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Crowds were, challenging to navigate these days. There was just so much movement and flux and all the space around him was packed with people and stories and Statements and far too much information. It made him dizzy. It was easy for his focus on the here-and-now to slip and he would suddenly find himself drawn to the call of a passing Statement. He did his best to avoid Taking a Statements anymore. He didn’t want any more nightmares, and he frequently found himself trapped reliving people’s life stories regardless of what he wanted to be doing at the time.
He had definitely gotten better at pulling his attention in close, at putting the blinders on as it were. It was a delicate act of finding the tipping point between losing himself in the Knowledge of the world around him and being so blind as to become a sitting duck for any passing Avatar with a grudge. It was a difficult balance to strike and Jon had experience with falling off the knife’s edge in both directions.
He hadn’t really had any experience of fully drowning under his power before his encounter with the Too-Much-Eyes-Wide-Cant-See and hadn’t realized just how bad it would have been if he hadn’t clung desperately to the shreds of humanity he still had left.
Elias had hoped that sudden and abrupt exposure to the All Seeing Plane would loosen Jon’s grasp on the core of who he was long enough for the Eye to pour itself through the Archivist and suffuse itself onto the world around them. And it probably would have worked– if Elias had given Jon any indication of what the ritual was going to involve. Because Elias had kept everything so close to the chest, Jon’s first reaction was confusion strong enough to shock him out of the trance the ritual required him in.
That brief lapse in the ritual gave the others the opening they needed to put a stop to it. Daisy Hunted him down finding the location Jon had been taken to with the help of the newly Born Detective, Basira at her back as always. Melanie gave in to the singing of Blood and finally took her vengeance on Elias, and Martin caught the edges of Jon’s fading self in a Web and pulled him back from the edge.
He still doesn’t understand why they didn’t kill him then while they had the chance, he was almost mortal in that moment and they would have succeeded. (He Knows why they didn’t of course, he Knows far too much these days but there’s a difference between having the facts and comprehending them and that's where human fallibility creeps in)
In the end however, they didn’t. The Watcher’s Crown was stopped and the world kept turning. People kept living and breathing and fearing things they didn’t understand. Everything was the same.
Except for them.
Except for him.
The others were changed by their paths and promises and Claims as well, but he was still the Archivist and still every bit of monster that title could ever entail. He was more powerful these days than ever before, the Eye had poured itself into every crack of his soul it could reach and the reshaped him so he could hold even more.
It was too much.
And so he wandered the streets, he didn’t need much sleep these days, just enough to Gaze upon the poor trapped souls within his Dreams before he was awake again. It was nice, pretending to be human for a while. It made the rest of the day that much easier to handle.
Occasionally he would wander too far and be brought back to himself by the slightest tug at the back of his mind, from the place anchored in the memories of safe-warm-comfort that was Martin. Conversations through the bond between them were spoken only with emotions and flashes of memories but they had become fluent in their own language soon enough. So when Martin sends amused exasperation and the memory of quickly cooling tea. Jon laughs and sends back the image of a quickly spinning clock, tired apologies, and confusion at the unknown.
Martin tugs more firmly on the threads between them now, giving them substance and a direction and Jon gladly turns to follow them home.
Other days it hurt to exist. He had been rebuilt by a god with no consideration for flesh and blood and self and it was a struggle to stay in one piece. He was splitting at the seams, unraveling around himself leaving only a husk of eyes and ink and cassette ribbon behind. He was nothing but his parts.
And it hurt.
The gaping wrongness pulsed around him pushing him to become who he had been destined to be. To give himself over fully to the Eye and have his voids filled with Knowledge and Knowing alone.
Those were the bad days.
He would pace around his flat, hitting the walls, the counter, the doors. Pressing himself into small spaces just for the feel of something against his skin. Then abruptly standing still blocking out everything around himself and trying to sink into his body, to try to remap it into the shape it needed to be, the shape he distantly remembered it should be.
It had taken Martin only two times of finding Jon in the aftermath of a bad day, lost to himself and barely reachable. Before he learned how to spot them coming before even Jon could.
The signs of an approaching breakdown started small. Jon would answer an unspoken question, or forget the boundaries of where someone’s mind existed and simply take the information he needed. Then came the way his handwriting would smooth out, become almost mechanically precise and no matter what sort of thing he was writing with, it only ever wrote in ink. After that came the way he would twist and flinch in his seat, trying to get comfortable.
This is when Martin would start to tug along their connection pulling Jon to his side and guiding him safely through the busy streets to Martin’s flat. They’ve done this many times before, but it always brings a smile to Martin’s face when he can literally watch as some of the tension on Jon’s face melt away the second he realizes where Martin was taking him.
The moment they cross the threshold in Martin’s flat he reaches out with thicker webbing along their bond, connecting him deeper and more expansively into Jon’s brain. He enveloped Jon as best he could, acting as a filter between him and the world. It was overwhelming in the best way, to feel the pulse of information and answers at his beck and call and, more importantly, to be able to intimately feel how Jon’s brain relaxed completely.
The Knowledge held at bay and the Archivist pliant under his touch, Martin begins to spin. The first web is the most important and it sits just under the skin, not restraining or even able to be felt. This one is built to hold Jon’s edges together to stop the slow unraveling like a loose thread on a sweater while Jon gives up control.
Martin guides Jon to kneel on a pillow and lays a hand on his head to ground him as he begins to spin the first physical webs of the night. Martin crouches and runs his hands down Jon’s arms, from shoulder to the tips of his fingers in one slow motion. Webs follow the path that his hand took and cling to Jon’s arms. Martin deftly twists his fingers and the webbing comes together pulling Jon’s arms behind his back. Jon gasps and his eyes grow wide at the suddenness of it and when Martin begins to draw threads across and around Jon’s chest Jon slumps down to press against the webbings with a moan of relief. Martin steadies Jon with a practiced hand and then continues his work.
Sometimes Martin will feel Jon begin to slip sideways into the current of Knowledge, the lure of it to loud to ignore. Every time it happens, he gently pulls Jon back into his body, sending shocks of sensation rippling along the webs, emotions and treasured memories saying ‘im here and I know you’.
When its done and webs wrap and cradle Jon completely Martin guides Jon down to lay on his lap. This is the closest either of them get to peace these days. Jon floating in between consciousness and sleep trusting Martin to prevent him from dreaming. And Martin with Jon wrapped up and safe in his lap, protected from everything, even himself.
Occasionally Martin thinks of keeping Jon wrapped up tight, safe and present and not running head first into danger, and he’s sure that Jon wouldn’t even mind, content to give himself over to being completely understood and appreciated by someone. But keeping Jon here would make him lose many of the pieces that made him the man Martin cared so deeply for.
So eventually he did unwind his webs, letting Jon’s awareness float back to his body before Martin gently peeled off the webbing that had been keeping him together, Jon mentally settled enough to maintain his awareness of himself without Martin’s help.
The two of them talked very little in private, preferring to speak in their language of emotions and thoughts. So when Jon reached out and grasped Martin’s arm as he stood and said thank you in a voice rough with contentment and disuse Martin couldn’t help but pull Jon up with him to wrap in a crushing hug.