Chapter Text
In the stale, sour air—Gerry doesn’t know why they still even notice it; all this time, and they’ve never been dragged to a hotel room that hasn’t smelled like a thousand nervous fugitives have sweated out the entire water content of their bodies into it—they sit on the edge of the bed and watch the new Archivist open and close his mouth several times. He’s done that a lot since Gerry started talking. He also looks a little like the way Gerry imagines someone looking just before they get hit by a truck, and Gerry can’t tell if that’s something that comes from outside, or if it’s something their mind just spun up in the middle of the crippling boredom that’s always been woven in between dread and bitterness and longing, for all the time they’ve been stuck with Herbert and Montork—or is it Montauk? Sometimes Julia pronounces it ‘Montork’, and sometimes out of her hungry mouth, it’s ‘Montauk’ instead.
Gerry’s never seen somebody get hit by a truck. They really couldn’t tell you for sure what it’s supposed to look like. They’re just gonna have to guess, and they’re gonna guess it’s the way Jonathan Sims, or the Archivist, or Jon, looks now.
Then, the Archivist, or Jonathan Sims, or just Jon leans over and turns off the recorder, and Gerry feels… not sure, actually. Gerry’s gotten good at not being sure what they’re feeling, when what scratching out what they actually feel would be… yeah, it wouldn’t be great. Maybe they feel like a string’s been cut inside of them, or they feel like somebody’s told them to shut up while they were in the middle of talking, or like they’re just waiting. Gerry looks down, picks at the fraying cuff of their button-down shirt, a shirt that’s long since lost any color and just taken on the color of the smoke of a hundred different campfires they’ve sat at while waiting for Herbert and Montork-Montauk to come back with the latest… yeah. Just… waits.
They’ve said everything there is to say. Well, saying everything there is to say would take longer, a lot longer, and Gerry sometimes imagines unraveling themselves like a fraying scarf or someone taking a set of knitting needles to the fibers of their body and unspooling it until they’re sitting on the floor in a pile of stringy flesh and eyes and bones and hair. Something about it feels terrible. Something else about it feels like ecstasy, though Mum would shake her head and say why limit yourself, Gerard? Why do you always insist on limiting yourself?
That’s probably got something to do with the fact that Gerry’s never had the nerve or the cruelty to do what they’d have to do to play all sides against the middle, and…
…and they can’t win any arguments with Mum now. They never could win any arguments with Mum. They really can’t do it now.
Gerry hasn’t said every last thing there is to say, but they’ve said everything the Archivist had wanted them to say, everything they know to say, anyways, kind of without meaning to, kind of meaning to say more, really hoping this man who doesn’t really look like ‘stop the apocalypse’ material, who doesn’t even have the hard gleam in his eyes that Gertrude had, that hard-bright gleam that had always made her seem so much bigger than the frail, delicate gray body that once was hers, will turn out to be up to snuff before it’s too late.
(Gertrude, dead! Dead? Yes, definitely ‘dead!’. Gerry can’t decide if they’re supposed to be angry, if they’re supposed to cry, if they’re supposed to not feel anything at all. They’re feeling something that is definitely not nothing, but Gertrude was…
Gertrude is something Gerry doesn’t want to touch. Not now. Maybe not ever. ‘Not ever’ isn’t likely. It’s not a luxury the world has ever seen fit to afford them. ‘Never’ always becomes ‘some time.’ They already told Jon more than they really wanted to, and the look on his face as Gerry explained just how it was they’d parted ways was one that made Gerry want to scratch his eyes out so he wouldn’t look at them anymore, just for a moment.
Simple story. Head trauma in a fight, suspected concussion. Gerry doesn’t have much of a choice about the hospital, because the EMTs aren’t taking no for an answer. And then, and then, they go looking for a skull fracture, and what they found instead was—
And then, a phone call. And crying. And then, she hangs up. And then, she’s just gone. No need to get that weird, twisty look. Really, what was anyone expecting?)
They’ve said everything this man came looking to hear from them, everything they know to say, and—and now, he’s turned the tape recorder off. Say whatever else you like about Gerry, but they’re not stupid enough not to know what that means.
Gerry feels something shrivel inside. It’s not their heart. Their heart’s not in a state that really allows for any further shriveling. It’s just something adjacent, that’s all.
“I…”
He’d been so full of questions all the time they’d been talking, and now, at last, he falters. Maybe he’s like Gertrude, and doesn’t know how to say goodbye to people, doesn’t know how to put into words the simple ‘You’ve given all that you can give.’ Huh, they should have talked to Mum; she could have given lessons, and probably wouldn’t even have charged too much for it. Jon’s got an excuse, Gerry supposes, in that he never had the vinegary pleasure of Mary Keay’s acquaintance. Gertrude’s another story. Gertrude didn’t have that excuse.
(She told them she was my mother, why didn’t that bother me, why didn’t I realize what—)
Gerry looks back up, and he’s looking right at them. Brown eyes owlish behind thick glasses that Herbert and Mon—Julia were kind enough not to break when they grabbed him. That’s kinder than usual for them, and there’s a part of Gerry that has enough energy left to be curious, but the greater part just reminds them that it’s easier not to wonder about anything anymore. Easier not to question what happens, and why.
“I…”
He’s very free with his ‘I’s, and there’s a part of that that grates. But there’s a flitting, antsy tenderness in his eyes that doesn’t grate at all, and Gerry thinks they mirror the nature of the rare jokes he tried to crack when they were talking. Gerry thinks about the moment that’s coming, the moment that always comes one way or another, and they feel a little nauseated, a little more shriveled, a little more old.
Eventually, Jon finds something to say that isn’t just another one of his ‘I’s, though it barely grates any less. He picks at his jeans with his hands, mouth working for a long moment, and what finally comes out is a garbled “S-so… How long… How long have you…”
Gerry grinds their teeth, just a little bit, before they force their jaw loose. Not like they can actually go to a dentist if they actually manage to fuck up their teeth, and Gerry would like not to wind up dead from some sort of brain infection from a broken tooth, thanks. They’ve had enough bad shit happen to their brain for more than one lifetime. Instead, they force something that might pass for a smile onto their face. It feels like the bright and sparkling smiles Mum used to fix to her mouth when she was seething, and Gerry knows their eyes must look just the same way hers did; they’re not sure what else would make Jon flinch like that, especially considering they haven’t even moved since Jon asked that question that isn’t a question, but which Gerry can parse into a demand as clearly as if it was etched into their skin, alongside all the other things that’s been etched into their skin—and Jon’s too, by the looks of him.
It’s not a weapon that’s ever really been made for Gerry. Theoretically, it could have been made for them. Their body might look the way Mum’s would if Mum had ever been stretched on a rack, but their faces, though Gerry’s has always been longer and thinner and gaunter, their faces are constructed roughly the same way, down to their mouth. Their mouths are nearly identical. There’s no reason why the smile that isn’t a smile but is just a little too much of a smile to be a snarl shouldn’t feel like it was made for Gerry’s mouth.
But it feels awkward. It’s always felt awkward, like imposing a shadow over their own flesh. Like raising the dead, and Gerry’s had a little experience of that, though not as much as… as some other people.
It feels like disappearing, and that’s why Gerry still wields the weapon, from time to time.
They smile that smile that makes Jon flinch, just a little bit, and then they soften that smile a little bit, until it’s not a snarl and it’s not a smile and it’s nothing Gerry’s ever had a name for. Bitter. Just bitter.
Gerry hooks their long, matted braid of hair with their right index finger, tries not to cringe at the oil rubbing off on their hands. Once upon a time, yeah, their hair was like this—okay, not like this, but close enough—and they didn’t care much, but they were twelve in that once upon a time, they’re not twelve anymore, and they wish, wish, wish.
Stop. Just stop.
“Do you see this?”
Jon nods cautiously, as if he expects the braid to rear back and try to bite hm.
Gerry smiles crookedly, a real smile this time for its crookedness. “The doctors made me shave off all of my hair before the surgery. It…” This is hard. It shouldn’t be. It’s just hair. It’s hard. “They didn’t let me start growing it back for a while. The hunters,” they say conversationally, “haven’t let me have anything sharp since I tried to stab the old man.”
Gerry lets that one sink in.
And they watch as it sinks, sinks, sinks into Jon, watch his face sort of fold in on itself like a piece of paper being crumpled by a giant hand. Then, he nods, as if deciding something to himself. Gerry can’t say they much like that. When Gertrude was deciding something to herself without telling Gerry what it was, it usually resulted in the two of them, or just Gerry by themselves, doing something that even now prances in the background landscape of Gerry’s nightmares, close to the vanishing point but inching closer and closer with each passing night. When it was Mum, it usually ended in her calling Gerry to make sure all the doors and windows were locked and to get the fishing wire and the marker pens and come take a seat with her and roll up their sleeves. With the hunters, screaming. Just… screaming. Sometimes Gerry’s. Unfortunately, more often somebody else’s.
“Alright.”
And he’s got a tone like he’s deciding something to himself, which is frankly even worse. When Mum got a tone like that, the thing she did right afterwards was usually tell Gerry to go look outside and see if there was anyone out there who looked like a cop or anyone else who might come looking for Mary Keay and Child in the dead of hell o’clock in the morning. When Gerry used to get a tone like that, they pretty much invariably went diving up to their necks in blood and piss and ‘what the hell is that?’ for something that never, ever worked out the way they wanted it to.
Jon looks like the sort of person who might be a little more sensible than that. He’s a supremely mousy-looking man, and being able to look mousy in an eye-meltingly bright neon tie-dye shirt (Gerry’s not against the colors on principle, but they clash so badly it makes Gerry wish they had paint on them so they could paint over the yellow bits, at least) is… some kind of achievement, though Gerry doesn’t quite know which kind, and it might not be the kind of achievement you’d write home to your folks about. Mousy-looking men are supposed to be sensible, right?
Then again, he came here trying to get information on the Unknowing without any kind of backup, let alone someone to help him try and fend off kidnapping attempts. So maybe not so sensible after all. Gerry can hope, though. And hope can go to exactly the same place it usually goes when it’s Gerry hoping.
Trying to get a lead on hope, Jon nods meaningfully towards the door. “They… You know, they left a while ago.”
Gerry feels like their mouth is full of broken glass. They don’t want to swallow. They want to swallow it all in one gulp, and at last feel something proportionate to what they should be feeling. “They do that,” and if they don’t actually sound like they’ve got a mouth full of broken glass, it still feels like there’s some shards stuck in their windpipe.
“How long do you think they’ll be gone?”
“Dunno. Could be hours. Could be days.”
And in that time, Jon’s free to just… just drift off, if it pleases him to do so, and it should. That’s… that really is unusually kind of them, people who get brought to Gerry aren’t ever that lucky, but when Gerry thinks about it, as far-gone as Herbert and Julia are, it’s possible they’re not so far-gone as to refuse to recognize what a bad thing a regime change would be for them.
Jon should go. He should really, really go, because if they come back frustrated, they might not remember why a regime change is such a bad thing for them.
Jon should go. He should do what no one else who’s been brought to Gerry was ever allowed to do, take the freedom Gerry never found the right words to buy for any of the others, and go home.
Jon should go.
Jon isn’t going.
Jon’s still looking at Gerry, and that restless tenderness is rippling at the corners of his eyes again. It doesn’t grate. It still doesn’t grate. It feels like something to fall into instead.
“Do you… want to stay here?”
It doesn’t feel like broken glass anymore. It feels like broken glass and rusty wire. “I don’t think I’ve really got a choice, here.” Gerry’s never had much of a choice about anything. They really would have thought Jon would have figured that out from everything they told him. Maybe the eldritch color wheel pushed that out of his head. Gerry can see how that might do it.
Not quite looking at Gerry anymore, which is new, because the whole time, Jon was either staring straight at Gerry or aggressively looking somewhere else, he never not quite looked at Gerry the whole time, Jon shrugs his tie-dye-clad shoulders. Tone kind of avoiding Gerry too, “You could come with me?”
Gerry laughs, harsh and barking.
What else are they supposed to do in the face of absurdity?
Besides cry or scream, of course.
Jon bristles, not quite so much a mouse as an angry goose. “You could.”
Gerry keeps laughing.
Jon should leave. The fact that Jon isn’t leaving, right now, makes Gerry wonder if they aren’t dreaming, if they haven’t taken a swig of some of the moonshine Herbert brings back from the hills with him sometimes, the really strong moonshine Gerry’s never convinced hasn’t been laced with hallucinogens. He should leave, he should take the chance that no one else ever got and just go, and why should he be dragging Gerry along behind him? None of the others would have, and why should they, not when Gerry could never find the words that would have unlocked the door, would have made the hunters’ eyes clear and the hunger in their mouths recede? Why should any of the others tried to drag Gerry behind them, when they could never do anything but shut their eyes and try and fail to block out the smell of blood?
But then, they stop laughing, because Jon isn’t bristling anymore, but he’s looking at Gerry with something that isn’t tenderness but desperation, cutting and bleeding something that smells like salt instead of copper.
The floor’s still. The floor’s giving way.
Fuck, he’s serious. Fuck.
Gerry revises their assessment of Jon from ‘maybe he’s sensible’ to ‘one-hundred-percent-idiot.’ But…
But.
Gerry looks at Jon in a way they haven’t really before, evaluating. He’s a small man. Not objectively small—Gerry’s seen Jon standing up, and his height’s dead-average, if Gerry’s still any judge of distance from the ground. But he’s still—
Here’s the thing. Some people are taller than they actually are. Take Mum. Mum was tall to start with, and even though Gerry got to be taller than her soon after they turned twelve, that didn’t matter to Gerry. Most times, they never even noticed that they were taller than Mum. Mum was always a giant in their eyes, and the only time she had ever come back down to earth, the only time Gerry had ever been able to look at her and see her for the size she actually was was when—
They still smell it, sometimes. Sometimes, they smell it so strongly that their stomach revolts and, if the phantom smell comes in conjunction with literally anything else, they’ll be throwing up on somebody’s shoes and trying to pass it off as too much vodka again. (Gerry didn’t always drink as much as they do now. The hunters are amenable to it, though, and Gerry needs… ‘Drink to forget’ is such a stupid phrase; Gerry’s never forgotten anything just from drinking, and no, they don’t want to hear anyone tell them that there might be a reason for that that doesn’t have a thing to do with the booze. But drinking to put things out of mind for the moment, yeah, that works.) Gerry doesn’t really want to throw up on Jon’s shoes. Jon hasn’t done anything to deserve it. They’ll stop thinking about it, now.
Gertrude was taller than she actually was, too (God, Gerry can’t even imagine Gertrude in the stillness of death). Like Jon, Gertrude was dead-average in terms of objective height, but she’d been a giant, too. And this was how Gerry had known that the man they’d almost, almost… that the man that they’d thought was Leitner hadn’t actually been Leitner. Leitner would never have been so small as that gray little man had been, bleeding on the ground in front of them. It wasn’t Leitner, it just couldn’t have been.
(Gerry still tells themselves sometime that if it really had been Leitner, they wouldn’t have stopped. They think that, some days. Some days, they’re not nearly as certain.)
Jon is not Mum, and he is not Gertrude, and he is not Leitner, the real Leitner. His objective height is dead-average and when Gerry looks at him, he’s just so small. The vessel of power beyond their ken, and yet he’s still so small. He holds himself like a man who barely knows what power is. Gerry wouldn’t be surprised if he really does barely know what power is, considering all the things they had to explain to him over the past couple of hours. He definitely doesn’t understand the sort of power the hunters have, beyond the power to crack bone and rend flesh.
(Gerry understands it, though. Gerry was brought up to understand just what power is, though sometimes they think Mum’s ideas regarding power might have been just a little sideways. But that’s another story, and Gerry doesn’t want to think about the inexorability of death any more than they have to—they already have to think about it enough.)
Jon’s just so small, and he’s trying to hold the door open and beckon for Gerry to follow after him, and it all seems so impossible, and it would all seem so wonderful, except if Gerry does follow after them, and they do get away, all their hopes now rest on this small, mousy man not bartering their location in exchange for his safety the moment the hunters find him…
Except that isn’t right.
Gerry feels a little sick again. (They feel sick so much, they don’t know why they bother distinguishing the moments anymore, but they do, they always do, cataloguing the moments as if they’re waiting for something to catalogue them for.) They push past it and think, or maybe they’re thinking while still in the middle of it. It doesn’t matter. The conditions in which Gerry think rarely matters.
If the hunters catch up to them… No, when the hunters catch up to them, Gerry doesn’t think that they, personally, are going to be in too much danger, beyond the obvious threat of getting kidnapped again. They haven’t always been the most well-liked of captives—they were still more than a little weak on that morning in the park when Julia and Herbert snatched them, and the hunters thought they were getting something with a considerably different temperament than what Gerry ultimately revealed to them, only for all illusions to be smashed to a hundred thousand bleeding pieces when Gerry grabbed that dull steak knife and went for Herbert’s left armpit—but the hunters place a high value on the treasure troves of knowledge in Gerry’s head. A high enough value that even when they’ve pissed the hunters off badly enough to try their tempers, neither Herbert nor Julia, no matter how pissed off they are, have ever done anything permanent to Gerry, not even break their teeth with a poorly- or well-aimed punch. And yeah, there’s a lot you can do to someone without doing anything permanent, but they’ve never done anything to Gerry that would make Gerry want to jump out a high window, so… not that bad, Gerry guesses?
When the hunters catch up to them, they’ll do what they have to to get Gerry back, do what they have to to keep Gerry on-hand and… persuade them not to try and run off again, and things will just go on the way they have for Gerry doesn’t even count anymore, it’s better when they don’t count. And Jon, who deprived them of their walking, talking monster manual for however it takes for the hunters to catch up…
Bile builds up in Gerry’s throat again, laced with broken glass and rusty wire and all the other things they’ve imagined swallowing over the years. But Jon’s been nice to them, nicer than… than… They don’t have a metric for it.
And when the hunters catch up to him, if they haven’t already grabbed Gerry, they’ll do whatever they have to do to get what they need out of him, and then…
They won’t forgive the insult.
They’ll just kill him.
Gerry tells Jon that. If he hasn’t figured it out on his own, he needs someone else to tell him that. He needs to know just who he’s trying to cross, needs to know just what he’s doing by trying to hold a door open for Gerry to walk out of behind him, needs to know just what bear trap he’s trying to put his foot in, needs to know, needs to know, needs to know—
Jon squares his jaw mulishly. “That’s fine.”
“The hell?!” And they’re not laughing now, but screeching, and it feels so fucking good to screech at someone who isn’t going to reply to it by laughing themselves, even though they can hear Mum muttering about control lost and never found again. “No, it’s not fine!”
But Jon, Jon who flinched at Gerry’s glittery little not-smile, doesn’t flinch when Gerry screams at the top of their lungs at them. “It’s fine. I’ve got—“
“What?! What have you got?”
And then, Jon smiles, and it’s a little like the way Gerry would imagine God smiling, if the God worshipped in the churches they walked by as a kid actually existed, and the God they knew wasn’t an unknowable eye god that likes to crawl around in their head sometimes and give them tools that, yeah, have come in handy loads of times, tools that have saved Gerry’s life more than once, but the price for it’s been…
Anyway, Jon’s smiling. It’s not a bad smile. Gerry’s known a lot of bad smiles, and this one is pretty nice, as smiles go. Gerry’s hackles are still up, but what he says next put them down completely. Jon smiles at Gerry, and says, almost triumphantly, “I have a car.”
Gerry opens their mouth. Then closes it.
They… don’t actually want to stay here, in this dingy hotel room that stinks of the sweat of a thousand nervous fugitives, you know. They don’t actually want to go wherever the hunters decide the hunting is best next, you know. Gerry doesn’t give a whole lot of thought to what they do want—never been much point to that—but they have spent a lot of time in their life thinking a lot about what they don’t want, and they don’t want this. It’s just that it’s been easier to…
Nope.
Gerry springs to their feet, grabs the bag they never bother to unpack wherever the hunters take them. When somebody wants to make decisions that are probably gonna end horribly, one way or another, it’s better not to spend too long stewing.
“Okay.” They really feel like they’re jumping out a high window now, but it also feels like Jon’s set out a trampoline for them to land on, and that’s… new. Gerry isn’t sure how they feel about it, but it is something new. “But if we’re gonna go, we’ve got to go. If you don’t want them catching up to us, we’ve got to get on a plane as soon as we can.”
“I already have a ticket,” Jon says, tossing off a shrug as he heads for the door. “We’ll get you one; you can use my phone.”
Gerry laughs again as he opens the door and the fresh air hits their face, sweeter than any perfume Mum ever wore. But it’s a giddy laugh, this time, and they think they might actually be smiling a smile that isn’t anything like a knife. It definitely hurts less than those smiles usually do. It doesn’t hurt at all, and maybe the pain will wait a little while before it comes back.