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banashee · 3 years

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5 Times Jon and Martin hug +1 time they kiss

The first time Martin and Jon hug - or more precisely, the first time Martin hugs Jon - it is a response to the fact that they’re still alive more than anything else. It’s after Jane Prentiss’ attack, after Martin finds the body of Gertrude Robinson down in the tunnels.

Everyone is a bit worse for wear, which isn’t surprising after everything. The whole institute is full of dead worms and police, so there is little time to think of anything else until the worst of the storm has calmed.

It’s only after, when Jon asks Martin for his statement about the incident that everything hits him at once.

“I’m sorry I left you. I thought you and Tim were right behind me…” The guilt about almost losing the two of them eats on Martin, and when he looks up at Jon, he is surprised to see that his eyes have softened more than he’s ever seen on him.

“Martin, it’s not your fault.” Carefully, as if unsure if he even should, Jon reaches out over the desk in an attempt to comfort, and Martin takes his hand and squeezes without thinking about it, grateful to have something besides a cold, hard table or the edges of his chair to hold onto.

He is also starting to tear up - great. As if today hasn’t sucked enough already, now he’s about to cry at work, too. But Jon… Is unusually patient. He waits for him to finish his statement and doesn’t push more than absolutely necessary.

Once the recording is done, he looks him in the eye, and thanks him again for letting him record this statement.

“Thank you, Martin. And, I suppose, I am glad that you are alright. I was… worried when you weren’t with us anymore.”

“I was worried about you, too. Both of you. I-'' Ah, great, now he really is crying in front of Jon. Martin wishes for the floor to open up and swallow him whole, but Jon doesn’t comment on that. He simply waits for Martin to calm down or leave or… Whatever he chooses to do next, reall, he doesn’t know.

To both their surprise, after Martin wipes over his face with one of his sleeves, he pulls Jon into a quick but heartfelt hug. The man feels stiff like a board and thin as bones in his arms, but after the first second of surprise, he hesitatingly hugs back.

“I am glad that you are okay.” he repeats quietly, and when Martin hurries out of the room after they let go, Jon looks after him, hoping that he really is alright. Or at least, will be alright.

There is a lot he would have liked to say, or do, but as always, there seems to be a blockage in his head that stops him from doing so.

It is late at night and Jon doesn’t think there is anyone still in the office. Yes, Martin is still in the Archives, but that is because he currently lives here. However, it is getting late and he is probably in the storage room and asleep by now, so that doesn’t really count, does it?

Jon wants to keep going, because he is having too many thoughts to calm down, but he is also exhausted. He doesn’t remember when he last got a decent night of sleep, or whatever counts as such ever since he started working down in the Archives. Sleep has always been a difficult subject to him, but it is even more so now.

Jon is cold almost all the time lately. He doesn’t sleep well as it is, but there is also something about this whole job, this whole situation, that leaves him nervous and shivering. Truth be told, he is afraid. More afraid than he is willing to admit, his short heart-to-heart with Martin when the worms attacked aside.

But even then, he had been unwilling to get into any more details. Trusting people, being vulnerable - it is an almost foreign concept to Jon, as much as he would like to be closer to the others.

He’s been holding himself back, trying to keep them at arm's length, for everyone's safety. But ever since Jane Prentiss’ attack, ever since he realized how much he really cares about Martin, Tim and Sasha when he’d feared for their lives, this particular plan had started to fail more and more.

Jon sighs, rubbing his tired and itching eyes under the glasses. There are slight tremors running through his entire body. Maybe he should get some tea, warm up and then see. He didn’t have a lunch break, because he keeps forgetting these things, so maybe it might help.

Jon sighs, then he slowly gets up from the seat by his desk. His recently injured leg is still hurting, and he knows he should give it a rest. He knows he should let it heal properly, but he’s always been bad at taking care of himself. Besides, what is he supposed to do at home? Sit there and wait for something terrible to happen while everyone else is stuck here? No, he’d really rather not.

When Jon steps out of his office, he is surprised to find that there is a faint light coming from the staff kitchen. Slowly, he steps closer to the room until he can see Martin. He is sitting at the kitchen table in an old t-shirt and what looks like green sweatpants with an ugly pattern, hunched over in his seat as he cradles a mug between his large hands. His hair is a mess, standing up in every direction, and he very much looks like somebody who tried and failed to sleep for quite some time.

Near him on the table, he can see the corkscrew and there is no doubt that there is one of the fire extinguishers in the room. Even though most of the worms are dead by now, old habits die hard, and it seems like these things help Martin feel a little bit safer.

Jon decides to say something now rather than later. He doesn’t want to startle the other man, and he also hopes that he wasn’t too loud while he worked.

“Oh, hi Martin. I didn’t wake you, did I?”

Martin almost jumps out of his skin and his head whips over to the door where Jon is still standing. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting the company at this hour. As soon as he realizes who it is, Martin seems to relax a bit.

“Christ Jon, I didn’t - I had no idea you were still here.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“It’s fine, really. Can’t sleep, anyway... There’s tea in the pot, if you want any.” he adds, and nods over to said pot on the table.

“Thank you.” Jon pulls another mug from the cabinet and fixes himself a mug, grateful that he doesn’t have to fumble his way through preparing everything. Now that he thinks of it, his hands are shaky and he would probably pour boiling water all over himself or something of that nature.

Truth be told, he is rather grateful for the company.

“Can’t sleep, either?” Martin asks eventually, and Jon looks up at him. He isn’t sure what Martin sees, but he is pretty sure that it’s fresh scars, exhaustion, more grey hair and eye bags down to his knees, or something to that effect. Really, there is no denying it.

“Not really, no. Getting work done here… It’s better than nothing, I suppose.” Jon shrugs self-consciously and takes a sip of his tea. It’s warm and comforting, and it instantly calms his nerves. At least a little bit.

The two of them share a bit of comfortable silence as they drink, and eventually, Jon slumps sideways with a sigh, more even exhausted than he had been before.

His head lands against something warm, soft and sturdy, and he finds that he doesn’t mind that.

Martin looks up in surprise when he finds that Jon has actually fallen asleep right on the spot , leaning against his shoulder. A deep blush is creeping up his neck, but thankfully, it is in the middle of the night and there is no one else around to see the scene unfold.

Careful not to wake him, Martin attempts to keep drinking his tea, pointedly ignoring that Jon, who seems dead to the world, actually wraps both arms around his middle in his sleep.

Oh, Fuck.

Martin is screwed - well and fully screwed and he knows it.

When Jon wakes up later, he is stammering and apologizing profusely, clearly embarrassed about the whole situation. But despite everything, somehow, something between the two of them seems to click into place that night.

Another time, a little bit later down the line, Jon and Martin hug in the middle of the office. There is no specific reason, really, but truth be told, the two of them have grown closer and closer over the last few months and weeks.

When they hug, it very much looks like what Tim will amusedly call “The happy fork lift” while he watches the scene unfold with a fond grin. It doesn’t happen often that he gets to see a treat like this - because “forklift” is actually quite accurate for what’s happening here.

Okay, so Jon is short. That is not his fault, but the fact is, he barely reaches up to Martin's shoulder when both of them are standing up straight.

No one dares uttering the word “adorable” because for one, Jon is technically still their boss,

But, the thing is, Jon is short, and when Martin hugs him that night, happy and seemingly carefree for once, he lifts him straight off of his feet.

Tim may or may not be cackling in the background and Melanie may or may not be rolling her eyes at them.

Today, there is no specific reason for them to hug. It’s just - their week has gone well for once - or at least, as well as a week can go for them these days. They’re off for the weekend now, so maybe for once, they’re simply a couple of coworkers - friends now, really - who are about to leave and that’s it. Just a friendly “see-you-on-Monday”-hug, and well.

If both Jon and Martin cling on for just a second longer than they usually would, that’s between them.

It’s been way too long since they talked.

Jon has just come back to work, freshly out of coma and the world might just as well have gone on without him. It feels like that, sometimes.

Jon doesn’t feel like himself at all, even if you take aside the whole “back from the dead” thing. The truth is, Jon is lonely.

Georgie is barely talking to him anymore. Tim is dead, which hurts like hell, even though they had their troubles towards the end. It doesn’t mean they stopped caring. Jon wishes they could have talked things through one last time, because that’s what friends do, right?

Sadly, they never got the chance.

Daisy, Melanie and Basira are around, but that’s not really the same. Jon isn’t as close to them, like he used to be to Martin, Tim and Sasha. Sasha who has been dead for so long and none of them noticed it at the time. It hurts, just as much as losing Tim, and it feels just as fresh.

Martin is still here, but Jon hasn’t seen him since he came back.

Every time he hears a door open in the hallway, Jon finds himself jumping up from his seat, sprinting to the door just to see if he might have missed Martin. More often than not, it’s someone else. Until one day, by chance, he runs into him in the hallway.

“Martin! Hi!”

Martin looks up, and it looks like he is… Grey. Fading away, like he isn’t really here.

“It’s - it’s good to see you. We haven't talked in a while.” Jon is smiling at him, but Martin seems incapable to return it. There is something lost and sad about him, more so than usual - it’s his eyes, Jon realizes. Martin looks sad and empty, but he’s Martin and he’s missed him so much.

Without thinking, Jon steps closer and wraps his arms around the larger man in a hug that doesn’t get returned this time. Martin stands there, stiff and just as lost as before, and he feels cold. So cold. But he still smells the same, smells of tea and woolen jumpers and that one brand of shampoo that he’s been using for years. It is familiar and comforting, but at the same time, it feels wrong.

When Jon returns to his office and closes the door behind him, there is a thick lump forming in his throat. He doesn’t feel better at all.

They are standing on a foggy beach and Martin is freezing cold. He is even more faded away than before, as if he barely even exists anymore. Far away from everything and everyone around him.

When Jon finally reaches him, reaches out for him, he is afraid that he might not even be able to touch Martin at all. But when he reaches out, Martin's hand is ice cold, his skin clammy and crusted with salt.

They stand there in the middle of an empty beach, waves rolling lazily behind them as the thick white fog seems to swallow them whole.

“I was so alone.” Martin tells him, and his voice breaks. Jon closes the distance between them in a heartbeat, wrapping himself around the larger man as tightly as he can, trying to protect him from the world around them and everything that is trying to hurt him.

“Come on, let’s go home.” he quietly tells him, and after what feels like eternity, Martin agrees.

They keep holding hands the entire way to Martins apartment, throughout the night and the entire next day when they’re huddled together on a train, on their way to Scotland.

Martin wakes up warm, comfortable and with a mouthful of Jon’s hair. The man in question is cuddled up into his back, both arms and legs wrapped tightly around Martin, like an octopus. He does that quite a bit, and honestly, Martin can’t complain.

He loves all the small ways in which they can express their love to each other, and if one of the most “human cactus” people Martin has ever met in his entire life wants full-body-cuddles from him on a daily basis, who is he to deny him that?

Besides, it’s not like it’s a hardship. Martin loves these moments just as much, and he wonders sometimes how he ever managed to feel truly alive before he - they - could have this.

Martin is well aware that he’s got privileges that no one else would have with Jon. He knows he won’t ever sleep with him - well, not like that, anyway - and they have talked about this, about boundaries and wishes, everything important to them. They have found and developed their own ways to be close and show their love to one another, and it works. It just works.

“You’re like a small backpack.” Martin had joked once, and as a result got the treat of hearing Jon sleepily laugh into his shoulder. God, he loves hearing him laugh. It doesn’t happen nearly often enough, but, not without a sizable amount of pride, he noticed that Jon laughs a lot more now that they are together.

Martin attempts to pull the salt-and-pepper strands of Jons hair out of his mouth without waking the other man, and as always, it proves to be a real challenge.

Jon’s hair seems to have a life of its own, and it’s everywhere. Spread out over the pillows. In Martin’s face. In his own face - everywhere. Jon, oblivious to all of this, sighs in his sleep and tightens his hold around Martin, hands clasped around on his sleep-warm chest. Meanwhile, Martin carefully attempts to free himself from his boyfriend's hair.

‘I should braid it later ´, he thinks as he carefully tucks the rest of it away and gently scratches Jon’s scalp while he is at it.

Braiding his hair relaxes both of them, and Jon tends to lean into the touch like a cat, which is always a plus. Martin smiles as he allows himself to slowly wake up while he enjoys the warm company of his boyfriend. It’s been a while since either of them could sleep so peacefully, and even though it happens on borrowed time, they are determined to enjoy every minute of it.

After a little while later, Jon slowly stirs awake. His hold around Martin tightens for a moment, then he pushes his face into the crook of his neck.

“Good morning, my Love.” Martin says, fingers tracing along Jons forearms that are still wrapped around him. He smiles when he gets a kiss on his neck in response.

“Sleep well?” he asks then, and Jon stretches out his limbs while he remains wrapped around Martin. Cat. This man is a damn cat.

“Hmhm… Good morning, Love.”

Now that there is a bit more space, Martin used it to turn around and face Jon. He is half awake and smiling at him, as if Martin is the best thing he has ever seen. Truth be told, he is, and Jon is happier to have him than words can express.

Martin is his person, the love of his life. As hard as the last years and months have been on them, at least they have found each other, and that has to count for something, right?

More so than that, they’re comfortable with and around each other, in a way Jon hasn’t been around anyone in a very long time, or maybe ever. They know each other, good parts and bad parts alike.

They remain wrapped around each other for a bit, chest to chest this time, and Jon smiles a happy, loops smile when Martin presses a kiss on top of his head and then keeps stroking his hair, neck and back. His own hands are tracing small, invisible patterns on Martins back now, and the two of them thoroughly enjoy slowly waking up like this.

Neither of them has had a nightmare, which is rare these days, but they’ll take some peace and quiet whenever they can.

After a little while, Jon and Martin pull away from each other, just a little bit, to be able to look at each other and to share a proper good morning kiss, ever gentle but definitely enthusiastic.

“Hi.” He smiles.

“Hi yourself.” Another kiss, and then they are interrupted by the sound of a growling stomach. They share a look.

“Time for breakfast?”

“Yes, definitely. I think we’ve got ingredients for pancakes, if you want.”

And just like that, they start another day in the cozy cabin in the middle of the scottish highlands.

Notes:

Warnings: - mentioned canon character death - references to depression, loneliness etc.

#banashee writes #the magnus archives fanfic #tma fanfic #jonmartin #the magnus archives #5+1 things #hurt/comfort #fluff #all seasons #tw canon character death mentioned #tw loneliness #tw depression

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jowritesthingss · 3 years

Text

A Fondness for Rabbits

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Pairing(s): n/a

Rating: Teen (for swearing)

Content Warning(s): rabbits, food/drink, mild(ish) swearing, not!Sasha, eldritch beings, spoilers through late s2 / early s3-ish

Length: 3,538 words

Brief Summary: Jon isn’t particularly keen on the Archive’s new rabbit mascot. (It would help if you read this first! But it isn’t required.)

AO3 link in reblogs bc Tumblr is annoying!

If he could, Jonathan Sims would absolutely be firing one Timothy Stoker right about now.

Unfortunately, it seems that for the moment, the both of them are stuck in some sort of limbo, working down there in the Archives.

Them and that damned rabbit Tim brought in to work.

Jon is certain, absolutely certain, that Tim only brought the thing into the Archives to bother him. It happened all too soon after they had their falling out and discovered that none of them can physically quit; there’s no way that it isn’t a coincidence.

Tim swears up and down that it’s only at the Institute because his flat doesn’t allow animals, and that it’ll be gone as soon as he can find a permanent home for it, but naturally Jon is suspicious—and rightfully so, he thinks. Perhaps Tim isn’t the one who murdered Gertrude, but that doesn’t free him from all suspicions. Jon still doesn’t know why he applied to work at the Magnus Institute. For all he knows, the rabbit could be the next step in some horrid plan of some sort.

Regardless of any possible ulterior motives, Jon knows one thing for certain—he does not want this animal in his Archives. He wants it gone, and he wants it gone yesterday.

He stresses as such to a seemingly uncaring Tim: “The moment you find it a different home, it goes. The moment.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Tim agrees placidly, and Jon huffs at that, satisfied enough for the moment.

Oh, but then Martin comes in, and Jon is tasked with the lovely job of explaining to Martin why Tim’s rabbit is allowed to stay when his stray dog wasn’t. And hell, Jon regrets this already.

He stares into the beady red eyes of the rabbit as it slowly, contemplatively munches hay in a corner of the break room. Well.

There’s nothing to do but avoid the break room from then on, yes?

...No. Unfortunately.

As the last person to leave at night, and the first person to get in to the Archives in the morning, Jon becomes the reluctant caretaker to the ridiculously furry animal that has begun to take over his Archives and win over his assistants.

Tim wheedles him solidly for a day, popping in at random times until Jon finally agrees to feed the rabbit every morning when he arrives and every night before he leaves. And Jon would say no, he really would, if it weren’t for Martin, annoying oaf he is with his big pleading doe eyes and his irritatingly effective pout. Jon feels the silent judgement radiating off of him every time he pops in bearing tea.

Of course, even if he can’t avoid the animal in entirety, Jon still tries to make his trips in to care for the thing as quick as possible.

He times it once out of curiosity and boredom while he waits for his laptop to finish a surprise update—he’s managed to get the whole routine down in under five minutes. Considering the routine consists of giving it hay, getting it a scoop of pellets, tossing it lettuce from the fridge, refilling its water, and tidying the litter box, he feels almost a bit proud.

It’s somewhat relieving, honestly, having something normal to express distaste at in between investigating his coworkers on possible murder charges and fighting weird worm people and stabby hand people and other supernatural stuff. It’s kind of nice, actually.

Jon’s not too sure he likes the way the rabbit looks at him, though. It’s a rabbit—it’s not like it’s all that smart, right? But something about it just seems so...so knowing. So otherworldly.

He’ll get the routine down to three minutes, Jon resolves. Anything to avoid the rabbit’s unblinking gaze.

The rabbit becomes Jon Jr, and Jon (now apparently Jon Sr—which, don’t get him started on that bit) becomes irritated. Well, even more irritated than he generally always is nowadays.

And yet...the rabbit seems to sense that it has been named after Jon, almost. It seems to take particular fascination with him, and he cannot for the life of him figure out why.

Whenever Jon is in the break room, the thing follows him everywhere, demanding pets and snuggles and gently nibbling at the tips of his fingers if he lets them drop low enough. So he goes into the break room less and less, expecting for it to lose interest in him or hopefully forget about or ignore him the few moments he does pop in—but the rabbit seems to become even more fiercely attached.

He knows the creature isn’t like this with the others. The rabbit doesn’t particularly like Sasha—it ignores her most of the time—and it outright bit Elias the one time he chanced in on it. It seems to like Tim and Martin a fair amount, but the moment Jon walks through the doorway it bounds over, refusing to leave his side and even trying to follow him out of the break room on a smattering of occasions.

Staring into those empty, beady red eyes, Jon could swear there is something ancient and eternal and knowing. But Tim refuses to get rid of the thing, and Martin would cry, and Sasha or Elias or probably all of them would corner him and lecture him unnecessarily about being too paranoid yet again.

Although, he could always take it to an animal shelter. The rabbit very literally eats into the Archive’s budget—the thing eats an absurdly large amount of hay. Then Martin keeps buying toys for it instead of getting the office supplies Jon has asked for just about twenty times (“what if he gets bored in there, Jon? did you know rabbits can get depression? I can’t let him get depression!”), and Tim’s determined to fatten it up with copious amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables (“only the best organics for my furred son!”).

He’s certain that he could logic it out—that if he reasoned and fought it, Elias would nod neutrally and let him get rid of it. Elias, for all he is suspect in Gertrude’s murder, seems to be the only one with a modicum of sense left in the place. Surely he’ll be on Jon’s side in this.

But when he casually asks Elias his thoughts on the matter, the man adopts an oddly amused expression and says he has no objection to an animal to emotionally support the Archives team (“especially considering the incident involving Jane Prentiss, Jon, it really might help boost employee morale”).

Jon is fairly certain that this is Elias’ stance only so that he doesn’t have to be held accountable for providing his traumatized employees with actual therapeutic aid, but he doesn’t mention it. Instead he angrily bites his tongue and excuses himself from Elias’ office before he says something stupid.

As he goes back down to the Archives and continues about his day, Jon puzzles through his predicament.

The shelter is still sounding like his best option, his coworkers’ opinions be damned. He’s always the last to leave at night and the first to arrive in the morning...perhaps he could wait until everyone is gone and take it to a shelter? Or maybe he could ask around the other departments to see if anyone needs a pet or—well, or snake food.

Although...some very small part of Jon hesitates at the thought of turning Jon Jr over to Artifact Storage or a snake or anything of the sort.

The rabbit seems almost scarily in tune with his emotions—perhaps more in tune than Jon himself—and it doesn’t seem to mean him any harm. Certainly it hasn’t attacked him with parasitic worms or stabbed him with ridiculously long, sharp fingers yet or anything like that. And, well, what could it even do if it did intend harm? Bite him? Pee on his shoes? Steal his lunch?

...Speaking of lunch, Martin keeps spilling chicken from his wrap on his pants. Jon doesn’t have the heart to tell him that the mayonnaise has also started to escape.

Abruptly, Jon stands up from the couch, throwing away his napkin and shooing the rabbit away with a foot as he wriggles his way out of the door to the break room.

It has to be because they named it after him, Jon concludes. That’s why he’s starting to get attached. That must have been their plan, and dammit, it’s working.

He’ll give Tim an ultimatum, Jon ultimately decides as he goes back to his office. Tim doesn’t have to know what Elias thinks about the situation. And he did promise that the rabbit would go when he found it a home. So either Tim finds the rabbit a home by this Friday, or it goes out to a local shelter.

...The rabbit has a home by Friday: Jon’s.

Jon can pinpoint exactly when it happens.

He works himself into a panic when Basira Hussein quits the police force, and he loses any chance he might’ve had at getting the rest of Gertrude’s tapes. And at this point his panic (and his bad luck streak) really isn’t all that surprising, but something about this one particular panic is bad. Really bad.

It’s late at night, and everyone has gone home (except perhaps Elias; Jon has no idea what Elias’ hours look like). Since there’s no one else there to notice him appearing even more frazzled than usual, Jon chances out of his office and into the break room for a glass of water. It ought help his scratchy throat and his shaking limbs and his buzzing head.

Of course, he’s forgotten about the rabbit entirely.

Upon shoving the door open and flicking on the light switch, Jon nearly jumps out of his skin to see the rather unpleasant reminder of the Archives’ pesky little visitor. It’s sitting directly in front of the door, staring expectantly up at him, almost as if it’s been waiting for him.

Unnerving as ‘Jon Jr’ is, the actual Jon’s exhaustion and want for water outweighs his suspicions in the given moment, so he continues forward, shuffling into the break room and very nearly staggering towards the counter.

Once he’s managed to get a cup down from the cupboard, Jon fills it with trembling hands, dropping it into the sink once and nearly dropping it across the counter once too. He turns around and nearly trips on Jon Jr, sloshing even more water out of his cup.

Despite being rained on, though, the rabbit doesn’t seem all that put out; rather, it follows him over to the break room couch, waiting almost patiently for him to sit down and get situated before it hops up and unceremoniously deposits itself in his lap.

“What?” he manages to sourly mutter at it, but he can’t muster up the energy to shoo the thing off of his lap.

So Jon sits there, in silence, drinking his water and attempting to ignore the rabbit.

His attempt does not go well. A few minutes into the stillness, the rabbit shifts, moving to face Jon. It presses its nose towards his torso, wiggling its way under the hem of Jon’s rumpled collared shirt.

Choking on a particularly large gulp of water, Jon makes a startled noise as the rabbit’s wet nose comes into contact with his bare skin.

Coughing violently, Jon tries to flinch away, falling sideways on the couch. His cup flies out of his hands—thank god it’s one of the plastic ones—and water splatters everywhere.

However, the rabbit doesn’t seem to be deterred by the sudden motion and his attempt to get away. It simply follows him, weaseling its way from his lap up towards his face. Its bright red-eyed stare burns into Jon.

Jon flinches as the thing looms in front of his face, sucking in a desperate breath. Oh, god. There’s no one for him to call out to, no help to be had. Oh, god. Is it truly some sort of—of monster—after all? Is this it? Is he about to die?

The rabbit presses forward...

...and begins to lick his nose.

As Jon lies there, frozen into some sort of terrified shock, a vague part of his mind recalls a memory of the rabbits that his grandmother’s neighbor had kept, all those decades ago. Licking someone is a rabbit’s way of kissing them, and licking someone’s nose...that’s one of the ultimate signs of love, isn’t it?

The rabbit continues to lick his nose—nothing more, nothing less. No biting, no clawing, no attacking. Just licks. Just kisses. Just...love?

Jon’s racing heartbeat slowly begins to calm down. He lets out a shaky breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, and he allows him to fall back into the couch, relaxing his tense limbs.

The rabbit follows him as he leans into the back of the couch, clambering up onto his chest.

For a moment Jon tenses up again, unsure of what it’s planning to do, but all the rabbit does is settle comfortably onto his chest and resume licking his nose. The weight of the animal on his chest somewhat reminds him of the Admiral, back when he’d lived with his former girlfriend Georgie, and it feels...nice. Calming, almost, soothing and lessening the sheer panic he’s been feeling for the majority of the day.

“You’re not....” Jon’s voice cracks; he inhales a shaky breath before trying again. “You’re not so bad after all, are you?” He licks his lips before he cautiously tries out the rabbit’s name. “...Junior.”

Jon reaches a wobbly hand up towards Jon Jr. He stares intently at the rabbit, waiting for any sign of alarm or ill will. Seeing none, he places his hand hesitantly on Jon Jr’s back. When the animal shows no sign of startling or moving to dislodge his hand, Jon slowly begins to pet him in short, stilted strokes that quickly become more confident as the rabbit kisses his nose more fervently.

“I suppose...I suppose you can stay for...just a bit longer,” Jon murmurs into the rabbit’s warm fur. He cautiously strokes Jon Jr’s cheeks, chancing a small smile when the rabbit closes his eyes in pleasure.

And if he falls asleep there on the break room couch, there with the comforting warmth and weight of the rabbit he’d set out to hate and instead fallen hopelessly in love with—well. Nobody was there in the Archives to see it, now were they?

Too much happens all too fast, in a blur of time and terror. Melanie King limps in on Jon acting much too immature (in his defense, Jon Jr is...difficult to resist when he wants kisses), but the worry over whether she’ll ruin his reputation or not is quickly washed away by the cold terror of realizing that Sasha is not Sasha.

Suddenly there’s an axe in his hand and an oddly swirling tabletop in his sights, and then suddenly Tim and Martin are interrupting him mid-swing, Jon Jr nosing around their ankles.

Then they’re surrounded by splinters of wood and the grotesque, distorted yells of the thing that is not Sasha, the thing that was not ever Sasha, and there’s a yellow door, and a thing with too-many-too-long hands holding out for a deal.

And then they’re running.

Martin gets lost, Jon isn’t entirely sure when—was it back in the twisting halls of Michael’s domain, or down in the twisting tunnels of Smirke’s creation? everything is blurring together at edges tinged with fear—

—and then it’s just him, and Tim, and Jon Jr, and the thing that had been, had been wearing his assistant’s life like some sort of costume, and oh. This is it, isn’t it? They’re about to die, aren’t they.

At least Martin will survive to tell their tale, Jon hopes, feeling a rush of remorse at how abruptly and patronizingly he’s treated his poor assistant. He could’ve been—he could’ve been dead and gone, replaced like Sasha, and Jon never would have known. And now—now Jon is the one about to die. Him and Tim.

God, Tim. He doesn’t particularly like Tim. Tim has been satisfactory enough as an assistant, he supposes—had almost been a friend once, back in their research days—and now....

Now they back into a dead end, practically hugging the wall as not!Sasha slowly approaches them with a look of manic glee on its face. And Jon...he wouldn’t wish this on anyone, regardless of how much he does or doesn’t like them. Certainly he wouldn’t wish this end on Tim...even if a small, selfish part of him is glad that he’s not alone in the end.

It’s just him and Tim. Just like it was back with Prentiss.

Mouth falling slightly open, Jon turns towards the man in question—perhaps to weakly comment as such, he isn’t really sure—only to see Jon Jr leaping out of Tim’s arms.

“Junior!” The word is tugged out of him, unbidden. Dammit, he’s grown attached to the rabbit. And dammit, there are tears prickling at the corners of his eyes as the rabbit obliviously makes his way towards the hungry thing that had pretended to be Sasha. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

Only—

Only then, the rabbit isn’t a rabbit.

It happens much too fast for Jon to really get a good glimpse at what their rabbit becomes. But there’s a loud cracking noise, then a monstrous blur of gray and limbs and mouth and teeth, then another crack and then...nothing. Not even not!Sasha remains. Just a smallish white rabbit in the middle of the now-empty tunnel, sitting primly and licking at one paw.

Jon and Tim gape at each other and at the rabbit, but one thing is for certain:

“...We’re keeping the rabbit,” Jon murmurs, light-headed.

“I—yeah.” Tim nods, and he slumps back against the wall and slowly slides down to the floor of the tunnel. A hand reaches out and snags Jon, dragging him down with, and there, leaning against the wall and each other, the two stare at the not-quite-a-rabbit.

“We’re keeping the rabbit.”

The rabbit-but-not-a-rabbit blinks his innocent red eyes up at them before flopping over to rest, and honestly? Jon thinks Junior has rather the right idea there.

And so the rabbit is kept, and Jon and Tim stagger out of the tunnels minus one not!Sasha but still with one not!a rabbit.

Come to think of it, they’re still down one Martin as well, which is admittedly worrisome.

Neither Jon nor Tim is exactly keen to go back in the tunnels so soon after escaping certain death within them. Jon has never been the most athletic of people—he’s an academic, he’s supposed to be sitting behind a desk all day, for christ’s sake—and his legs feel like jelly beneath him as they debate over calling the police.

Tim is of the mind that they should call the police, or at least Basira, whom he stubbornly still refers to as Jon’s “girlfriend” (and Jon is much too tired to dispute that at this point). Jon, on the other hand, doesn’t think even section thirty-one officers would listen to “we went into a door a monster created in a wall and we lost our coworker in a maze of endless passageways.”

Thankfully, it turns out that they needn’t have worried, because Martin turns up not too long after, dizzy and dragging two other people behind him.

One of them is a familiar face—Helen Richardson, whom Martin apparently had picked up while stuck in Michael’s spiralling labyrinth, and who seems quite content to latch onto Martin and sit firmly in one spot in the center of the place, refusing to pass through any doorways whatsoever. But the second person is an unfamiliar face—an aging, gray-haired man who seems impeccably polite, incredibly calm, and increasingly out of place among the dinge of the tunnels and Artifact Storage.

Then the man introduces himself as Jurgen Leitner, and Jon nearly drops Jon Jr.

But Jon is much too tired to deal with that in the moment, so when Martin tentatively suggests a slumber party of sorts in the Archives to ease his, Helen’s, and Leitner’s worries all in one, Jon gives in without the fight he normally would put up.

As the others assemble bedding and piles of pillows and cushions pilfered from the library chairs, Jon manages to snag the break room couch once more for himself...and for Jon Jr.

Jon has absolutely no idea what, exactly, he’s supposed to do now. There are clearly bigger things at play here—or, at least, Leitner seemed to think so, from the little he said before Tim shut him up and sent him to bed—but as he watches Jon Jr nibble on a cucumber peel, Jon feels a bit better, at least, knowing that one of those bigger things might at least be on his side.

(Or, well. Hopefully he can bribe mister “bigger thing” with enough carrots to stay on his side. That is yet to be seen.)

Fin

First || Next

I just have so many stupid ideas for this ridiculous AU that I couldn’t just let them live in my head...so I might as well scrawl them out and let y’all enjoy them with me, right? (Or you can tell me to shut tf up if these get too dumb or annoying for you asdhjkl)

But yeah, as you can tell, Jon Jr’s presence will be messing around with canon, because I take any and all opportunities for fix-its. I just really miss my boy Tim and also my wife Sasha ok so sue me

Want to chat or be added onto any of my taglists? Shoot me an ask or a message here or via my other social media!

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ollieofthebeholder · 3 years

Text

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

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Also on AO3

Chapter 7: Martin

Martin is ready to go now.

It’s late—it was late when all this started, but it has to be closing in on midnight now. He’s wrapped up like a mummy, and he’s only not in complete agony because one of the very nice paramedics got permission from the doctor at whatever hospital to give him some painkillers. He’s still in pain, but it’s fainter, more muffled. He’s tired and he’s, well, drugged, and it’s hard to think straight, and he just wants to get some rest. He wants to go home, or at least somewhere quieter and less...wormy than here. Somewhere safe.

He’s seen movement and flashing lights through the translucent plastic sheeting that is the quarantine tent, heard voices and shouting that he can’t quite make out, but it all seems to have mostly died down by now. Martin wonders how he’s going to get anywhere, much less home. He wonders if Tim and Sasha made it out of those tunnels okay, if the other is all right. He wonders about the scream.

But nobody will tell him anything, only that he is not infested and needs to keep the wounds clean and needs fresh air. They tell him a lot about how to recover from what’s happened to him and a bit on what to expect about that process, but nothing about what’s going on beyond the four walls of this tent, and it’s worrying Martin. A lot.

“What time is it?” he asks the paramedic currently standing with him. Her partner has stepped outside and may or may not be talking to someone, probably from ECDC. He’s at least ninety percent certain they showed up for this, considering the situation, which is a very mild way of putting it.

Before the paramedic can answer, the second one steps back into the tent and nods. “All clear. Everything’s settled...Mr. Blackwood, just to be clear, you are declining transportation to the hospital, correct?”

“That’s right.” Martin has been asking them to just give him the paperwork already for what feels like this side of forever.

“All right, go ahead and sign here, please.” The second paramedic hands him a clipboard. Martin’s hands are bandaged and it’s hard to hold a pen, but he manages it. He signs without really looking at what he’s signing. The paramedic studies it and nods. “That’s all in order, then. You’ll need to keep the bandages clean and dry, and you may need to go back to your regular doctor for a checkup...”

He rattles off more instructions for looking after himself and his wounds, but frankly, Martin is too tired to listen to all this again. He hopes whatever new information is included isn’t going to be too important, or difficult to figure out; Martin’s usually pretty good at taking care of others, but that’s the point, it’s always someone else he’s looking after. Maybe he’ll just have to think of himself as “someone else”. It’s going to be some time before he’s allowed back to work, he knows that much at least, so he’ll have plenty of time to figure out how to look after himself. Not like there will be anyone else to.

Something of all this must show in his face, because after a minute, the paramedic’s face softens. “I know, it’s a lot to throw at you right now. Don’t worry, I’ve already told your partner all of this.”

“My...?” Martin looks up, confused. He doesn’t have a partner. Who could be out there claiming that? The only one he can think of is the other, and surely he wouldn’t be so foolish as to come out in the middle of...all this.

“Yeah, I told him to give me a minute to debrief you and make sure you didn’t want transport.” The paramedic tucks the clipboard under his arm. “Do you think you can walk on your own?”

If he can’t, Martin’s not about to admit that out loud; they won’t let him leave if he can’t, and he doubts they have crutches handy. “I think so, yeah. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” The paramedic smiles. “You’re a lucky man, you know.”

“I know.” Martin only has to think about Timothy Hodge to know that. If the system had triggered any slower, he might have ended up too far gone to save, even if the CO2 had worked.

The paramedic winks. “’Course, he’s luckier. Take care, Mr. Blackwood.”

“Erm, you, too.” Martin bites his lip to hide his confusion and slides carefully off the stretcher. The painkillers help, but he’s still a little unsteady on his feet. He wobbles at first, but manages to make it to the edge of the quarantine tent without too much difficulty.

He steps outside and shivers. Apparently the tent blocked a lot of the night chill out; it may be halfway to June, but the nights are still cool and Martin wasn’t wearing his sweater when everything went down. It’s still in the Archives...he hopes. Assuming his little fire didn’t spread. Assuming Jane Prentiss didn’t cover the whole place in...whatever that was. Assuming...

“Martin!”

Martin looks up in shock to see Jon coming towards him, eyes wide and panicky. Behind him are—thank God—Tim and Sasha, both looking none the worse for wear. Tim and Sasha should be there, of course, but Jon...Jon went home hours ago, it’s late, he needs his sleep. It has to be a hallucination.

“Jon?” he says anyway.

Jon stops in front of him and reaches out like he wants to touch his shoulder, then stops himself, eyeing the bandages. “Are you all right? The paramedic said—”

“I—I’m fine.” It’s a lie, sort of, but Martin figures Jon doesn’t actually want to hear the nuances of that. “Apart from the...holes.”

He shivers in a sudden gust of wind, and Jon unfolds something under his arm. “Here, I—you left your sweater in the Archives, I—do you need a hand?”

Martin blinks in surprise. Is Jon sick? Is this even really Jon? He wants to say yes, to see how far this will go, but there’s enough of a height difference between the two of them that he finds himself saying, “I think I’ve got it, but...thanks.” As he takes the sweater, he manages to ask, “What are you doing here?”

Jon plays with the cuffs of his cardigan. “I—I came back to get those notes I was looking at before I left, I meant to take them with me and...I don’t know, I suddenly felt like I had to get them right away. I got back here and I found...” He gestures back in the direction of the Institute.

Martin struggles his way into the sweater and looks around. There are police cars, officers prowling about. The ambulance is packing up, and there’s a man in a white hazmat suit, minus the helmet which is under his arm, talking to one of the police officers. He mentally runs through the list of other flashing lights he saw through the walls of the tent, the voices he heard in the Archives, and surmises that there was a lot more chaos an hour or two ago.

“You should be sleeping,” he says instead, unable to keep the worry out of his voice.

Tim’s snort is practically elephantine, and Martin looks at him briefly. Jon just shakes his head. “I couldn’t—I realized you weren’t part of the crowd and that must mean you were still in there, and I—I had to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m all right.” Martin straightens up, despite the stiffness, and manages a smile. “I should...probably try and get home, I guess. If the trains are still running and all.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Jon gives him a look that’s almost reminiscent of his usual stern scowl. “I’ll give you a ride. I—I need to get your statement anyway, and...best to do it somewhere that...isn’t here.” He glances over his shoulder. “That goes for you two as well. Especially you two.”

“Are you guys all right?” Martin asks anxiously.

“We’re fine.” Sasha manages to give him a smile, coming a little closer to him as she does so.

Tim nods. “Well, we’re not hurt, at any rate. It’s...a lot.” He pauses. “Tell you what. My place is closest. Why don’t we all go there? I’ve got plenty of room and we can...debrief or whatever it is we need to do.” He grins, a pale imitation of his usual confidence and cheek, but enough to make Martin feel a little better, anyway. “Besides, we never got that sleepover in the Archives. Might as well do it in my living room.”

Tim’s up to something. Martin’s almost sure of it, but he’s honestly too tired to care. “Yeah, okay, sounds good.”

“Come on, then,” Jon says, turning towards the curb.

Martin starts to follow, and his knees buckle. That fast, Jon turns around and tries to catch him, but unfortunately, Martin is about a head taller than Jon and outweighs him by a good amount, so now they’re both falling. Luckily, Tim steps in and takes Martin’s other side, keeping them from pitching to the ground. “Whoa, there. Come on, nice and steady then.”

The three of them shuffle like an awkward, six-legged beast towards the curb, where a nondescript car that’s seen better days sits haphazardly parked and glared at by several officers. Jon opens the passenger side door, and Tim lets go of Martin slowly while Jon helps him settle into the seat. There’s a gentleness—almost a tenderness—to his actions that Martin isn’t sure he’ll survive. Never mind the worms, he’s going to die right here in this car because Jon is being nice to him.

Not to say Jon’s never been nice before. He’s been better—less tense, less angry—since Martin burst into his office and dumped a literal can of worms onto his desk. And there’s been a definite softening since Martin admitted he lied about his job history. But this level of concern, of care, is new, and Martin’s still not sure he isn’t hallucinating the whole thing.

He’s barely aware of Tim giving Jon an address, of Jon brusquely assuring him he knows where that is. He’s more concerned with not passing out or aggravating any of his injuries. He doesn’t know how many worms tried to burrow into his body, but he’s just thankful he’s not infected.

“Was the fire too bad?” he asks, feeling a little anxious.

“No, it was fine.” Jon’s voice is soft, reassuring. “Confined to a trash can, from what I could tell. I—I admit it wasn’t my primary concern when I went in. Elias said it looks like it was set to trigger the fire system.”

“It was. I just...didn’t want it to get out of control.” Martin takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t—”

“Martin, no. It’s fine. If—” Jon tightens his grip on the steering wheel briefly. “It’s fine. You did the right thing. Pulling the alarm wouldn’t have done anything but clear out the building, if there had still been anybody in there. It wouldn’t have set off the system.”

Martin nods slowly. Then his brain catches up with what Jon said. ��Wait, Elias was there? When? How?”

“I presume he gets an alert from the alarm company. I don’t know. He was already there when I arrived.” Jon glances over at Martin, his beautiful brown eyes still worried. “He’s the one who told me Tim and Sasha were in there.”

“How did he know?” Sasha blurts.

Jon’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror, then back to Martin, before returning to the road. “He said he overheard Tim talking about it.”

There’s an audible frown in Tim’s voice when he speaks, but Martin can’t spare the energy to try and turn his head. “Okay, now I really think he’s got the place bugged. The only person I mentioned it to was Sasha, and we were in the Archives at the time. It was right after she got back from lunch—right after you showed me that statement you found.” He pauses. “Or was that you?”

This time, Martin does turn his head, to see Tim regarding him seriously. “No. Must’ve been the other.”

Tim nods. “Thought as much. I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”

“Wait, what are you talking about?” Jon asks. “The other what?”

Martin opens his mouth to explain, but Tim beats him to it. “Tell you when we get to my place. Don’t want you wrecking the car ‘cause you’re distracted. Make a left right here.”

Jon subsides and continues driving, but he keeps shooting glances at Martin that make him thoroughly nervous. He hates keeping secrets from Jon—from anyone, really, but especially Jon—and he really should have told him about this one right away. But the other’s caution had rubbed off on him, and he had kept his mouth shut. Now it’s going to be another stress about losing his job...despite the other’s reassurance that he won’t.

Even if he doesn’t lose his job...what if he loses Jon’s trust? He doesn’t think he’ll survive that.

Finally, Jon pulls the car to a stop in front of Tim’s house. Or at least, Martin assumes it’s Tim’s house, since he directed them there. For all he knows, this is some completely random place and Tim’s playing one of his jokes on them, but he doubts it. Tim undoes his safety belt and opens the door. “Come on in, everybody.”

Sasha gets out from behind Martin, too. Martin manages to get his safety belt unfastened, but when he goes to open the door and climb out, he can’t help the small, pained noise that escapes him when he tries to stand. He presses his lips together tightly and swallows down on the pain, desperate not to be a burden, to prove that he’ll be fine when—inevitably—Jon drops him home or he manages to hobble to the nearest Underground station and get there himself. He can do this. It’s just a few steps.

“Martin?” Jon’s suddenly there beside him, one hand out uncertainly. “Here, let—let me give you a hand. You’ve got to be stiff at the very least, sitting cramped into that space for so long. I should have pushed the seat back before you got in—that’s why Sasha sat behind you, I’m sure, her legs are shorter...”

“I’m fine,” Martin insists, or tries to, despite the fact that he’s leaning heavily on the roof of Jon’s car for support and that’s really not helping the pain from the holes under the bandages. “You don’t have to.”

“Maybe not, but let me help you anyway,” Jon says. He sounds like he’s trying to summon up his usual brusque and stern facade, but the genuine worry in his eyes makes a lie of that. Martin doesn’t know what to think about it, but he can feel his ears getting hot.

“Sure, okay,” he hears himself say softly.

Jon slips an arm gingerly around him, draping Martin’s arm around his shoulder. Martin tries not to lean on him too hard, but Jon takes more of his weight than Martin would prefer as they limp towards the front door. When Tim, who’s in the process of unlocking the door, realizes what’s going on, he abandons the keys and comes back to help. Since he’s closer to Martin’s height, it makes things easier.

Sasha pulls the door open for them, holds it so they can maneuver in, then shuts the door behind them as Tim switches on the hall light. “Here we are,” he announces, his voice maybe a bit louder than necessary. “Home sweet home. Come on, let’s get settled in the living room.”

It’s not a very long hallway, but still, Martin is definitely ready to sit down by the time they shuffle awkwardly into the living room. There is, he’s relieved to see, plenty of seating available. Apart from two wing chairs flanking a window and backed by a bookcase, there’s a comfortable-looking sofa, a matching love seat, and an oversized armchair. There’s also someone standing next to the love seat, one hand pressed into its back. Jon stops abruptly and nearly sends Martin tumbling to the ground, his entire body stiffening.

“It’s all right,” Tim assures him. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?” Jon repeats incredulously.

The other smiles, but there’s something sad about it. “Hello, Jon.”

“Who—what are you?” Jon demands. There’s an edge to his voice, something between anger and fear that stirs a feeling of protectiveness in Martin’s chest, which is not helpful at the moment since he can barely stand on his own, let alone stand between Jon and anything that might be trying to kill him.

“I’d really like to sit down right now, if nobody minds,” he says.

“Sit. Everybody,” Tim adds. He takes most of Martin’s weight and helps him over to the armchair, which turns out to be a recliner. “Put your feet up if you need to...Jon, Sasha, you sit too. And you,” he adds, gesturing to the other. “I’ll go make tea. Or break out the whiskey. We might need it.”

“Not a good idea for me,” Martin says softly. “Painkillers.”

“What, you don’t think the possibility of a good time outweighs the risks of an overdose? Kidding,” Tim adds quickly, holding up both hands as Jon turns a glare on him that makes the ones he directed at Martin and his work pale in comparison. “Only kidding.”

“Tim, sit down. We don’t need tea right now,” Sasha says, gesturing for everyone to either sit or calm down or both. “Maybe later.”

She takes a seat on the far end of the sofa, by the door; Tim comes over to sit next to her in the middle. The other moves carefully around the love seat and sits down on the end closest to where Martin sits. Jon remains standing, still glaring at the other.

“What are you?” he repeats.

“Human,” the other says. “As far as I can tell, anyway. At least as human as you are. But if you’re asking who I am, which I think was your original question...I’m Martin Blackwood. From the future. And I’m here to help save the world.”

#tma #the magnus archives #leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall)#protective Jon #protective Martin #honestly all these boys need a damn hug #probably Sasha too #ollie writes fanfic

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haberdashing · 4 years

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The End Comes Near (7/?)

TMA AU where Jon isn’t entirely wrong when he asks if Martin is a ghost in episode 39.

on AO3

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7

Work was... work, same as always. It helped take Martin’s mind off things, at least, even though he was sure he probably wasn’t doing things as well as others would in his position, or even as well as he had before... well, before Jane Prentiss entered the picture.

Jon would probably find his work riddled with errors and yell at him when he got back. But that was fine. Wouldn’t be the first time Jon complained about his work, and at least this time he had an excuse for not being at his best.

(And at least he’d be seeing and hearing Jon again, even if it was in a less than ideal context.)

The day went by quickly enough, and after Martin left work in the evening he forced himself to make that overdue trip to the grocery store, which really wasn’t as painful as he’d feared and meant that he could actually make himself a decent dinner rather than ordering food or eating out of a can again.

The bags under his eyes grew after another night of restless sleep filled with nightmares, but he could manage. They’d go away with time, like he’d said to Sasha, right? They had to. And besides, if he was having nightmares over all this, Jon and Tim had to have it ten times worse... no use feeling sorry for himself when he knew others were worse off.

Monday started off more or less the same as Sunday had. Martin ate breakfast in his flat instead of at a cafe, but still ended up having to dispose of a good portion of it, having once again overestimated his current appetite. Sasha’d beaten Martin to the archives again, fresh coffee in hand; Martin got her a cup of tea when she ran out of coffee, and her appreciative smile brightened up the day some, though they didn’t chat all that much.

Jon and Tim were still out, which was no surprise--it would probably be weeks before they were fully recovered, and if one of them tried to come back before then (probably Jon, workaholic as he was), Martin was fully prepared to ream them out for it. He knew well enough the toll that working when not entirely healthy could take on a person, and he wasn’t going to let them do that to themselves.

...even if that meant the archives were even quieter than normal because of it.

What ended up standing out about Monday hadn’t seemed like anything remarkable at first. Martin was just fetching a book that might give useful context for a recent statement; either one of them could have gotten it, really, but Martin knew that Sasha had trouble reaching the top shelf of some of the Institute’s bookshelves while he could do so with ease, so it made sense that he do it just in case. As luck would have it, the book turned out to be on one of the lower shelves, which meant that he’d had to do some scanning of the bookshelf to locate it-

-and, while scanning the bookshelf, Martin noticed a crack in the wood around eye level, and suddenly remembered that he’d been the one that put it there. He’d been running a bit too fast through the Institute’s halls and rammed into the bookshelf, and the bookshelf had toppled over in turn, and it had taken hours to get all the books put back in their proper places, and apparently even after that he’d damaged the bookshelf in the process, hadn’t even noticed it at the time...

Martin’s thoughts raced, and he couldn’t even place them all, but the gist was clear enough: His clumsiness had hurt this bookshelf, his clumsiness had nearly cost him his life down in the tunnels (should have cost him his life, really, if the worms hadn’t reacted so bizarrely to getting the chance to attack him), his clumsiness could easily have taken his coworkers down with him...

He could have killed them. They could have died because of him.

(They didn’t, of course, but that was just dumb luck, wasn’t it? He couldn’t take credit for that.)

And he hadn’t even noticed the bookshelf getting damaged, couldn’t even fully remember how it had happened. What else had he damaged without even realizing it? What other harm had he caused without even blinking an eye?

Martin didn’t know how long he was lost in his thoughts, his vision narrowed down to that crack in the bookshelf’s wood, but he knew that what startled him out of it was a hand being pressed gently but firmly against his back and a familiar voice calling out “Martin?”

Martin blinked a few times before looking over to the source of the voice. He couldn’t remember seeing Sasha look so visibly concerned before (well, with one notable exception, one he’d rather not dwell upon any further).

And... god, his jumper (which he had worn in disregard to the summer weather because it felt right, somehow, and also because he really needed to do laundry and was rapidly running out of work-appropriate clothing) was sopping wet, his cheeks were covered in tears and he could taste snot and... and he was a blubbering mess, now, wasn’t he? Another thing he hadn’t even realized until it was too late.

“Martin, just... just try to calm down, alright?”

Martin nodded weakly and tried to focus on his breathing, on the warmth of Sasha’s hand, on how her long fingernails were pressing into his shoulder. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Deep breath in, deep breath out...

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

Martin pointed at the crack in the wood. “I... I put that there.” God, his voice was shaky. He sounded pathetic. “Not today, a while back, I just... I never noticed.”

And suddenly his thoughts flipped from feeling like he could have ended the world and everything bad that happened was his fault to feeling like he was making a big deal over nothing, which didn’t actually make him feel any better, because it didn’t change that he was a blubbering mess standing... no, sitting on the floor next to a cracked bookshelf, and Sasha--Sasha of all people, who’d never cared much for emotions generally, her mind staying focused on logic instead--was the one that had to calm him down out of some sort of nervous breakdown over it.

“‘m sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Sasha said. “Don’t apologize. You’re fine. It’s alright, really.”

But Martin knew better. He wasn’t fine, and it wasn’t alright, really, was it?

#tma #tma au #tma fic #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives fanfic #martin blackwood #personal #my writing

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edelwoodsouls · 5 years

Text

the light behind your eyes

The Magnus Archives, JonMartin, pre-relationship

You'll never go through with it, he said. Watching the blood drip, maybe he doesn't know Jon as well as he thought.

Word Count: 2464

Ao3

inspiration

(this art and this show apparently single-handedly cured my months-long writers block, i only started the show like a month ago, holy shit im in love)

The Institute's halls are darker than they used to be.

He's not sure when it happened, really. Just a few short years ago, he could have called this basement home. It didn't matter that he was sleeping there, that his real home was writhing with worms - that wasn't what gave it that comfort, that warmth. But the knowledge that someone was always there, the camaredie of close-quarters living and near death experience...

He misses it. He misses Tim, with his awful sense of humour. Sasha's laugh. Even Melanie's angry tirades about whatever was pissing her off that week.

He misses keeping Jon company over slowly cooling cups of tea late into the night - not talking, not acknowledging each other, simply existing quietly in the same space, an assurance that he wasn't alone-

He laughs out loud at the thought, the sound echoing like a gunshot down the hollow corridor, because isn't that the point? He's miserable, he's lonely, so it must be working. It'll all be worth it.

But still. The corridors feel cold and empty. Even though he knows Melanie is around somewhere, probably using the pages of some ancient research tome as cigarette paper, and Daisy has been haunting the spaces between the stacks for the last few weeks. And Jon, of course, most likely recording another statement and pretending it satisfies that primal itch in his soul that screams for fresh trauma.

It feels more like a haunted, ghostly archive than the home of several nearly-human disasters who should really be banding together for emotional support.

In these moments, with the others sequestered away in their own problems, Martin likes to wander the halls himself. It's so hard to leave the office without making human contact usually, but over the last few months he's come to sense the pathways of the others, how best to avoid their company. Almost like a sixth sense, or - ironically- a third eye. He takes the chances when he can, stretching his legs, letting himself get lost in the ghosts of better memories.

He's not sure if it's voluntary, or a method of making himself feel more Lonely.

It's the early hours of the morning now, not that he can tell without windows. He hasn't seen sunlight in so long, he's sure his skin must be paler than the pages of a Leitner - even turning on the overhead lights makes him squint.

His footsteps echo off the brick. It must be raining outside, he thinks, because there's an odd, sharp smell in the air, damp and cloying. He almost wants to run outside, feel it on his skin. Maybe it could wash away his - his Loneliness? His attachments? Which would he prefer to lose more at this point?

He can't deny the power that slipping through the cracks, going unnoticed but noticing everything, makes him feel.

His feet guide him thoughtlessly, in tracks he's paced a hundred thousand times before. Through the stacks of old statements, still barely organised from Gertrude's original mess - fifty years is a hell of a lot of statements to manage, after all, especially when the mess is deliberate. Past Tim's old desk - it's Daisy's now, technically, but Martin's never really been one for change.

Of course, his feet always lead him to Jon's door.

He hates to admit how many times he's sneaked up to the small porthole window in the door, peeking in to check in on the archivist. He's seen Jon recording statement after statement, seen him staring absently into stone-cold coffee for hours, seen the absent-minded scratching of burn scars, the many times he's been straight up passed out on top of a mound of files. Only sheer will-power has kept the door firmly between them.

He'll only sneak a quick look, Martin tells himself now, tugging absently at his shirt sleeve. Just to check that the archivist is still alive and breathing - not that anything else is possible now, he supposes.

His thoughts are interrupted by the unmistakeable sound of Jon groaning, a low, agonised noise that sounds forced out involuntarily, through gritted teeth. Martin's heart stutters. For a moment, his feet still. Then he's speeding the rest of the way down the hall and, before he can think better of it, throwing open the door.

Martin freezes. Hand gripped white-knuckled around the door handle, to keep himself standing upright, to keep himself grounded so he doesn't throw up at the sight before him.

That scent is thicker in the air the moment he opens the door, and he realises with a plunging horror that it isn't raining outside, that the stench now shoving its way down his nostrils is metallic and all-too familiar.

Jon is sat at his desk, as he always is, slumped over it, head held in his hands like he's about to fall asleep on the pile of blood-soaked papers below. But it isn't fatigue dragging at him now. It's the steady stream, the waterfall of crimson forcing its way past his palms, curling past his fingers in almost mesmorising, intricate patterns, dripping audibly onto the statements below.

Spread before him among the papers are an assortment of tools. A kitchen knife, a letter opener, a screwdriver - is that a blowtorch? With a sick sense of humour, Martin notices the corkscrew he had kept so closely for protection during the Filth's first attack, now sticky with blood, clutched limply in between Jon's fingers.

His voice cracks as a strangled noise emerges froom his throat in place of words. He swallows down the bile, resisting the urge to clamp a hand over his nose. "Jon?"

Silence stretches deafeningly across the table. Jon doesn't even react to the sound, though his limbs are shaking with a brittle tension.

The corkscrew slips slickly from between the archivist's fingers, clattering on the table like a gun going off, and yet the silence rings louder still. There's an awful static in the air, like when Jon uses his abilities, except now it doesn't seem to stop, doesn't seem to end, just reverberates in his head to the point of pain. Like the very air is crying out silently in pain.

A small sound emerges from behind Jon's hand. He still hasn't moved, hasn't looked up, but Martin would recognise that dry chuckle, tinged with disbelief, any day. It's a sound that's brought him no small amount of delight to hear over the years, even when that disbelief was more indignant and exasperated at Martin's incompetence, because it meant that he had Jon's attention - had, in some way, broken through that stiff upper lip that Jon had once been adamant on presenting.

Now it sends a horrified shiver down his spine. There's no pain in that laugh, just a resignation.

"Martin." The word is spoken so softly he almost doesn't hear it - a whisper, a prayer; a drowning man accepting his fate.

Panic rears, finally, inside Martin's chest like a suddenly startled animal. "Jon, Jon are you okay-" Stupid, stupid, of course he's not bloody okay, but what else can he say, with Jon sitting so calmly as he bleeds out onto his desk? "I'll- uh- hang on a sec, I don't have my phone with me, I'll call the ambulance, oh god-"

You won't go through with it, Martin had said, in a voice as cold as he could make it, as detached and unwelcoming as he could bear. You're a coward, looking for an excuse.

Hit Jon where it hurts the most, cut off any emotional connection keeping them tethered. It's the only way, he told himself, ignoring the sick satisfaction he got from finally scaring Jon the way Jon had often scared him.

He'd really thought he was right, but apparently he doesn't know Jon as much as he thought he did. Or maybe it's his fault, he drove him to this. Who and what has Jon got left, without Martin? Abandoned by those he loves, treated as expendable by Basira, blamed for things he can hardly control by Melanie and Tim, left alone to face that wide, unrelenting eye that pulled their strings.

Jon is far more Lonely than Martin has ever managed to be, and he isn't even trying.

The words continue to fall from his mouth in a panicked babble. "Do you have your phone with you, Jon? Jon? Or did we reconnect the landline after the last attack? I know the hospital ignores calls from the Magnus Institute when possible, but surely they can do something, it's gonna be okay-"

"Martin." Jon lets one of his hands shift slightly, and a trickle of red bursts forth onto the pages. "I guess-" there's that endearing, terrifying laugh again- "I suppose its for the best, that you didn't agree to come with me."

"What?"

"Would've made this a bit awkward, if you'd said yes."

And finally Jon raises his head, and Martin is horrifyingly unsurprised when deep brown irises meet his own. Blood still drips from the nearly-healed whites of his eyes, spilling over like tears. He can see the tissue knitting back together before his eyes, until the only evidence that anything awful ever happened is the drained pallor of Jon's skin, and the sticky wash of half dried blood spread around him like a pool. He's clearly been at this for a while, judging by the dry patches, and the variety of tools at his disposal.

Martin can't take his eyes off the sight. "I..." The words vanish on his tongue like so much smoke.

It's almost worse, he thinks, that Jon is healing so quickly. That the one avenue of escape offered to the rest of them is closed to him forever by the very thing he's attempting to flee. He hadn't regret saying no to Jon, shutting him down, not with the very existence of the human race hanging in the balance - and he still doesn't. It's the mental image of him hidden away in his office, unnoticed, hacking away at his own face for hours without anyone so much as wondering where he was, noticing his cries of pain, that makes him sick with guilt.

"No need for an ambulance, Martin," Jon's face tugs into an awful almost-smile. "I'll be right as rain any second now. But if you happen to have some painkillers, I wouldn't be opposed. Bit of a headache, you see."

Despite himself, Martin lets out a disbelieving laugh of his own. How the hell did they get here? He even misses the long hours of investigation, the haunting paranoia. Even that was better than this resigned certainty of tragedy. None of them are planning to survive this, and if they do? Where the hell can they even go from here?

His feet carry him over the threshold into the office, and he can almost feel the Lonely loosening its clutches, just a little. He offers a hand out, surprised at how steady it remains in front of him. "Come on, Jon."

Oh, how that soft, shocked expression on Jon's face makes his heart break. The fingers that clasp around his feel like burning, an electricity leaping across his skin. When was the last time he touched another person, skin to skin?

It takes a long time to clean up the blood. Martin wishes it could take just a little longer, every touch rekindling an unnameable something in his heart. Sat in the bathroom, Jon is quiet, retreating into himself. His newly healed eyes are vacant. Martin sponges away the crust from Jon's sickly skin, brushes it from his hair, and Jon simply yields to his touch like a doll.

They find a fresh change of clothes in his locker, but judging by the stale air released from the compartment Martin is pretty sure Jon hasn't changed clothes in a long time. When was the last time he took a shower? Brushed his hair? Hell, Martin can't remember the last time he saw Jon eat. Does he even need to eat anymore?

He throws the bloodstained clothes away, and leads Jon back to his office. The statements on the desk are barely legible beneath the crimson, but as he goes to throw them away, too, Jon's hand catches his wrist, the first voluntary movement in almost an hour.

"Jon?"

"I...need those."

"They're unreadable."

"Not to me."

Worrying his lip, Martin silently hands them back, watching as Jon smooths them out carefully on one of the only clean patches of desk. As if he can feel the gaze on him, Jon looks up, finally meeting his eyes once again. God, that softness in his stare is an arrow in Martin's heart. He's painfully aware that he's viewing Jon without any of his walls up, stripped bare, at his lowest. Once he might've considered it an honour that Jon trusted him this much - wanted nothing more, really - but now he just wishes Jon would get angry at him again. It would make this so much easier.

Martin swallows, throat suddenly a desert. "I have to go."

Jon doesn't look surprised, or even hurt, just nods, gaze never leaving his. It occurs to him that the last time they spoke, Jon probably thought it was the last time he would be able to lay eyes on him.

Silence yawns across the room.

"Talk to someone?" It comes out more of a desperate plea than he would've liked. "Daisy, or Basira, or Melanie-" he knows even as he lists them that only Daisy would be willing to bear Jon's company at this point, and she's hardly in any better a place mentally.

"Okay, well..." Words can hardly be adequate enough in this sort of situation. "Don't, uh, don't get too Lonely, Jon?" The archivist's expression sharpens at that. "Before you can't come back from it."

A second of hesitation. Jon nods slightly, jerkily, as if he hadn't even considered the possibilty. "As long as you remember, I'm always here, Martin. I- I trust you, but if you need an anchor... I can be your rib."

"How romantic," Martin snorts drily, before he can think better of it. A flutter of panic ignites in his chest, but Jon just nods, and the flutter becomes something more like hope.

It's not an assurance that everything will be okay. They both know the impending disaster rushing towards them at full speed as they themselves hurtle towards it.

But it's a promise. A thin, invisible cord, anchoring the two of them together.

Today, whatever fresh hell this is, they can take the punches and commit the sacrifices until they're bled dry.

But tomorrow - what if. If there is a tomorrow, any semblance of future? They can take on the world, together.

He leaves the door ajar when he slips back into the corridor.

#the magnus archives #jonmartin #fanfiction #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #own work

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statementends · 5 years

Text

Orange Sky

Characters: Jon Pairings: Gen, hints of Basira/Daisy and Jon/Martin Rating: Canon typical Warnings: Canon typical, nothing too graphic, but all the powers are at least mentioned, mention of canonical character deaths

Summary: After spending three days in Too Close I Cannot Breathe Jon needs to see the sky.

For @magnuscc the challenge can be found here. This month’s theme is Colours and my prompt was Orange. --

The dirt clung to him and every muscle in his body ached, but Jon slowly climbed the stairs of the institute up and up and up.

After some furious and confused words he had left. Basira was looking after Daisy, they had a lot to talk about. They had a lot of…

He let the thought fall away too tired to finish it. He reached the roof access and stepped through to the orange dawn. The sky over London seemed to go on forever. A fiery glow that covered the city. He felt wet tears trail down his face, leaving muddy lines. He staggered, feeling the fresh cold spring air on his face. Open sky. He wept.

It could snatch him up and he didn’t think he’d care.

Jon let himself breath in and out over and over again. He had felt the crushing fear of the buried before, in the statements, in the dreams, but that had been…

He rubbed his eyes tiredly.

The last three days, the last few weeks, the last few years all hit him at once. He was afraid. He was so afraid.

Because that was going to be his end, wasn’t it? Maybe not the Buried, but something just as horrible and everlasting. Terminal velocity, or endless burning pain. Spider webs tugging him in all directions, his skin peeled off, being stabbed in blind rage, or hunted with cool intent. Going mad through endless corridors, or his bones pulled from his body, or worms under his skin building a nest. He had already tasted each of them.

And he would be alone, and in darkness, and watched throughout it all.

Jon looked up angrily at the blazing sky. A ring of clouds made a corona of light. Eye-like, burning burnt golden orange. He wanted to laugh, but it came out more as a sob. How ironic, the power that everyone feared most death was the kindest, and that Jon Knew he would never get to face it.

And if by some luck the others didn’t get him, then it probably meant he would be doing it to others. That he would grow into the monster Elias wanted him to become.

He let himself sink to the ground, folding his legs against his chest. His tears stopped. He didn’t have the luxury for it. Daisy had been through hell, had spent months in there. Basira had been holding the archives together. Melanie had been almost consumed by rage and slaughter, and Martin…

And none of them trusted him. They didn’t even like him, which was a stupid thought. He never cared about being liked, and it was the least of his problems now… but maybe he was tired of being resented. Tired of being at fault for powers so far out of his control... even if he did blame himself all the same. He has powers, he should at least be able to protect someone with them.

Tell that to Tim. He thought bitterly. To Helen. To Leitner. To Sasha.

He still couldn’t remember her face. Couldn’t remember what she was really like. He had memorized the tapes, hearing a young woman he didn’t recognise happily banter with him over the pronunciation of Calliope. And no one could morn her properly. Anyone that knew her remembered the creature that took her place. They wouldn’t remember the real Sasha.

He… wanted to ask Melanie… but Melanie wasn’t… no.

No point in asking.

He sighed. The clouds had broken apart. The orange sky was fading off into blue, and along with it any energy he had left. He was tired. Bone achingly tired. He felt no triumph at all. It was the very least he could do for Daisy...and for Basira. And--

Well the very worst thing was… he had wanted to save her of course. He went there for her, but another part of him…

The stupid monster part of him had wanted to know. To see first hand what was down there. To open the box labeled ‘do not open’ and see what kind of torture awaited. To feel the dirt crushing against him. The darkness surrounding him. Revel in the claustrophobia setting in as he breathed in mud. The fear of knowing he would never escape. He had wanted that… and … in doing that… for a moment he had felt...whole.

It would be worse now. The sea swirling at the back of his mind held back by a flimsy door strained to keep it all back.

He wondered if it would be easier… without them. He wasn’t like Gertrude. He could never feed someone to the Spiral in the name of the greater good without hesitation or guilt. Bind a man to a book that had haunted him throughout his childhood.

Tim had died… but that… it was different. He felt it was different. Maybe because he felt about it at all. She wouldn’t have, he was sure of it.

But, if there was no Martin, Sasha, Tim, or any of the others, he wondered if maybe he wouldn’t mind becoming the monster.

The monster felt easy. He was so terrified. But he still wanted to know. He had always wanted to know. Even before the archives. He could never just… walk away. Even now, trying to imagine life if he could free the others and himself from the Archives…

Even now he just imagined himself there. Tether cut, but still among the files and tapes. Listening. Hearing the statements. Learning.

Elias would be so pleased...

But Elias was wrong. His ...friends… his colleagues weren’t tools to examine, use, and ultimately discard. They might not trust him, or like him, but it didn’t matter. They kept him wanting to be human. And that was enough. It had to be.

“What happened, Martin?”

“You died.”

“I came back.”

“Yeah… and I’m not going to let it happen again.”

Right.

He pulled himself up still sore and muddy and cold. He would shower and dress and do his best to protect them, because they were the last bit of Jonathan Sims that he could hold on to.

#magnuscc #the magnus archives #magnus archives #jon sims #the archivist #tma #tma fanfiction #my fic

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soveryanon · 5 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG133 /o/

- As far as I can tell, this was the first time that someone had stayed in the room while Jon read a statement? We know that Basira was revealed to have been there all along after Martin had finished MAG095’s statement, but I’m pretty sure that no similar case happened with Jon? Sssso… if something Spooky happens when Jon does his readings, Daisy will probably tell us about it in a few episodes. (Extra eyes? Feeling of being watched increasing to a suffocating level? Jon forgetting to blink? Jon not even reading the pages?) Maybe nothing weird is happening… but maybe there is something, and in which case, we’d learn about it through Daisy.

- Jon got to discuss a statement with someone!! He wanted to do this a few episodes ago!

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] I have no theories on it, no… no sudden insights. [SIGHS] I wish I could talk it through with Martin. … Or Tim. [SHORT SAD CHUCKLE] Or Sasha. But we never really did that, did we…?

And it’s with DAISY, of all people!! … Though she had some trouble answering or understanding why he wanted her contributions on the matter and, towards the end, she tended to breathe quite heavily before answering – panicking a bit due to discomfort…?

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: I–I understand. Ho–honestly, er, I’d actually appreciate your insights, er, for this one, just… You know, keep quiet during the statement and that. […] What do you make of that, then? DAISY: … Dunno. Why? ARCHIVIST: Oh! Well. You’re, er… You’re a Hunter, right? Well– DAISY: [GROAN] ARCHIVIST: I… just wondered. I’ve been looking for evidence of, er… a Hunt ritual. Er, to see if it was one of the ones Gertrude stopped. And this is the closest thing I’ve been able to find. DAISY: Could have been one. I think.

Joooon, I think you used the wrong tense here: “you WERE” a Hunter would probably have put her in better dispositions. Well! Daisy wasn’t cross at him, she didn’t leave the room, she didn’t threaten, but… quite clearly, the reminder that she’s affiliated with The Hunt wasn’t pleasant. And on the other hand:

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: But it didn’t work. … I don’t even know how it was meant to work? DAISY: No. ARCHIVIST: … But why…? There was no outside interference, no other Powers; even indigenous tribes who could theoretically have derailed it seemed to stay away. So why didn’t it work…? DAISY: I don’t think it was about that. ARCHIVIST: I’m not sure I understand? […] Hm. You don’t think The Hunt would let its ritual end? [PAUSE] You don’t think it would let them find the… culmination? […] Hum, one of the bits I managed to decode from Gertrude’s notes, it references something she calls the, er, “The Everchase”. You think that might be it – the, the ritual that never ends because The Hunt is all in the pursuit?

Jon’s inquiries, his questions, his soft voice when a bit lost in thoughts, trying to understand the logic hidden behind the statement… felt awfully Beholding from him, even more than usual? I get the frustration of not having been able to discuss things out with people who were experts in fields he wasn’t, and it’s indeed a strategical thing for the Archives team to check which rituals Gertrude had stopped and how, in order to potentially neutralise the ones that could still be running (… Jon still hasn’t mentioned anything about The Watcher’s Crown but. He knows it was coming, Basira confirmed it was still a possibility, it’s still a hanging sword); but the way Jon is pushing to understand and to dissect is also… a demonstration that yeah, he’s truly from The Eye, uh.

- And at the same time, I love that Jon kept trying to make it a discussion even though Daisy had trouble essentialising her experience to help him understand the broad picture (she kept referring to very concrete examples), and Jon sometimes gave the feeling that he was talking to himself more than to her – at the very least, he was… the only one who was invested and interested in that talk. But he did hear what she had to say in answer! He pursued her ideas! He tried to reassure her when she felt she wasn’t contributing!

(MAG133) DAISY: [BREATHING HEAVILY] I–I don’t know. You’re the expert. ARCHIVIST: No, no, I–I like it, it–it’s a good theory!

I’m just? Would season1!Jon have reacted like this, awkwardly insisting that it was Daisy’s own ideas, when it’s technically Jon who managed to reach the conclusion? SWEET BEAN??? He would have it in him to be a good pedagogue??

Daisy wasn’t at ease at all, but I felt that it was probably a good idea from Jon to push her to talk about her past experiences? Yes, it wasn’t something she wanted to think about, clearly, but at the same time… Picking apart how she used to function under The Hunt, identifying what were the parts of her which were maybe influenced, might help her to be more conscious of her choices in her future actions? Jon explicitly told Basira that he was aware of Daisy’s current line of action (“She is trying to keep a clear head. Stay away from The Hunt as much as possible.”); it might… help, to talk about it, even if it’s hard? And she indeed managed to explain why she used to act like she did, the mechanism behind her actions and decisions? … And yes, they all need therapy (as long as it’s not financed by Peter fucking Lukas), and Jon is not a professional, but it’s the closest thing to therapy-talk that a character has ever been given in this series, technically?

(And Jon demonstrated that a bit with Basira afterwards, too, by trying to clear up Basira’s feelings regarding Daisy’s return and why she seemed so… unsatisfied by the whole situation. Not shaming, not diminishing what they were feeling, and trying to expose to Basira how her stance could become a danger for herself?)

- I’m overall so, so, so fond of Jon&Daisy interacting… they had funny bits in season 3 and it’s been two episodes in a row that they’re just… delightful? Yes, Daisy was clearly awkward and uncomfortable, but even then, Jon could throw a joke and Daisy would laugh! And Daisy would reference something that should be a trauma for Jon and yet feels like an inside joke between them nowadays!

(MAG133) DAISY: […] You know what my least favourite part of a case was? ARCHIVIST: Police brutality lawsuit? DAISY: [LAUGH] Arresting them. […] Sometimes I lost purpose because I let myself get too into it. Gave an opening just because I wanted to keep chasing. Like with you. ARCHIVIST: [HUMOURED HUFF]

They’re just fantastic and Jon is such an adorable idiot for laughing at these horrible things he experienced himself but, at the same time, I’m so glad that he is in the mood to laugh about it with her! =D ~You tried to kill me; well, it happened; no offense taken.~ FRIENDSHIP!! Someone getting Jon’s shitty sense of humour!!

- I… do like, although it makes me very sad, how after the worry-then-euphoria of managing to save Daisy, we’re also back to down-to-earth concerns about that return. No, the fact that Daisy is back and alive is not the end of her story; and yes, there are consequences around it. Same as with Melanie, Daisy needs to recover right now, and… it might take time physically, since Basira mentioned muscle atrophy and Daisy admitted that her legs weren’t quite fine at the moment; and it’s something that Jon experienced, too? (MAG050, Tim: “You were at physical therapy.” -> after-effects of the worms.)

On the mental side, it was also made clear that Daisy… didn’t want to be on her own or alone anymore, since she hanged around Jon for that reason:

(MAG133) [CLICK–] DAISY: You sure? ARCHIVIST: No, uh, it’s, hum. It’s fine. DAISY: It’s just… Basira’s busy. […] I, I can do quiet. ARCHIVIST: Right. Er, oh, do you want a chair? DAISY: No. ARCHIVIST: Oh. Okay. DAISY: I’m trying to get my legs right again. ARCHIVIST: Oh – of course. DAISY: Just ignore me, I… I’ll stand in the corner. […] BASIRA: [FAR, WITH SOME ECHO] Hey, there you are. You’re meant to be doing your exercises. DAISY: … You were out. BASIRA: [IN THE ROOM] You could have done them alone. DAISY: … Sure.

I wonder if it’s only due to The Lonely hitting her hard, or simply… Daisy’s personality. We know that she actually had trouble operating alone:

(MAG082) ELIAS: And then they don’t ask any questions, as long as you keep it far away from official police channels. Except your partner leaving has made you sloppy. No notes, no proper interrogations, no back-up of any sort.

(MAG112) DAISY: Elias is keeping me busy. Hunting. Takes a while. [FALTERS] I’m used to working with a partner. … It’s fine. BASIRA: Daisy… DAISY: It’s fine. BASIRA: Right. But it’s not, though, is it? DAISY: […] Maybe you could ask Elias if you can join me on a case?

(And once again: how do I HATE that once again, Elias had been spot-on about someone :< He had immediately pointed out that Daisy had been deeply affected by Basira leaving the police – it was still a fresh wound, Basira had quit just one week prior.)

Even putting aside the lack of emotional care from Basira… Daisy’s situation is legally a mess? Officially, she could have died in the explosion; we know that Section 31 were searching for her and would want to make her disappear if given the opportunity (since Elias demonstrated that he had ~ample proof~ of her activities). Daisy can’t really risk being identified publicly anymore. She isn’t even an assistant: she isn’t under Beholding’s “protection” (she still had the dreams with Jon) and… doesn’t have an official status in the Institute, won’t get a salary nor anything? … I don’t even know if Elias “We really don’t have the budget for that” Bouchard was giving her a salary when he had coerced her into working for him. In summary: she had no existence whatsoever and would be best kept hidden. Still recovering and indeed… needing protection, from the exterior world and from The Hunt’s call?

(And I’m extra-worried that if Elias is Watching, then he knows she is back; and although he rarely blackmails… we know that he isn’t above it, ~nor above threat~. Basira could potentially become VERY vulnerable if Elias were to highlight that he could just tip the Section 31’d officers that Daisy is hiding in the Institute… ;;)

- Though, actually, Elias didn’t get a Perfect Score on profiling Daisy, since:

(MAG082) ELIAS: If you’re smart, you’ll go back to the police station and put forward some half-baked cover-up for what happened to your mystery corpse, and leave it at that. But I don’t think you are smart, so in many ways I’m excited to find out what you do next.

(That was still SO AMAZINGLY RUDE, EFF OFF ELIAS W O W.) (Watching over Jon during season 2 must have been a hell of a ride, uh.)

A bit like with Martin, I feel like Elias might have completely underestimated her…? I still wonder if the “idea” he had about a new Defender for the Archives in MAG127 was Daisy (assuming they would manage to get her out) and, in this case, whether he had any idea of the state she would be in. On the one hand, The Eye couldn’t access the coffin (as Breekon mentioned), so he shouldn’t have been able to know; but did he connect the dots and guess that, deprived of The Hunt, Daisy would probably choose to turn her back on it? In the case that it was all a scheme to get Daisy out of the coffin, was he expecting her to indeed be usable as a defender, and will we get to witness a battle of hissing rants between Basira and Elias next time she visits him (pLEASE); or did he have truly have someone/something else in mind, and it’s just that this plan hasn’t come to fruition yet?

(- On a happier note: Daisy wants company, is quietly staying in a corner while Jon read a statement, is told to go do her exercises… Archives!dog is achieved??? And Jon even has a bone (a rib) to throw at her if they want to play.)

- Historical statement! Percy Fawcett and The Lost City of “Z” weren’t part of my general pop culture package, so I learned a few things here and there, and laughed a lot because his statement:

(MAG133, Percy Fawcett) “Perhaps you’ll have read reports of my disappearance or death, constructing wild theories of violence at the hands of Kalapalos tribesmen, or a lack of adequate supplies or preparation. I can only wish my hubris had been so mundane. […] I awoke back in Dead Horse Camp. Some of the Kalapalos had found me collapsed in the forest and had taken pity on me.”

… sometimes sounded like a direct answer to the Wiki page retracing his life and speculation about his death, with major theories feeling rooted in colonialism. I think it was during the season 3 Q&A that Jonny described very enthusiastically the Mechanical Turk and how spooky the whole thing already was to start with? And in Percy Fawcett’s case, once again: I love how Jonny only needed to add some extra bits to an already very spooky story and how the final statement is almost (LET’S HOPE.) reality-compliant /o/

- Percy’s story highlighted similar patterns in Hunt-related statements: first, obviously, the vampires, but also… the idea that even if Hunter start out by going after bloodsuckers, the line grows thinner and they quickly begin to target “monsters”, predators, humans indiscriminately.

(MAG010, Trevor Herbert) “I have killed five people that I know for sure as vampires, and there are two more that may or may not have been. There is one man I have killed, unfortunately, who I am now sure was human, but I also know he was a violent criminal so I try not to feel too badly about that. […] I always kept my eyes open for them, although sometimes I was too eager, as was the case of Alard Dupont who I killed in 1982 and later discovered was a human.” (MAG056, Trevor Herbert) “There’s a sharpness to them. They’re hunters. But over the years… I’ve become a hunter as well, and maybe predators recognize each other. All I know is, these days, I can almost smell the blood coming off them. That’s not to say I can’t be wrong though. I can be very wrong indeed. […] In retrospect, I should have realised that this didn’t exactly match the vampires I’d met before, who’d never displayed any sort of mind-reading, but I was aching for a kill. […] I will never forget the moment I heard Alard Dupont scream. It was such a piercing sound, and something I’d never expected. In a moment, everything I’d built up in my head over the past couple of days shattered, and I felt a sudden panic at what I’d done. […] And then he was quiet. And everything was horribly still. He just lay there. I’ve never felt anything like the shame and disgust I felt at that moment.” (MAG109) ARCHIVIST: I read your statement, you know, you… you– you don’t kill people. Only monsters. TREVOR: The lines get blurrier every day.

(MAG061) ARCHIVIST: Ah, oh, yes, er, it’s just– Do you know anything about vampires? DAISY: … Yeah. […] I take care of it in a dozen or so precincts. I cuff the suspect’s hands and legs, drive them out into the middle of Epping Forest, and burnt it to ashes. There’s never enough left to be a problem. I don’t know if they’re vampires exactly, but that’s what we call them. ARCHIVIST: Good lord… H–how many have you… taken care of? DAISY: Hm… Five? In the last nine years. (MAG082) ELIAS: “Six years ago, Calvin Benchley became the first human being I murdered. […] He was harder to get rid off than the vampires, but I managed it. And nobody asked any questions at all. He was a scumbag, and nobody wants to risk getting a Section 31. He was the first human I dealt with like that, but he certainly wasn’t the last.” (MAG132) DAISY: […] The, The Hunt was me, b–but I don’t, I don’t think I liked it. I think it just made me… need… it… I hurt… a l–lot of people… and some who… who I shouldn’t have. Did you ever hear the, the story Elias told me? About what I did. How I am… He, he didn’t get a detail wrong. The Hunt… Hunger was in me all my life.

(MAG133, Percy Fawcett) “[Raleigh Rimmell] simply told me he had inside him a strong and enduring hatred of bloodsuckers. Jack nodded, as though the statement were in some way profound […]. Now [Eduard von Toll] and his crew were pinning the things that looked like men to trees, with long iron spikes. They thrashed, and struggled, and a long bulbous tongue hung from their throats, pinned by the iron of von Toll’s men. “I cannot stand bloodsuckers,” Raleigh said approvingly, as he conversed quietly with Baron von Toll in French. Two of the figures pinned to the trees screamed in pain. They had no tongue, no distended belly filled with stolen blood, but no one seemed to notice – or if they did notice, no one cared. In the joy of The Hunt, they had been seized, and that was that.”

………………………. I’m still so glad that Daisy was able to take a step back and was allowed to look over what had happened during her life (Trevor had mentioned that “there is always an urgency to the hunt that has, for the most part, stopped me from doing much investigation”, in MAG056 – The Hunt doesn’t want you to think about what you’re doing or pursuing, uh.), but I’m also so worried that she’ll fall back into it ;; Though now… she is aware that she has options, that following The Hunt is not her only solution.

- Another new question to the list: did Maxwell Rayner’s interest in John Franklin’s expedition in MAG098 have to do with the fact that polar territories might be Dark-affiliated, given that we know that Ny-Ålesund is a Special Place for them (MAG025: “That far north… during the winter… nights can last for a very long time.” + Basira confirming it in MAG108), or was it because Rayner was trying to meddle with The Hunt? Algernon Moss, the statement-giver from MAG098 (May 14th 1864), had mentioned that Rayner hadn’t been too pleased about failing to get his hands on some documents related to John Franklin, hence Rayner sending The Sandman after him:

(MAG098, Algernon Moss) “His passion appears to be polar expeditions, and it’s rare to attend any social gathering with him where the subject does not eventually come up. In particular he seems to share that peculiarly specific mania regarding the fate of John Franklin and his lost expedition. I would assume he was intending to accompany such a party himself, were it not for the fact of his own blindness. […] I outbid him at an auction. It was nothing of note, so I assumed, though perhaps I should have considered his particular obsession. It was an oilskin packet of documents, supposedly from the log-books of Franklin’s lost ship, the HMS Terror.”

It really sounds like a coincidence and two interests converging (John Franklin got seized by The Hunt, while Rayner was more about the… place that Franklin was searching, ironically, but for Dark-related purposes), but then, it’s The Magnus Archives and coincidences are so very rare :|

- The fact introduced by MAG133 that Hunters could encompass explorers and people pursuing a place felt wonderfully logical, and even more with the idea that The Hunt wouldn’t want a culmination since it’s all about the chase… because there is something to be said about expectations grounded in fantasies, imagination and projection rather than tangible things? The more progress Percy’s expedition made, the more engrossed Jack sounded in an ideal that could never be fulfilled by reality and… indeed, it helped to conceptualize a bit more what The Hunt was about (and what it wasn’t about), as Daisy explained afterwards:

(MAG133, Percy Fawcett) “The ancient ruins, the statues and hieroglyphics, the sheer unrivalled beauty of it all. […] The world was changing with every day we marched forward, feverishly hunting for a destination I was no longer sure of. Raleigh hadn’t mentioned the city of “Z” for days, and Franklin at no point indicated any destination other than the Northwest Passage […]. And so the expedition began again, with no sign of progress or clear destination, only the pure focus and wild excitement to find… “it”. Whatever “it” was, wherever “it” might be, they would not stop, would never stop until “it” was found and taken. […] The most painful part was Jack, who would spend hours walking beside me, telling me of all the wonders we would see, all the delights we would be part of when we’d finally found “it” – or caught it, or killed it. Whatever it might have been. […] DAISY: I don’t think it was about that. ARCHIVIST: I’m not sure I understand? DAISY: Just a feeling. When I was– … You know what my least favourite part of a case was? […] Arresting them. I hated the handcuffs. The, the click. It meant the chase was done, the Hunt was over. Satisfying on a good day, sure, but… boorish. I never really wanted it to be over. ARCHIVIST: Hm. You don’t think The Hunt would let its ritual end? [PAUSE] You don’t think it would let them find the… culmination? DAISY: [BREATHLESS] I don’t know. … Maybe…? Sometimes I lost purpose because I let myself get too into it. Gave an opening just because I wanted to keep chasing. Like with you.

I wonder what prevented Percy from being seized by The Hunt, though? Was it his concerns/love for his son, acting as an anchor? In his case as with Lucia Wright, they both hid the fact that they weren’t actually willing participants of… whatever was happening around them, and made the conscious choice of deceiving the people surrounding them in the hope of making it out (MAG130: “I made the decision that… whatever was happening, my best chance to make it out was just to keep doing as I was asked.” / MAG133: “I sometimes thought I might burst out laughing, though I knew that would quickly change to sobbing and I would be exposed. I had felt my safest option was to feign that same obsession that gripped Raleigh, that had taken my son.”). Both Lucia and Percy shared some common interests with the other spook-fuelled people doing their ritual (the sense of religion, the obsession with finding the Lost City) but they managed to stay conscious and to not feel like they were part of the Grander Things happening, though they were direct actors: I wonder if there is something behind this? If they had something in them (anchoring thoughts maybe?) that prevented them from getting pulled into it? Or is it simply, once again, “the bias of survivorship” and… technically, a lot more people happened to be unwilling spectators and faked it so well that the statements we got failed to recognize that the others were in the same situation as them? Or is this a hidden commentary on passiveness leading to reluctant condoning and participating in witnessed wrongdoings, crime and injustice, instead of fighting them? I don’t know! (In Lucia and Percy’s cases, though: they were indeed at risk of getting killed; thrown into the meat pit or staked through.)

- On the 2nd of September 2007, Gertrude had mentioned that there were suspicions of The Hunt’s ritual taking place in North America. That might have been why Jon paid attention to this one, to clear up the question of Gertrude had gotten involved against it or not?

(MAG099) GERTRUDE: These additional researches have further cemented my belief that North America is going to be the focal point for the Buried. Now it’s just a matter of narrowing down the specifics of geography, and that may just come down to monitoring the right movement of supplies and people. I’m still not completely sold on the US for the Hunt, but that’s unlikely to be quite as urgent.

There was the infamous Hunter-creature from Lawrence Mortimer’s statement, prompting Jon to explicitly deny any interest in the matter (MAG031: “‘Wolfmen in America’ is too far-fetched and too far away for me to care about.” I doubt that comment was part of his Sceptic Act.); the events described happened in late November-early December 2010. We also know that Julia and Trevor (well. Mostly Trevor.) decided to go to America in the pursuit of a wolfman and had been stuck there for two years when they gave their statement in June 2017, so they arrived there around 2015. Both were posterior to Gertrude’s comment so… she got her suspicions from other sources or stories. It sounds like a lot of Hunters end up in America, indeed, though they might have “officially” disappeared from other places? Or was Percy’s jungle… a non-space at all, not more in the Amazon than in any other place?

- With the mention of Eduard von Toll’s expedition, which had disappeared in the pursuit of Zemlya Sannikova, at the beginning of the XXth century, I thought at first that… The Spiral had managed to derail The Hunt’s ritual by hiding the location point and/or by messing up with the explorers’ mind to ensure that they wouldn’t find their final destination? Since both Eduard von Toll and John Franklin were from a different timeframe as Percy, and Percy himself started losing track of time of space despite his attempts at putting some bits on paper (“This is where things started to turn, and my memory begins to fragment. I kept a journal, but the entries were… sporadic, and shaky, the dates no longer make sense: at some point I realized that there were no animals around us anymore, that the Amazon had become… strangely quiet. But I don’t know whether this was before or after I found the pile of dead birds in Raleigh’s tent. It must have been before; but my journal is not clear on the matter.”).

It’s really not a Spiral-only thing, though, indeed; we have had cases of… multiple entities twisting statement-givers’ sense of reality – or at least, examples in which what the person experienced didn’t seem to match the world as they knew it and as it should have been objectively. The Mysterious Tree at Hill Top Road had been uprooted by Ivo Lensik in November 2006 (MAG008), but Anya Villette reported seeing it in April 2009 (MAG114) while cleaning up the new house built on the property (+ Raymond Fielding, although officially dead by 1974, had been seen by Ivo in 2006, together with the glimpse of pigtails in the house, which matched young Agnes’s description + Anya found a basement in the new house, although there wasn’t supposed to be any, and it had cobwebs, like Raymond’s old house + Anya gave her statement on April 22nd despite asserting that she had cleaned the house on the 23rd and that it had been two weeks after the events). The Spiral attempted its ritual in Sannikov Land, which doesn’t exist, and Gertrude and Michael found it and temporarily walked on it despite that. Andrea Nunis got gradually “lost” in Genoa before she managed to come back to the normal town (MAG048). Vincent Yang’s watch “no longer matched the lock in the break room” after he was freed from the wooden crate, and he remembered spending four days inside of it by tracking time and light, despite coming out from it the day after he had gone to bed normally (MAG066). Craig Goodall got three fingers cut, and he saw them severed from him, but he came out of the experience with his hand whole (MAG072). I wonder if these cases are a fore-taste of what the world would feel like if one Fear managed to pull its ritual through, bending reality enough?

- There is something bittersweet but also comforting in the fact that Jon finally agreed to accept that they’re all changing? Comforting because he sounds less tortured about it and gives the impression that he has learned and has been listening to others, from being told the message to repeating it himself:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: […] I’m… I’m trying to focus. Trying to make sure I’m the same me as before, but… how can anyone really remember that? How do you know… you’re the same person that went to sleep…? […] I want to say I’m the same. But I don’t… really know if that’s true. I know I’m different. I feel… more real, somehow.

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: […] Everything’s changed. … [SIGH] Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.

(MAG131) HELEN: Not this again. I’m not “wearing” anything, Archivist. I am at least as much “Helen Richardson” as you are the “Jonathan Sims” that first joined this institute. Things change. People change. It happens. ARCHIVIST: … We’re not “people”, though, are we? Not anymore. HELEN: Names, categories… it’s all so important to you, isn’t it? You do know none of it is actually real. It’s all just… meaningless boxes.

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: Daisy… you should know I’m… If I wasn’t human before, I’m, uh… I’m even less now.

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: [EXHALES] She is trying to keep a clear head. Stay away from The Hunt as much as possible. You valued her purpose. Her resolve. The sort of things– BASIRA: I get it. It’s her. ARCHIVIST: … We’ve all changed, Basira. BASIRA: Yeah, I just… I didn’t realize she’d change into someone who… can’t look after herself.

It could be worrisome (if you just accept that people “change” and that’s it, then what about them becoming worse, terrible, actively hurtful to others and fine with it?) but I don’t think that Jon meant it that way? More like… people change, and you can decide to stay by their side, because you feel that they’re still the person you liked or because they still bring you something, or you can leave it and go your own way and there is no point in dwelling on how they’re not the person you thought they were or liked to have by your side – and all of this is also valid for your own stance about yourself? The thing with Basira sounds like she’s been projecting her expectations of Daisy onto the Daisy who came back, and they were mostly revolving around Daisy’s potential “usefulness”. But the question should be more: does Basira like the Daisy who came back for herself, is she still the person Basira valued?

And indeed, they all have changed? Melanie has been reconsidering her anger and how it has fuelled her, but also harmed her. Helen became The Distortion. Jon “made his choice” and became The Archivist (whatever that… encompasses: we know about the added powers, we don’t yet know the downside of it except for going higher in Spook territory). Basira, who was so prone to calling people out, to gathering and sharing information, to gossiping and to devising plans with others, became the protector with the side-consequences we know. Daisy decided to become “better” and wants to stop being a Hunter. Martin has made a decision and is sticking to it (for now), going into self-sacrifice territory.

……………… I’m not sure that Martin will accept that people from Team Archive have “changed”, though, although he himself has. Because according to Tim:

(MAG086) MELANIE: […] I… I just feel like you two don’t want me here. TIM: We don’t. Martin’s not big on change. I don’t want anyone to be here.

So I’m really not sure that Martin will take well the fact that… The Distortion is now an ally, or that Daisy is back and will stick around and is someone that they need to protect a bit, or that… Jon woke up and got deeper into Beholding, got more powers, and is more ready than ever to take risks and injure himself if it means saving the people he cares about. (Well, it isn’t that different from before; just with added communication about it.)

- Despite what Jon told Daisy about his Insights:

(MAG133) DAISY: [BREATHING HEAVILY] Basira said you could just… “know” all this now anyway. ARCHIVIST: Yeah, it’s… I–I can’t really… control it.

… if feels like he’s been better in that regard, lately? He hasn’t mentioned Martin for a few episodes (since he came to talk to him again in MAG129) and, officially, he has managed to stay out of Basira’s activities:

(MAG133) BASIRA: I told you not to look in my head. ARCHIVIST: I didn’t. This one is just me.

Though I’m a bit suspicious about the fact that Jon used the word “defender” specifically, since:

(MAG133) ARCHVIST: You were hoping for a defender.

(MAG127) ELIAS: I believe you’ve recently lost Melanie. BASIRA: … We saved Melanie. ELIAS: As a person, yes, but as a defender… […] it would seem you’re in rather dire need of another option.

… Elias had been the one to use the term before. Not “(body)guard”, not “protector”, not “shield” or anything: defender. So either Basira had specifically worded it that way to Jon at least at some point, either Jon might not be exhaustively honest about what he knows (… either Elias is slipping into his mind, and that would be another source of dread), but I don’t feel like it was a coincidence.

- AOUCH did the Basira+Daisy heartbreak hurt, right away, as soon as Daisy mentioned that Basira currently wasn’t there, and… even more when Basira found Daisy, only to make her understand she wanted to talk to Jon alone (thus sending Daisy to do her exercises… alone, when she had precisely come to Jon for company). I feel like there might have been something of an echo, between the impossibility for Percy Fawcett and the other explorers to find a destination that could ever be as high as their expectations and the thrill of the chase, and Basira’s… own expectations regarding Daisy’s return? The atmosphere just grew colder when Basira came in, so much that even JON, OF ALL PEOPLE, picked up on it:

(MAG133) BASIRA: [IN THE ROOM] You could have done them alone. DAISY: … Sure. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: Everything alright? BASIRA: Yeah… Daisy, could you… give us a minute? DAISY: Oh. Should I… BASIRA: Yeah, please. DAISY: … Sure. [DOOR CLOSES] ARCHIVIST: A–are you–

If Jon is able to tell that there is Drama Between Two Women, you know that the situation is very serious.

I’m trying to joke about it but: I’m heartbroken, it hurts, it hurts to see Daisy… clearly subdued and saddened that her current relationship with Basira is the way it is? They barely exchanged a few words and yet, you could definitely understand that Daisy is perfectly aware that Basira is not looking at her with joy or reassurance. I wonder if Daisy will try to endure it or will quickly reassert herself? Second option would probably be best but… given that Daisy is now aware and upset that she has done wrong things in the past, I fear that she could try to perceive Basira’s coldness as… something she deserved, or at least can’t complain about. As a form of retribution.

;; And I’m so glad that Jon took her defence and highlighted that Daisy had suffered hell, because she did, too? And aouch aouch at the obvious parallel between… the way Jon was expecting Martin when he woke up, and the way that Daisy was clearly expecting more warmth from Basira too.

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Fine… Fine. Haven’t seen Martin about yet? BASIRA: Yeah, he comes and goes. He’s busy. Well, he seems it. ARCHIVIST: Working for Peter Lukas.

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: Wh–where have you been, I–I mean, I–I–I thought– MARTIN: N–no, no, I’ve… I’ve been here, I just, er… Y’know. Been busy. ARCHIVIST: Busy. MARTIN: Yeah. ARCHIVIST: … Right. Working for Lukas.

(MAG133) DAISY: It’s just… Basira’s busy. ARCHIVIST: I–I understand.

Basira and Martin are both “busy” and… working for/with terrible people on the side (well, it’s still not totally clear if Basira has indeed been following Elias’s leads, but that’s the logical assumption right now.)

As usual in this series: I just love (even when it breaks my heart) how you quickly understand where the characters stand and why they’re acting the way they are, and how they could feel like the whole situation is unfair to them. Daisy got stuck in the coffin for eight months, unable to die and with no hope of getting out (“… I thought, thought I’d… I’d ne–never see the s-sky again, never… never s–see Basira…”) before Jon managed to find her; she’s physically and psychologically affected; she has to remain careful and to try not to fall back into The Hunt, despite the fact that her “last connection to humanity” (MA092) would have rather liked to get a Hunter back; and Daisy confessed to Jon that she wanted “to be better”… but has yet to find a way to achieve this except by being the most passive and neutral she can. On the other hand, Basira spent six months keeping the Archives afloat while Jon was in a coma, barely managing to convince herself that Daisy was dead (MAG122: “They still haven’t found her body. Probably never will. I thought for a while she might’ve… but. It’s been months. She’s gone.”); she witnessed Martin’s fall, she more or less contained Melanie; she suffered Jared’s attack; and she kept doing her work alone, to the extent of listening to Elias, without getting stellar results (at least officially). Nobody had a great time and nobody was there for anyone else – although Jon is pushing more and more in that direction nowadays.

- ;; It’s especially sad, regarding Basira, considering that… Trevor had described The Hunt as an addiction, something you couldn’t easily escape, something that would always pull you back to it:

(MAG056, Trevor Herbert) “In the early 80s, I was deep in the grip of my twin addictions. As I mentioned, after a while, the hunt became an addiction of its own. Of the two, I’ve always found heroin the easier one to quit. […] But the hunt… the hunt is a purpose. It’s not just a way to get through the day, it’s a reason for there to be a day at all. […] Ah, it’s a shame I’m on the way out. I will miss the hunt.”

And it should be a good thing that Daisy has decided to call it quits, to try to free herself from it! And she would need support for this! And it’s something that Jon heard and kept in mind, although he’s awkward about it (making her talk and telling her she is a Hunter when she would like to keep it in the past)! But the way Basira reacts, I can’t help but fear that Daisy is at risk of falling back into The Hunt and losing herself, out of a desire to be useful and valuable to Basira once again… I wonder if this is why Jon quickly took the reins of the discussion with Basira and insisted on Daisy’s situation and on the way Basira was coming close to extreme (and harmful or self-destructive) past examples, namely Gertrude and Tim? Because he fears that Daisy, too, could take a wrong turn in that context?

At the same time, given how… Daisy had accepted her Fate when she awoke in the coffin (MAG132: “Y–you know what I thought wh–when I woke up here? I thought this was hell; I wa–, I was dead, and within hell. And I… eh, I–I knew I deserved it…”), and how she accepted to leave when Basira told her to, although clearly distraught… Daisy is beginning to skyrocket in my list of people who could die soon (YES, ALTHOUGH WE JUST GOT HER BACK): by sacrificing herself to protect people – not even Basira specifically – while stopping another ritual, or another threat, out of her own free will. She’s lacking a drive right now, and that could really well serve as a new goal to… make up for her previous hurtful actions, in her mind. I don’t want anyone in Team Archive to die (I’M STILL MOURNING SASHA AND TIM, ALRIGHT???), but that could feel narratively satisfying? ;;

- Random screaming because:

1°) Basira, if your “good intelligence” was what Elias told you in MAG127: put that in the trash where it belongs, p l e a s e, you’re better than this ;; 2°) … I can’t even tell “who that reminds me of”, Jon. Are you talking about yourself and how you handled things until the second half of second 3 (and with the coffin recently)? Are you talking about Tim stalking the circus? Are you talking about Martin’s current Mysterious Activities? I have no idea. There are too many options about that one.

- … Shockingly, it’s also, technically, the most… actual “boss” that Jon has felt since the beginning of the series? Making sure that people under his authority wouldn’t make each other miserable?

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: And give Daisy a break. She was there eight months. [EXHALES] I was only in there for three days, and I– BASIRA: Yeah, I know. I just… ARCHIVIST: What? BASIRA: Nothing. I’ve got work to do.

(AND GUUUUH… I FEEL LIKE EVEN THOUGH BASIRA MANAGED TO KEEP HER MASK ON ALL THROUGH THE EXCHANGE, she… began to slip with that “I just…”: suddenly, there was something underneath, with that aposiopesis, something Basira is not telling, refusing to tell, feeling like she can’t allow herself to tell. I wonder why: if it’s because she doesn’t want to be heard by Jon, by Beholding/Elias, or if she simply doesn’t want to exteriorise a few feelings because then, she would have to act on them when she… feels like there should be other priorities.

I wonder if Basira is not driven, overall, by a fear of… feeling powerless? She quit the police after witnessing something she deemed unfair, in a situation she wasn’t able to do anything against (MAG075: “They’re covering it up. Altman’s death. Saying he was dirty. That he got stabbed in a botched drug deal. […] I mean, I didn’t know Leo well, but… it’s not right. And they seemed happy enough to get me out the door.”), and Elias had recently played on her sense of vulnerability (MAG127: “I would have thought you would want all the help you could get, or… have you forgotten what happened last time you lay your guard down? […] Then again: you are beset by enemies on all sides, Basira.”).

At the very least: it hurts, Basira hurts, the fact that Daisy is hurt by Basira hurts… but Basira clearly isn’t an emotionless robot. She cares (“No, she still sounds like her. Says things Daisy would say, laughs like her. […] I would never abandon Daisy and, having her back is… [SIGH]”). And despite the similitudes with Gertrude (YOU REALLY DON’T WANT TO BE COMPARED TO HER, Jan and Michael and the people in Alexandria say hi), I’m really not sure that she would be ready to sacrifice people other than herself if necessary? She has been trying things out alone, it hasn’t succeeded (at least officially: she came back from her three weeks-trip without anything to show for it), I could easily picture that her frustration would make her even more adamant about going solo… but Jon might have struck a chord with this episode. We’ll see ;;

- Looks like the episode definitely confirmed, although implicitly, that Jon had listened to the assistants’ testaments from MAG117, since:

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: […] You valued her purpose. Her resolve. The sort of things– BASIRA: I get it. It’s her.

=> sounded like a nod to Basira’s perception of Daisy:

(MAG117) BASIRA: […] But at least Daisy’s coming along. I mean… I know she’s… difficult. Everything they say about her, it’s true, it’s fair. But… she’s solid. She’s a fixed point. And if she’s there, I know exactly where I stand, exactly what I’m doing relative to her. She has no doubts. We go in, we plant bombs, we leave, we blow it all to hell. Or we die. I don’t think I’ll ever have clarity like that.

And the comparison to Tim:

(MAG133) BASIRA: […] But right now, she’s dead weight. And I need to be able to travel light. ARCHIVIST: … You’re starting to sound like Gertrude. BASIRA: Good. As far as I can see, Gertrude Robinson was the most effective person in this place. ARCHIVIST: … That’s what Tim said as well.

=> sounded like a direct reference to:

(MAG117) TIM: […] From what I can tell, there’s only one person who’s ever managed to hurt them, to reaaally hurt them. And that’s Gertrude Robinson. She was cold, ruthless, and she hit them when they were vulnerable, and she sacrificed a lot of people to do it. Honestly? I hope that Jon learned something from her, because… because I don’t expect I’m going to be coming back from this. I don’t know if I want to. And if he needs to pull the trigger, to use me to stop it, well, he better have the guts to do it.

(And the nod about Gertrude was from Gerard’s description in MAG111: “She travelled light. Left things behind.”)

I… am glad that Jon quickly saw the pattern repeating and called Basira out on it? Bad experiences from the past are not forgotten, and could help to… avoid another disaster? And yes, maybe something even worse will strike, but at least, it’s giving me the feeling that… Tim’s spiralling downfall wasn’t exactly for nothing, if it can serve as a counter-example and a demonstration of how things could go wrong?

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: […] Look, I’ve… been where you are. BASIRA: Have you? ARCHIVIST: Yes, I have. Like you’re the only one responsible for everyone, the weight of all their lives on your shoulders: it leads to bad decisions. BASIRA: Yeah, well. When I get myself kidnapped three times in a row, maybe I’ll look to you for advice. ARCHIVIST: Bad decisions, like wasting three weeks chasing dead ends and false leads, rather than talking to us about the plan. BASIRA: I told you not to look in my head. ARCHIVIST: I didn’t. This one is just me. You’ve not mentioned anything about where you were, avoided talking about what you might have learned, and that file that you were studying clippings from? Empty.

(Jon said “us”!! There is still a “us”, it’s not only about him!! ;_;) (Also, COLD, BASIRA, COLD.)

Jon told Basira she was reminding him of Gertrude and Tim, while Jon himself has been studying and following Gertrude’s notes and actions. I feel like there was really something about Jon… learning from the past: from what objectively happened, but also from the mistakes and the tragedies he witnessed or committed – being now ready to weaponise them? He honestly was… very very good, when talking with Basira: pausing and summarising Basira’s own feelings, and Daisy’s, and… pointing out that there were actually other options when Basira acted as if there were none?

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: You were hoping for a defender. BASIRA: I was hoping for someone I can trust to share the load. Because right now, it’s all on me. ARCHIVIST: [EXHALES, SLOW] It doesn’t have to be. BASIRA: Hm. ARCHIVIST: You’re not happy she is back.

Calling for teamwork and joined contributions! Jon really upgraded himself this season, overall? He gained in patience, he seems to understand that his words have effects and that situations can get out of control if he says the wrong thing; he’s able to apologise, to step back, but also to be a tiny bit provocative and to dig where it could hurt but… not to destroy people, but to point out the threat and risks in their train of thoughts? He told Martin that he was worried about him working with Peter; he told Basira that she was becoming closer to Gertrude, which is something that we could feel and fear previously, and pointed out that her methods weren’t working so far, putting her… on the defensive. He adapted to her reasoning, and yes, it feels sad that he didn’t manage to get her to trust him, and that he seems to exclude the idea that she could, but I do like that he’s not giving up on the possibility of them collaborating.

(MAG133) BASIRA: Maybe I found something and I’m not sharing. ARCHIVIST: You didn’t, though, did you? BASIRA: I had good intelligence. ARCHIVIST: Which you charged off to investigate without telling anyone. You know who that reminds me of? BASIRA: Drop it. ARCHIVIST: … Fine. I don’t care if you trust me, but I think I’ve proven at the very least that I’m useful. So use me. Because if you go it alone, you are going to die. Even Gertrude worked with people. We make bad decisions when we don’t communicate… BASIRA: [HUFF] You literally just jumped into a spooky coffin without telling anybody! ARCHIVIST: … Case in point. BASIRA: [EXHALES] Okay.

He managed to get a few points across? They can still be on the same wavelength even if Basira chooses to not trust him? It feels like a lot of what Jon tries to offer is with the intent of… keeping people alive, whatever their relationships might be. And compared to the beginning of season 3, it’s not by pushing people away; it’s through a mix of allowing people to follow their own path, preventing them from repeating his own mistakes, and insisting that they factor him in and what he can offer, on their own terms. Jon has been very good at communication? And he’s giving me… hope that things could get a bit better, since he’s gradually managing to get on better ground with people around him, and saving them in some ways – Melanie’s bullet was removed, although she isn’t fine at the moment; he told Martin that he missed him and was worried for him (and Martin hasn’t stopped, sure: but at the same time, words of concern and care might help, on the long run, to repel The Lonely’s influence a bit?); he managed to get out of the coffin with Daisy; he got a few points across with Basira. It’s not ideal, but it feels hopeful, in a way, because characters are aware of the past mistakes and are ready to fight to prevent a repeat. Though I don’t know if it’s meant to lead to something (Jon is managing stuff! Jon is a bit more in control and aware of what is happening around him! There could be a non-heartbreaking ending to this situation!), or is currently giving us a false sense of security before something strikes and makes Jon realizes that, no, the situation has always been out of his control because there are other people with more experience and knowledge on the chessboard.

- What a treat, lately, that we’re getting answers fast about Jon’s new injuries or traumatic experiences! Same as with Melanie stabbing him (happening at the end of MAG125, location explained during MAG127), I wasn’t expecting to learn so quickly how long Jon had stayed inside of the coffin:

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: And give Daisy a break. She was there eight months. [EXHALES] I was only in there for three days, and I–

(I always remember how it had taken us from MAG047 to MAG053 to get the confirmation that Michael had indeed cut Jon quite deeply since it required ~five stitches~. It’s like Jonny has understood our Priorities and chosen to indulge us a bit.) Also, always a good time to remember Peter’s words:

(MAG126) MARTIN: … When all this is over, I’m telling him everything, with or without your permission. PETER: Martin… when it’s over, you won’t want to. MARTIN: … Mm. PETER: But he will be safe. They all will.

Jon: *gets visited by an agent of The End in his hospital room, stabbed in the shoulder in the tunnels by a Slaughter-affected person, aggressively visited in his office by the remaining half of a Stranger monster, followed and led around (and likely manipulated) by Spiders, enters The Distortion’s door again, gets two ribs taken out from him by a Flesh avatar, spends three days stuck in The Buried’s coffin* Peter “if ‘Elias is very protective of his people’ then lol what does it say about me regarding employees who are not even My People” Lukas: This is fine Martin. When you put this into perspective, Jon is going to be daijobou :)

- Daisy went to Jon because she didn’t want to stay on her own; Basira keeps investigating secret things without opening up to anyone about them; Jon felt “alone” and “lonely” when he went back to the Institute… y e a h, sounds more and more likely that The Lonely is messing with them a bit. … Are Melanie and Helen more-or-less safe because they seem to be mostly staying in the tunnels?

- I still wonder what the deal was with the tape recorders at the end of MAG132: it doesn’t sound like Basira did something? Was it only in Jon’s office, or did it happen over the entire Institute? Do Peter and Martin know about it?

- Jon’s main line of study seems to still follow Gertrude’s notes and to investigate how she stopped rituals. He hadn’t sounded especially enthralled at the prospect of learning more about it when he remembered the notebook, when he got a little more information about the preparation leading to The Spiral’s ritual? And then, it was a mix of spooky Beholding powers giving him Knowledge about The Buried’s, and The Web sending him a tape from Gertrude gift-wrapped in cobwebs about The Flesh’s, so not… exactly Jon’s conscious and explicit decision:

(MAG126) ARCHIVIST: […] … I remembered Gertrude’s notebook; we found it alongside the plastic explosives […]. It… it’s borderline incomprehensible, not because of any code or cypher – there’s every chance I could read those; just simply because… most of it is… numbers or fragments of sentences that would no doubt mean something to her, but… well, not to me. I’ve been staring at it for hours, in the hope something from it would just… come to me. And it worked well enough to point me towards this statement, which is… useful background, and perhaps gives some insight into how Gertrude formulated her counter-rituals, but… not much more.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: Even as I say it, I can feel the knowledge, pushing in my mind. Eager to find a way in. But I don’t want it. I don’t want to know. … I don’t want to see. … No more than I wanted to see how Gertrude stopped The Buried and their ritual, but that came to me as well.

(MAG130) GERTRUDE: When I heard there’d been survivors of “The Last Feast”, I was rather concerned that one of them might be able to positively identify me […]. At least we know for sure that these “grand rituals” can be disrupted by conventional means, though a more… nuanced approach will be needed for some of them, I’m sure. Also… I can’t rely on having this much lead time. […] ARCHIVIST: Even so, and… leaving aside the matter of Gertrude’s actions for a moment… what is it trying to tell me with this? Is it about… rituals? About getting Daisy back? About… about an anchor.

However, in MAG133, it was absolutely explicit that Jon was indeed conducting his own investigation about The Hunt’s ritual attempt:

(MAG133) ARCHIVIST: I… just wondered. I’ve been looking for evidence of, er… a Hunt ritual. Er, to see if it was one of the ones Gertrude stopped. And this is the closest thing I’ve been able to find.

So he’s indeed investigating the counter-rituals right now, whether it’s the only thing he feels like he can do at the moment (since Martin is out or reach and Daisy is recovering and Basira is not ready to rely on him yet) or he just downplayed his interest before. Jon used to work with middle to long-term goals: re-ordering the Archives (and learning a bit more about Jane Prentiss’s intentions) in season 1; discovering who killed Gertrude, why, and what Gertrude’s activities exactly entailed in season 2; finding out what he was becoming and how to stop The Unknowing in season 3. Currently, there is still no mention of whatever Jon’s plans or intentions are: it seems safe to assume that it involves ensuring that no other ritual succeeds, including The Eye’s, but Jon… technically still hasn’t said anything. He seems almost content just learning more about them, right now, which, oops, looks like a very Beholding behaviour ;;

(At the same time, yeah, uh, it’s prrrrrobably safer to not mention anything about planning to wreck any chance of Beholding’s ritual attempt in Beholding’s own temple? Better to stay absolutely neutral on the subject, like Basira did in MAG123 when she explained to Jon that Beholding was one of the few that hadn’t had a chance at its ritual yet during this round.)

So, amongst the ones that Gertrude was confirmed to have stopped or studied a bit, we now have:

* The Buried: “The Sunken Sky”, 17th June 2008, in Bucoda, Washington (USA). Stopped by Gertrude by throwing pieces of Jan Kilbride’s Vast-touched body into the pit (MAG097, MAG129).

* The Flesh: “The Last Feast”, October 2009, under an old Gnostic temple near Istanbul (Turkey). Stopped by Gertrude and Adelard Dekker thanks to a bunch of explosives (MAG130).

* The Spiral: “The Great Twisting”, somewhere between October 2009 and 2015, in Sannikov Land, which does not exist (somewhere in the Arctic). Stopped by Gertrude by sending Michael Shelley with a map inside of The Distortion, to fuse with it (MAG101, MAG126).

* The Hunt: “The Everchase”, ongoing for at least the past two centuries, aggregating Hunters in America. No culmination (MAG133).

* The Stranger: “The Unknowing”, 7th August 2017, at the House of Wax in Great Yarmouth (UK). Preparations to stop it begun by Gertrude with Adelard’s help; effectively stopped by Basira, Daisy, Tim and Jon thanks to plastic explosive (MAG118, MAG119). Previous attempt was in October 1787, at the Court Theatre of Buda, Hungary, and was stopped by an agent of The Slaughter (MAG116).

Status absolutely unknown at the moment, as far as I can tell (bearing in mind that according to Gerry, some might not have a ritual at all):

* The Lonely (though Peter Lukas transported Gertrude and Michael Shelley to stop The Spiral, so Gertrude probably didn’t meddle with the Lukases, at least before that, or not too obviously?)

* The Web (but somethingsomething what the heck happened at Hill Top Road, what happened on November 23rd 2006 with Agnes’s death and the Tree and Ivo Lensik, what happened to That Table for it to go here and there)

* The Slaughter (but Gertrude went to the Pu Songling Research Centre in Beijing to read a statement about this one, in 2004)

* The Vast * The End

Some that Gertrude referenced, or was cautious about, or was preparing to stop, or might have stopped already:

* The Desolation: apparently stopped not so long before October 2014 (MAG087, Gertrude: “It interests me that Jude Perry would be involved. I was unaware that The Lightless Flame had had any contact with the Stranger’s ilk, but I suppose it makes sense that it would be a possible ally to the Devastation, especially since their own plans have so recently, erm, gone up in flames.”), and the fact that Jude really had no love lost for Gertrude in MAG089 also implied that Gertrude might have indeed actively messed with them. Their ritual attempt might have had to do with the site with the bottles containing Gertrude’s pictures in Scotland, near Loch Glass (MAG037)?

* The Corruption: Gertrude’s laptop revealed that she had bought pesticide (MAG066: “There’s also the matter of the products she was ordering. There were several online orders of petrol, lighter fluid, pesticides, and high-powered torches. They are sporadic, but notable, in that she did not drive, smoke or work in pest control.”) and there might have been something attempted during the Prentiss siege against the Magnus Institute on 29th July, 2016, due to some worms forming a “ring” in the tunnels (MAG041: “Then I found the circle of worms. […] a few were still embedded in the wall providing the clear outline of a circle. The ceiling was higher here, and all told it must have been about… ten feet in diameter. Its size was not the most disconcerting thing though. Inside the circle, the stone was… wrong somehow.”)

* The Dark: Gertrude’s laptop revealed that she had bought many, many torches (MAG066: “The torches would make sense, if it wasn’t for the quantities in which she ordered them.”), which gave Jon the idea of telling Basira to take a lot along when the police went after Maxwell Rayner (MAG072: “Bring torches. […] As many as you can get your hands on.”). Unclear as of now if the People’s Church of the Divine Host attempted their ritual in Hither Green Chapel on May 15th, 2015, the night Gertrude officially died (MAG025) and roughly when a full solar eclipse was happening in Ny-Ålesund (MAG108), or on February 10th, 2017 in the industrial complex up in Harringay, with the kidnapping of Callum Brodie (MAG072, MAG073); Jon thought that someone had tipped the police about that last operation – we still don’t know who (Adelard? Elias?). Jon spotted people sporting the symbol of the cult recently (MAG125: “I’ve seen two different people wearing symbols for the People’s Church of the Divine Host”).

* The Eye: “The Rite of the Watcher’s Crown”. According to Gerry Keay, it was the next one on Gertrude’s list together with “The Unknowing”, and she had already devised a plan to stop it (MAG111: “She didn’t tell me much about that one, just that she knew how to take care of it”), which might have involved reducing the Archives to ashes (MAG080: “I assume [Elias] discovered we were planning to destroy the Archives.”, “Planning a little light arson, are we Jurgen?” / MAG092: “So. For the avoidance of any doubt. I killed Gertrude Robinson because she intended to destroy the Archives.”).

I would say that we’re more likely to learn about The Desolation or The Corruption next? We previously got some info about their activities and we haven’t heard a statement involving them yet in season 4. Aaand those two had a connection through Arthur Nolan, member of the cult of the Lightless Flame, who was Jane Prentiss’s landlord and knew that The Hive was in his property and had “mumbled something about hoping it wouldn’t get this far” (MAG055) when Jordan Kennedy had taken care of it, before putting himself on fire…

The Dark might get cleared up (ha.) when we’ll meet one of its avatars, since we’ve never heard one live yet and we know that some people from the cult are lurking around. … Plus, Jon is missing an Experience (and a scar) from The Dark, as of now. So they might attack soon-ish, I guess ;;

(And/or maybe Jon will get another perspective from Daisy about the Callum Brodie case? Basira stated, when recounting the operation in MAG073, that Daisy had been amongst the sectioned officers sent after Maxwell Rayner.)

Titles of the week are out, I DO NOT LIKE MAG134’s godsdamnit!!! No idea about what it could be about except from regular “Mmm maybe uncovering one of the Mysteries: Adelard’s researches? Peter’s agenda? Jon’s intentions? Elias’s plans? Basira’s investigations? What the heck happened at Hill Top Road? What was the deal with Agnes? Did Gertrude really destroy Eric Delano’s page and is he indeed Gerry’s dad?”, but I can’t help but get reminded of Peter’s “Must be the End Time!” from MAG108, or feel like it could maybe be about… The Dark? For the irony of it? Don’t know, I was totally off the mark for MAG133, but once again: I’m WORRIED :|

#where are you the admiral; you have another target to comfort #long post/#mag133 #tma liveblog #the magnus archives #tma season 4 #tma spoilers/

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voiceless-terror · 3 years

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I have been seeing those posts about ep 40 jon being injured and sleep deprived in the archives interviewing the others. Jon probably hasn’t come down from that getting wormed fear/adrenaline.. maybe he’s about to have a breakdown.. but tims there. Or martin or both. Also thank you for all the good content this year :)

Thank you for the lovely message! Had fun with this one, though I think I made it a tad more angsty than I planned to. Hope you enjoy otherwise, and happy holidays!

“...It’s just pain.”

Pain. That’s all. He can work through that, he’s done it before. The pills are wearing off, his entire body throbbing and wrestling with the feeling of hundreds of frantic, wriggling worms burrowing in and feasting- no, best not to think about that. He’s got to stay in control.

Control. Control is standing in his own office, leaning against his file cabinet surrounded by the corpses of worms with his boss sitting in front of him. His boss who is currently giving him an unimpressed stare, demanding that he go home. But it’s alright, he can do this.

It’s just pain.

Elias recounts what happened when Sasha came up to his office, alerting him to Prentiss’s attack. His voice is measured and controlled, but his face betrays a level of disgust that they all feel, the living reminder of which sits in front of him, bleeding and fidgeting as he tries to stay upright, squirming not unlike the-no. Stop.

He wishes he had the tape, but Sasha lost it in the confusion. This second-hand retelling is stale and hard to swallow. Elias sounds perfectly reasonable, as always, apologizing to Jon for taking too long with the CO2 to which Jon only replies “It’s fine. We’re alive.”

Just barely.

But then he talks about the scream. And Jon hears it all over again, that impossible sound of agony and rage that sung out as his world faded to black. And then Elias talks about how he stumbled upon them, compared them to fucking swiss cheese and he’s got to stop him, raising a trembling, still-bleeding hand. He doesn’t need to be reminded of that. No, Prentiss is gone. What he needs to focus on now is Gertrude- how she died, who killed her. If the person who did it was sitting in this very room. If he’s going to be next.

He imagines his body, lying forgotten in the tunnels as Gertrude’s did all those months. No one looking for him, no one caring. He’ll never get his answers, he’ll just lie there and rot like all those worms-

Elias gives no more useful information, repeating the story as if Jon’s being irrational and urges him to go home. You can barely stand. It’s true. But if he sits, he’ll have to look Elias in the eye instead of standing over him, grasping what little high ground he can.

“Martin finding her body in the tunnels is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.”

Is it?

He sighs, succumbing to exhaustion and sinking to his seat.

“Can you send in Tim?”

________

Tim’s voice is strange and detached. He sounds...traumatized, which is of course to be expected.

He’s probably still high, too.

It’s odd, how these things affect them. It’s sharpened all of Jon’s edges to an untenable degree, every movement a sharp agony of tangled nerves that sends his mind spiraling. But it dulled Tim, left him foggy and so unlike himself. He stares blankly somewhere to the left of Jon, as if meeting his eyes and seeing his own injuries laid out before him like a warped funhouse mirror would be too much, would undo this strange facsimile of a workday that Jon’s tried to conjure. Just the two of them in his office, discussing a case. Pay no mind to the dead worms or the blood coating the ground and the desk and his arm and his leg and-

“...I mean, I went full Gas-Rambo.” Tim. That sounds like Tim. His voice may be wrong but the words are there, teasing and familiar. He comes back, clears his throat and nods. But then Tim keeps going, slides back into his memories and makes them lucid for Jon.

“You know that worm smell? That earthy, rotten smell?”

Oh, yes.

It’s still there, cloying and wretched reminder that it is. Elias told him to leave the basement, told him that he and Tim needed fresh air. But Jon wouldn’t listen, he never listens. And that’s why they’re in this mess.

But the why is bigger than that, too. He needs to know why Gertrude was in the tunnels, why she was killed, why these statements disturb him so and why the Archives feel wrong, like an intruder’s in their midst. He thinks he knows where he can find the answers.

“Could you...describe the tunnels?” Tim sighs, but Jon presses on. Perhaps through someone else’s eyes he’ll find the one detail he missed, the one thing that explains it all and gives him peace of mind.

It’s quite the opposite.

Because the worms down there, in that room Tim found, weren’t trying to attack anyone. They were crawling, wrapping around each other to form a ring- no, a doorway. Jon’s mind fixates on the word and Tim stares resolutely ahead, looking weary and drained. He has to hold it together, just two more interviews and he can go home and rest (and think and weep and scream). He clears his throat, lowers his voice to the register he finds most authoritative and tells Tim to go home and get some sleep. Tim rolls his eyes at the action, but gets to his feet, slow and pained.

“Yeah. Sure.”

He starts to shuffle towards the door but something twitches out of the corner of Jon’s eye, a tiny, jumping movement like...like a worm. He lets out a whimper as his mind shuts down, starts tearing at his arms, ripping at the bandages because something’s still there, burrowing deeper into his skin and soon it’s going to hit bone and where’s the corkscrew, where’s Martin’s steady hands and strong grip, he needs help-

“Whoa, there!” Tim’s coming back but he shouldn’t be, not when there’s worms all over his desk, crawling and jumping and devouring.

“She’s- she’s still here, can’t you see?” Jon’s tripping over words, stumbling out of his seat as he tries to avoid the writhing mass he sees below him. “Get h-help, we need- Martin! Martin, are you there?” It’s hard to walk, hard to move but he does it anyway, grabbing at the wall for balance as Tim backs away- good, go, get out, get help-

Rapid footsteps sound and Martin appears in the doorway, his eyebrows knit in concern. “What’s- oh Jon, you’ve ripped your bandages, let me-”

Jon doesn’t care about that right now. Not when he can hear their song, not when Gertrude was rotting in the walls for so long and he didn’t know, he didn’t know. She became a mystery and he will too, it’s just a matter of time. He grabs onto Martin’s arm, clawing at his jumper with desperate hands.

“She’s-she’s-”

“There’s no one here, Jon. She’s gone. The ECDC took care of it,” Martin’s just trying to placate him, he can see the pity in his eyes. Maybe he needs it. But if Prentiss is gone, that doesn’t mean the danger is. Even if he can tell himself there are no worms, it’s all in his mind, there’s still that nagging voice in the back of his head- you’re next.

So he holds on tighter, dragging Martin down to his level with a movement that makes him flush. “You- you saw her, Martin. Gertrude. How did she die?”

“Jon, please, just sit down-”

He pulls harder, raises his voice. “How did she die?”

“Jon-”

“How?”

“She was shot! Three times to the chest. Th-That’s what I saw.” Martin’s eyes widen, as if the words were torn from him involuntarily.

Shot. Shot. The words echo somehow in this small, cluttered room and Jon can’t wrap his mind around them. She wasn’t attacked by Prentiss, killed by some unknowable enemy. She was shot. With a gun. A gun wielded by someone who had a reason to take the Archivist out. Someone who might still have that reason.

He staggers back, releasing Martin and collapsing with what might be a sigh or a wail- he can’t hear what’s coming out of his mouth. He dimly registers a hand on his shoulder, gentle and warm but it feels like a threat because something’s wrong here, something’s after him and maybe it’s Martin, who found the corpse. Maybe it’s Tim, collapsed silently in the chair. Maybe it’s Elias, telling him to go home where he’s alone and vulnerable and easy to get. So he scrambles back against his desk, breathing heavily with his arms thrown out in front of him.

Martin was right, there are no worms here. Prentiss is gone. And something worse, and perhaps much more human is waiting in the shadows.

“..just needs sleep and some painkillers. I can take him back, call us a cab-”

“-both full of holes, for Christ’s sake. Jon’s scratching at himself! I’m not going to leave you on your own.”

“This isn’t some fun archives sleepover, Martin, you aren’t missing out on anything, I promise-”

“Shut up!” Martin’s voice breaks through the fog, loud and commanding in a way it usually isn’t. Jon hazards a glance up to see him standing at full height and even Tim looks shocked, leaning back in his chair as much as it allows. Martin goes red, taking a deep breath and lowering his voice. “That’s not what this is about, just...just let me do this. Let me make sure you’re alright. Please.”

Tim pauses, but gives in with a sigh. “Fine. I drove in, bad day for it. You fine with driving us back, or should we take a cab? I need to sleep.”

Jon raises his voice, tired of being talked about as if he weren’t in the room and can’t make decisions for himself. “N-No. I’m not going back with either of you-”

“Quit it, Jon.” Tim gingerly rises to his feet, shooting a tired look at his hunched form. “Nobody’s out to get you, you just need to get some fucking sleep and you’ll feel better. Now get up, or we’re leaving without you.” He clearly doesn’t mean it, because he pauses and waits for them in the doorway, watching as Martin bends down to offer his hand.

Jon’s hand automatically reaches out to grab his, but he stops himself. Maybe it’s his best shot- if it’s one of them, they may not make a move if the other one’s present. If it’s someone outside of their group, their odds are better for fighting them off. But if it’s Tim and Martin, well.

Jon takes his hand. because what other choice does he have? Only bad ones, it would seem. Martin helps him to his feet. “Are you sure you can walk? I can-”

“I’m fine.” If he’s going to die, he’d rather do it on his two feet and spare himself the indignity of holding onto his killer. He lets Martin keep a hand on his back, though- he can’t walk without it.

Every slow step is agony; he ignores Sasha smirk on the way out and eventually finds himself bundled in the backseat of Tim’s beat up silver sedan. He considers asking for the passenger seat as his nausea might get the best of him back here, but thinks better of it. Better to be back here and alone.

But then he isn’t alone, because Tim hesitates and moves to the back, wincing as he sits beside him. Why would he do that? What does he want? Jon wraps his arms around himself and scoots as far as he can to the side, trying to focus on Martin fiddling with the car and not the presence beside him. The radio blasts as soon as the engine roars to life and Jon flinches back, fingers burrowing deeper into his arms.

Martin begins to drive, not saying a word as he pulls out into traffic; he knows where they’re going, but Jon doesn’t. Tim must see his confusion.

“Were you not listening? We’re going back to mine.”

Jon casts his eyes to the floor. “I-I don’t want to-”

“Do you have unexpired food at your flat, Jon?” His face heats up- he’d been living on leftovers in the Archives, so that’s a no. “Will you actually rest if you go back on your own? Will you-” There’s a hand on Jon’s own, gentle but firm as Tim pulls it away from his arm and forces it down to the seat. “-stop picking.”

“Sorry,” he whispers, but Tim doesn’t let go, just holds his hand in his and leans his head against the window, staring out at the road. Jon doesn’t pull back, no matter how much he wants to. He just looks down, staring at the larger hand on his own and wonders how easy it would be for Tim to break it. Just one good, hard squeeze and a crush of bone but no, Tim just absentmindedly runs his thumb over Jon’s knuckles and somehow this hurts more.

They must make an odd couple, he and Tim bandaged like mummies staggering up the steps with Martin at the helm. He’s been here a few times and he has to fight against the instinctive ease he feels upon walking through the threshold. Martin’s talking and Tim’s barking out short answers, dropping his belongings as he limps towards the bedroom and makes a dismissive gesture at Martin. Jon feels strangely outside of his body, looking in on a bastardized scene of domesticity through a foggy haze of pain and unreality. With a start he comes back to himself, and suddenly he’s on Tim’s couch; time must have passed for he’s wrapped in a blanket with a steaming cup of tea in his hands and a lump in his throat. And he’s talking, watching as Martin fixes his bandage with a careful hand.

“...tapes are gone, Martin. Sasha said she lost them but I don’t understand-”

“Prentiss practically destroyed the Archives, Jon, I’m surprised more aren’t missing. Look, Tim’s already asleep, you should do the same-”

Sleep? How can I sleep when- “Someone killed Gertrude,” he whispers and his hands shake, tea dripping down the side of his mug and scalding his skin. “And they’re going to get me next. Can’t you see?”

Two hands wrap around his own- big, like Tim’s but softer and unscarred. Kind, but still capable. Of what, Jon doesn’t know. He lifts his eyes towards Martin and sees it- Martin’s scared too, doesn’t know what to do with Jon’s ramblings and doesn’t know how to comfort him or make it better.

“Drink your tea.” There’s an edge of hysteria in his voice, a naked plea that Jon finds unnerving. “And I’ll keep watch. You’ve- you’ve got us, Jon.” It’s so sincere.

Jon wants to believe it. “I do?”

“Yes.”

He drinks his tea and feels the fogginess from painkillers he doesn’t remember taking slip over him, quieting the voice in his head to a barely audible whisper. The pain’s gone but the memory of it doesn’t fade; he stifles a manic giggle as a childish tune pops into his head. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out!

His eyes drift shut as the cup is pried out of his grip, a gentle hand pushing him to lay down on the sofa. He hears the dull murmur of comforting words and a sniffle- he’s going to go to sleep soon, Martin will be the only one awake, and Jon doesn’t know what he’ll do or what he’s capable of. But he’s so, so tired. And he may not trust Martin, but he wants him to stay.

He wakes only once during the night to see the outline of Martin sitting in a chair, scribbling something in a notebook. It’s so innocuous he can’t help the tiny noise of relief that slips out of his mouth.

Martin doesn’t even look over, just quietly tells him to go back to sleep as if he’s hushed him a few times already. Maybe he has. The normalcy of it is like a peek into some universe he’s not yet privy to; Jon knows he shouldn’t trust the comfort of it. And yet.

He goes back to sleep.

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28252950

#prompt fills #my writing #tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #tim stoker #martin blackwood #cw worms #panic attacks #general grossness that comes with worms #whump #angst #hurt/comfort #jon's paranoia coming in hot #Anonymous

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the-magnus-archives-archiver · 5 years

Text

A Distortion

Case: 0160402

Name: Sasha James Subject: A series of paranormal sightings Date: April 2nd, 2016 Recording by: direct from Sasha James, under the supervision of Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

[John: Are you sure you’re all right to do this now? You can take a few days off to recover if you need.

Sasha: No, it’s fine. Tim’s getting me a coffee, and I’d rather get this down while it’s still fresh in my mind. Besides, you didn’t give Martin any time off when he had a bad experience.

John: Martin had to start living in the archives. I mean, I could hardly give him a holiday in the office. Anyway, he wasn’t injured.

Sasha: It’s just a scratch, John. I’ll be fine. Can we begin?

John: Okay. Statement of Sasha James, assistant archivist at the Magnus Institute, London, regarding...

Sasha: Let’s just call it ‘a series of paranormal sightings’. John: Statement recorded direct from subject, 2nd of April 2016.]

Right. Well, I’m sure you know I was skeptical about how dangerous this Jane Prentiss was when you first suggested Martin stay in the archive. I mean, it’s not that I didn’t believe him about what happened, it just seemed... Well, Martin is a great researcher, but his self-preservation instincts are not the strongest, and to be frank I thought that if this Prentiss were a danger everyone seemed to think, then he’d almost certainly be dead. Don’t get me wrong, I mean, I’ve read the same statements and profiles as you, so I know how many people have died because of her. What was it, six hospital staff when she was first admitted?

[John: Six from colonisation and a seventh... with a broken neck from her escape.]

But that was two years ago, and whatever she is now, it sounds like her condition is degenerating. I just wasn’t sure how much damage she’d still be capable of. So I guess... I didn’t take as much care as I should have when I was coming into the Institute yesterday. The thing is, I’m still not sure how much of a threat she is. I’ve seen plenty of those silver worm things squirming about outside, same as you, and made a point to step on them every time. What happened just made things more... complicated, I guess. I’m not really sure what to think. I’ll start with the first thing I noticed. I live up near Finsbury Park, and my building is old. Victorian, I think, and though it’s been repaired and maintained quite well, it’s got all sorts of strange little quirks. One of these is the windows. The actual windows in the flats are fine, but the stairwells they have slightly warped glass, where the window have those little bubbles. Looking down on the street below can be a bit strange, as the glass bends the light and distorts whatever’s below it. I never really paid much attention to it until a few days ago, but it’s not a new thing.

It was the day before yesterday when I first saw it. When I’m heading down the stairs in the morning, I sometime like to spend a few seconds looking out of the window at the people on the street below. I’ll move my head so that I see them through the warped glass, and they’ll distort like a funhouse mirror. It’s a bit daft, but I have a pretty dreary commute down to Victoria, so I take my fun where I can get it. Well, on that morning I paused before the window, and noticed one of the warped figures below was... off, slightly. It looked too tall, the limbs and body were very thin and almost wavy, like they didn’t have any structure or bones in them. I couldn’t make out a face, but it was the hands that were the most bizarre. They seemed to be stretched and inflated by the distorted light, until they were almost the size of the rest of the torso. The fingers were long and stiff, and seemed to end in sharp points. It stood completely motionless, and I could feel it staring at me.

Moving my head to the side, I saw that the actual person I had been looking at was a large man with long, blond hair. He was neither stood still nor facing me, instead moving around the display of the flower shop opposite my building. Nothing about the guy seemed especially out of place, but I made a mental note to keep a lookout for him. I checked again through the bubble of bended glass and again I saw that tall figure with its limp arms and huge hands.

Now, you know me John, I’m, I’m not exactly the bravest person in the world. I generally avoid horror and I tend to stay off rollercoasters in the rare situation I have a chance to ride them. So I was as surprised as anyone that this undeniably sinister figure wasn’t causing me more distress. I mean, I was a bit nervous, sure. I’ve never had any direct experience with the supernatural before and the more I looked and checked and double-checked, the more sure I was that supernatural was exactly what it was. To be honest, I was surprised how quickly I accepted that. I’ve always considered myself a bit of a sceptic, and until recently I’d have said working at the Institute only made me more so.

Anyway, I watched it for about ten minutes, until the blond man bought a small bunch of lilies and walked away. Once he was gone, the distorted figure with the long hands disappeared as well. I headed down into the street and over to the flower shop. The woman working there gave me a bit of a confused look when I asked if there had just been a tall, blond man in her shop. She said yes there had, and no, she hadn’t noticed anything strange, and was I looking to buy some flowers. I was quite confused myself, and on a bit of an edge when I left. I was already late for work, though, so I decided to ignore it and just keep an eye out.

Sure enough, it wasn’t too long before I saw him again. There’s a small café I generally pop into when I head to work in the morning. I love the Institute’s building, of course, it’s beautiful, but from a money point of view, I really wish it wasn’t in Chelsea. Everything around here is so expensive. I generally walk down from Victoria Station. It’s a long walk, but quite pretty, and it gives me a chance to pick up a coffee on the way. As I said, I was running late that morning, so I was a bit conflicted about whether to get one, but as I looked in the window I saw a familiar figure at one of the corner tables. Again, the blond guy wasn’t looking in my direction, nor did he seem to give any indication that he was aware of my existence. He was there, though, and I was on the verge of walking in and confronting him when I noticed the time and decided getting to work was more important. Besides, what’s that old saying? “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action”. I decided that if he turned up a third time, then I would ask him... something. I don’t really know what I was planning to ask him. “Are you secretly a monster?” probably would have been a great opener.

When I got here, I realised I needn’t have worried so much about the time. You were having some argument with Tim about... um, oh, who’s that architect he’s obsessed with?

[John: Robert Smirke.]

Yeah, that’s the one. So, I was starting to regret not getting a coffee and talking to tall, blond and monster, since it didn’t seem like I’d have missed much. I got on with my work, did some filing, cross-checked a few statements with police incident reports. I mean, I guess I don’t need to tell you what a day working in the archives entails. It was a quiet day, aside from when Martin thought he saw one of those silver worms and we spent half an hour checking for it.

[John: Yes. I remember.]

Come on, it’s not his fault he’s being stalked by some weird living hive.

[John: I know, but it would have to have been Martin, wouldn’t it? I mean, anything goes wrong around here, it always seems to happen to him. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. Why didn’t you report this?]

Seriously? If a member of the public came in, you would have torn that statement to shreds. No, I, I figured I’d get more evidence or it wasn’t worth mentioning. Nothing else had happened until I left work. It must have been about half past six, so the sun was just about starting to go down, and I headed back up towards Victoria. The first thing I noticed out of the ordinary was that the café was still open. Normally they shut up about six o’clock, but the lights were on and the door was open. I couldn’t see anyone behind the counter, though, and there was only one customer. He sat there in the exact same position he’d been that morning, drinking what could easily have been the exact same coffee.

I looked around to see if there was anyone else who could confirm what I was seeing. The street was empty, but as I looked, a car drove past. In the curving glass of its tinted windows, I saw him there, the weird distorted body, rail thin and limp, the hands huge and sharp. And then the car passed on and I turned back to see a normal-looking man. But now, for the first time, he was looking at me. He gestured to the chair across from him, clearly inviting me inside. I don’t know why I wasn’t more scared going in there, but I wasn’t. My curiosity apparently conquered my nervousness.

He didn’t speak when I sat down, and I saw his coffee cup was empty. Whatever was inside had dried up hours ago. He seemed to be waiting for me to ask him a question. So I asked him what he was. He laughed at this, the first sound I’d heard him make, and it sounded... unnatural. Like he was laughing very quietly, but someone had turned up the volume up so I could hear it. He said it didn’t matter what he was, that he couldn’t describe it even if he wanted to. What was the phrase he used... “How would a melody describe itself when asked?”

This put my back up a bit to be honest, and I told him if he was going to talk in cheap riddles I was just going to leave. He actually apologised, told me I could call him Michael. I didn’t want to call him Michael; it didn’t seem to fit somehow, and the way he said it made me think that it definitely was not his name. Still, it wasn’t like I had any other name for him. No, not for him. For it.

It sat there, clearly waiting for me to ask another question, so I did. I asked it what it wanted, and was told that it wanted to help.

[John: Help? With... what?]

That’s what I said. Did it want to stop Jane Prentiss? It laughed that weird laugh again and told me that I had no idea what was really going on. It didn’t sound like it had any intention of telling me, though, it just seemed like it was amused by my attempts to understand. Then it said it didn’t care if I or my companions lived or died, but that “the flesh-hive was always rash”. It said it wanted to be friends. When it said this it put its hand in mine, and it may have looked like a human hand, but it was heavy. It felt like a... wet leather bag full of heavy stones. Sharp stones. I pulled my hand away quickly and got up to leave. By this point I was just about sick of this weird thing that looked like a person but was not a person and talked in riddles. It made no move to stop me as I headed towards the door. As I was about to exit, though, it called after me, and said if I was interested in saving your life it would be waiting at Hanwell Cemetery.

[John: Sorry, saving my life?]

Yeah. It called you by name. You. And Martin. And Tim.

[John: That’s... unsettling.]

It really was. At the time I just tried to ignore it. I went home and I got as much sleep as I could. I don’t know if you noticed how tired I was yesterday, what with Tim’s April Fools’ joke.

[John: Don’t remind me.]

Well, I was a bit of a mess. I checked the cafe on the way in, and on the way home. I even went down there on my lunch, but ‘Michael’ wasn’t there. Part of me wanted to tell you about it immediately, to make a statement, but even if you believed me I knew you’d try and talk me out of going to Hanwell Cemetery, and I had just about made my mind up to go. I didn’t know if what Michael had said was a threat or a warning or just a lie, but I decided I couldn’t take the chance. So I went to the cemetery.

The sun was starting to go down when I got there, and the gates of the graveyard were lit with the bright orange of the dying light. It had been raining earlier that day, and the pools of water reflected the vivid colours of the sky. Hanwell is an old cemetery, and past the walls I could see the weathered old gravestones standing silent. As it turned out, I didn’t have to go inside. Michael was waiting for me next to the tall iron gates when I arrived. I caught a glimpse of its reflection in one of the deep pools of rainwater, and shuddered as I saw again – the warped body and swollen bony hands.

It didn’t say anything when I arrived, just nodded at me to follow. I have no idea how long he had stood there waiting for me. I expected to go into the graveyard, but instead Micahael started walking down the road towards a nearby row of houses. The sign on the road said Azalea Close. Most of the buildings were in good repair, but there was one at the end that looked abandoned. It might have been a pub at one point, but now all the windows were boarded with metal sheets, and covered with dirt and graffiti. The door, however, was open and swinging gently. Michael went inside, clearly expecting me to follow, so I did.

Inside was dark and dusty. I was annoyed with myself that I hadn’t thought to bring a torch, but just enough of the setting sun came through the door for me to see by. It clearly had once been a pub, and the bar appeared to be intact, though riddled with woodworm. Sitting on top of it was what looked like a builder’s kit, with a toolbox and a small fire extinguisher. I was just about to ask Michael why we were here, when I heard it. A low, wet groan coming from the far end of the room, where the light didn’t reach. It sounded like someone in a great deal of pain.

I walked towards the noise. As I got closer my eyes began to adjust, and I saw the floor was covered in pale, writhing shapes. I had a listen to Martin’s statement after you recorded it, so I knew what to expect. But hearing about something doesn’t even come close to seeing it. To smelling it. I expected to see what Martin described, a squirming mass that was once Jane Prentiss, but the figure slumped against the wall looked like it was once a man. The worms wriggled out through the holes in his skin. The ‘flesh-hive’, Michael had called it, and the silver things formed clustered knots where his eyes used to be. I couldn’t help it. I gasped.

It wasn’t a loud sound, and given how sick the whole situation made me feel I think I actually was quite composed. It was loud enough, though. The head snapped around to face me, dislodging a small cascade of twisting shapes. The mouth opened as he tried to scream but that wasn’t what came out of his mouth. The worms also seemed to have taken notice and began to move towards me at an alarming speed. I backed away, but slipped on a piece of loose wood and fell into the bar. I glanced desperately at Michael, but it just watched me, its face unreadable.

I started to try and stamp on the worms as they approached, but there was just too many of them. Staggering to my feet, I felt my hand come to rest on something cold and metal – the fire extinguisher. Without thinking, I pulled the pin out and squeezed the handle. A cloud of gas shot out and, to my surprise, the silver worms began to shudder and recoil, shrivelling and dying. I began to walk forward, catching every last one in the jet of gas. Finally, I found myself standing over the mass of pitted and hollow skin that was once a man. He shuddered violently as the gas engulfed him, and then lay still.

I was breathing heavily, and the CO2 from the fire extinguisher was making me feel light-headed. For some reason I felt like I should check his pockets. They were empty except for a wallet. It was stained with blood and other substances, but the name on the driver’s licence was still readable: Timothy Hodge.

As I stood there, staring at the wallet, I felt a sharp pain in my right arm. I looked up to see Michael, reaching into my shoulder. Its fingers were long and distorted as they reached through my skin, cutting it like paper. I screamed. After a few seconds, it withdrew its hand. Held there was a single silver worm, wriggling pathetically in its grip. I hadn’t even felt the thing burrowing into my arm.

After that it’s all a bit of blur. I remember I was going to phone the police, but Timothy Hodge’s corpse was gone, and I was worried about trespassing, so I just sort of wandered away. Michael, or whatever it was, had gone as well. Eventually I found my way back to the Institute, where I must have woken up Martin and, well, here we are.

[John: Yes, I suppose we are.]

[Sasha: So what do you think?

John: I, uh... I don’t really know. We can look into it more later.

Sasha: I should really quit, you know. We, we all should. I don’t think this a normal job. I, I don’t think this is a safe job.

John: You’re probably right. Do you want to quit?

Sasha: No. I’m just... I’m just too damned curious, I suppose. You?

John: No. Whatever’s going on, I need to know. Get some rest.]

Archivist Notes:

Obviously there is little we can really do to follow up Sasha’s experience. If it was any of the others I might have cause to doubt, but she has always been the most level-headed of the team, and if she says that this is what happened, then I believe her.

This does at least explain what happened to Timothy Hodge, whose disappearance shortly after making his statement in late 2014 has been something of a concern since I discovered it. It seems odd how different the effect of Prentiss’... infestation was on him and Harriet Lee, but without more information I don’t have a working theory on why that might have been. The thing that most disquiets me about Sasha’s statement is this ‘Michael’. She seems pretty convinced that he was not human, at least not in the conventional sense. Almost every statement I’ve catalogued has engaged with the paranormal in some form of antagonistic relationship. The idea that there are things out there like that that want to help us... For some reason, that makes me more uncomfortable than the worm-infested creature stalking the Institute. Sasha has taken a few days off to recuperate, and I’m having a word with Elias about getting some extra CO2 fire extinguishers for the Archive.

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 26 A Distortion)

#the magnus archives #magnus archives #MAG #MAG26 #MAG 26 #ADistortion #A Distortion #Statement #Sasha #Sasha James #'Michael'#The Entity Known as Michael #The Spiral #The Corruption #Jane Prentiss #Prentiss

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fedorasandstuff · 7 years

Text

New fic

Currently untitled, but written because I like meta with my fic and fic with my meta. Based partially on this bit of meta from Sunday.

Thanks to @backofthebookshelf for catching some of my grammar errors. Any that are left are my own fault for not being able to type as well as I think I can.

Statement of Martin Blackwood, Assistant Archivist at the Magnus Institute, London, concerning the discovery of the body of Gertrude Robinson

Is it weird doing this? Okay, yes this is weird, by default talking to your boss about how you didn't murder the last person to have his job is weird and not talking but writing a note about it is even stranger. But does this help? You've been reading so many statements that I wonder if it just seems more, I don't know, legitimate to have a confession come to you on paper rather than talking about it out loud.

Or not a confession, because that sounds like I did something wrong, and I didn't. There, I'll say it straight out. I. Did. Not. Kill. Gertrude. Robinson. And frankly, it hurts that you think I could have murdered her. That you think I could have murdered anybody. I am sorry that I left you and Tim behind. I thought you were right behind me. I'll keep saying it, because maybe this is why you think I could have murdered her, because leaving you behind was like letting you be murdered. With how hard it was for you to walk at the time it pretty much was murder.

I thought you were dead. I turned a corner and realized you and Tim weren't behind me and I was sure you were both dead. And then I realized that I had no idea where I was. Lost in a maze of twisty passages all alike. Well not all alike, they were different enough that I felt like I should be able to tell where I was going, a curved archway here, a blocked off door there, those bricks were a slightly different shade of gray. But I couldn't tell them apart. There's a sameness to the passages below the Institute, like halls of a school or a government building.

I have never felt so lost. I don't know how long it was, my new phone was in my desk, and I just keep walking until I found a trail in the dust on the floor. At first all I could think about was vampires, and that statement where the only sign that someone lived in that house was the well traveled path in the dust. I didn't care. At one point I thought I heard a scream, but other than that I hadn't heard or seen any sign of Prentiss and her worms for what felt like hours. It couldn't have been hours, I know I wasn't lost for that long. But it felt like it, and even if I found a vampire... at least it would be something.

I didn't find a vampire. You probably didn't even think I had, it was probably stupid to think one would be down there. Who even knows if the tunnels come out someplace other than the Institute? What I found instead was a door, a normal ordinary wooden door.

Inside the first thing I noticed was the boxes, piled in two stacks on with three and one with two boxes. They were those cardboard bankers boxes we use for the statements that still need researching and they were new, still white and mostly holding their shape. The top one on the stack of three didn't have a lid and I could see it halfway full of cassette tapes, like the one's you use to record statements.

Then I saw the body Gertrude the body. I had to have seen it first; it was posed in the middle of the room, but I didn't really register it right away. The new boxes were of all things safer than the body. She was positioned in the chair like she was just sitting there, her arms and legs tied in place. I'd run files down to the Archives sometimes, before... and she'd always be sitting at her desk like that, like someone's Gran just about to get out of her chair to give you tea or a new knit jumper. She was staring at the door, not accusing, not afraid, but like she knew something I didn't. And there were the bullet wounds in her chest. I could count three patches of dark black stains on her cardigan where the bullet holes had bleed out.

And that's when I ran. I followed the clean path away from the room and the body and the tapes. Eventually, I found corridors filled with worm corpses, and I ran faster because that meant that there was at least an Institute left. Then I heard voices, and that's where I found Elias and the emergency responders... you took my statement on tape not long after that... I don't really have the words to describe that even with how bad you looked, how good it was to see you and Tim alive.

That's it. I just wanted you to know. I wanted to say it in a way I knew you would listen and couldn't just blow it all off. I didn't kill Gertrude Robinson. You can trust me; I just want to help.

End statement

Martin wouldn't admit to screaming when the door to his apartment started pounding at 10pm Friday after what was, sadly, not the worst week at work ever. And if he did he was allowed. He didn't have very good experiences with unexpected pounding on his door, and he was still keyed up from the lackluster Intervention Wednesday. Tim was mad. Sasha was distant, more distant. And John... well, before he'd watched everyone like they might pull out a knife at any moment. Now he watched everyone like they'd kicked him and still might pull out a knife at any moment.

“Martin! I know you're in there, I heard you scream!”

“John?” Martin unbolted the door and unlocked the chain. “What are you doing here?”

“Why did you write this?”

“What?” John limped past Martin into his apartment waving a wad of paper. “It's ten at night, can this wait until Monday?”

“Ten...” John looked around at the apartment, eyes wide and astonished; had he lost track of time again? Had he eaten anything since lunch? “No. It can't wait until Monday. I need you to tell me why you wrote this.” He shoved the papers at Martin's face.

“Because...” Martin took the papers and smoothed them out; it was a statement form. Oh, that statement. “I wrote it because it's true and you've been...”

“No. Not like that,” John sat on the couch, pulled a pen and more statement forms from his messenger bag, and placed them on the clear spot on the coffee table. “I need you to make a statement.”

“John. It's late and after this week do you really...”

“Please. Martin, I need you to do this. Please, I need this.”

Tim was right, he really was allowing John to get away with far too much, but he couldn't ignore this. He'd been waiting for months for John to reach out and ask for help, and if he was going to beg for a statement about a statement, Martin could do that. He sighed and folded himself so he could sit on the floor and still be able to write at the coffee table.

“Anything in particular?”

“Just why you wrote the statement about finding Gertrude's body.”

Martin wrote. It was less than a page, but there wasn't really that much to say. His previous statement was true. He was worried about John, and would do everything in his power to help. Even if it was to just lend an ear that wasn't going to lead back to Elias.

When he finished, Martin silently handed the paper over. John stared at the paper, and slowly closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, as if he didn't read these things every day and needed to prepare himself for it. When he opened his eyes, he started to read.

“Statement of Martin Blackwood, Assistant Archivist at the Magnus Institute, London, concerning his statement about the discovery of the body of Gertrude Robinson...”

Martin rolled his eyes at the opening. Yes, that's how it always starts, but shivered as John got to the body of the statement. They'd all heard John read the statements, and knew how he sounded... different when the tape recorder came out. John's voice became lighter, and he never misspoke. He'd never thought how it would sound to the person, the one who had given the statement, to hear John read it like that. Even Tim, joking around with the tape recorder hadn't seemed to get how unnerving listening to his own statement was.

John sounded like him. Not like John was doing a Martin impression and copying his voice and his accent, but those were his words at his cadence coming out of John's mouth. He took a breath where Martin would have taken a breath. He ground out the same words Martin would want emphasized, and waited to deliver that final plea in the same way Martin would have.

Done speaking, John carefully laid the paper on the table and rested his elbows on his knees. He pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes and shook. Martin watched silently for a moment. John was not a large man; he wasn't small mind you, but he often seemed to take up more space than just his physical body. He had presence. Now, it seemed he was barely taking up the physical space on the couch.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

“If it's not too much trouble.”

“I'll be right back.”

Martin used the time making tea to order his thoughts. By the time John had a mug and was waiting for it to cool enough to drink he had his first question.

“What was that?”

John stared into the tea, he didn't look up at Martin. “I don't know if you remember, but I said that I lose myself in the real statements.” He did remember, he hadn't forgotten anything they said while waiting for Prentiss to finish them off. “When I saw your first statement, I thought you were playing a joke. I thought you were trying to make yourself seem more trustworthy. And I had a fresh tape, so I read it.”

The implication that he wasn't trustworthy still hurt, but Martin didn't interrupt. John tentatively sipped his tea.

“I didn't expect to get caught up like I do with the other statements. But after reading it I knew that the statement was true, that you were telling the truth.” John lifted his head to look at Martin. “So I had to come and find out why. I'd hoped that I could make it happen again, so I could know the truth. And now I do.” He gave one of his ugly little laughs. “That was the first time it's ever happened on purpose.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I... you want to help?” He sounded so plaintive that Martin took back the pen and scrawled Y E S across the bottom of the page.

The laughter surprised out of John was genuine, and caused him to spill half his tea over the paper. Martin got a bunch of paper towels and grinned as he was cleaning up. “Does this mean I shouldn't trust you with tea as well as knives?”

“You can trust me with knives,” John said softly as he examined the paper. “That was Michael. Sasha's Michael. I objected to him, uh, it taking Helen Richardson, and it stabbed me.” Martin froze half way to throwing out the soaked paper towels. “It called me Archivist, like Prentiss did. It said there were sides, though not how many or why. There may be a war.”

Martin got rid of the paper towels and sat next to John; he was a little closer than necessary, but John looked like he needed a bit of human contact.

“I think Gertrude may have chosen a side. Basira's been trying to get me some of her tapes. I've made copies.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“You won't tell anyone else.” He wouldn't, Martin kind of wanted to now that he knew some of what was going on, but he wouldn't. “You said in the statement that I could trust you, and... and it was true.”

“You should stay here tonight.” John stared at him. “It's late and we should sleep. Then we can get started on everything in the morning fresh and ready to go. Did you think we would go down to the Archive right away? No, that's a bad idea. Everything is always worse at night.”

John wanted to object; he was making his I'm-right-why-are-you-dumb face.

“No, everything will go better in the morning, and no one goes to the Institute on Saturday. I lived there for months, I know these things. Now I'll make up the couch for you to sleep on because I don't fit and you owe me for thinking I was a murderer for four months.”

“Thank you Martin,” John smiled and Martin grinned back. This was better.

AN: And eventually Martin convinces Jonathan that Tim and Sasha are trustworthy and then they all write notes to Jonathan when they need him to know something or he gets twitchy. Only Sasha is Not Sasha so she has to be very very careful how she phrases her notes. And Tim thinks this is bullshit because this isn't trust, it's just a switch from surveillance to a lie detector test, but Jonathan is light years better than he was before, so he'll live with it for now.

#The magnus archives #Martin Blackwood #fanfiction #my fic #jonathan sims Archivist #fic to go with meta #what does Archivist mean in this context?

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