Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

After spending the morning attempting not to lose all hope and will to live at the sight of the mess that was the archives and the workload ahead of them, plus then having to spend a good hour trying to corral a dog and fix the mess left behind, the newly-minted archival team were all quick to agree to a lunch break the moment that they had caught their breath. Thanks to Tim’s charisma -read: persistent and annoying badgering- even Jon agreed not to instantly go back to his office, though he didn’t look happy about it.

Though that may have just been his general annoyance at the dog situation. Martin sure was still caught up twisting himself into knots about it, red in the face, and somehow getting redder anytime he glanced aside and met Jon’s glare. Tim was almost concerned for his health, poor guy.

“That was a bit of a mess.” Understatement of the century, really, but he couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

“If anything, it made the archives neater . I wish I knew what Gertrude was thinking when she organized those files.” Jon rubbed a hand over his face but, success, at least he was being social. Tim did his best not to give him an encouraging thumbs-up.

Martin looked like he was breathing again, at least.

“Maybe he makes a habit of hiring under-qualified people?” Sasha’s hand flew up to cover her mouth. “Oh sorry I didn’t mean-”

Much to Tim’s surprise, Jon gave her an encouraging smile.

“Oh no, I agree. Elias was… persistent about me taking the promotion.”

“Now, now, Jon. Already talking badly about double-boss?” Tim teased and tried to nudge Jon with an elbow but he side-stepped out of the way. For a slightly clumsy man, he was surprisingly adept at dodging things. 

“All I’m saying is that either he’s a sexist capitalist bastard or he’s an evil eldritch being who has plans for all of us and that somehow involves a guy like me being here. Who knows?” Jon said. His tone is no matter-of-fact that even the janitor walking by had to tamp down on a snort.

Declarations like that were exactly why Tim ended up befriending Jon in the first place when they worked together in research. At first, he had given the guy a wide berth - Jon always looked so professional and strict and, honestly, like an absolute bore. But then on one assignment that led them into artifact storage, Jon had looked at an amorphous mass of black inky goop that seeped from a newly-uncovered Leitner, looked back at Tim, and then calmly declared, ‘You know Tim, this really reminds me of home. Just needs more eyes, that’s all’.

After that, Tim decided to take the poor antisocial guy under his wing because honestly, his sense of humor and creative tales were a thing of beauty. His constant anecdotes about his radio internship could make for a fiction bestseller, and even the true-er tales from his childhood were a blast to listen to. Wherever the fuck his hometown was -Tim wasn’t sure since Google was no help- sure sounded like a place Tim wanted to visit. Wheedling Jon into taking him along during some vacation or other was still a work in progress.

All in all, Tim was used to Jon’s declarations enough that while Sasha and Martin looked at each other in a silent debate whether it was polite to laugh or not, Tim brought down a hand on Jon’s shoulder with enough strength to nearly make the smaller man trip, whoops.

“Don’t spill all of Elias’s secrets. He might murder us with a rusty pipe or something.” He advised in the loudest whisper he could manage, struggling to keep his grin under wraps.

“Less work to do - that’s a win-win.” He sounded so wistful that Tim couldn’t help it, he laughed. Soon Sasha and Martin were joining in, while Jon just regarded them all with something that on him was as close as people got to a smile.

“Look at the bright side, boss, less creepy research to deal with!”

It was Sasha who spoke up, though Tim wasn’t quite surprised - she was the one going through all the boxes instead of loitering about before the dog ran in. “If you think that even half of those statements were followed up on properly and are fit for archival, you would be wrong.”

“Well, at least I know that our new boss here-” Tim threw an arm over Jon’s shoulders while still grinning at Sasha “-is chill with breaking and entering.”

Jon’s glare didn’t quite measure up to the one he gave Tim over the ‘hypothetical’ dog situation, so that was something. “That was once.”

“No, I’m rather sure you also mentioned climbing through a window into a closed library for your radio internship.”

There must have been some skill involved in making a single sigh sound so disapproving. “Fine, twice .”

Martin’s concerned voice made Jon jolt under Tim’s arm. “You broke into a library?”

That was exactly the opportunity Tim needed. Jon would thank him for this later, once he got over his professional facade being smashed to pieces. “He didn’t tell you? Well, our Jon here has apparently had the wildest time working at a small-town radio-”

Despite Jon’s protests, Tim regaled the archival team with the second-hand tales of work at Night Vale radio all the way through lunch.

Chapter Text

Jon sets down the statement of Amy Patel with a sigh, then scrubs a hand over his face to fruitlessly try and push away a slowly building headache. At least this read-through has not made him as tired as the previous one.

This is the third statement that he has had to record more than once. He really should have probably learned to stop recording everything in one go from the first two, the Nathan Watts and Joshua Gellespie statements that corrupted files on every device that he tried and only seemed happy to be recorded on tape. 

Well, the third time’s the charm, or something like that.

He puts the tape away into the folder to join the handwritten pages. Maybe next time he should just try reading a couple of lines from the middle of every statement to his phone to test whether it would record or not. It will certainly save him some time and some tape. Or maybe he can just get Martin to do that boring job, he shouldn’t be able to mess that up too badly.

On the topic of Martin, Jon honestly isn’t sure why Elias decided to transfer him from the library in the first place. Even disregarding the dog incident -and Jon really will not disregard the dog incident until Martin actually proves to be less of a fool- Martin really isn’t cut out for the job. Sure, experience in a library is great for anyone working in an archive, but with the amount of mess in here and how most of the statements need follow up, this archive barely lives up to its name. It’s as if Jon, Tim, and Sasha have just brought the research department down into the basements with them. This means that Martin is left to catch up and learn the ropes of the finer points of investigation, something which usually involves dubious legality and a slight lack of morals.

If the tea slowly cooling on Jon’s desk is anything to go by, Martin is just far too nice for that. He’s too nice and too soft with his fluffy hair and comfy-looking sweaters and annoyingly distracting smile. 

Livia and Sebastian had been nicer than anyone Jon has known back home. They didn’t last a month into their radio internship and the memory of Livia’s last moments still makes Jon itch all over with second-hand discomfort. That ghostly sensation of needles pulling at skin, slow and squirming and writhing, makes him shudder. 

The sudden movement knocks him out of his thoughts and back into the present.

Slowly, Jon uncurls his fingers from where he has been clutching at the folder with a white-knuckled grip. Stiff fingers smooth out creases in the thick paper as he takes a deep breath and looks around his desk for a place to dump the documents. The archival team has begun to just dump the finished cases into vaguely organized piles on one of the free desks in the main office space, at least until they actually have some free boxes to start the filing in earnest or they have miraculously cleared enough backlog from the shelves that any new addition won’t just get lost in the mess all over again. Jon, however, doesn’t quite feel up to braving the open office and dealing with people just yet.

Not while the gaze of an unseen eye still rests on his hunched back.

It’s that unseen watcher that had drawn Jon to his current workplace. Like the steady gaze of the radio tower’s blinking light back home, the feeling of being watched is a constant presence that permeates the air in the institute and, even more intensely, the archives. It makes Jon somewhat homesick, but in a good way, like finding a long-forgotten recipe or an old cherished picture. The ceaseless gaze, that niggling little creep of paranoia and madness, is a comfort.

Currently it isn’t as quite sharp as it was when Jon read the statement for the first time, dictating it to his laptop. On this third go at Patel’s statement, that gaze is almost distracted, if one could attribute any feelings to the vague sensation of being watched. It’s just white noise and getting lighter by the second.

Usually, this would have meant that Jon had just been the highlight of Night Vale radio and the segment about him just ended, but this is not Night Vale, and Jon has yet to find a London equivalent. Maybe it’s some TV show on an obscure channel, that would be fun.

Though, no, nevermind. It would imply that people actually get to see him pretend at liking his stuffy professional clothes. If Jon could get rid of his librarian attire and steal one of Cecil’s outfits instead, he would do it in a heartbeat. Just this morning he had texted him a picture of his attire for the day - rainbow skirt and colorful top and piercings galore. Jon was jealous, still is, but unfortunately the dress code here is boring and an unseen eye keeps watch.

Jon wishes he could ask someone about it, really. However, he isn’t even sure if the others feel that strange presence that shrouds the archives at all, and even if they do, he’d rather not risk coming off as rude. If he has learned anything from the sheriff's secret police, it’s that some things are better when ignored.

While he waits for the attention of the unseen watcher to slip away completely, Jon fishes a tiny notebook out of his pocket. It’s small enough to fit in his palm and can be carried around without getting in the way. Currently, it’s almost completely empty besides the first few pages that are slowly filling with cramped, spidery script.

While working in the Magnus institute and researching the supposedly supernatural day after day, it’s far too easy for Jon to slip back into the mindset that got him through his year-long (or at least what stood for a year in a place where time wasn’t a line or a loop or a figure eight but instead resembled either soup or a bowl of very funky spaghetti) radio station internship.

People die easily and habits die harder, those who lead to survival doubly so. His notebook, and two more copies hidden in his office and his flat, slowly amass notes on statements, at least the ones that would only record on tape. Things are exceptional for a reason, Jon has learned, and he knows to take note of such exceptional things. As such, after each statement, he fills a new page of his notebook. Small details, names, places, signs that preceded the culminating event, they all gather in the neatly-lined pages.

There’s a description of the anglerfish and its exact location, notes on Breekon & Hope as well as their casket. Amy Patel’s statement, already annotated from his first recording but now with added details that Jon has missed on his first read-through, takes up a full three pages. A bit excessive for such a clear-cut account, but Jon may be a little biased against things that take over the lives of other people. At least he can already take precautions against it, and he already has.

Two days ago, the evening after he recorded the statement for the first time, Jon spent a good few hours tracking down an old polaroid camera. He isn’t the type of person, or at least is pretending to not be the type of person, who goes around taking pictures of people, but he knows exactly who is.

The camera and a few packers of film were ‘found’ by Tim in the box of statements that Jon deposited on his desk in the morning. Tim’s sour mood at the workload vanished quickly once he actually found the camera and soon the archives were littered with polaroids, enough of them that nobody noticed when Jon slipped a few into his pockets.

If one of them, the one where Tim got Rosie to take a picture of all of the archival team with Jon being pulled into the frame last second, found itself in a spot of honor on the shelf by Jon’s bed, nobody is there to call him out on it.

Now, as he pockets his notebook and he picks up the folder to put it away, a few polaroids fall from where they have been hidden under the documents by Tim. Jon allows himself a private smile.

Yes, he thinks, working at the archives is the best decision he has made to date.

Chapter Text

Elias Bouchard, or, maybe more precisely, Jonah Magnus currently inhabiting the body and identity of one Elias Bouchard, sits in his office and contemplates the mystery of his new Archivist.

No, that isn’t quite right. Jonathan is, in no way, a mystery . Elias is no stranger to running background checks for any new hire, and he of course pays extra attention to anyone he puts in any important position, such as that of the Archivist. He prides himself on knowing his employees, his pawns.

Even when he had first hired Jonathan for a position in the research department, he had paid extra attention to his application. How could he not - the man that came into the interview nearly reeked of the entities, already almost marked as chosen by the Beholding, and traces of all the others clung to him like a second skin. What must he have experienced, for the End to lurk behind him like a jilted hound, the Stranger and Spiral to stick close like old friends? He was not marked, not quite, but Jonathan had witnessed the Fears already.

Elias would have assumed him to be a sectioned officer, had Jonathan not been fresh out of university with his only work experience being that of a few retail jobs during uni and an old radio station internship. It didn’t make sense

An eventful time chasing down crimes and accidents as a radio intern may explain the Beholding, but the other marks left Elias confused. Whatever kind of place Night Vale is, it surely can’t be that eventful. There is little known about the town, and just as little to Know about it too.

Elias had come to the conclusion that it must have been an incredibly boring place if even the fear god of knowledge found little to tell him about it. The only other option would have been that the Beholding was keeping mute on purpose, but since there was no way that the town of Night Vale had been completely given over to the Spiral, the Stranger, or -despite its name- the Dark, that theory didn’t have a leg to stand on. An almost frighteningly dull and average town was far more likely.

Maybe Jonathan has had the misfortune of having worked at a corner store that avatars really like to frequent. Retail is its own kind of hell.

In the end, Elias just decided to see him as a gift from the Mother of Puppets. The Web had left quite an impression on Jonathan, after all. Her approval of Elias’s plans was a great boon.

Now after keeping a close eye on the man since his promotion, Elias is worried that he may have slightly miscalculated with the promotion.

Jon is a good fit for an archivist, despite not having the official credentials for it. After a few days of adjustment -and a few nights full of frantic research and going over plans with Sasha- he seems to have made himself quite at home in the role of Head Archivist, chipping away at Gertrude’s mess the best he can.

While he makes a good archivist, Elias worries about his role as the Archivist .

Jonah Magnus had overseen the first steps of every single Archivist to ever work at his institute. All of them had a few common traits, and one was always there no matter the person - fear. The Archivists took statements, read statements, and all of them felt the fear of their givers, for understanding and knowledge only ever comes through experience. Even Gertrude had started her job with shaking hands and a heart that wouldn’t settle down for hours after she read a true statement, flinching at the shadows.

Jonathan doesn’t do that. Sure, the man does give voice to every statement, acts out the fear and worry, but he never seems to truly be afraid. He just sits at his desk, weathers the exhaustion of reading such a thing, and then scribbles away at his small notebook as if taking notes about the news in the morning paper.

Paranoia and attention to detail is great, in Elias’s opinion - with a few dropped hints and carefully planted knowledge, it could be an easy way to guide the Archivist on his path, maybe even push him away from his coworkers by making him doubt their every move. But no, the man seems to keep a careful and caring eye on his assistants, and whatever he writes in that book of his has become a mystery ever since he had first doodled that damned web table on one of the pages.

Now all that Elias gets if he tries to Know the contents is a headache and the looping sound of radio feedback in his ears. He really needs to get his hands on that damned notebook.

It’s immensely frustrating. What good is an Archivist who ignores all the Fears altogether? Is his skull too thick for the proof to get through his cynicism and disbeliever act? If this carries on, Elias might just need to consider finding out how long he has to stay his hand until another mysterious disappearance of an Archivist doesn’t draw too much attention.

In any case, he has to wait at least a little while.

Elias checks the time - no meeting about funding or similar managerial drivel for another half hour. Might as well check on the Archives.

The assistants' office sits quiet and empty, all of them out and tracking down details on various statements, both fake and true. A spider weaves a web in the corner, and Elias makes a note to tell the cleaning staff to pay better attention to those pests.

In his office, Jonathan sits hunched in his chair, small and fragile among the towers of shelves and paper that line the walls of the cramped space. He’s well on his way on chewing through yet another pen, fingers tapping a staccato rhythm on the small notebook while his eyes stay fixed on the tape recorder before him.

Must have just finished a statement, Elias surmises, and the name of Julia Montauk comes to mind.

The rhythm of Jonathan’s nervous jittering cuts off as the man begins to go through his pockets with near frantic determination.

Well, Elias has always been a curious man, especially when he thinks he’s about to uncover a delightful surprise. He turns his sight towards Jonathan’s thoughts.

He can’t peer deeply. The eye protects its own, even the weakest of beginners, and trying to behold the thoughts of his Archivist in any deeper way is bound to leave Elias feeling painfully cross-eyed.

Still, a shallow peek is more than enough. 

Oh, finally!

Through the churn of wordless ideas and images, worry and fear are easy to see, woven around images of dark alleyways and grasping tendrils of darkness, tearing, rending, suffocating. The alley is unfamiliar to Elias, but Jon pictures it with perfect clarity - somewhere close to home, perhaps?

Elias withdraws his gaze, satisfied. From what he can gather, his Archivist will be flinching at every darkened alley for a while, and maybe even avoiding that specific one altogether. Paranoia will make it all too easy for a true mark of the Dark to take hold. 

Maybe Jonathan just needed to read more than one statement for the second-hand fear to finally begin to seep in, leave its mark. But now he is at last Knowing the fear of the statement-givers, taking his first steps towards his Becoming.

Elias feels his lips twist into a smirk as he gives himself a mental pat on the back.

How wonderful it is when it all goes according to plan.

----------

In his office, Jon turns on his phone before he can work himself into an anxious mess.

NVCR chat but not council-approved

*FavouriteExIntern is now online*

ChadAintDeadYet: No Cecil you're not getting username changing privileges back

ChadAintDeadYet: Jonny!

[Redacted]: hi Jon

Stacey: Jon!

TheNewbieLeland: Sup Sims

DogParkDuty: Hello!

SimpingForCarlos: Jonathan!

FavouriteExIntern: Hello everyone

FavouriteExIntern: Just gotta check in on something.

FavouriteExIntern: Is Sylvia, you know, the sentient patch of murderous darkness in the alley next to the library, still there?

[Redacted]: probs

DogParkDuty: Think so

Stacey: I'll check, I’m nearby.

*TheNewbieLeland has been removed from the chat*

ChadAintDeadYet: f in chat for Leland, Cecil's making the announcement

Stacey: f

[Redacted]: f

DogParkDuty: f

FavouriteExIntern: rip

ChadAintDeadYet: Jonny I hate you.

FavouriteExIntern: No you don't.

ChadAintDeadYet: No I don't.

Stacey: Just checked, Sylvia's there. 

Stacey: She says hi btw.

FavouriteExIntern: Ok.

[Redacted]: y did u ask

FavouriteExIntern: Something similar just came up in one of the statements. It reminded me of when she moved in, so I wanted to check in that she's ok and didn’t somehow end up hurt.

FavouriteExIntern: I'll send my notes to you, apparently full statements don’t agree with anything digital.

FavouriteExIntern: [Case#0020312Summary.pdf]

FavouriteExIntern: Before I go, Cecil, what's up with the new username?

*SimpingForCarlos is now offline*

[Redacted]: lol coward

DogParkDuty: I'll fill you in.

Chapter Text

Even after a couple of weeks of work in the archives, Martin isn’t quite sure what to think about his new position. He had been prepared to scramble to figure out what to do - that’s what happens when you lie on your CV, damn it, but trying to follow along as Tim explains the best way  to sound official enough on the phone for people to give you records or as Sasha details how to best trawl through social media profiles for information? Well, his stint at the library did not prepare him for that .

It also did not prepare him for Jon. The man is just impossible to understand. On one hand he looks like he sacrifices food and sleep in favour of work and he dresses like the dictionary definition of a stuffy librarian or university lecturer, but on the other he doesn’t blink at even the most outrageous of the statements and only takes Tim’s and Sasha’s reports of obvious illegal activity (all for work, of course) with a faint smile and a ‘no new enemies?’ that barely sounds like a joke and-

And the man is walking into the office, expression stormy in a way that can only be a result of a meeting with one Elias Bouchard.

Martin sinks down in his seat by pure habit, as if making himself small might avoid some secondhand ire falling onto him. He grasps for the nearest sheath of papers and makes sure to look like he has been intently reading them all along, obviously doing his job and all that, though that’s  a bit awkward to do since  the statement is upside-down. Is it too late to turn this around? 

Tim, apparently, doesn’t notice Jon’s mood, because instead of just letting the man go shut himself away in his office, Martin sees from the corner of his vision as he perks up.

“Hey, boss!”

Jon turns towards him with an expression that speaks of a held-in heartfelt sigh. “Yes, Tim?”

Martin takes this chance to flip over the statement in his hands. Somehow it still feels like someone has seen his fumbling and is now judging him for it. 

Tim just continues speaking, pen poised over his notepad. “Got a fun saying from home today?”

Now Jon does indeed sigh and cross his arms, but he also does obediently recite, “Don’t be afraid of the dark. Be afraid of the terrible things that are hiding in there, and the terrible things they will do.”

In response, Tim gives him a double thumbs-up and a wide smile. “Wonderfully terrifying, bossman. Thank you.”

Whatever Jon mumbles in reply is lost behind his eyeroll and the office door shutting behind him. Martin stares at the door for a moment before he turns back to Tim.

“Is he always like this?” Not that he can’t appreciate the unexpected glimmer of almost-poetry in those words, but really? Of all the things to say? Do the shadows in the archives look suddenly deeper or is it just the feeling of being watched suddenly becoming stronger? He holds the pile of statement papers to his chest like a teddy bear. He really needs some tea.

“You get used to it.” Sasha says from where she is organising paper at her own desk while Tim humms happily, already writing the words down on yet another sticky note to add to the collection of scribbles on the wall behind him.

Yeah, he’ll get used to it. That’s what Martin had been thinking when he had first been transferred to the archives. Hasn’t happened yet, unfortunately.

He drops the papers back into the messy piles on his desk, then wipes his palms on his jeans as he stands up. “Right, well, anyone up for tea?”

“Martin you’re the best and I love you.” Tim slumps theatrically down onto his desk, stretching out to make grabby hands at Martin as if he could just manifest tea at will.

Sasha hides her laughter behind her hand. “Thank you, Martin.”

And so Martin steps away to make tea. It’s probably a bit of a silly thing to be proud of, but it does make something inside him light up, just a little, to be met with thanks and grateful smiles whenever he does go around dropping off cups at desks and gets everyone’s tastes just right. He has yet to figure out what Jon prefers, but he is determined to get it right. Maybe he has a sweet tooth?

He dumps an extra spoonful of sugar into the tea and, carefully balancing the cups, steps back out of the break room.

Tim and Sasha are gone, probably looking for things in the storage rooms, if the distant shuffling is to go by, so he silently puts down their designated cups - both with ridiculous puns scrawled across them in faux-fancy script- then turns to drop off his own before he heads to Jon’s office.

It is only sheer luck that makes it so that his hands only lock up tighter against the cup handles instead of dropping them as he suddenly comes face-to-face with a woman that definitely hadn’t been there before.

When did she come in? Why didn’t he hear her?

She strangely seems almost as startled by his presence, then visibly pulls herself together.

The silence that stretches between them is full of the awkward confusion of two anxious people not sure about who between them should speak first.

Martin ends up the one to cave in to the pressure. “Um- How can I help you?”

“I’m here to give a statement?” She says it almost like a question. The mess of papers on all the desks surely did not give the best of first impressions. ”The receptionist told me to come down here.”

Right, statements. That’s Jon’s job, right? Martin surely hopes so, even as he automatically smiles his best helpful librarian smile and says a cheerful ‘of course’. He prays that the panic doesn’t show on his face, or that she doesn’t notice as, right at Jon's office door, he fumbles with the teacups that he only now remembers he is holding.

Still, at least his voice doesn’t shake as he opens the door with a faux smile to be greeted with a scowling Jon who glares at him for being interrupted with whatever he has been doing with that box of statements.

“Jon, there is someone here to give a statement.” Martin doesn’t wait for a response and holds the door open for the woman. He really should have asked for her name.

He really expects Jon to continue scowling, maybe even deman what’s going on or explain to him in that no-nonsense tone of his that he has gotten the situation completely wrong. What he does not expect is for Jon to smile in a way that, had Martin not worked with the man for weeks now, would have seemed completely genuine.

It’s a very nice smile, in Martin’s opinion.

“Ah, yes. I’m Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist.” Jon introduces himself as he steps out from behind the desk to greet the woman with a handshake. His friendly tone would put any talkshow host to shame.

The woman’s shoulders relax slightly as she shakes his hand. “Naomi Herne. I’m not sure if I was supposed to email ahead or just walk in but the receptionist-”

“That’s all perfectly fine, Miss Herne.” He guides her further into the office, geturing for her to sit in the chair while he goes to reclaim his usual place. “Did you need anything, Martin?”

It’s only then that Martin realises that he’s still staring at Jon’s smile, holding the door open. He meets Jon’s gaze for just a moment before quickly looking away.

“Ah, no, I’ll get back to work.” The words are almost a squeak and his face is burning as he only barely avoids slamming the door in his haste to flee back to his desk.

It’s only once he’s back in his seat that he realises that he still has two cups in his hands.

Oh well, more tea to drown his shame in.

----------

While Naomi fills out a form with personal information and signs all of the forms that apparently came with submitting a live statement in the Magnus Institute, Jon fumes.

Not outwardly, of course. He knows better than to do that. Nobody talks to or answers questions asked by some sour bastard who looks like he has better places to be (which, admittedly, is something that Jon likes to use to avoid people in day to day life). No, outwardly he smiles his best ‘radio intern about to interview you about that horrific squamous horror that crawled out of the local pond’ smile and inwardly he curses Elias Bouchard out as best as he can manage in all the languages that he knows.

Somehow, he is sure that the bastard had known that Naomi was to come in today. How else would he explain that just that morning Elias had requested that Jon come to his office only to explain in that insufferable tone of his something about live statement and their importance to the archives, the last part wreathed in enough vague implications that it has left Jon with a headache and a wish to grab Elias’s tie and hopefully choke the man with it. He knows how to do that effectively, he has the boy scout badge to prove it.

It didn’t even leave him with enough time to prepare a proper mental script of how to act with statement givers. Polite and friendly? Professional and detached? Should he have introduced himself as he did or say something else? Should he make small-talk or get straight to the point?

Jon makes a show of setting up the recording on his computer while, hidden from Naomi’s view by a paper-filled file organiser, he quickly clicks on the tape recorder too. No need to stress the poor woman out by explaining the annoying grudge that the supernatural had on the digital. It’s a bit of a trick he has learned from Cecil. Cecil could possibly just extremely pointedly think of a radio broadcast and it would be announced on air for all to hear, and yet he luggs around a mic just to fit in. It just makes people much more comfortable, he once explained, when they have something normal to cling to, even if it’s fake. Plus in Jon’s opinion an apparently complex audio program looks just a tad bit more professional; the Magnus Institute is already a joke for far too many people.

After Jon clicks on the last notification to confirm that yes, he really does want to start recording, he turns towards Naomi with a smile he has practiced on far too many frazzled witnesses and interviewees back home.

“Are you alright to begin?”

Naomi nods visibly pulls herself up, as if she is about to be marched to her execution. At least there’s no station management here, or that may have actually become a possibility. 

Guiltily, Jon realizes that he can’t wait to know what she has seen. He clears his throat, lest the anticipation that he feels actually makes it as far as to be heard in his voice.

“Very well. Statement of Naomi Herne on-” Jon looks expectantly at her, then after a short moment of slightly awkward silence, does a little ‘go on’ gesture.

Naomi’s smile is sheepish and she leans just a little closer towards the desk and the laptop on it. “Ah, sorry. On the events following the funeral of my fiancé, Evan Lukas.”

“Statement taken directly from subject on January 13th, 2016.” As he speaks, Jon can almost swear that for just a moment, he hears the hiss of static or radio interference. “ Statement begins .”

This time, Naomi needs no cue to launch into her tale.

“So what do you think? Was it real?” She asks once she is done speaking.

Jon chances a glance down at his laptop. The little display above the recording that graphs the soundwaves is already going all messy and jumbled. He clicks the ‘delete’ button automatically, somewhat distracted. He feels a little strange. Has the unseen watcher always looked down on him as keenly as it does now? Why does he feel more awake than when Naomi started speaking, after he has done nothing but sit and listen? It takes him a second too long to realise that he has yet to reply.

“I believe you.”

Apparently, his silence has been taken for hesitation. “You do? Oh, well, of course. That’s what this institute is for, isn’t it.”

“Yes. You can leave the stone with us, to study it. We’ll let you know if we find anything.”

“And that’s it?”

For a moment, Jon wants to take out his notes, look through the pages. But no, the twelve entries that he has made he has already memorized, and nothing matches up to what Naomi has encountered. It doesn’t mean that he can’t think on his feet, and the vague motifs of her statement already come to mind. Graveyards for a distant family, fog, being lost, being forgotten, being alone, and-

“It seems like the turning point in your experience was when you made the decision to get out, to reach someone else, yes?” It’s only partially rhetorical.

Naomi nods.

“Then it’s very likely that whatever this experience was about, you should most likely try to focus on people. Maybe contact your fiancé’s friends, or join a club or an online forum.”

“Really, just make friends? That’s your advice?”

“You wouldn’t believe how many supernatural things can be solved by just being contrary. Your experience was all about being alone, so surround yourself with people, at least until we can find something more concrete.” Jon shrugs. “Simple logic.”

Somehow, that last statement draws a smile from Naomi. “I’ll take what I can get.”

Jon makes a show of closing his laptop, because really this is more unexpected socialisation than he can handle with a stranger at any one time. 

“Very well. We shall inform you if we find anything.” He repeats himself, and hopes that she does not notice. His usual ‘listen to the community radio for updates I now have to go before station management is displeased and kills me’ spiel doesn’t quite fit.

Naomi, at least, doesn’t seem to want anything else from this meeting, and so in minutes Jon is closing the door behind her, a chunk of gravestone held in his free hand.

He puts it down as a paperweight and makes a note of finding a proper place later.

That night, Jon dreams on Naomi Herne and a cloying fog that drags her forever down into a lonely grave.

Chapter Text

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a pattern.

Jon is not used to dreams, he doesn’t get them often and if he ever does, it’s because they’re either sent by the Night Vale city council, or they’re the result of him being stressed for far too long, though that latter case they follow a rather simplistic script of him being late for everything.

The recurring not-quite-nightmare of Naomi consumed by the fog is neither of those things.

He ignores it for the first five or so times the nightmare returns and lets himself get lost in his work. He narrates more statements now, the fakes with detached amusement and the true ones, well, he gets lost in them quite literally. 

‘Statement begins’ he says and after that, it’s as if he’s not the narrator but the statement-giver, there, watching the tale unfold, living through the fear and terror. It’s both exhausting and exhilarating and it’s just not right. If he was a different man, a skeptic, or someone refusing to believe out of pure stubbornness, maybe he would write it all off as a vivid imagination or the thrill of reading a captivating narrative. But no, this is not the thrill of being lost in a book, unless that book is a Leitner.

Something’s at play, Jon knows it, and it has something to do with his position as Head Archivist.

And so Jon does what he does best - he goes to find answers.

Once, when conversations between him and Georgie were more than just idle ‘how are you’s and exchanges of cat pictures (Georgie sends one of The Admiral, while Jon forwards her ones that Cecil sends of Khoshekh), Georgie had given Jon a corkboard and a skein of red yarn as a gag gift. He just looks like a guy who should own at least one, she had said.

Joke or no, over the weekend, Jon breaks it out of storage even if it means coughing up lungfuls of dust afterward. Now it stands against the wall of his living room, uncomfortably empty.

He sits down in front of it with a cup of tea -whatever was on hand and bitter enough to taste like nothing at all- and stares at it as if it might provide him with answers.

Two cups of tea later he has to fight the urge to maybe carve an eye out with a pencil as the board has nothing but a couple of new additions connected with string.

There isn’t much to go on at all, just the fact that Naomi gave a statement and that in his dreams, he watches her relive her trauma, again and again, cataloging the details. Archiving.

He needs more information.

So at first Jon tries all that he can to get rid of the dreams - exercise, relaxation techniques, he even breaks out a bloodstone circle even if those don’t quite function outside of Night Vale anyway. His two-weeks-worth of experimenting is cut off when he’s testing out whether sleep deprivation would shut off the dreams. Tim and Sasha catch him brewing coffee with energy drinks instead of water in the break room and Jon gets a stern talking-to from both.

After that, with all of his normal ideas exhausted, Jon decides to just turn to someone who would most likely have experience with work-related eldritch powers.

He calls Cecil.

If time zones are to be believed, it should be the middle of the night in Night Vale. However, Jon has been informed previously that Carlos the Scientist had recently proven that clocks aren’t real, so he isn’t too surprised when Cecil answers on the second ring, his voice as pleasantly chipper as ever.

“Hi, Jon! I just put on the weather.”

True to Cecil’s words, if Jon really strains his hearing he can hear a jaunty violin tune in the background. Sunny Tuesday morning, with a risk of reverse lighting storms in the afternoon. Prepare appropriate earmuffs and barricades. 

Jon realizes that he has zoned out once Cecil speaks up again.

“Jo-on.” He drawls. “Our usual calls are on Sunday with the rest of the radio crew, is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, at least I don’t think so.” Jon goes to double-check that the door of his office is completely closed and not about to open. He’d rather not have his assistants come in and think him some incompetent idiot because of his next question. “Hypothetically, do work-related eldritch powers usually come with some warning or training manual?”

“Well, if they’re part of your position, it would make sense for a training manual to be somewhere.” Cecil hums a note before he continues. “But I think that’s not the case if they’re just given as a bonus or a raise? Wait-! Did you get something? Oh I’m so proud-”

“Yes, yes, keep that for Sunday.” Jon cuts him off, then checks the door again. He feels like he did back when he had to learn all the ropes as an intern as Ada talked him through such simple and obvious things as correctly communicating with Station Management without being absorbed into their squamous mass. “Anyway, I can’t make the nightmares stop.”

“Nightmares?”

And so Jon launches into a  practiced summarised explanation of his experience, with Cecil humming and making approving noises at all the correct moments.

“Did you check your employment contract?”

“Of course I checked my employment contract.” Jon lifts a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. He’s not that much of an amateur. “No mention of them besides the usual ‘sign your life away’ capitalist stuff.”

“Must be a bonus, then. Those-” Cecil starts but interrupts himself. “Oh, wait, the weather’s ending.” 

There’s the shuffle of a phone being put down and when Cecil’s voice next comes, it’s echoing, the muffled noise of someone speaking a distance away from the phone overlaid over the audio quality of the familiar NVCR radio microphone.

“Welcome back, dear listeners. I am happy to say that I have received a call from a friend! It’s from Jonathan Sims, who is now the Archivist-”

“Head archivist.” Jon corrects, unheard and ignored.

“- of the Magnus Institute in London. How exciting! On behalf of our community radio, I really hope that his experience of a pleasant probably-year spent with us has prepared him well for his position in the temple of Beholding. I’m not sure what that is, but I Know it. How curious. We are talking about dreams. Nightmares, to be exact. Shared ones. Apparently they are a peculiar experience, when not government-mandated. But worry not, dear listeners, we shall figure out exactly who to lodge a complaint to. Remember, listeners - if you have an issue with your City Council approved dream schedule, file a complaint by writing it down and then dropping it in the nearest trash can for their not-consideration. City Council prides themselves on their transparency. Now, how about a word from our sponsors?”

There’s a click, and then Jon once again hears shuffling as Cecil picks up the phone once more, his pre-recorded voice slowly fading away from the call. “McDonald's - we have it. Have you listened to the song of the hive? The aria of the hunt? What about-”

Cecil talks over the announcement. “Okay, I’ve got a minute unless you want this conversation to go on air.”

Jon doesn’t even need a second to decide. “I’d rather not.”

“Neat. So you think the nightmares also include Miss Herne?”

“Yes, she reacts to my presence sometimes? I think so, at least.” He doesn’t mention that those times she is pleading for help, for any acknowledgment, and he can do nothing. “But I told you I can’t even do anything about it and-”

“I assume you already tried calling Miss Herne?” Cecil asks.

Jon smacks a hand to his face so hard that he almost risks breaking his glasses.

The goodbyes are said quickly - they both need to go back to their jobs. Naomi’s file is still on Jon’s desk, buried under a couple of other statements, but there. He had been wary of giving it away for follow up, seeing as he had yet to figure out his own connection to it. Jon doesn’t even need to look beyond the first page. Naomi’s number is on the form that she filled up to give the statement, a few contact details provided in case follow-ups are to be made.

For a good hour, Jon pretends that he doesn’t see the paper at all, does menial work while the folder sits on its own little throne of random papers and mocks him for his indecision until he figures out what to do.

This is most likely a great overstep on his part, but Jon believes that between a call to HR about him accidentally stalking someone’s dreams and a call to HR about him finding out someone’s phone number to try and avoid the previous situation, the second one is less likely to make him lose his job.

Wait, wouldn’t this actually count as a follow-up on Naomi’s statement?

Jon decides that yes, it does, if only to allow himself to feel less like a creep as he at last types the numbers into the messaging app. There’s no way he’s calling her about this. Messages at least give him a socially acceptable frame of time to worry whether his response will be up to par.

He clicks send and gets absolutely nothing done until his phone pings. He nearly bites through the pen that he has been worrying with his teeth.

In the end, he shouldn’t have worried. It turns out that it’s surprisingly easy to schedule a quick meeting when the topic one wants to talk about is recurring traumatic nightmares.

It also turns out that it’s surprisingly hard for Jon to go out for lunch without all of his assistants taking notice.

“Is everything alright, Jon?” Martin asks from his desk as Jon walks past.

“Yes?” It sounds more like a question than Jon is comfortable with, so he adds, “Why would anything be wrong?”

“You look like you’re going outside.” And that’s Tim, looking Jon over with either concern or confusion. He’s standing in the doorway, halfway through walking out of the archives. Possibly towards the library or artifact storage, if the sheath of papers he carries under one arm is anything to go by.

“I’m going out for lunch.” He explains evenly. Was that really so unusual?

“You never go out for lunch.” Tim’s eyes narrow, though the concern in his voice changes into amusement. “Do you even eat at all?”

“You can’t just say that, Tim.” Martin scolds while Jon sputters.

“What? Of course I do. What kind of question is that?” It’s a perfectly reasonable question, but not here. Jon resists the urge to cross his arms and sigh. “I’m simply going to meet with someone. For lunch. To talk.”

"Oh?" Tim frowns, and then suddenly he seems to come to some realization. Dread fills Jon's stomach as Tim's previous frown turns into a cheshire smile, his voice full of smug glee as he repeats, with some pointed meaning, "Oh."

Martin and Jon share a look for just a moment. It’s one made of equal parts confusion and dread.

"Say no more.” Tim raises his hands, still grinning like the cat that got the canary. Don’t worry, I’m cool. Good work, boss.”

Well, Jon finally catches up with Tim, or at least his implications. “What-? Tim, no-”

“Don’t worry, I’ll see me and Sasha can dig up anything on this pile of statements-”

“-it’s really not-!”

“-do have a great time, don’t come back too early-”

“Tim that really is not what I-!”

The door shuts behind Tim and Jon sighs.

“Not what I meant.” He finishes his thought anyway.

A stifled laugh beside him makes Jon tense as his brain takes a moment to remember that there was one more person in the room. He hopes Martin cannot visibly see the heat that rises to his face. But no, the man is already looking anywhere but at him, stumbling over his own words. He basically disappears behind his computer monitor.

“Oh I’m sorry I just thought that that was amusing - not that it was- I mean it kinda was but still- um, I’ll shut up now.”

Jon bites back the ‘please do’. Instead, he hands Martin the folder that he’s holding in his hands. “I need you to do a follow up on this.”

“Alright, I-”

Jon doesn’t wait for Martin to answer and leaves him and the statement of Carlos Vittery behind.

Chapter Text

Naomi looks over the man sitting before her with a critical eye. They had both sat down at the table almost five minutes ago, and besides idle and socially-required questions about each other’s wellbeing, neither of them had said a word to each other, just sipping at their coffees. 

Naomi isn’t sure what to say, how to start talking. She isn’t even quite sure why she agreed to meet at such short notice. Maybe it was the exhaustion from the nightmares, maybe it was the fact that she wanted someone to tell her she was not mad, maybe it was just curiosity, to see if the monster that haunted her dreaming mind would show up in the small, quaint, coffee shop.

But no, the Jon that sits before her has only two eyes and looks more tired than Naomi feels. Somehow she suspects that it has something to do with the short stretch of nightmare-less nights she recently experienced. That thought makes her feel dread and amusement at equal measure.

A soft snort of humorless laughter escapes her lips, unbidden, and for the first time since they sat down, Jona actually looks directly at her eyes. A question is obvious in his expression.

“It’s just- Is it silly that I expected you to have more eyes?”

Jon frowns for just a moment “No, that’s a perfectly reasonable expectation to have.”

“In what world is expecting to meet a person with a dozen eyes for lunch is a reasonable expectation ?”

“...this one?” His tone is that of someone answering a trick question.

It seems like the time for dancing around the subject and sitting in semi-companionable silence is over. “So you know what’s going on, then?”

Jon’s shoulders draw up, as if he was about to shrug but now stopped himself. “Now I wouldn’t go as far as to claim that but, well, I have my suspicions.”

Naomi gestures for him to proceed and then listens, incredulous, as he continues to talk.

“Well I think both of us, and then the scenario in your dream, can all be tied to the statement you gave, yes? So my assumption is that the dream either originates from you, as a statement giver, or me, as the head ae-” Jon frowns, a barely-there thing, “-as the Archivist who took it. This means that to possibly get it to stop, either you, or me, or both of us, need to reach some kind of conclusion.”

What he says makes sense, somehow, even if it’s impossible. A ‘this is bullshit so might as well apply bullshit logic’ kind of deal since Naomi has accepted the impossible the moment she opened the chapel doors just to be faced with an empty field, accepted it the moment that she headed down to the institute to give a statement about her experience. So, she decides to humor him. “And what would that conclusion be?”

“As an Archivist, I assume I am meant to… Archive? Maybe glean as much detail as I can from your experience?” Jon’s fingers begin to tap restlessly against his coffee cup. “Or maybe you, since you gave a statement about an experience that frightened you, need to learn to get over your fear.”

“I don’t think a nightmare is the best way to do that.”

“If you are subjected to the same thing again and again, you become numb to it, sooner or later.” Jon shrugs. “Like scandals about factories polluting the environment or a dark hooded figure that occasionally steals babies and for a reason no one can understand, we all stand by and let him do it.”

He says that last part in such a flat tone that Naomi actually feels a smile spread across her face for just a moment before it drops as his words catch up to her. “So I just what- wait for it to stop?”

Jon hums, his fingers still for a moment before they resume the tapping. “I can’t do much in your dreams - just watch-”

“Yes, did I mention the many eyes?” It feels good, somehow, to admit such mad things under the guise of sarcastic humor

“-um, yes. But you, however, seem to be able to act. Between fight or flight, you can choose to fight.”

“I can’t exactly punch the fog.”

“You would be surprised,” Jon says quickly. “Back to the point - you can try and see what keeps you from being afraid. Maybe try to narrate your experience, it sometimes helps to hear it laid out clearly, like on the radio. Or you can focus on something else, like… Are you afraid because of what you’re experiencing, or are you afraid because you think you’re back in your previous situation?”

“Both, maybe?” She thinks for a moment. “Maybe a bit of the latter?”

“That’s a good start, then - I’m there. I wasn’t there before, when you first got lost. So If I’m there now, you’re not back. You’re just dreaming and you will wake up.” Jon perks up. “It’s like a lucid dreaming exercise. Counting fingers or whatever.”

“Counting eyes.”

Nomi clearly sees a twitch in Jon’s expression that betrays him keeping back an eye-roll. “Or counting eyes, yes.”

Jon seems to have said his piece, because once Naomi doesn’t continue talking, neither does he. The silence between them is more comfortable than the one that came before, yet something still nags at Naomi’s mind.

“And what if it doesn’t work?”

“What? Oh… You could always lodge a complaint? Or maybe sue?”

Now it’s Naomi’s turn to say, “What?”

“If the nightmare is not under your control then it’s tied to my position as Archivist, but since I have no control over it then it means that it’s tied to the Institute as an entity, so…” He moves his hand in that vague ‘continue until you reach the point’ motion. “Elias Bouchard is the name of my boss, if that helps matters.

"So you're telling me to... Lodge a complaint against your boss for sending me repetitive nightmares?"

"And possibly threaten to sue, yes. It might not get anywhere, but even then you might as well get some satisfaction from inconveniencing him. A paper trail could also be useful if a case is built over any mismanagement of higher powers."

Naomi can't help it - Jon's stereotypical academic outfit coupled with his completely serious tone of voice and all that mixed with the fact that he openly encourages her to sue his boss over higher power mismanagement ? She laughs, genuinely and loudly, for the first time in a month.

For the first time since their meeting started, Jon smiles.

Maybe they can both figure this out after all.

Naomi leans back in her chair. "Where do I even get a supernatural lawyer?"

"Oh, I can give you pointers."

----------

The following Monday, Elias chokes on his coffee as he opens an envelope to be faced with a lawsuit.

----------

Days pass and work in the archives returns to normal.

The assistants run around, finding details on statements, Jonathan records and organizes and tries to figure out a way to indirectly ask Elias whether Gertrude may have left behind any directions on whatever this dream thing is. The first time he asks whether Gertrude left any guidance for any future Archivists - and since Cecil used it as a title, Jon soon fell into the habit too - Elias had gone worryingly pale. Jon excused himself quickly.

Jon pauses in the doorway to his office as his phone pings once more and he takes it out to check what the message says.

Sasha looks up from her computer. Tim is sitting nearby on her desk, though whatever conversation the two were having had been cut off when Jon first walked in. “Are you talking to Martin?” 

Jon locks his phone on pure muscle memory before he looks up at the two assistants, frowning. “Why would I be texting Martin?”

He was talking with Naomi, actually. She had appreciated his last choice in sleepwear - the t-shirt was a gift from Cecil, a neon tye-dye that had ‘my eyes are up here’ written on it black script with arrows pointing all over his body. She had apparently taken one look at him and laughed her way right out of sleep.

“Neither of us have seen him since Monday.” Tim tilts his head to indicate the empty desk. “And he hasn’t been answering our calls.”

“So he would answer mine?”

“You are the boss.” Tim’s statement sounds weak even to Jon. It’s quite obvious that he’s grasping at straws, fidgeting in place from worry.

Jon quickly checks his phone. The last message had arrived just this morning. “He’s still out sick.” Tim’s worry is also apparently rather infectious, as Jon takes a second look at the previous messages. “He texted me that he had a stomach bug on monday… said he thought it might be a parasite.”

Was it just his paranoid mind, or were those words a little pointed?

He interrupts Sasha and Tim mid-speech, something about how Martin only texting not being quite right. “Do you know what case Martin was working on?”

“You’re really worried about work right now?”

“I thought I would cover for him while he recuperates.” Jon can’t usually lie to save his life, but this one excuse was a well-practiced one. The judgemental glare helps.

Tim, at least, looks chastised enough by it to answer. “Oh, um, it was one with ghost spiders? Carlos Vitty? Vitry?”

“Vittery?” Sasha looks up from where she leans over to look at the contents of Martin's desk.

Tim perks up and grins, shooting Sasha a thumb-up. “That’s the bitch!”

Jon frowns before he can laugh. Nice and professional. Okay, professional but probably not too nice. Whatever.

“Thank you.”  He nods at Sasha as she passed him the appropriate folder from Martin’s desk. “I’ll check in with Martin and tell you if anything comes up. Now if you could all get back to work?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, just takes that last step into his office and shuts the door. He doesn’t even look at the statement, just checks the notebook in his pocket, flipping quickly through the pages.

He really hopes this is not one of the statements likely to be real.

Of course, it’s one of the statements likely to be real.

Spiders and worms. Small silvery maggot-worms that his notes have mentioned more than once already.

Jon flips back to his entry on Timothy Hodge’s statement, then pulls up the last messages from Martin. Bugs, parasites.

Jon has lost at least half a dozen of fellow interns. He is not losing a single assistant, not if he has anything to say about it.

Five minutes later, Jon is marching out of the archives and towards Martin’s apartment.

Might as well start the search there.

Chapter Text

As Jon half-walks half-jogs to Martin’s flat he, not for the first time, terribly misses the ever-present radio chatter that perfuses Night Vale. The moment Cecil is on air, all the radios tune themselves into his channel and then you always know all the notable and unusual events around town when you need them. 

Jon is rather sure that if Cecil was here, he would have already heard all about the fact that Martin was gone, why it happened, how Martin was doing, and maybe also overheard how he made his tea. Martin sure makes great tea and Jon kind of wants to know the secret to it, so what, sue him (please don’t, the pay at the archives isn’t that good, go for Elias). 

But no, London, like the rest of the boring world, it seems, has the same boring radio that really doesn’t say many substantial things unless you actually manage to find the news -and you have to find the channel yourself, how annoying- at which point you might learn something useful, but more than a few hours late. Even Desert Bluffs is better than that. Desert Bluffs .

Jon distracts himself with these thoughts as he walks because aimless rants about radio are much better than imagining the corpse of someone eaten by worms, spiders, or both.

He doesn’t even wonder about how he knows where to go without even checking his phone for directions, just leans more into whatever sixth sense guides him.

Soon enough he is standing before an apartment building, one that is perfectly unremarkable and blends into all the others around it. It’s boring, there is no other description for it, just bland and the perfect picture of a place where nothing would ever happen. Boring.

Jon knows better than to trust outside appearances of places, he steps through the door and heads to the stairwell.

With each step that he climbs, the air changes.

There is something there, something that permeates the apartment building with dread that Jon can only remember feeling when Cecil would gleefully announce over the radio that one of the interns would be sent out to investigate one matter or another.

It’s the anxiety of something deeply unpleasant lurking just around the corner, like everything is suddenly half a millimeter off and his brain is trying to catalog all the too-many little differences that suddenly put him in this strange situation.

It’s one part anticipation and one part worry and Jon has long since passed the third 'fear' part of that cocktail. You never survive internship if your first reaction to the unknown is fear.

Now that he’s thinking about it, maybe he can put that experience to good use.

If you see something, say nothing, and drink to forget. If you seek to see something, then you better have either a backup plan or a weapon.

Jon has none. Step one failed, damn. 

A quick frisk of his pockets leaves him with a pen -very similar to one he had once had to drive through the eye of a shambling shadow horror that haunted the radio break room kitchen, so that's at least something- but nothing else, unless whatever he meets might be vulnerable to spare change and paperclips or would get a papercut from his notebook. 

Maybe he should invest in a knife. Or an axe. Probably should start small, butterfly knives had some aesthetic to them, and Dana always-

Anyway , future purchases aside, Jon only has a pen, but something is better than nothing.

Now armed and just a tiny bit more dangerous, Jon takes a deep breath, straightens his spine, and marches on up the stairs.

At last, Jon is staring down the correct hall, down towards Martin’s apartment door. Nothing seems to be off, the hall empty and silent.

Jon doesn’t trust that fact one single bit. There’s the faintest sweet taste to the air, like fruit on the verge of rotting. A warning. In Jon, old habits scream for him to turn on his heel, go back to work, and pretend like nothing has happened, like he went on the most usual of walks -if him going on mid-day walks was an usual thing, at least- and met nothing strange at all.

But he is the head archivist, the Archivist, whatever that is, and Martin is one of his assistants and he is not getting a death toll on his hands quite so soon in his new position.

So, Jon starts to walk down the hall.

He really shouldn’t.

He continues.

He really should turn back, this is just a hall.

Something’s there, he Knows it.

There’s nothing to see.

But he does See.

It’s less of a transformation and more of a realization, not a shift in perspective as much as an image coming into focus. One moment there’s the impression of a hall he really should avoid for whatever reason, t he next the air smells of rot and there’s a decaying figure at Martin’s door and-

Jon staggers back with a yelp, leg instinctively kicking out to shake off whatever may have caused the sudden burst of pain in his calf.

The sudden motion is apparently enough to detach the small white worm that has just finished chewing through his pants and send it flying.

It disappears down the hall with barely a noise to signal it landing on the ground, quite a distance away, among its other brethren at Jane Prentiss’ feet.

"Oh good lord I'm so sorry."

Her rotting head turns towards him and Jon tries his best to offer an apologetic smile.

----------

Somewhere in his office, even as he restlessly paces while nearly pulling all his hair out, Elias Bouchard is really considering having a drink. Or two. Or a full bottle or ridiculously expensive wine.

That last option sounds best by a longshot.

It’s one thing to glance down at his Archivist and his assistants during the day to see something like Tim using institute materials to print out a life-size paper cutout of Elias to glue it together on a piece of cardboard and terrify his previous coworkers in research by hiding it in a storage closet.

It was another to see Jonathan, unarmed and unprepared, standing face-to-face with Jane Prentiss.

Elias is rather sure his swears could have been heard all the way down the hall as he scrambled for anything the Beholding might have to make sure his new Archivist didn’t get himself killed.

Hopefully, the Archivist would not be left with too many physical and mental scars from what was sure to go down.

Elias wasn’t about to lose another project that showed so much promise.

----------

"...what?" Jane Prentiss wheezes out the word more than she says it. Her enunciation is slow, as muscles struggle to move despite all the holes eaten through them by the wriggling shapes that slither in and out of her face. A worm drops to the floor as she speaks, and Jon suppresses a wince. 

"I just didn't mean to kick it -them? uh-  the worm, sorry, just got startled.” A pause. “Did- uh- Did it get hurt?"

The pool of worms at her feet stops moving in Jon’s direction, or at least wriggles quite a bit slower.

Jon will take what he can get. He does his best to keep himself from fidgeting under her gaze, just focuses on how he's holding himself to avoid following up on any of the more anxious thoughts that buzz around his head. One of them is a note on the fact that the worms seem to have very sharp teeth and how quickly they seem to bite through clothing, what to even say of flesh. The wound does sting quite a bit. A t least Martin's door is still standing and doesn’t quite look like swiss cheese, so maybe Jane's worms didn't like the taste of wood.

Speaking of Jane's worms, who are still drawing closer and closer-

“Just to clarify...” He honestly wasn’t quite sure how to best phrase the question, but it was better to be polite and just ask before he said something stupid. ”Ah, is this like an Erika situation?”

Now the worms do truly stop advancing as a unified twitching mass. They just aimlessly crawl around, some slowly making their way back to Jane. Jane herself just stares at Jon with an unreadable expression, though how much of that is true emotion and how much is due to paralyzed muscle and mutilated skin is hard to tell.

“Erika?”

Jon nods. “Angels, you know, the ones whose existence people are not allowed to legally acknowledge?”

Jane’s expression doesn’t much change, though some of the skin and muscle on her face do twitch as if attempting to move despite being consumed by the writhing things that live within. Somehow, Jon still knows that her confusion has only deepened. He’s good at recognizing expressions when he really tries, his primary school teacher was replaced for a while by a floating monolith of singing flesh.

“Just, um, nevermind. The point is - do you go by Jane Prentiss, or is it that all of you, as in all the worms, go by different Jane Prentiss’s?” 

The worms now too somehow manage to look baffled as they slowly wiggle along on the carpeted hallway floor. Jane, for Jon is still rather sure that this was the correct way to address at least her as the hive, stands still and silent for a moment.

“The worms don’t have names.” She decides at last, the emotion behind the words quite unreadable.

That sounds quite sad to Jon. Names have a way of making things more important, and the worms already look so small. He just shrugs. “Very well. If they don’t want any, I won’t judge.”

A silence falls between them, broken only by the sound of worm on worm on hallway floor. It sounds a bit like moist spaghetti being moved around in a bowl. Jon makes sure to keep his eyes on Jane, as much as he hates eye contact, though he’s not sure it’s doing much since Jane doesn’t have that much left of her eyes in the first place.

He still has no clue how to get her away from Martin’s door, and apprehension slowly shifts to frustration, something which he quickly stamps down on. Not the time to lose his temper.

“You are not afraid…” Jane declares, it sounds almost like a question.

Only almost, but Jon would rather keep her talking while he figures out what to do. “No, I don’t think so.”

Was he supposed to be afraid? Yes, the wriggling and twitching of the worms is a bit disgusting, sure, but that’s probably because he doesn't interact much with worms and maggots in the first place. These aren't even sapient, unlike the tarantula community in Night Vale. These bugs were just bugs, Jane was a human host for those bugs, and all that was quite a stereotype for any zombie movie or maggot-ridden corpse shown in some horror flick. It was uncreative, to be honest, and uncreative things are seen again and again and so become banal and boring instead of terrifying.

Jon has previously called more objectively scary people and entities his neighbors;  Jane hasn’t even tried to kill him yet - that one little worm doesn’t count - and so has quite a bit of catching up to do.

The stalemate of silence ends as Jane speaks again, “Do you like worms, archivist?”

“Uh, no.” Definitely not. Especially not these ones, with all the teeth. Oh, maybe the quick refusal is a bit insulting. “I mean- I do like things like moths and butterflies! The patterns on their wings are, uh, neat. Did you know that some actually are meant to mimic the eyes of owls?”

No info-dumping about butterflies and moths on the living hive of maggots, Jon.

Jane tilts her head to the side and Jon is rather sure that’s how people look with their necks broken. He quickly hurries to speak up before the hive can, because he may not be afraid of Pretiss or her worms, but small-talk is the bane of his existence.

“That out of the way, could you and the worms please vacate the premises? I really need to get to my assistant to make sure he’s okay.”

As polite as Jane is, keeping people trapped at home without any public safety motive or correctly-filed paperwork is quite rude, especially when those people have work to do. Sure, when it was Valentine’s day or you have to hide from the secret police or the doppelgangers attack, then it's perfectly fine to take some time off unannounced. However, this is none of those situations and so Martin has no reason to be kept away from work. Jon is rather sure there wouldn’t be too many consequences since there is no station management equivalent for the Archives and Elias just doesn't measure up to those vaguely eldritch abominations that sometimes assimilate, kill, or eat employees,  but it's always better to be safe than sorry.

He really wants to get Martin back.

Jane doesn’t move, just twitches where the rot continues to burrow through her flesh.

Jon decides to try again. “Miss Prentiss, please. I respect that this might be something that you have to do, as I am quite sure Martin’s investigation must have upset you in some way, but all complaints should be directed to Elias Bouchard, he’s the head of the Magnus Institute here in London and if you wish I could give you precise directions to his office-”

She still doesn’t move, then flinches, as if a thought just hit her quite physically.

“You can have him back, Archivist.” Jane wheezes out at last.

“What? Oh, thank you.” What do you even say after that? “I’ll keep in touch?”

Not that, probably. Too late.

Jane doesn’t respond, just turns on her heel and walks away.

Jon watches her go, then shrugs to himself and goes to knock on Martin's door.

Chapter Text

Jon knocks forcefully on Martin’s door and waits. As a minute ticks by he knocks again. Then a third time. Maybe Martin isn’t home, he thinks out of pure frustration, the thought so stupid that it makes him scoff.

Of course he’s here, why else would Prentiss camp out at his door for what must be… four days? Five? Martin must be here, or else the worms must have gotten to her brain already.

Some people can probably speak and move about without a brain, he can list at least a few of his uni roommates.

Jon sighs as he waits for an answer, for any sound in the apartment beyond, then glances behind himself to make sure that Pretiss has not changed her mind and shambled back to finish whatever it was that she was doing here.

For now, she stays gone, but Jon knows better than to waste time, unlike some people. 

He takes a deep breath.  “Martin, open the damned door!”

Unlike in most situations, this time, yelling works like a charm. A lock clicks and the door swings open.

Martin is disheveled and wild-eyed and clutches a table lamp in his hand as if he had just been ready to use it as a weapon. Not a bad choice, in Jon’s opinion, it could certainly do quite a lot of damage. 

“OhmygodJonit’syouIthoughtPrentisswasonohwhereis-” Martin speaks so fast Jon can barely catch a stray word from the tirade but then Martin glances somewhere behind him and-

“Watch out!” 

That’s all the warning Jon gets before he suddenly finds himself pulled into Martin as the man tries to pull him away from whatever danger has managed to sneak up on Jon, stupid, how could he be so stupid as to let down his guard-
He twists around in Martin’s grip, stumbles forward with a pen clutched in his hand like a sword because like hell is he going down now without a struggle-

And sees nothing.

He looks down. Oh.

Jon almost laughs as his brain suddenly catches up to the situation. “Oh, you poor thing.”

----------

Martin has no clue what’s going on.

He watches as Jon carefully coaxes a silver worm onto a tiny notebook with the tip of a pen, and realises that he has absolutely no clue what’s going on.

His heart is still hammering in his chest. Where is Prentiss? Her knocking has haunted his waking hours for days now as he frantically stuffed towels and stray shirts over every crack and gap that could let anything into his apartment, praying that the tiny silver flesh-eating would not start crawling through the plumbing even as he recounted all the facts he knew about dying of thirst and now… Now Jon is here.

He’s almost doubtful that this is Jon at all, not some hallucination or supernatural trick. Jon doesn’t hold himself like this, back straight, shoulders, back, gripping a pen like a knife and actually somehow making it look dangerous. Jon’s doesn’t often give off the impression that the grey in his eyes is nothing but steel.

Oh, that could be a good line for a poem.

“Martin.” 

Really, he’s half tempted to just turn around, march back into his bedroom and go to sleep, death by worms be damned. He is tired and confused and-

“ Mah-tin !” Jon’s disapproving tone, so familiar, rips him back into the present. “A jar for the flesh-eating worm, please .”

Martin suddenly realizes that he has been staring at Jon’s face for far too long and then he glances down at what he’s holding out and sees the wriggling silver thing and-

“Of course, yes, jar.” He doesn’t flee, he doesn’t, but he does walk quite quickly to his kitchen to follow the given orders because Jon looks like he knows what he’s doing while Martin really does not.

He can hear Jon following behind him, mostly because of the low muttering coming from the man. “No, you can’t eat my hand just wait a little.”

Martin’s boss is currently scolding a flesh-eating worm. Martin almost wants to laugh, but with the stress of the past days, he’s rather sure he would end up crying instead. And here he was about ready to just come to terms with the situation and just accept his fate and weather it as best he could.

He focuses on finding a jar in his recycle bin, luckily already long rinsed out and dried.

He nearly drops it when Jon offers him a bright thankful smile as he takes it, quickly dumping the still-wriggling worm into it before screwing the lid on.

“Shouldn’t we just crush it?” The question just tumbles out.

On one hand, Martin doesn’t want to kill the small thing - it’s proof, living, physical proof that this wasn’t just some elaborate nightmare or head trauma or psychotic break or something. On the other hand, he wants the thing very, very dead. Maybe even on fire. Definitely on fire.

Jon looks taken aback for a moment, then he scowls, and then suddenly he seems to realize something and his expression smoothes out and he shrugs.

“Rule number one - don’t inconvenience unknown entities unless you have a plan on how to deal with the fallout,” Jon states.

Martin would still rather just crush the worm and be done with it, but Jon does have a bit of a point, especially when he says it with such unwavering conviction. Still, Martin takes a few steps away from the jar. “So you’ll just… keep it?”

“For now. I’ll have to figure out how to return this to Jane.” Jon’s sigh is filled with such exhaustion that Martin almost automatically apologizes for the inconvenience. Almost. The words catch up to him first.

“I’m sorry you’ll what ?”

“Return it to Jane,” Jon repeats slightly slower. “I’m not sure if it would survive out in the wild or harm the ecosystem. Though seeing as Jane is already walking around all over maybe they are some obscure native species so then- nevermind that. We should go back to the archives.”

Now, Martin doesn’t exactly love the archives. They are dark and dusty and something in them makes him feel small and watched to the point that after some workdays his shoulders hurt from him trying to stoop and make his frame so much smaller. Today, being anywhere besides his apartment suddenly feels like the best of ideas. The archives, yes, wonderful - no worms out in the institute.

“You should pack some essentials, it’s always better to stay away for a while-”

Martin turns to do just that when he notices something else.

“Jon, why is there blood on the floor?”

----------

Jon has no clue what’s going on.

One moment he’s watching the worm wriggle around in the jar, wondering whether he should find something to poke holes in the lid with, and the next he’s sitting on the couch and Martin has manifested a first aid kit from somewhere and he looks even more worried than when he was about to deck someone with a lamp.

Jon has no clue what to do, so he just sits there and lets Martin inspect the wound on his calf. It’s surprisingly deep, Jane’s worms have quite a nasty bite.

“Oh god what if there’s one in there, they burrow and-”

“It’s just a bite, Martin.” Jon cuts off the start of yet  another rambling tirade, then as Martin looks up he adds, “I know the difference between a bite and something burrowing in.”

Martin blinks a couple of times. When he speaks, his voice has risen at least a full octave. “How?”

“From experience, how else?”

There’s a silence. They stare at each other until the eye contact itches at Jon’s usual reclusive habits. He looks down at the first aid kit instead.

“So do you have a bandaid, or…?”

“Oh, yes, of course, yes.”

After that, actually getting to the archives is no issue at all. They’re both jumpy and keep a brisk pace, but there are no interruptions. Well, once they are at the institute proper Jon does spot a slightly frazzled Elias scanning the crowd of people leaving work that are milling about near the doors, but since Jon would rather not talk about why he suddenly skipped out of work in the middle of the day, he just leaves Elias to it and walks faster. Martin, luckily, doesn’t mention it.

The door to the archives opens to the worried faces of Tim and Sasha, their conversation cut off by the squeak of hinges.

Jon and Martin speak at once.

“Don’t worry, it was just Jane Prentiss.”

“I think we both need to give a statement.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“My guys, what the fuck?”

“Really there’s no need for a statement-”

“Excuse me-”

“What do you mean Prentiss ?”

----------

Jon makes his exit as quickly as he can after offering Martin the cot in the archives. Tim and Sasha are good people, good friends, but they are a bit much with their fussing in his opinion and repeated questions begin to grate (“What do you mean you just spoke to her?” “That’s what I did!”). How hard is it to just accept things the way that they happen? Tim talks people into doing things all the time, why is it so surprising that Jon just did the same thing?

Probably because Jon himself isn’t even sure why it even worked in the first place, but that’s beside the point.

Jon has three more copies of his notes to make and he’d rather do it sooner than later, so while Sasha and Tim are distracted grilling Martin about some point or other, Jon quickly gathers his own things and slips out the door.

It’s only once he steps out into the cool evening air that he remembers one thing - while the Archives are safe from Prentiss, his apartment surely is not.

Standing on the institute steps with a flesh-eating worm in a jar under his arm he considers turning back, but no, that would really be embarrassing to explain. What Martin now needs is space and the privacy to either deal with things on his own or, if his coping mechanisms are anything like Jon’s, to have a bit of a breakdown.

Jon sticks his free hand in his pocket to try and find anything to fiddle with while he thinks and his fingers brush against the cool plastic case of his phone.

Oh, he suddenly realizes. Unless she threw it away, Jane still has Martin’s phone.

Jon quickly pulls up and renames the contact. After a moment of contemplation, he also adds a quick message.

‘If you plan to break in, please give a polite 15-minute warning. Thank you.’

‘This is Jon from the apartment building, by the way.’

The three little dots in a bubble dance for a moment, then disappear without being replaced by a reply. A little rude, but understandable. Nobody seems to have manners when it comes to anything supernatural, out here. He really misses Night Vale.

With a sigh, Jon pockets his phone. This will do for now, but maybe he can get away with crashing on the breakroom couch tomorrow.

Chapter Text

Jon didn’t get to crash on the archives breakroom couch, mostly because he forgot that it was friday. Over the weekend, he crashes on Georgie’s couch instead.

“Really, Jon. If you wear a track into the carpet with your pacing you are replacing it.” Georgie doesn’t even bother to look up from whatever she’s doing on her laptop. Probably doing the last edits to the script she had Jon read over as payment for suddenly intruding in her life.

Jon doesn’t look up either from where his face is hidden in The Admiral’s fur. “It’s not that bad.”

Yes it is.

“Yes it is.” Georgie doesn’t hesitate to call him out. There’s a reason Jon never agrees to add her to the NVCR chat no matter how much she asks. There’s the sound of a laptop being shut. “Look, I know our Agreement means we don’t ask questions about anything, but really, what’s got you all worked up?”

Their unwritten Agreement is a wonderful thing. Georgie doesn’t question it when Jon asks her to look up stuff about the Beholding or whatever and he doesn’t ask when she shows up at his place and spends an evening drinking cheap wine and talking about how her weirdly unsocial sound-tech acquaintance Sarah is moving around like a funky mannequin. It’s great. 

However, Jon also knows that sometimes talking is just the better option. Communication, urgh.

Jon sighs into The Admiral’s fur. “Worms.”

“...what?”

“My coworker got trapped at home by a walking hive of flesh-eating worms under the name of Jane Prentiss.” Jon explains. “And now she won’t text me back and I can’t figure out what to do next and what to tell my assistants to make sure they’re careful because you already know that Tim thinks my stories from back home are a joke so now everyone else does too and-”

Somehow, Georgie has the gall to look delighted. “Jon, Jon, Jon, my friend, my pal, wait the fuck up.”

Jon glares at her, but does stop talking.

“You mentioned flesh-eating worms.”

“I did.”

“Flesh-eating worms like the one in the kitchen?”

Right, he did put the jar there. On his way to Georgie's, Jon looked up how to care for worms and now it’s half-filled with moist soil, covered in leaf-litter, and some of the Admiral’s treats have been sacrificed as worm food until Jon figures out whether he should maybe get it some raw meat. After all that was done, he nearly forgot about it.

Jon wilts a little under Georgie’s pointed gaze.

“Um, yes. I do plan to return Brian to Jane but as I said she won’t-” He cuts off with a huff as Georgie laughs. His annoyance is mostly due to the fact that the sound makes the Admiral jump out of his arms and now he won’t be able to pick him back up for at least five minutes, the cat just is like that.

“Brian?” Georgie’s smile makes Jon grimace.

"...I thought a name would be nice, better than just calling it ‘the worm’.”

“And you chose Brian?”

“Well, it was better than Cecil’s suggestion.” He crosses his arms. “Can we please get back to my coworkers being in danger?”

Georgie raises her arms in mock surrender. 

“Okay, okay, chill…” She pauses for a moment.“But really ? Brian ?”

Jon doesn’t throw himself onto the couch. He just… sits down energetically. Georgie laughs at him anyway. “Georgie…”

“Okay, okay, getting serious.” Jon doesn’t have to see the eyeroll, he hears it in her words well enough. “Look, you talked to Naomi and that went well. She didn’t even say anything about the Khoshekh pictures.”

Jon had sent her one accidentally and noticed the mistake much too late. Now Naomi has joined the picture sharing group chat and sometimes contributes with cute pictures of mice and rats that she encounters on her job as a lab technician. Should he send a picture of Brian there, or is that intruding on Prentiss’ privacy? Eh, better safe than sorry. In any case-

“It’s not the same, though.” Jon tilts his head back to stare at Georgie from where he’s sat. “I have to work with them and none of us can quit so if they decide I’m mad or  paranoid or something, I can’t just avoid them.”

“Okay, first, what do you mean you can’t quit? Second - at least one of them has met uh-” She pauses. “- Jay?”

“Jane,” Jon corrects. “And it’s a clause in the employment contract. The usual.”

“Definitely not the usual but whatever.” Georgie waves her hand as if to push that topic away -they have stopped discussing the details of employment after Jon told her about all the clauses in a usual NVCR internship- and continues. “Anyway, Jane the worm hive. They know she’s real. Why wouldn’t they believe you about the rest?”

That’s a good point. Jon ignores it. “Because.”

It’s hard to explain. He has seen newcomers to Night Vale, how some, mostly those who unknowingly drove in, reacted to their new situation. He has met people who left the town and then came back, how when he too decided to leave to study they told him to simply not mention what goes on back home and spare himself the headache and judgment.

He had only opened up to Georgie when she told him about the living anatomy class cadaver incident one night when they were out at a bar. He’s still careful with Naomi, only answers questions when she asks about something directly. It grates in a unique way, when people look at you like you’re something fake, something other.

He doesn’t want Tim and Sasha and Martin looking at him like that. That’s the reason why the only tales he tells Tim are the amusing, ridiculous ones, about cults and sudden disappearances and weird events. None of the death and blood and destruction that are common occurrences in Night Vale. ‘We have to kill and eat someone to reach the highest rank of boy scout but I dropped out a bit early’, that’s a sentence that wouldn’t go over well.

“Nobody believes, not without proof,” Jon adds to his previous statement. “And I can’t just show them pictures from home or something. It’s not enough.”

The way Georgie looks at him, Jon is rather sure he has missed something big. “Jon. What exactly do you want your assistants to watch out for?”

“Jane. And then there's the rest of the most probably real statements so-” Jon doesn’t even get far enough to start listing things. Right, the statements. “Oh.”

“Got your proof right there.” Georgie sounds much too smug. “Now come help me research this story.”