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The building is so unassuming that it's hard to believe that inside of it, the world changes. It's on a busy street in London, large and old and nothing to really look at it. You'd miss it, quite honestly, if you weren't searching for the answers you needed.
Georgie Barker isn't quite sure if there are answers in this building that she wants, but if she had never wanted anything more to do with the macabre and evil that existed, she'd have never started What The Ghost. Never would have let Jonathan stay. Never would have allowed him to test his powers on her.
Never would have sat for hours in that hospital, the tiniest of shivers working their way through her body with each death.
And that prick had never bothered to call her or drop a letter or an email. Hey Georgie, doing great, thanks. Georgie, I never did thank you for what you did for me because I never actually removed you as next of kin for emergencies. He had just sent her on her way without an answer, without listening to her. Typical John.
So here she is.
Outside of the Magnus Institute, home of the esoteric and the weird and the monsters she knew were so very real. Outside of the building that seems to have taken all of the people she's cared about in the least few years and eaten them alive.
Melanie doesn't answer her calls anymore, ignores the texts she sends. She'd assume her friend is dead, except her texts are being read.
She hasn't bothered with John. She shouldn’t have had to bother with John.
It's easier to make him feel like a real fuck in person, and she wants to give him a swift kick in the arse.
But there's something in her that doesn't allow her legs to make those last few steps forward, through the door to hassle some poor secretary about the office of the Archivist. It's not fear; that's laughable. Caution, though, has become her best friend, and it's telling her to go home and leave this world to others.
"Oh. Well, hello there."
The voice is pleasant enough, and Georgie glances over her shoulder to spot the owner coming up on her left. He's an older gentleman, graying at the temples. His beard is neat and trim, showing off a relaxed smile. It's inviting, trying to bring her in.
Yeah, she's not going to fall for that.
"Hello," she answers after a beat, because she's at least polite.
He stares at her for a long time, an uncomfortable stretch of silence that puts her on edge.
And then, he speaks, and his eyes seem hollow and his voice is still inviting. "You don't happen to belong to the Institute, do you?"
The hell does that even mean.
“Do you?” she shoots back.
She doesn’t like the way he looks at her, too long, like he’s trying to dig out the parts of her that don’t quite make sense. But that shouldn’t be possible, right?
“Peter Lukas, at your service. I run the Institute.” He holds his hand out to her.
Elias Bouchard is the name she read during her research on the place, but she rolls with it. His hand is cool to the touch, but soft, like he’s never done a day’s hard work. His shake is firm, though.
“Are you here to make a statement? I assure you that our archival team is quite impressive.” He’s gesturing to the doors now, still smiling, but now it’s edged with expectancy.
She forces a sigh from her lips, shoulders sagging just a bit. She’s the picture of relief. “I wasn’t sure--”
“Nonsense.” He leads the way and holds the door open for her.
The air in the building is cool, and she hasn’t realized how warm she is until there’s a roll of sweat weaving its way down her back. It’s a normal enough looking place, all tile and sweeping architecture that doesn’t even belong in the 21st century. A couple of people are in the lobby, wearing pantsuits and somber lipstick. The secretary behind the desk is an older woman, bags under her eyes, forehead wrinkled. She must have seen a lot in her time here.
Georgie wonders what it would be like, and if fear is a daily occurence.
Could she deal with being afraid every day?
No, of course not.
She turns to ask this Peter Lukas about John, only to find herself alone in the lobby. He left so quietly, so suddenly, and she frowns. He could have been more useful to her, but what does a director or whatnot have to do with the people who come in to give statements?
Georgie steels herself and makes her way up to the front desk, drawing the attention of the woman who sits behind it. She sounds as tired as she looks.
“How can I help you?”
“I have a statement to make.”
The woman nods, because this is the norm for her. How many people will there be in a day? In a week? Does Jonathan have to read so many a day? And why. Why does he keep doing this to himself, after - everything.
Six months. She watched him lie in that bed, practically dead, and waited. For a sign, for death.
Does her entity come for them all? Or is death simply a concept without fear?
The woman’s shoes click against the floor as she leads Georgie to the staircase. “Go down two flights. You can’t miss the Archives. Someone there can help you.”
Georgie listens to the click of her shoes disappear back to the front lobby, and she stares down the well-lit stairs into the shadowy darkness that is beyond it. Well, she’s here now. Maybe it’s stupid. If any of them had wanted to talk to her, they would have. And she should let them go. She’s touched enough of this to know she doesn’t really want to be involved.
But an unease has settled into her bones, an alarm that tells her there’s something wrong.
Melanie is opening up the door to an office when Georgie makes it to the bottom floor. She stops, stares. Her hair is pulled back from her face in a messy ponytail, exposing a face that’s much paler than Georgie remembers. Her shoulders slump. The door shuts behind her, hand still on the knob, and her weight seems to give out as she leans fully into it. As if she’s blocking Georgie from coming inside.
“I was going to call you,” Melanie lies. She knows it’s a lie because she hasn’t bothered to call all this time.
She has no idea what to say. There’s anger and sadness and loneliness, and it’s not all on Melanie. It's not all on John, either. It's not even on herself. It's just a thing that happens to people.
So Georgie simply finds herself nodding. Maybe there's a certain fault in having sex with friends or keeping friendships after dating someone. The lines get crossed, wires fray and spark and there are fires when you just wanted the soft glow of light.
Maybe she’s just not meant to actually be close to anyone. She told John everything - everything. She’s never done that before, never allowed anyone to know that shred of truth about her, and now…
God, she feels abandoned. She’s a grown ass adult with a job and her own place and a cat, and she feels abandoned by what is essentially a monster and whatever Melanie has become.
“What are you doing here?” Melanie asks in the silence that Georgie has let stretch on and on and on. There’s that fear she doesn’t even have an acquaintance with, curled perfectly in her tone the way the Admiral curls into her lap.
“I’m here to see John.”
Her mouth rounds itself out into a surprised “o”, and she looks over her shoulder at the door she’s trying to hide behind her.
“Is that his office? Am I not allowed in?” She tries for a grin, stretched too thin and all awkward on her mouth right now. Her chin juts out to indicate the door.
“This is just a door.” Her words tumble out of her mouth in a haste she’s never quite heard from Melanie before.
“Okay?”
“It doesn’t quite lead to any office.”
“It’s a door that leads nowhere?”
A brittle laugh. “No doors lead nowhere.”
Georgie’s gaze moves from Melanie to the door. It looks, quite simply, just like a door. It’s made of wood and has a shiny silver knob, and that’s it. Plain.
The more she looks at the door, the more it seems to squirm in her vision, as if the sides are growing like static, fuzzy and wavy and grey. Her head tilts. One corner seems longer than its opposite, not quite a perfect rectangular, as though the builder had made a mistake during construction.
The knob turns.
Melanie’s knuckles are white.
“John’s down the hall. He should be in,” Melanie breathes out. “It’s - I’m really sorry I haven’t returned your calls.”
Georgie has already taken two steps, anything to get away from the squiggly door that is not meant for her. But she stops, turns. There’s a hollow sadness that rings in her words, and Georgie knows that sound, that feeling. She’s been there, in the darkness, in a place that can’t be reached.
“What’s happened to you, Mels?”
“The same thing that happens to all of us here.”
“A vague answer.”
“You should leave.”
Probably. She couldn’t quite disagree with that. Isn’t it what her gut has been telling her since she walked up to the building? Hadn’t she decided that being ignored was answer enough?
“Take care of yourself, Mels. Let - I understand. I understand.”
It’s important that Melanie knows that, that she can be trusted, that she isn’t afraid, but now isn’t the time for that kind of talk.
She leaves Melanie and the door behind and makes her way to John’s office.
She doesn’t bother to knock.
It’s impolite, sure, but this is Jonathan Sims. He crashed on her couch and once shared her bed and allowed her to spoon him and hold his hand, and she took him home just the once and he was there when she adopted The Admiral. She lent him shirts and bought him shoes because he couldn’t go to his flat when he was in danger. She lied to the cops.
She told him the truth.
So, no, there is no knocking to be had here.
“Excuse m- Georgie?”
She grips the knob and holds the door wide open and glares at him. Because there he is, not looking much worse for wear. There’s a little bit more grey in his hair, and it’s a dignified look. He looks just about as tired as always, but she swears it’s just this building sucking the life out of everyone like a vampire.
(Are vampires real, she wonders.)
His palms are flat on the desk, a recorder between his hands, and she can see the tape curling, moving, imprinting this moment. These damn tapes. This damn job. This -
And it’s a strange feeling, watching him now, her friend and ex-boyfriend and fellow something. It’s not like she’s suddenly become a human monster detector. A monster monster detector? But she gets whiffs, like the guy at the hospital right before John woke. Like John now. She blinks, and there are eyes. She blinks, and there are just the two.
What does he see when he looks at her?
What does he know now?
What is he becoming?
“I only see you, Georgina.” He sounds tired as he says that. “Can you shut the door, please?”
It latches with a soft click. “I didn’t even say anything.”
“I know. I didn’t - It happens, I swear, on its own. It’s not mind reading, in case, that’s what you’re wondering. It’s just…” He runs his fingers through his already wild hair. When was the last time he brushed it?
“I see you, but-- Jesus, John, I asked you not to. I didn’t want you to come back to this!” But it’s not her place. She’s the one who broke up with him, anyway, because he couldn’t give her the things she needs or wants or whatever it is that she feels when she looks at him.
She sinks into a chair across from him. He pushes a tea cup in her direction. There’s still steam coming off of it, so at least he isn’t giving her his cold leftovers.
“This is what I am.”
“A monster.”
His lips press together and he nods.
“Can I stop it?”
“No. I had to choose, while I was in that coma.”
Weeks, and he couldn’t tell her. Weeks, and he offered her no words, nothing.
“You’re a grown man, and you can do as you please,” she says, “but to think so little of me--”
“It’s not that, Georgie. I don’t want to involve you. I can’t involve you. You’ve seen enough, and I - this life isn’t for you.”
“I can take care of myself.” She kicks her feet up onto his desk and sips the tea, earning a scowl. “I’m not joining your stupid institute, Jonathan Sims, don’t you worry about that. But you need me.”
A slim smile flickers across his mouth to replace the scowl. “Do I?”
“You wouldn’t have made me your emergency contact if you didn’t.”
--
John takes her to a pub.
On their first date, she took him to one, and it was an adventure in watching how uncomfortable he could get.
It’s not as though he’s fully grown to accept pub culture, but he looks slightly more relaxed in the booth with its torn seat and stained table than he did behind his own desk. He even drinks a beer, nursing from it.
“You’re putting your life on the line by stepping into that building.”
“My life was already on the line.”
There’s silence between them, thick. Outside of their bubble, the radio plays something loud that vibrates in her ears, people talk and laugh and yell at one another.
“The End,” he finally says.
Her entire body feels like it’s fallen into a lightning bolt. She didn’t want to think about it before, but there’s definitely a part of her that wants to know what she is, and what she - not belongs to but is marked by. The End. The End. A fitting name for Death and all that it is. Which she doesn’t know what that even is. Dead coming back to life, parts of yourself dying off, stealing souls.
She finishes off her beer. “Sure, yeah. The End. So it’s not like I don’t have one foot already in the world.”
Especially now that she knows about it. What once was a nightmare tucked in the back of her mind is a need to do something about it. To know more. Maybe not in the way Jonathan needs to, and she has seen firsthand what the thirst of that knowledge has done to him. To Melanie.
Basira, too, maybe, but she never really knew Basira all that well before the hospital.
But she’s been nothing but tenacious her entire life, and this is no different. It’s a curiosity that gnaws at her, and a need to protect, and a need to do something with her fearless life. If she can help…
“You almost died to save the world, right?” Georgie asks John. “That’s what you did when you went and blew up?”
He nods.
“Is the world safe?”
He shakes his head. “Not quite.”
There’s nothing further offered, and Georgie doesn’t push. They’re in public. And besides all that, it’s obvious that he’s resigned himself to accept her help for whatever reason that might be.
--
The End.
It’s never far from her thoughts, which is rather unfortunate. She wonders if it’ll bring it to her, as if just thinking of it can alert it. Or has it always been there, watching and waiting?
She knows that it doesn’t matter, either way. She belongs to it, to that dead woman who rose and claimed so many years ago. When she dies, it’ll kill the rest of her off. It’s kind of a sad thought, and it’s not even exactly natural, but she’ll die in the end.
Ha.
Georgie rubs a hand over her face as she walks into the Institute for the first time in a couple of weeks. She knows which way to go now, which doors to go through. She’s memorized it from her first visit. There’s no crooked door when she passes through the hallway to John’s, and she stops and stares at it longer than she intends to.
“Who are you?”
The woman who asks is almost as tall as she is, with more than enough muscle to make most men uncomfortable. She wears an impressive scowl, one eyebrow arched in Georgie’s direction. Hostility, in the Magnus Archives? Perish the thought.
“A friend.”
“Not one of mine.”
Georgie smiles, and there are a million responses she could come up with that are all slightly more inappropriate than the last. She settles for, “Of John’s.”
Several emotions flash across her face, all of them more incredulous than the last before she emits the most tired and pathetic laugh Georgie’s ever heard. Another victim of the Beholding. Or something. She isn’t quite sure what this woman is, but she’s not normal.
Nobody is normal.
They’re all fucked.
“You’re really trying to tell me that Jonathan Sims has friends? Real friends that don’t work here?”
“John has friends at work?” Georgie murmurs back. They both fall silent for the briefest of seconds before wearing matching grins. “We’re old friends, from uni.”
“You don’t have to keep explaining.” She holds up a hand and shakes her head. “I just left him in his office with a statement, if you want to wait a few moments before heading on in.”
Georgie’s lip curls, and the woman shrugs. “Thanks. I’m Georgie, by the way.”
“Daisy.”
“Oh!” The name sparks recognition, like a flash going off in her mind. Last she heard, Daisy had died with Tim when John had been hurt. She really should stop being so surprised around every corner, but it’s a nice emotion to hold onto in place of others. “Congratulations on your rebirth, then.”
Daisy snorts, running her fingers through short hair. A few pieces stick up from where they’ve been disturbed. “A lot of people seem to enjoy running their big mouths.” A beat, and: “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Daisy leaves, and Georgie takes a seat. There’s a library in front of her, stacks of books and tapes and haphazardly placed papers. Her fingers twitch. Are there answers in there? She shakes her head. No, there’s nothing in her that’s curious enough to use the Beholding’s findings.
Maybe.
She doesn’t know how long she sits there, but she does know that most of the statements aren’t book length, from what she remembers of the papers that John read from in her flat. Time seems to fall away from her, and she doesn’t like the way that feels like something crawling up her spine.
She knocks on his office door, a quiet rapping of her knuckles on wood, and waits. There isn’t as much urgency this time, as there was before.
“Come in!”
Jonathan stares back at her, recorder in hand, when she opens the door and lets herself in. “Georgie.”
“Is it on?”
“Er, yes. Do you mind?”
A million times yes, she minds. But she has come here, to their stronghold as it were, to the Archivist. Does she get to have many says on what she minds?
“Is it necessary?”
The way he tilts his head, as if examining her question, reminds her a lot of The Admiral. But more intense, more otherworldly than she wants it to be. This is John, but it’s not John. It wears a human skin and stares at her with eyes she’s painfully familiar with. And when he blinks and his face softens, fingers relaxing their grip on the device as though it was tethering him to the here and now, he’s a little more John.
She shuts the door behind her and takes a seat.
“It’s just better if we keep it on,” he says.
She nods. “So how do we save the world?”
He doesn’t try to talk her out of it this time. Doesn’t try to remind her of the dangers or what could happen, and she tries to pretend like she doesn’t know it’s completely idiotic what she’s offering.
Here’s the thing that Georgie has come to the conclusion about: one way or another, she will be involved. She wants it to be on her terms.
“You said it yourself that your boss is elusive, although I’ve met him so--”
“You met Peter? Peter Lukas?” John leans forward instantly.
She isn’t exactly sure how to react to that question. How does one work here, as the Archivist, and not know who is running the Magnus Institute? She runs a hand through her curls, pushing a few back off from her face. “Really?”
“He is impossible to catch unless you’re Martin.”
“There’s a lot of emotion in that sentence,” she says, quirking an eyebrow at him.
“Don’t give me that look, Georgina.”
She holds her hands up in front of her. “So, you have not yet met Peter Lukas. I can safely say you aren’t missing much, honestly.”
“That’s very much besides the point.”
His mouth twists like he’s been sucking on a lemon, and she wonders… Well, she’s not in the habit of snooping into her ex’s personal life and all that, but this is a very odd situation they’ve found themselves in. She remembers Martin from the hospital, that brief interaction, his fear and longing nestled sweetly on his round face.
“I hope you know it’s not really like saving the world,” he eventually says. He takes his glasses off, stares at them, puts them back on. His hands have a slight tremor to them. “We’re monsters.”
She feels like she’s been included in that broad blanket. She’s a monster, she supposes. Of a sort. Her lips press together in a line for a moment as she tosses this thought around. It doesn’t bother her as much as she wishes it would. She wants to yell at John for saying that to her, to make a quick exit and forget this entire nonsense.
A soft sigh escapes the prison of her mouth she’s made. “I feel as though I’m supposed to do something.”
“And if it’s to stop me?” he asks her quietly.
Now there’s a thought that definitely hasn’t come up before, and she can’t help the look of surprise that takes over her face. Eyebrows high, eyes wide, lips a perfect circle.
“Elaborate.”
“The Watcher’s Crown.”
And they talk, voices etched forever on demonic tape about the things he doesn’t know he might do or could do or will do.
And Georgie realizes she will do what she has to.