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Jon wakes up to the light, and he knows that he’s dead.
It’s a long time coming, really. There’s no… fear. That concept in itself is enough to solidify the fact that it is well and truly over, that there is nothing living off of his emotions. Nothing… gathering power, ready to strike from some unseen distance… it’s… it’s nice.
The end was meant to be terrifying. But now, all Jon can think is… how beautiful it is.
It is abstract and nothingness, but he walks, anyway. It is glimmering gold and the most metallic of silver that makes his eyes squint when he catches full sight of it. Then it’s gone, replaced by translucence and emptiness. But the emptiness is beautiful in itself, now, and Jon breathes in the air and feels free.
He wanders for some time, aimless and pleased.
“Jon.”
The voice in the light doesn’t surprise him. It doesn’t startle him, although there is a bit of a swooping sensation in his stomach when he does recognize it. Somehow, despite having forgotten it, despite a few short snippets of conversation on tapes he’d found far too late, he recognizes it.
“… Sasha.”
She’s there as he remembers, as he somehow remembers, long hair to her waist and eyes full of gentle teasing behind her glasses. He looks at her, and she watches him, and then… Jon’s aware that he has emotions, here, after all. Not fear. But the other ones, they’re still there, and a spark of pain burns hot in his chest when Sasha smiles, and leans against a nonexistent doorway to speak.
“You took your time, Jonathan Sims,” she chastises. Her voice is playful.
The tiny spark in his chest expands. He can’t stop looking at her. He had forgotten for so long. It hadn’t been fair. “I’m…” Clearing his throat doesn’t help the ache building there. “Yes, well.” He presses his own frames further up his nose, and fixes her with as much of a steady look as he can manage. “I had some work to finish up.”
“Imagine that! Jon, you? Slaving away until you didn’t have anymore of yourself to give? I couldn’t have guessed!”
Jon flounders, for a moment, until he realizes that Sasha is actually still teasing, and it’s only as he realizes it that she crosses the distance between them and hugs him. A solid presence, warm and unyielding as the spark bursts and prickles at his eyes, and he puts his hands solidly on her back to awkwardly– but genuinely– return the hug. “I’m– I’m so sorry, Sasha–”
The words come like a wave, crashing over the both of them at once. A deluge of things he barely comprehends, although he thinks that they’re all apologies. He isn’t sure what else he can give her, but… it is good to see her.
“God,” Sasha says, laughing, after awhile. “He was right, you really have gone to shit. Look at you, blubbering.”
“Sorry.” He pulls back, and does have to thumb away a few stray tears that have managed to escape. He is not blubbering, however much she says. “Who said?”
“Hey, boss.”
Jon has to close his eyes to steel himself. When he opens them again, Tim is waiting.
“Welcome to the afterlife.” Tim drops his arms from where they’re crossed over his chest, and gestures to the space around them. “Probably doesn’t look like much to you yet, since you just poofed in here, but… Death. And all that.”
“Tim.” Jon isn’t quite sure what to say, again. Made even more fraught by the complicated nature of their relationship in the first place– never friends, perhaps not quite enemies. He does wish things could have been different, in that regard, but he had thought that about a lot of things in the past few years. Another casualty of their war, taken away by the unknown.
“If you try to talk at me, I may still punch you,” Tim says. “Fair warning.”
Sasha sighs. “Tim.”
“I’m allowed to still hate him, he dragged me into this bullshit.”
“Don’t you think it’s been long enough to, you know, let that go?”
“It’s been like a week.”
Jon opens his mouth to ask, but Tim cuts him off to continue.
“Time’s a relative thing, yeah? Doesn’t really exist here. How long’s it been on your side? Months? Years? Probably not too long, I doubt even you’d survive at the Institute long.” Tim shrugs. “Point is, I’m still royally pissed.”
There’s a lot to take in. Jon… sets most of it aside for another day. He has, apparently, all the time in the world now. Instead, he simply nods, and says “that’s fair” because… it is. He understands that it is.
“… but… y’know.” Tim scowls, turning his head to look out the imaginary window to their left. Jon can feel the sunlight. “I know it wasn’t your fault. Not really. Yeah, you dragged me into the archives, but I don’t think you really knew then what we all know now.”
Jon… thinks he stares. And he must, because Tim’s scowl deepens and Jon hurriedly attempts to salvage the conversation before it can go awry. This is their– all of their– new start. The chance to have things be the way they should have been.
“I’m sorry, Tim–”
“Save your apologies, Jon, I really don’t want them.” But Tim looks slightly less severe as he says that, and there is something… lighter about him, too. “It’s over. It’s just… it’s done.”
It is.
Jon takes a step forward. Tim takes two back, and looks abruptly panicked.
“I’m not hugging you.”
“I wasn’t–” Jon scowls, now, too, because he… absolutely was. An instinctive movement. Easy like breathing, even if he didn’t seem to need to do it here. Tim still manages to be infuriating, even here, but it’s… familiar. And so very, very good.
Jon sticks his hand out instead, jaw set. Determined, and warm beneath his collar. He thinks it may be progress that the motion feels stiff, but right.
Tim hesitates. For a moment, Jon thinks he’ll deny him that as well, as he is far entitled to. But then… he takes Jon’s hand to shake, and rolls his eyes while he does. “Save your feelings, Jon, God knows we’re going to be drowned in enough of them as it is.”
“What?”
“Jon!”
“There he is,” Tim mutters, but he’s smiling. Just a little.
Jon barely notices. He’s spinning around for the voice, gentle and warming like the cupful of perfectly prepared tea that he’s missed so goddamned dearly. “Martin–”
“You’re finally here–” Martin’s already got tears in his eyes, hands wringing at his sweater. “I thought– you know– I mean, not that I’m glad you’re here or anything, because that means you’re– you’re…” He swallows, and dismisses the rest of the sentence with a wave of his hands. “But I guess I am glad. I am really… really… happy to see you… Jon.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Martin, if you’re going to go snot on his shoulder, just do it and get it over with,” Tim mutters. “Like you didn’t know he was going to die eventually.”
“It’s not the same, Tim,” Martin protests. “Like, we knew, but we didn’t know when–”
“Or who or what would kill him,” Tim mutters, and Martin’s glare is weak, and watery, and barely exists at all when he looks back at Jon like that.
Jon interrupts by initiating the hug on his own volition.
Martin stammers something unintelligible, and then… hugs him back. Jon has the most peculiar sensation of the air being squeezed out of his lungs when he doesn’t need the air to begin with. It’s… comforting. It is so very comforting.
He will absolutely blame Martin’s free flowing tears as the catalyst for the moment where the spark thrumming through his body turns to actual crying and not just a bit of teary prelude. Honestly, he’s just glad he didn’t start crying over Tim. He would have never lived it down, which was… moot, since they were all dead, anyway.
The tearful laugh he stifles into Martin’s hair doesn’t go unnoticed; it’s the wet noise that probably makes Martin pull back and realize he’s set Jon off into tears as well. Then he’s blathering off more apologies and looking like he wants to wipe the tears away himself for a moment but then frantically searching through his pockets instead.
“Sorry, I’m sorry, Jon, I’m just… it’s been a l–long time and I was s–so worried–” Martin isn’t doing any good at pulling himself together, either, even as he produces a small packet of tissues for Jon. He only manages to seem to be spiraling further and further out of control.
Jon looks helplessly to Sasha, his one go-to for advice in emotional situations because it is still lost on Jon, even now, but she’s crying, too. Happy tears, Jon thinks. His tears are happy tears, ones born from harsh destiny and the relief that comes from it finally falling free of his shoulders.
That’s… it, isn’t it. Relief. He very nearly feels weak with it. The sob he hears is his own, and then Martin’s hugging him again, and Sasha’s there for the embrace, too, and Jon wouldn’t be able to hold back the tears if he tried. He doesn’t want to try, he thinks.
“Jesus Christ,” Tim says, from somewhere behind the three of them. Jon can’t look for him right now, but he wonders if he just imagines how his voice sounds a little choked on its own. “Can we try to pull ourselves together?” It is, at its very best, a weak complaint.
“Get over here, you arse,” Sasha says.
“No chance in hell.”
“This isn’t hell,” Martin babbles, and Tim breathes a put upon sigh.
“Tim, I swear to God–” Sasha doesn’t finish, and then the unmistakable weight of Tim’s presence is in their immediate orbit again.
“Here I am. Happy? Here I am.” He leans his shoulder against Sasha’s, a bit. “… here we are,” he says, quieter.
“We are,” Martin agrees readily, nodding his head enthusiastically. “We are.”
They were.
Jon will pull himself together. He swears he will soon, but for now… just now… just once, he finds that he doesn’t feel the need to.