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The tunnels were unforgiving, seeming to twist and send Jon in opposite directions every few metres. On more than one occasion he had run around a corner and slammed into the rough stone wall. If he still had all of his ribs, he was certain that they wouldn’t be fully intact.
There had been a time when Jon had been able to find his way through the tunnels almost effortlessly. As it were, the pale flashes of his two-year-old chalk directions only served to confuse him. If he hadn’t seen what meagre scraps remained of him, Jon would have accused Leitner of changing the layout again.
Jon skidded to a stop and closed his eyes against the darkness of the tunnels. Like Jonah, he was half-blind beneath the Institute. Instead he focused on his heart, a dead thing lodged in his chest, hollowed out and encased in webs.
If he focused, he could see the strands stretching outwards. Two heading up towards the Institute, where he had to believe that Daisy and Basira would survive Not!Them and the Hunters. Two stretching farther away, to wherever Georgie and Melanie had taken shelter.
And one, woven through his body like silver veins. The Eye could not show him where it led, but he was no longer Looking.
At the other end of the endless, twisting passageways, something tugged on the web. Jon kept his eyes closed as he followed it.
His eyelids shone red as the room around him lightened. Jon opened his eyes, scanning for Martin’s soft figure. The room before him was large and round, made of concrete and man-made stone.
Millbank Prison, the Eye supplied. The Panopticon.
Someone had lit a handful of torches and placed them around the edges of the room. The fire flickered over Jonah’s face and the eyeless corpse at his feet. For a moment, Jon let the thought cross his mind that he’d been too late. But the body was too slim, too old, to be Martin.
“Ahh,” Jonah said, smiling pleasantly at Jon, as if the man hadn’t been part of the elaborate plot to put him behind bars and out of range. “How wonderful of you to make it.”
“Where is he,” Jon demanded. “Where is Martin?”
Jonah used his foot to gently kick aside a knife that was resting next to his corpse. “Hmm? Oh, you’re much too late for that, I’m afraid. Peter has banished him to the Lonely. There’s no way to get him back now, unless…”
Jon stepped forward and dug his fingernails into Jonah’s shoulders, pulling the words up from deep inside him, dripping with compulsion. “Tell me how to get him back.”
.
Somewhere, Martin could hear the lapping of the ocean. It should have been a gentle sound – he’d always loved water – but instead it felt like listening to a skipping record. He wanted to reach over and pick up the needle, to make it stop, but he was fairly certain that the sound was coming from inside his head.
The world was made of fog, whites and greys overlapping like he’d been dropped in the centre of a cloud. There was a nagging worry that if his feet stepped in the wrong place, the ground beneath him would evaporate and he would fall through.
It must have been solid enough, though, because Peter was in front of him, confidently pacing back and forth. He was More in that liminal space, solid in a way he never was in the Institute.
“Even your dear Archivist cannot save you now, Martin.” Peter grinned as his words drifted along and faded into the fog, taking absolute delight in his victory. “How does it feel to be utterly alone?”
Martin looked at him, eyes perfectly clear.
“I’m not alone,” he said, shrugging off the Lonely like old skin. “I never was.”
.
Jonah staggered under the weight of the command, but Jon held on tight. If Jonah were anything resembling human, his shoulders would likely have bled where Jon’s fingernails curled into his skin. Instead, it was like digging his hands into wet sand.
“If you follow him, you’ll die. Is Martin really worth dying for?”
“Yes,” Jon growled out, the sound echoing through the Panopticon as if the Eye were agreeing with him. “What do I need to do?”
Jonah studied him for a moment. Jon could see the exact moment the older man thought he’d won whatever game he’d been playing.
“Well, firstly you’ll need to–oh.”
Jonah’s words cut off as a shape flickered to life before them. A silhouette, large, masculine, as pale as smoke. They reached out their arms towards Jon with a whimper that sent chills through his body.
“Martin? Martin, can you hear me?” Jon called, stepping forward. His fingers passed through the figure’s hand. Even as he attempted, hopelessly, to catch hold, he Knew that something was very, very wrong.
Fog spread across the room, rising up from the figure. Not enough to properly obscure anything, just enough that Jon had to squint to keep his vision clear.
“Please, h-help me,” they whispered, like an exhale lost in a crowd of people.
“Martin,” Jon pleaded.
“There’s so… so many of them.” Their voice was so wrapped in fear it was almost silent. A broken, wrung-out sound. “Jon–”
Jonah’s hand gripped Jon’s shoulder in a mirror image of their earlier position and tugged the Archivist backwards. Jon tried to pull free, twisting in Jonah’s hold to no avail. He needed to get to Martin, needed to gather him up into his arms and let him know that everything would be okay. He needed everything to be okay.
“Jon,” Jonah criticised, shaking his squirming body.
“Let me go. It’s Martin,” Jon demanded.
Jonah looked in the direction of the man and frowned. “No.”
“Jon–” They said again, half cut-off from the pain of whatever was happening to them. “Jon–”
“He’s calling for me,” Jon snapped, managing to tug himself free of Jonah’s grip.
“He isn’t.”
Jon ignored Jonah’s cryptic remark and stepped closer to the pained man before him. “I’m here, Martin. I’m here.”
“There’s so many,” they said, seeming to look past Jon, deeper into the fog that had surrounded them. “Please, Jonah.”
Jon startled back, looking between Jonah and the man in shock.
There was a moment of silence, and then the man screamed. It was a deep, agonised sound, like someone had reached inside them and ripped apart the very essence of their being.
Jon knew the feeling. He also Knew, with everything he had left, that this was not Martin.
“Peter,” Jonah said, a confirmation.
The fog cleared up enough that Peter’s face was visible, twisted in a cry of pain. His mouth was closed tightly, like he was attempting to keep something contained.
“Where is Martin,” Jon demanded, reaching for Peter, this time actually making contact. Unlike Jonah, Peter had blood to lose. “Where is he?”
He wasn’t sure what would happen to the people trapped in the Lonely if the Avatar were to die. He really didn’t want Martin to be the one to find out.
“Jon,” Jonah said, voice verging on panicked for the first time since Jon had met him.
Jon dug his fingers deeper into Peter’s skin, unsure and uncaring whether his whimpers were from Jon’s actions or whatever was happening to him. He felt Jonah’s hands on his shoulders again, tugging him away, but ignored it in favour of shaking Peter like his secrets would fall out of the pockets of his ridiculous coat if he tried hard enough.
Jon,” Jonah repeated, hands rough as they attempted to pull him away. “Stop.”
Jon didn’t stop. He leant up, until his face was almost level with Peter’s and, Eyes open, heart wrapped in Webs, he screamed, “give him back to me.”
Peter’s eyes finally locked onto his. He gave one last desperate whimper and then opened his mouth.
Jonah pulled Jon back as Peter shrieked.
Or, it would have been a shriek, if not for the thousands of spiders crawling up his throat and spilling out of Peter’s mouth. They were a wriggling mass of legs and furry bodies, dropping down Peter’s neck and landing at his feet, building up until they began to cover his body. Like he was sinking into a pit of black, living quicksand. Still, they kept coming, a seemingly endless number of spiders, ranging from ones barely the size of a newborn’s pinkie nail to spiders that needed to crawl out of Peter’s mouth one leg at a time.
Jon sunk back into Jonah’s grip, leaning on the older man as laughter ripped its way out of his chest. It boomed in the vast space of the Panopticon, reverberating and multiplying until all he could hear was the skittering of many, many legs and his own half-mad laugh.
Peter’s eyes remained locked on Jon’s until the spiders grew so numerous that they covered his nose and his eyes and his forehead. Until there was nothing left of Peter Lukas to See at all. And then, like someone had reached between the overlapping bodies covering him and popped him with a pin, one moment Peter was a living, terrified man and the next the spiders fell gently to the floor, leaving nothing behind.
“Annabelle,” Jonah ground out behind him.
Jon pulled himself free, unable to keep the grin from his face even as he got his laughter under control. “No.”
He walked over to the puddle of spiders and held out a hand. They moved over each other, forming a bridge from the ground to his fingertips and wrapping around his palm like fingers reaching out. Achingly slowly, the spiders built their way up into the shape of a man.
A second hand rose up to cradle Jon’s face and he leant into it, closing his eyes and relishing in the feeling of a thousand tiny bodies against his skin.
“Hello, Love,” Martin whispered into the quiet space between their bodies.
He had just watched a man be unmade in front of him and wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t played some role in it. But Martin was alive, Martin was touching him, Martin’s breath was warm against his face and smelt vaguely like tea.
For the first time in years, Jon didn’t care that Jonah Magnus was watching.
He leant forward, arching onto his toes and reaching for Martin’s shoulder. Even with his eyes closed, he found Martin waiting exactly where he’d expected him to be.
Martin’s lips were curled into a smile when his own smiling mouth met his. They opened effortlessly at Jon’s gentle prompting and Jon breathed out for the first time since he’d Awoken. Martin was soft and familiar under Jon’s palms. The hysterical part of his brain that had thought he would never get that again finally settled.
Martin breathed Jon’s name against his mouth and Jon shifted, pulling Martin down to kiss him properly. He kissed him, in the closest thing to a temple the Eye had, Observed by the Eye’s oldest Watcher, as if Martin was the only true God he’d ever known.
Jon would burn the world down to ashes and remake it in whatever shape Martin liked best, if he only asked.
Jon swallowed down the lingering traces of the Lonely on Martin’s tongue, letting the warm slide of lips bring them both back to life.
When Jon opened his eyes, Martin’s flushed, familiar face looked back at him. His bright hair curled around Jon’s fingers and fell in front of his eyes. Up close, Jon could make out every single one of the freckles scattered across his face.
If he Looked, Jon could See past the beautiful man before him, through the faded yellow sweater he’d gotten him for their second wedding anniversary and the soft skin. Jon saw that the mass of spiders, crawling and writhing in the shape of a man, had never left.
Jon blinked and Martin’s smiling face was back.
He loved him so much, no matter which form he took. He loved every single one of Martin’s spiders and he loved the man before him. Just as he knew that Martin loved him, Eyes and all.
Jon pulled away and turned to face Jonah, keeping hold of Martin’s hand. Martin’s palm was solid in a way it hadn’t been since before the coma, but he would not be letting go of it if he could help it.
“You… should not be able to do that.” Jonah’s eyes flickered between Martin and where Peter had been standing moments before. “You’ve been touched by the Web, certainly, but you aren’t an Avatar. You shouldn’t–”
Martin’s keen eyes looked over at Jonah, warm with cunning. “Aren’t I?”
Jonah scoffed, but there was a nervousness settling in his stolen eyes. “You are not Miss Cane.”
Jon smiled as his husband turned to face Jonah. There was something thrilling about watching the layers peel back. Martin had spent so long as a quiet, disaster of a creature, it was beautiful to witness the sharp edges of him come back into the light.
“Oh, Annabelle is wonderful, yes. Very, what did you call it, Jon? Spooky. The obvious choice, really.” Martin smiled with too many teeth. “Did you think the Mother of Puppets was foolish enough to go with the obvious choice?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course you aren’t… I would Know.”
Jon witnessed the moment that Jonah finally Saw beyond the gently rounded, hopeless man he’d always assumed stood before him. Jonah did a good job at not stumbling back, but his fingers had curled into fists as he adjusted his tie, pulling the fabric tight enough that Jon half expected him to choke.
Jonah shifted his stance and cleared his throat. “I, I see.”
Jon stepped closer to Martin, half curling into his side as the pressing need to know Martin was there, was safe, grew unbearable.
Jonah’s eyes caught onto him, bright and – a thrill ran through Jon – afraid. Or unsettled enough that fear was lingering close-by, ready to sink in.
“You hate spiders.”
“No,” Jon said quietly. “I don’t.”
“I’ve seen–”
“Exactly what we wanted you to see,” Martin purred.
Jonah sighed, a deep tired sound, like Jon was a child who didn’t understand something. “He’s manipulating you.”
Jon scoffed. “Yes, obviously. I’m not entirely daft.”
Surprise ricocheted across Jonah’s face. His features seemed to twitch at the unfamiliarity of the sensation. He glanced up and Jon wondered if he was asking their God for help.
“You do not seem to mind,” Jonah stated, sending Jon a look that bordered on disappointment. “I had thought I’d better prepared you.”
“Better prepared me to only fall for your manipulations, you mean,” Jon clarified.
“Yes, obviously,” Jonah echoed. The words rang hollow.
There, in the Heart, knowledge flooded Jon’s mind in a constant cycle. Rinse and repeat. Already he was becoming More. He felt Jonah stumble as Peter was unmade, tasted Peter’s fear, witnessed the manic glee on his own face. He lavished in the hit of relief from Martin leaving the Lonely and finding Jon waiting. He absorbed it all, again and again, in a single instant.
For a moment, Jon’s hair flashed entirely white, layers and layers of spiderwebs interwoven together like a veil. Martin moved his hand and the webs shifted, lifting like the strings of a puppet.
Jon saw it through Jonah’s eyes, felt the terror settling in the man’s stomach like a lining of bile. Jon saw it through Martin’s eyes, felt the tender fondness that made Martin’s entire body thrum.
“He is lying to you, Jon. I should have noticed earlier, but I can See it now.” Jonah’s voice was almost genuinely miserable, already grieving the loss of another Archivist. “You’re so tangled up in his Web. He’s blinded you and taught you to thank him.”
“Martin has never lied to me.” Jon laughed, a greedy, twisted sound that crawled up the back of his throat and settled heavy in the room. He reached up and the webs wrapped around Martin’s fingers easily slipped into his own hands. “I am as much a part of the Web as Martin is a part of the Eye. I chose this, Jonah.”
“You cannot be both,” Jonah stated, words unsteady on his tongue. “The Eye would not allow it.”
“I am the Archivist. The world is whatever I say it is.” Jon felt the Eye notice something in him as he spoke, a recognition that his words were true. A question of what that could mean.
“Did you know,” Martin said, eyes wide with childish innocence, slipping back into the persona of Martin Blackwood as easily as he had since Jonah had first met him, “that a spider’s consciousness is interwoven into their webs, like an extension of their mind? Did you really think the Web was going to leave my Archivist alone with you?”
“Your Archivist?” Jonah scoffed, but the sound was strained, like a tape recorder struggling to wind itself fast enough to catch up. “You may hold his affections now, but he was mine first.”
Jon looked up at Jonah. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
Jon sent a flash of memories to Jonah, fleeting glimpses of a life with Martin before the Institute. Breathless laughter and lazy mornings and matching rings. Faces a decade younger. He sent I love you’s whispered in the dark spaces the Eye couldn’t See and rejoiced in revealing all of the clues that Jonah had missed.
With every new layer that was peeled away, Jon felt the Eye’s gaze.
I can See More, Jon told it. Something shifted in the air, under Jon’s skin, as the need for a new Avatar was Recognised and Understood.
Being Seen felt like drowning.
It was not unpleasant.
“So,” Jonah’s voice cracked. He swallowed, putting himself back together like the jigsaw he was. “So long, you couldn’t have known I would pick him. That I would even need him.”
Martin tutted and the sound echoed through the space and settled beneath Jon’s bones, warm and familiar. Jon wanted to feel Martin under his skin, safe forevermore, but instead merely leaned into his husband’s side and sapped up the heat radiating from his body.
Gone was the stoic man, half terrified of what was happening to him, in his place was a man made of silk, smooth and pliable in the right hands. Martin could have torn him to shreds and Jon would have praised him all the while, but he knew Martin wouldn’t.
Martin’s fingers curled around Jon, protective even as his focus remained on Jonah. “It’s a shame really, what happened to Gertrude. She wasn’t a bad Archivist. You believed in her once, do you remember? But, well, Jon needed to be the Archivist for his full powers to emerge.”
“You?” Not for the first time since Martin had returned, Jonah really Looked at him. He had spent so much time blind to the younger man that now he seemed incapable of stopping.
“Did you really think she came up with the idea to burn the Archives down herself?”
Jon wasn’t sure who pulled the memory out, whether it was Martin casting his threads or Jonah playing his games or Jon’s need to Know or perhaps the Panopticon itself working for the Eye.
It was Martin’s memory, but it also was not.
Martin met Gertrude only once, when he came down to the archives to drop off some paperwork. In the memory he looked young, although Jon Knew that he was barely 24, all red cheeks and clumsy fingers as he stumbled through his steps and his sentences.
Gertrude took one look at him and the sharp, unflinching part of her mind considered that he would make a good Assistant should the Lonely ever attempt a Ritual. Or, perhaps, she had thought, the Hunt or the Spiral. They did so enjoy a good chase.
Martin had lingered for only a moment, pausing to squint at the ceiling with concern. Might want to check the sprinkler system, he’d said.
Wouldn’t want it all burning to the ground.
The thought had stuck in her mind for four years before she’d acted on it, time enough that it had grown familiar and its original owner had long since faded from Gertrude’s memory.
“I joined the Institute the following day,” Jon said as the knowledge burrowed into his consciousness.
“Yes,” Martin confirmed.
A surge of pride swept through Jon at the easy, confident tone of Martin’s voice. Gone were the days of pretending that Martin was a lost cause.
“And Peter.” Jonah’s body shook, minuscule trembles travelling down his arms and legs as he struggled to remain standing. The Eye looked at him and was left wanting. His eyes were half-wild, pupils dilated as three lifetimes worth of power were taken back. “How did Peter fit into this?”
Martin hummed and pulled Jon closer. “You needed Jon touched by the Lonely, I was never going to let that happen directly. It was Peter’s own fault for inviting me in.”
Jonah wanted to dig his fingernails into Martin’s body, to mutilate his eyes and rip open his skin to expose the muscles and bones beneath. He wanted to laugh at the expression on Jon’s face as he turned his loved one into gore.
He wanted Peter back. He wanted to feel rough skin against his face and taste his grin, overeager and tainted deliciously with misery.
He wanted to have enough energy to properly avenge his death. To properly grieve.
He wanted Jon to get out of his head.
Jon made a noncommittal sound as Jonah Magnus sent the full force of his glare his way, but he did not stop looking. He wasn’t sure it was possible anymore, there was too much to See.
“What does the Web get out of this, the end of the world?” Jonah asked, lowering himself to the ground as elegantly as was possible on unstable legs. Better than letting them give out beneath him.
His corpse lay beside him. Two bodies, one man.
Jon stood tall, back straight as power flowed through his veins in the place of blood.
He could not see them, but he Knew the marks on Jonah’s neck had begun to bleed.
“If we want to, you’ve done such a wonderful job at providing all of the pieces.”
“You could have it, if you wanted,” Jon was quick to offer. “I Know the words.”
He did. He Knew Everything Now.
“I Know.” Martin smiled down at him, promising silently that he would do the same for Jon if he asked. He turned back to Jonah and that smile turned sickly sweet. “For now, knowing that we could and that no one else has or will even come close is enough.”
Jonah sighed, his breath a death rattle in his throat. His body felt old, like he was absorbing the weariness from the decaying bones he once was. “And now you’re going to kill me?”
“Oh, no. You’re much too valuable for that.” Martin stepped forward, letting the last degree of sweetness drip away from his body.
The room shone bright as constellations of webs lit up even the darkest corners. Martin did not lift his hand to touch them, but Jon could feel the familiar pull of his gentle weaving as the threads shifted. They moved, overlapping and intertwining, centering on Jonah until, like Peter, he too vanished from sight. The webs covered him like a glimmering blanket, stitched together with fear and knowledge.
Martin turned to him and there was nothing sweet in his gaze as he offered Jon the threads of his Web.
Jon would unmake the world to keep him, if necessary.
Martin guided his hands, as he had hundreds of times before, trusting Jon implicitly with the most intimate parts of him.
Jon tugged a strand towards himself and Jonah was pulled into the air, webs attached to the former Avatar of the Eye at every joint like a marionette doll. He hung limp, unable to move unless Jon and Martin decided otherwise.
With spiders in his hair and eyes beneath his skin, Jonathan Blackwood-Sims looked up at the man who would have happily sacrificed Jon’s entire world to get what he wanted, and he grinned.
“Mother is looking forward to finally meeting you.”