Chapter Text
The wind whistles through the unforgiving desert. At least, what can only be assumed to be a desert. Since the world ended, it’s been a bit hectic.
Two sets of footsteps crunch over the red sand. Was it always red? So much blood has been spilled on it that nobody can really tell any more.
Over the sound of the screams it carries, the wind dips down and swings around the two walking figures. It drifts over their battle-worn faces, caresses their bare skin where their fingers interlock at their sides, brings to them the news of the domains it has travelled through. Only one can hear it, though.
Jon tilts his head. “I think we’re coming up on a Spiral domain.”
Martin scowls. “Great. Love the Spiral. Big fan.”
Nudging him with his shoulder, Jon chuckles. “Is this about the two weeks you spent in it’s halls?”
“Yes it’s about the two weeks I spent in the halls!” Martin sputters. “Two weeks, Jon! Endless running, always scared, felt like one big fever dream!”
Jon’s laughter only grows, and Martin can’t really keep up his grumbling in the face of… that.
“Stop it, you.” He huffs. “You’re too cute for me to be mad at.”
“Well, would you take a look at the happy couple.” Someone spits, voice laced with a bitter venom that winds itself through their ears and leaves the feeling of an oil spill in their brains.
A black door slams open where no door had been previously.
Martin glances at Jon nervously, to find Jon already waiting for his eyes.
“Martin, I’d understand if you wanted to wait out here.” Jon starts. Martin doesn’t let him finish.
“And what, let you get chased around for eternity while I draw sand pictures? Out of the question.” He tightens his grip on Jon’s hand. “I’m ready to go when you are.”
Steeling himself, Jon squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. The door draws him in, and his first step is almost a subconscious action. The two of them cautiously head inside the darkness.
There’s no light, which is… strange, for the Spiral. Normally it wants you to see your descent into madness, but as the door swung shut so hard that the frame rattled, Jon Knew that this was not a random Spiral domain.
This one had sought them out.
Hesitantly, Jon took a step forward. He felt Martin’s hand stiffen around his, and for a heart-stopping moment, slip away.
He stuck his hand out, feeling around for where Martin had just been. “Martin?”
“Jon?” Martin called back, muffled by some kind of divider. Most likely a wall. “Jon, where are- what happened?”
“It’s the bloody Spiral, Martin.” Jon called back tiredly. “Just… don’t be scared, and we’ll find each other. You know the drill.”
There’s an anxious silence from Martin’s direction before he responds. “Okay. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Jon’s hand finds a wall- some kind of plaster- and he starts moving. His right hand trails along the wall as he marches. The key to the Spiral is just to have a goal, he reasons. If you know what you’re doing, and you aren’t afraid, it has no interest in you.
“And where, exactly, do you think that will take you?” The corridors ask him in that scalding, furious tone.
“Outside, hopefully.” Jon responds calmly. “It’s good to see you again, Gerard. How has the Apocalypse been treating you? Me, it’s been quite good to, if I’m being honest. Did you see the lovely man I came here with? He’s qu-woah!”
The hallway underneath Jon’s feet ripples, and he stumbles. “Not a fan of that one, are we?”
A freezing cold hand whacks Jon upside the head. “No, actually. I quite like him. I think I might keep him.”
Jon scoffs, rubbing the place he was hit. “Please. If you tried to keep him, the extraction wouldn’t go well for you when I come back for him.”
Gerard’s sneer is almost visible in the pitch black. “Right. I forgot you only care about leaving people alone when they’re yours.”
“Mm-hm. You’re phrasing this like I left you at the altar.”
The corridors brush Jon’s shoulders and he shivers involuntarily, the confines of the Coffin all too fresh in his mind.
“Don’t get smart with me, Archivist.” Gerard spits. The lights flick on- or rather, the candelabras lining the hallway ignite. Jon suppresses a laugh. The Gothic style hall is all too Gerard. Black wallpaper, and the occasional vase of dead flowers. The hallway curves ever so slightly to the right. Or was it the left? The more Jon tried to think about it, the less clear it became. As is the Spiral, I suppose.
“Or what, you’ll blindfold me?” Jon bites back. “You may have me in your clutches, but it’s not my gaze that’ll hurt you.”
The carpet changes patterns from a grey slate to a spiked black design, interlaced with white threads. Gerard’s footsteps echo from the empty space next to Jon.
“Maybe not. But it’s not about your fear.”
Never good words to hear from an Entity. Jon tries to remain as nonchalant as he can as he strolls through the corridor, brushing his hands over the doors he passes. “What’s it about, then?”
“Revenge.”
Jon is thrown violently to the other side of the hallway, slamming into the wall with a crack. He cries out in surprise, and from somewhere in the labyrinth, hears Martin do the same. Panic swirls in his stomach.
“What do you mean, ‘revenge’?” He grunts, pushing off the wall only to tumble down onto the floor. The hallway had tilted itself so that the wall was now the floor, and it made Jon slightly sick to stand on unsteady legs.
Gerard himself was standing a few doors down from him, hate seeping off him like a cloak. “Aren’t you supposed to Know this kind of thing?” He snarls.
Jon rolls his eyes. “Is this about Micheal? Because that really wasn’t-”
With a few stomps of his boots, Gerard was up in Jon’s face. He was remarkably human, for someone so intertwined with the spiral- that is, of course, it still hurt an incredible amount to try and focus on any details of his face. Jon laughs uneasily and tries to blink the pain away. “Mad, are we? I didn’t kill him, Gerard.”
“You got him dead.” Gerard hisses. “You locked that door and shut him out, and it ended.” The hallway spins under Jon’s feet again, and he’s pressed against the wall behind him, his feet on carpet once more. Gerard’s long coat drapes over them both as he holds Jon up by his lapels and Jon feels with a dizzying terror that he could fall into the dark underside of the fabric.
“It tried to kill me.” Jon delivers flatly. “I think I was within my rights to-”
He’s cut off yet again by the intense creaking of the hallways around them. Gerard’s face becomes painful to look at, and static runs across Jon’s collarbones where Gerard’s hands (?) are fisted in his jacket lapels.
“Gerard.” Jon starts calmly, battling the hysteria rising in his throat. “I’m going to have to ask you to let me and Martin go.”
The hands on his jacket tighten, despite Gerard no longer being in front of him. There’s a presence in the hallways that isn’t Jon, but the hallways are so constricting and tilt on such a dangerous angle that he can’t really discern where it is. It’s in front of him, he thinks, but then why is there a hand pressed to his back in a sharp fist? The knuckles dig into his spine and Jon opens his mouth to scream, but the kick that lands on his ribs takes all the air out of his lungs. He’s being battered and beaten from every direction, non-stop hits raining on his body from all directions.
Jon is hit with the certainty that if he does not act, he will die.
“Cease-” he starts, but is cut off by a blow to the face that sends him reeling.
“Absolutely not.” Gerard snarls. “You don’t get to save yourself.”
Jon tries to start again, but every time he so much as opens his mouth he’s tossed around mercilessly like a ragdoll that belongs to a child with a frightening amount of anger issues.
As his head slams into the wall, leaving a faint splash of the blood pouring out of his nose, Jon hears a muffled vibration.
He desperately presses his ear closer to the wall, under the pretence of curling into himself to avoid injury, and through the wall he can hear Martin’s voice. He’s calling out for Jon.
“Gerard!” Jon coughs out between hits. “Wait, Gerard. I can- I can find him.”
A bitter laugh bounces out of the wall next to him and ricochets off the corridor around him. “Who, your precious boytoy? Not in my halls, mate.”
“He’s not my- not him, Gerard. Micheal.” Jon grits out. “I can find Micheal.”
The beating ceases almost instantly. A deathly silence replaces the flurry of sound, a silence so tense that Jon feels like it pulls all of the air out of his lungs. He licks his lips, the bruises developing on his chest making it hard to speak.
“He never un-became. Micheal. He Became the Spiral in Sannikov land, and he- Micheal, that is- he doesn’t exist any more. But he didn’t un-become.” Jon stammers, vaguely wondering why he’s trying to make something make sense to the Spiral.
But whatever he was getting at must have worked, because Gerard manifested in front of him once more, looking as human as he gets.
“Afterlife.” Gerard whispers, face unreadable and hands filled with static.
Jon nods. “Afterlife. If you let me Look, I can... I can Find it. I can take you to Micheal.”
Gerard stares at him. Every eye on his body focuses dizzyingly on Jon.
“No you can’t.” He says slowly, as if sounding it out.
“Yes, I can. Let me See.” Jon argues.
Gerard doesn’t move, physically or cosmically. “Why would you?”
Jon rolls his eyes, shifting into a sitting position against the wall. “Because it’ll delay my death, something that I’d very much like to put off.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he adds “And you’ve always confused me. It’d be nice to get an actual, real Look before I die.”
At this, Gerard smirks, and Jon Sees the dizzying spirals begin to uncurl. “Fine. I doubt you’ll make heads or tails of anything, but what the hell.”
Jon feels a little something inside him wilt with relief, but he doesn’t show it. He just nods, closes his eyes, and opens his Eyes.
He Looks. The Spiral whirls around him, it’s very nature compelling it to encase and confuse him, but Gerard holds it back while he Searches.
And amidst the roiling, angry black, there’s a yellow door. Jon grimaces. Now for the hard part.
“I See him.” He says quietly. Gerard inhales sharply.
Then he Looks around.
“And I see you.”
The air around him grows chilled, as if Gerard’s blood had run cold.
“I Know you, now.” Jon continues, voice growing louder. “I see within your depths and turns and tunnels. And I invite It Knows You to in turn, Know You as I do.”
“No,” Gerard gasped breathily from around him. “NO!”
As the halls began to twist and swirl Jon continued, yelling over the storm that surrounded him. “Ceaseless Watcher, turn your Gaze upon this culmination of a thousand Lies. Behold it in it’s entirety. Cast your Gaze through the tunnels that create it, and View fully the deceit that upholds it’s very being.”
As Gerard thrashes around him, screaming and sobbing, calling out and begging, throwing himself at Jon’s feet and at the locked yellow door as he scrambles away but cannot escape the Watcher’s Sight, Jon brings it all to a fever pitch. “I bring you into the light, and you are Seen!”
A terrible cracking splits the air, and Jon feels as though his brain is pouring out of his skull. The power of levelling Gerard’s existence flows through him but rings hollow as the hallways begin to quake, beams shattering out of walls and doorframes splintering.
“Jon!” Someone yells frantically. Martin.
“Martin!” He responds, staggering away from where he was pinned in place. “Martin, you’ve got to get out-”
Martin is in front of him, and Jon is reaching for his hand without realising it until Martin grabs his hand with determination scrawled over his face. “Not without you.” He says firmly. “Come on. You Know where the exit is.”
Jon nods, mouth setting in a hard line. He takes the lead.
They dash past falling vases too big for their small size, candelabras that reach to them as they run, windows that don’t display the world outside. Jon nearly gets another nasty scar from a sudden burst of heat from an open door, but Martin yanks him out of the way just in the nick of time.
After hours and days and barely any time at all of running for their lives, Jon points at a red door. “There!” He grunts. Martin squeezes his hand.
The hallway was longer than it looked, and far more dangerous, but as Jon laid his hand on that handle he felt an agony like no other. It nearly brought him to his knees- Gerard’s final cry, a harsh whisper that laced through his brain like a strobe light. His hand burned, and as Martin bundled him up and kicked the door open, he clutched his head with a pained whimper.
It was so much. Gerard’s very being was crumbling under the sheer force of being something it was not meant to be- something so familiar to the Spiral felt like a heated knife when turned against it. All the pain, love, hatred and sorrow that Gerard had stored up rushed through Jon, and he nearly choked as a wave of longing clogged his lungs until he was breathing smoke in the form of a distorted name.
Micheal Shelley had no grave, but he was laid to rest in the corridors of his love.
Gerard Keay was now gone, and with him, Micheal too.