Chapter Text
1.
The Archivist frowned at the shelf, a sturdy grey stone object that probably weighed five times what the Archivist weighed himself. He took a step back out of the row of shelves, comparing the new one to the other rows.
“No, move it slightly to the left, not too much, just another couple of inches.” He told his companion, who responded with an irate hiss. Despite that, almost invisible strands, pulled up the shelf and shifted it to the indicated spot.
The Archivist looked over the newly situated shelf, turning and looking down both rows, before turning to his companion.
“It looks good and see, now we don’t have to worry until the next time we reorganize the library,” the Archivist said with a smile. His companion, a fist sized black spider with a red circle on his head, just clicked at him in response. The Archivist chuckled.
“We have at least another century before I make you go through that again, Mister, don’t worry.” He told the spider. Mister just scurried over the shelf, cutting each strand of web with his mandibles, the strands hanging from the ceilings, pulled up out of sight as soon as he did so.
The Archivist meanwhile made his way to his desk, and grabbed the woven basket, that was filled with the journals that before this morning had been kept in a small shelf within arm’s reach of his desk. He picked it up and walked over to the new row and started carefully putting each journal in the starting shelf of the row.
All the books in the basket, barely filled a quarter of the single shelf they had been set on, but that was good, hopefully he wouldn’t have to expand this section of the library for a while yet, the Mother’s section was getting close to full anyway, and would need to be expanded first.
The Archivist lowered himself to the floor and leaned against the stone bookcase. Hearing the sight sound of scurrying above him, he glanced up to see Mister on the top of the bookcase looking down at him.
Mister clicked at him.
“I know, I know,” the Archivist said in response. “But it’s better we do it now anyways. We don’t know how many statements or how much information I’m going to get on the new power. I’ve never been around for an emerging one before.”
Mister’s answering purr sounded fond to the Archivist’s ear, and he reached up a hand and let the spider use him as a ladder down to the floor.
About halfway down the spider paused, turning to, though blocked by the many bookshelves in the way, where the door to the hallway that led outside was.
Mister after pausing for a moment, continued his way to the ground. When it reached the ground, he knocked an appendage to the stone floor, the sound echoing in an odd but familiar way.
Knock, Knock.
“A guest?” The Archivist asked confused. “But I had a guest just a few days ago. The Mother never sends anyone that soon.”
Mister clicked at the Archivist now sounding irritated, as he scurried around him. The Archivist frowned down at the spider; he had never seen his jailer this perturbed before.
2.
“Hush, it’s interesting,” Jon traced a hand over the lettering of the hand-printed journal. He had his own journal beside him and had been scrawling out notes as he read. “I mean a lot of this Smirke’s theories are wrong of course, but it’s still interesting.”
Mister clicked at Jon from where he sat, propped up on a stack of books next to Jon.
“Mhm, see look here,” Jon showed him a page, “It lists all the known fears, but it only includes thirteen, isn’t that interesting? I wonder if its just him that doesn’t know about the fourteenth yet, or if no one besides the Avatars it has managed to claim, have realized yet.”
Mister just stared at Jon, until Jon pulled the book back, continued with his note taking.
“I think he’s trying to say here, that he thinks that all the fears were born into the world at the same time, by a ritual long ago,” Jon said. “Well we know that’s wrong, both Terminus and The Forever Blind have been around much longer than the others. Same with The Chase, if I’m correct about my theory, both The Watcher and The Mother, must came after The Chase.”
Mister hissed in answer and was met was a fond smile in response.
“I know, I know, you don’t like the theory,” Jon responded in the tone of someone who has had this argument before. “But I just think you don’t like the idea that The Mother started as an offshoot of The Chase, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. I suppose she could be younger than my projections; like the Twisting Deceit or The Unending Battle she is very community oriented, but her association with spiders points otherwise.”
The click that Mister gave in response to that, if it had been a human noise probably would be compared to grumbling.
“I do like the names that Smirke gives the fears though,” Jon paused, dipping his quill in ink. “They are simple, but they have a sort of charm in their simplicity. Perhaps I should start using them? He doesn’t have one for the newest fear yet, of course. I’ve been thinking Meat? But I think that’s a little on the nose, so, perhaps something similar.”
Jon’s note taking continued like that for a while, making little comments, that Mister either responded to or ignored. Finally, Jon reached the end of the book and as he closed it, traced his fingers up the spine.
“When someone gives you a gift, are you supposed to give one back?” Jon asked staring down at the journal, placing his quill in the inkwell. He sighed, closing his own journal, and setting it in a nearby bookcase.
Mister, suddenly paying more attention, hissed, drawing Jon’s attention.
“I mean, he said he was going to come back,” Jon responded, staring down at the book. “You don’t give someone a gift and then never come to see them again.”
Jon paused before turning back to Mister, worried. “Do you?”
3.
“I can’t believe you.” Jon was folded in on himself, wrapped in a blanket sitting in an overstuffed chair next to the fire. “You could have killed him.”
Mister circled around the chair, reminding Jon of a shark circling prey or a guard dog on patrol.
“I’ve seen your bite kill avatars! He’s just been touched, he’s barely more than a normal human.” Jon’s hands were in his hair which was no longer tied back, and just hung loose around his shoulders, pulling at it in irritation. “He could have died.”
Mister turned and hissed at Jon, angry, rearing up as if poised to attack.
“Is this about your scroll?” Jon snarled in response. “I’m the one that brought it up! He was just curious that it’s the only other thing in this entire library that I haven’t wrote myself!”
Jon went to stand from the chair only to find himself stuck there, as if inviable strands were tying him to it. Jon froze, eyes wide when he realized he couldn’t leave the chair. He didn’t bother to struggle; he knew from experience that it wouldn’t get him anywhere.
“Really? Its been over a millennium, since you pulled this trick out.” Jon started glaring at the spider as it started to continue making circles around Jon’s chair once again.
“He said he loved me,” Jon said sadly to himself, “and he kissed me, and then he almost died.”
Maybe that meant Jonah would still come back, and at least visit. Jonah had gotten so close to death though, if Jon hadn’t seen Mister just in time, then…
Well at least Jonah was alive. Even if Jonah now hated Jon for not warning him about his dangerous jailor, at least he was alive to hate Jon.
The spider glanced up at him, stopping its trek around the chair. It clicked at him, slow and precise.
“Manipulating me?” Jon asked, his voice cold, his grip on the blanket surrounding him tightening. “Really? You of all creatures have the audacity to claim someone else is manipulating me?”
It answered with an annoyed hiss and Jon scoffed in response, before turning away, deciding that the conversation was finished.
4.
The Archivist lay on the bed, in the room he had been confined in for the last two centuries. The bed was nice, and was replaced relatively often, but less so since he had stopped ripping it along with every other thing he could break, apart whenever he grew bored with his surroundings.
The room was stylized like a bedroom, but with grey concrete walls and an impenetrable metal door. But despite this it was over filled with luxury. A large bookcase filled the room, chock full of books Jon had never read, an over-stuffed love seat sat nearby to it along with a beautifully designed reading lamp.
Honestly the Archivist didn’t understand why his captor kept replacing the items he broke with items of the same or greater value. How pretty it was, certainly hadn’t stopped the Archivist from shattering the last lamp he had gotten, by tossing it at his captor’s head.
Speaking of his captor, The Archivist heard the sound of the bolts on the outside of the door shifting. He turned his body to be facing the wall and closed his eyes, pulling the heavy quilt he had wrapped around him even tighter.
The door opened almost soundlessly, and then closed just as quietly.
He heard his captor walk over to where a sturdy wooden desk sat facing the wall. The Archivist listened to the shifting of the expensive journals that had been place there for his use a few weeks before. They hadn’t been touched since, something that must have evident as the Archivist listened to the angry rustling of paper.
“Really Jon.” Elias Bouchard, who had once been Jonah Magnus, said with a displeased sigh. The Archivist didn’t respond. “I bring you notebooks and pens to keep you entertained, and you refuse to use them like a spoiled child.”
“Why should I?” The Archivist asked, still facing the wall. “Any notes I take, any theories I hypothesize about, are stolen from me as soon as I commit them to paper.”
“Stolen? Don’t be so dramatic,” He felt more than heard Elias getting closer to the bed and tightened his grip on the blankets around him in response. “This room simply doesn’t have the space to hold the amount of literature you tend to generate. Once you give up this pointless battle to free yourself, you will be given free reign of my Institute. I really think it has gone on long enough.”
“Pointless?” The Archivist asked his voice filled with false cheer as he finally opened his eyes, still facing the wall. “Do you know how long I existed in the Web’s clutches? No, you don’t, because I don’t know. I just know it was over three thousand years.”
He sat up and turned but still refused to look at Elias. “And you think that after not even two centuries of a different jail, I’m going to roll over and play the good prisoner? Behave and pretend I am not kept here against my will? Pretend I’m not being treated like a pet?”
“A pet, Jon?” Elias asked stepping even closer, slowly moving forward as if he was approaching a wild animal, or more likely Elias was worried that the Archivist had something to throw at him, again. “Don’t be dramatic, you are so much more to me than a pet.”
“There is a collar around my neck.” The Archivist said, teeth clenched staring across the room toward his bookshelf, to continue refusing to look at Elias.
“Only a precaution, my dear Jonathan.” Elias is close enough to touch the Archivist now, a hand stroking through his long hair, combing it of knots.
Following his hair down, one of Elias’s hands touched the archivist bare shoulder, one of the few parts of him not covered in the heavy quilt.
“I am going to escape one day.” The Archivist said, trying to shift away from Elias’s hands. Elias didn’t let him, following him as he moved.
“How long did you tell yourself that when you were stuck in the Web’s trap?” Elias asked amused, letting the Archivist try cover himself more with his blanket. “Yet, you were still there when I found you. How long did you say? Over three thousand years? I really doubt it will take quite that long for you to come around to my point of view.”
The Archivist stiffened angrily before relaxing, a slight smile making it to his lips.
“How long have you lived Jonah?” The Archivist asked him, his voice calm and cruel. “A little over two hundred years? Honestly, I doubt you will even make it to five hundred, and once you are dead, I’ll either be free, or locked back in my library.”
For a moment the Archivist’s word hung in the air, as Elias stilled after he said them. Then swiftly one of Elias’s hands left the Archivist’s hair, the hand moved to grip the Archivist’s chin. The other hand, still in his hair, turned to a fist, pulling painfully.
“You have such a lovely voice Jon,” Elias told him, his fingers painfully digging into the Archivist’s cheeks as he forced him to tilt his head up and look Elias in the eye. “It would be a shame to have to gag you.”
The Archivist bared his teeth in response but didn’t say another word. Eventually Elias let him pull away, but not before pulling him closer and placing a soft kiss on the Archivist’s forehead.
“I really would prefer to have you willingly at my side Jon, don’t you remember how much you used to enjoy my company?”
The laugh that the Archivist gave in response was drier and more unamused than anything. “No, but you know what I do remember? Jonah Magnus talking for hours about how he wanted to free me. So, we could be together. So, I could meet all his allies and friends. So, I could see the sky.”
The Archivist, this time turned and looked at Elias of his own will. Once they met eyes, he gave Elias a sad smile. “Strange how things change, isn’t it?”