Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A low groan echoed out into the hall behind them as Jon and Martin slowly pushed open another set of large double doors. The touch of thick wood and iron felt just as cold beneath their hands as it had for the last dozen or so times they had carried out this same task. The doors swung open, carried now by the momentum of their own weight, to reveal a large chamber carved from stone.

Its design was reminiscent of a library, with unmarked volumes lining shelves which filled any bit of wall that wasn’t made of the large, floor to ceiling windows that allowed for an all-encompassing view of the world outside.

 It was ever so slightly larger than the rooms they had encountered before it. They seemed to grow somewhat with every level they ascended, structured impossibly given the outward appearance of the Panopticon tower implied consistency in size all the way up. Something that was consistent, however, was the fact that this room and every room before it was completely unoccupied.

“Empty again,” Martin groused, brushing away nonexistent dust from his hands. “How many rooms does this place have?”

“I swear this was supposed to be the top,” Jon mused, though he realized that judging the height of the tower from how it looked from the outside seemed to be less and less of an accurate gauge. “If we have to climb another set of stairs, I might just lose my mind.”

Jon wasn’t able to See much inside the Panopticon. He was still able to Know things and he knew he wasn’t completely cut off from the Eye like he had been at the Upton House, but anything surrounding Elias was a void for him. He and Martin had to go searching for their former employer the old-fashioned way and even with a lack of physical exhaustion, climbing staircase after staircase only to find more empty floors was beginning to weigh on them.

It didn’t help that they traversing it by themselves. Of course, they had traveled through much of the apocalypse with only each other for company and support, and Jon would trust his life with Martin a thousand times over. However, this was very clearly the final stretch of their journey, and right about now he was beginning to wish for a good climactic, storybook moment where the allies would swoop in to help the protagonists defeat the villain.

It was good that Basira had managed to draw Daisy out of her Hunt-drunk haze and force a little bit of humanity back into her. And truly, Jon was very grateful that they had gone off in search of Melanie and Georgie to make sure they were safe while Jon and Martin had continued on to the Panopticon. He could also respect, in some ways, Salesa’s desire to stay out of things and Annabelle would certainly be one of his last choices for genuine assistance.

But he wouldn’t lie and say that any one of them wouldn’t be a good asset to have in a fight.

Martin took a few steps into the room and slowly spun around, searching for anything that might help them track down Elias or let them know if they were getting any closer.

“Why do I get the feeling that we’re just walking into a trap.”

“We likely are,” Jon said as he followed Martin into the chamber. He ducked his head when Martin sent him a look that told him he was unamused. “Sorry, sorry.”

“A vote of confidence would be nice,” Martin told him before letting his tone shift to a playfully mocking rendition of Jon’s own. “Of course not, Martin. We’re perfectly safe. I have everything under control.”

“You want me to lie to you?” Jon questioned, raising a brow.

“No! I just…” Martin huffed and took a few steps towards Jon, reaching out for an embrace that Jon was more than happy to return. Jon tucked his face into the curve of Martin’s throat and heard him sigh. “Promise me something.” Jon let out a noncommittal noise to show he was listening. “Don’t do anything stupid when we find him.”

“Martin-”

“Don’t try and argue with me,” Martin pulled back to properly look at Jon’s face, though they kept ahold of one another. “I get it, there’s a lot on the line here. It’s not going to be easy going against Elias…Jonah…whatever he calls himself.”

“Probably His Majesty at this point,” Jon teased with a wry smile. Another unamused look from Martin forced the smile to drop. “Sorry.”

“You have a particularly nasty streak of putting yourself in danger for others and I just…I can’t lose you, Jon. I can’t…” Martin’s expression twisted into something that made Jon’s heart ache. “It’s selfish but I don’t want to be alone again.”

“It’s not selfish and you won’t be,” Jon swore, reaching up with both hands to cradle Martin’s face. “Not if I have a say in the matter.”

“Promise you’ll do everything you can to not die,” Martin told him as he reached up to place his own hands over Jon’s.

“Only if you promise the same.”

Martin gave him a small smile and Jon felt, just as he had every time before, that Martin’s smile could very well be the answer to all of his problems. He stood on his toes to press their foreheads together and took a moment to enjoy the contact before they’d inevitably need to separate and continue on through the never-ending tower.

“Oh, what a touching moment.”

Jon’s head jerked back and he mourned the separation as he and Martin pulled away from one another to get a proper look at the source of the interruption.

Of course.

Elias had joined the party.

Jon wasn’t sure where he had come from and he wasn’t a huge fan of the fact that he hadn’t sensed him enter the room. He had no idea how long he had been there…watching.

As it turned out, Jon’s earlier joke about Elias using royal titles was probably less of a joke and more of a reality. The man rested upon a raised throne carved from the same dark stone that made up the rest of the room, and where had the throne come from because it certainly hadn’t been there when they first entered. Black silk robes adorned with golden eyes enveloped his form, draping over him like an oil slick. Crystals and fine metal laced around his fingers and hands and throat in a superfluous display of wealth and power, though they all paled in comparison to the crown of spiked gold that rested atop his head.

He sat with one leg slung carelessly over an arm of the throne while he leaned back and propped his face up with the opposite arm, resting his cheek against his fist as he gazed at Martin and Jon with a haughty, heavy-lidded stare.

Martin took a step forward, placing himself between Jon and Elias and god why was Martin the one protecting him? Jon wanted Martin gone from this room, far away from Elias and tucked away somewhere safe but instead he was placing himself between Jon and something that could very well be close to a deity at this point.

Elias grinned, malicious and smug, as he observed the protective display.

“I hate to ruin it, I really do, but my Archivist and I need to have a quick chat.”

Jon’s eyes twitched as a sense of disconnected ire flashed through his mind.

What was that?

The displeasure felt foreign, like he had been having a conversation with someone who told him they were upset and he recognized the emotion but did not consider it his own. Did his surprise cause him to accidentally look into Martin’s mind and see his emotions, mistaking them for his own? 

Jon didn’t have very long to contemplate the possibility before Elias snapped his fingers and he felt Martin’s presence swiftly leave his side as some invisible force sent him flying back through the large double doors they had entered through.

“Martin!” Jon shouted, hand uselessly outstretched as if he could call him back.

Martin landed on the floor just past the entrance but thankfully seemed uninjured, quickly stumbling back onto his feet. Though as he began to make his way back towards the chamber, the doors swung shut in front of him, likely closed by the same force that had sent him flying back. Jon watched as his view of Martin was cut off and tried not to let the panic of not being able to see him overtake his senses.

“Elias, you bastard!” Martin’s angry voice filtered in from the other side, muffled by the thick wood of the doors. “Let me in and face me like a man!”

“Apologies, Martin,” Elias called out, tone wholly unapologetic. “I know you’re not all too fond of being alone anymore but this is a matter best settled between me and my Archivist.”

There it was again.

A nagging twinge of irritation in Jon’s brain at hearing Elias…at hearing Jonah’s possessive tone and claim of him. A part of him rationalized the annoyance, considered it normal to feel such a way. He did not belong to Jonah, not to the man who had manipulated and deceived him and caused him to lose so much. How dare he claim ownership of the Archivist.

But another part of him recognized that these feelings were not entirely his own.

He did not belong to Jonah.

He belonged to the Eye.

The Archivist belonged to the Eye and the Eye was displeased and offended to hear someone else so brashly claim that which did not belong to them.

Jon did not feel anger or fear from the knowledge that he belonged to the Watcher. Perhaps he should have but instead he felt a strange sense of comfort and security in the idea that he was the Eye’s beloved Archivist, cherished and protected. As he considered this, a new swell of satisfaction bloomed in his mind which he now recognized as his patron’s contented emotions.

“I am not your Archivist, Jonah,” Jon maintained as he spun back to face his former boss, more detached warmth spreading through his mind from the declaration. “If I were you, I’d watch what you say lest you anger the one you claim to serve.”

“Oh, please,” Jonah groaned with a roll of his eyes. “I molded you into what you are, Jon. The Archivist is practically a servant to me.”

Another twinge of displeasure.

“You claim too much power and authority,” Jon warned, prompting a scoff from Jonah. “A servant does not assume itself to be more than just that.”

“The Eye could not ask for a better servant. I reshaped the world for it. I set out a banquet of fear for it to observe and feast upon.” Jonah swung his leg down to plant his feet firmly on the ground as he spread his arms wide in a grand gesture. His eyes shone with manic pride. “No one else has accomplished such a feat. No one else understood what caused their string of failures. Only I was able to complete a ritual and I deserve the crown it has granted me.”

“That’s exactly the problem, we’ve never completed a ritual before and as it turns out, it’s actually not a good thing. It only seems successful now but its rewards are finite, even for the Entities.” Jon took a few steps forward, careful in his approach when he noticed Jonah tracking his movements. “An avatar of the End determined that the pool of fear that can be generated in each domain is limited. Eventually they’re going to have to take victims from different domains to refresh the pool.”

“So?” Jonah rose from his throne and began to make his way down towards Jon with lazy strides. “Let them squabble over resources. The Eye feeds off the collective fear observed in every domain so it won’t be affected.”

“That’s not the only problem,” Jon reasoned. “Banks believes that no new humans are being created or born and considering the End is still doing what it does best, then people are being removed from a closed system. Eventually the domain of death will collect the victims from every other domain and there will be none left.” Jonah stopped less than a foot away from him and Jon swallowed back the tightness in his throat. “The world will be empty and with no one around to feel fear...”

Jon felt a strike of suddenly realized panic lance through his mind as his patron, for the first time, considered the possibility of its own nonexistence. An entity of fear…experiencing fear. Jon would have laughed if the moment had allowed for it.

“A simple fix,” Jonah claimed, waving his hand as if he were batting away a bothersome gnat. “We’ll…figure out how to create new cohorts or…” He shrugged and gave a grin. “The End’s domain just…won’t be allowed any new victims.”

“There’s no way you can just cut them off,” Jon argued. “Even if you had the power to do that, it’d likely start a war. The Slaughter and the Hunt would certainly be in favor but that doesn’t fix anything.”

“I’ll find a solution,” Jonah asserted, his eyes narrowing dangerously as Jon continued to argue with him.

“Face it.” Jon ignored the warning stare he was receiving and pressed on, still holding out hope that he could reason with him. If Jonah was so intent on claiming the Archivist as his own then maybe there was a possibility that he’d actually listen to him. “There is no balance in this new reality. There was balance before, or at least something we could manage to keep stable. The only option is to reverse the ritual and-”

“No!” Jon flinched, startled by the sudden wrath in Jonah’s voice. Whereas before he had been conversing with arrogant nonchalance lacing his tone and demeanor, now there was a tension in his form. He looked like more like a wounded animal that had been backed into a corner than the predator he seemed to want to be. “I have power here, true power. I will not give that up just because of some other avatar’s half-baked theories.”

The irritation was back in Jon’s mind, compelling him to speak and defend.

“It is not your power.” Jon reminded him. “The Eye will not thrive here. You’d be sacrificing your patron for a limited era of rule over a reality that is slowly dying. You need to reverse the-”

“Never!”

There was a shift in Jon’s mind. An evaluation, followed by a consideration, ultimately leading to a decision and an offer. Suddenly a new option was revealed to him, like a chapter selection in a video game that you could only choose once you had completed the side quests first. Those thoughts that he knew were not his own swiftly returned, hopeful for a response.

The Eye, dissatisfied and merciless, wished to make a deal with him.

His patron hid nothing from its Archivist, completely transparent about what would happen if he accepted. As Jonah stood before him, paranoid and seething, promises of pain and everlasting servitude flooded Jon’s senses. But alongside them were promises of knowledge, of stability, of…of the safety of his Anchor.

Martin was going to kill him for this.

“Ceaseless Watcher…”

Jonah’s face fell, realization dawning in his features as Jon’s voice rang out with intention. He was not the only one with power in this new world and he certainly wasn’t the only one willing to use it.

“No,” Jonah ground out.

“Turn your gaze upon this False God,” Jon’s lip curled into a sneer. “This former servant who has encroached upon your domain.”

“Stop.”

“Know that he has deceived you and played the role of king and ruler of a world which should be yours and yours alone.”

“I haven’t…I-I wouldn’t-” Jonah stuttered, an impulsive plea that was dragged from his throat by some latent instinct for self-preservation.

“He who has hidden and lied and trapped and isolated and bled and killed and deceived for only his benefit.”

“You can’t do this!” The righteous anger had returned but this time, Jon did not flinch.

“Know that his eyes have witnessed much but that does not mean that the vessel must remain. Know that a more faithful servant will remain in his place, loyal and subservient to you. Know that your Archivist entreats you to close the door on this new world and open the door back to the old, back to an era of balance where fear thrived in perpetuity across a spectrum which you were ever witness to.”

Jonah reached out and grabbed Jon by the folds of his jacket, pulling him in so they were pressed against one another, chest to chest. Jon let himself be dragged, an assured sense of triumph settling over him and silencing any doubt or distress. Jonah could not hurt him, not now. All of the fury and desperation and hostility that burned in his eyes had become pointless.

“I have sacrificed too much for a twitchy little bastard of an archivist to tear it all down!”

Jon smiled, a pitiless thing.

“Ceaseless Watcher, your Archivist is here,” He announced, disgust and disappointment in his gaze as he stared down at Jonah. “Answer his call.”

…

Pain.

Searing, excruciating agony that crawled its way through Jon’s veins and seeped into his bones and filled his lungs and consumed his brain. He felt as though he was being destroyed and reconfigured, all at once killed and reborn. He collapsed to his knees and let out an inhuman scream as his arms fell limp and useless to his sides. There was no stopping this, no action he could take that would curb the torment he was experiencing.

Thoughts and feelings and ideas and knowledge not his own filtered through his fractured mind as his psyche knit itself back together and unraveled simultaneously. Words of assurance and comfort were whispered into his ears, clear and decipherable even amidst the screams that echoed through the chamber.

A necessary trial for your metamorphosis.

The voices declared.

It will be brief. It will be temporary.

They promised.

You will be perfect, my little Archivist.

It crooned, proud and possessive.

Jon knew, even with the suffering-induced haze that clouded his mind, that in the past he would always close his eyes during moments of pain. In this moment, he was not allowed such a reaction. His eyes remained wide open, watchful and observant as they drank in the sight that unfolded before him.

Jonah had stumbled back a few feet away and fallen to his knees as well, though he wasn’t screaming in pain. He was muttering. Panicked words of denial mixed with anger mixed with pleading tumbled from his mouth as he stared down at his hands. Jon could still see, even with the distance between them, that his hands were disappearing…disintegrating.

Bit by bit his skin and flesh flaked away and floated up into the air, kicked up like the dust of crumbled pages from an ancient tome. The fingers went first, then the hand, followed by the wrist and the arms and the legs until it crept up his torso and towards his throat and face and…

Oh, his face.

The delicious expression of unadulterated fear on his face was enough to almost make Jon forget about the pain.

For just a moment, Jon and Jonah met each other’s gazes as the decay crept closer and closer to the edges of Jonah’s eyes. Jon thought he could almost make out a melancholy acceptance in their depths before the flesh and bone around them were consumed and they dropped to the floor, no longer supported by the sockets of a skull.

Jon dropped as well, the pain and agony slowly ebbing away to leave him feeling exhausted and empty. He slumped to the floor, cold stone pressing against his cheek as he fought to keep his eyes open. But he was so tired and his eyes had been open for so long. He could rest them for just a moment, his patron would allow it.

He registered the sound of a door opening in the distance and a familiar voice calling out his name, desperation and concern lacing its tone. The voice meant safety and comfort and love and it wrapped Jon in a cocoon of warmth, anchoring him in place. The voice meant that he was secure now and could drift off in peace, sinking deeper and deeper into oblivion.

There was much work to be done, and the Archivist needed rest.

Chapter Text

Having to listen to Jon’s screams from the other side of the door nearly made Martin lose it. Helpless and unable to stop whatever was causing him to make such tormented sounds, he was forced to simply wait and breathe and pray to whatever bastard power would hear him. By the time he was able to finally get the doors opened, the screams had already tapered off and he rushed in to find Jon collapsed on the floor, unconscious and alone.

Well, alone save for the pair of disembodied eyes laying on the floor beside him. Martin took one look at those eyes and decided he didn’t need to wonder where Elias had disappeared to. 

He crouched on the floor beside Jon’s unconscious body, calling out his name and forcing back panic when he received no response. As Martin gently pulled at Jon’s body to roll him onto his back, his mind finally registered the metallic scent of blood in the air in the same moment that he saw them.

Eyes.

Eyes everywhere. Crimson circles and arcs of varying sizes, carved deep into any exposed inch of Jon’s skin and as Martin shakily pulled a sleeve higher to expose one of his arms, he realized that they likely covered him everywhere. Blood oozed slowly from the gashes, thick and red, but Martin paid no mind to how it stained his hands as he searched Jon’s throat for a pulse. Relief flooded his heart and mind when he finally felt one, slow but surprisingly strong, and he let out a breath.

Martin let his eyes slip shut for just a moment in an attempt to gain some form of composure and think of what to do next when he felt something shift. His knees had been digging into cold, hard stone but now it suddenly felt as though they were pressing against a threadbare carpet.

Martin’s eyes snapped back open and he choked on a breath.

Across from him was not stone but rather the familiar, rough wood planks that made up the walls of Daisy’s safehouse. The room was silent and Martin let out a small and strangled cry of confusion as he looked around, taking in the undamaged state of the cabin. No broken glass littered the floor and no crawling things masquerading as tea scuttled around in shadowed corners. Gone was the suffocating feeling of false security that had tricked them into staying there for so long before they had finally managed to escape it.

His gaze tore downwards and he let out a breath once he confirmed that Jon was also with him in the cabin, though he was still unconscious and bloody. An assessment of his own form showed that he was wearing his apocalypse gear but when he stumbled to his feet and towards the window, the apocalypse was not what he saw through its dusty glass panes.

Pulling back the curtain revealed a slightly cloudy sky with the sun hung slightly lower to the west, letting him know it was a bit later in the day. The rolling green hills of the Scottish Highlands stretched out before him, undisturbed save for the breeze that rustled the grass.

There were no voyeuristic eyes gazing back at them from above, no domains of fear in the near distance, no evidence of the Change that Jon had been manipulated into creating.

Martin let the curtain fall shut and slowly turned to look back at Jon who, save for the shallow rise and fall of his chest, seemed altogether dead to the world.

“Jon,” He asked aloud to fill the quiet space of the room, fully aware that he’d receive no response. “What did you do?”

Martin drew in a deep breath, knelt back down to reaffirm that Jon had a pulse, and took a moment to collect himself. The situation had changed and he didn’t have all of the details but he certainly couldn’t just stand around doing nothing simply because he was confused.

So, Martin moved, he acted.

It was almost like he knew what he needed to do, knew what things would best help Jon even if they went against his instincts. Martin may have been an unwitting servant of the Eye but he’d never been allotted any sort of powers or abilities, certainly nothing anywhere close to what Jon was able to do. The Lonely allowed him to disappear as he pleased but that was no longer an Entity he wished to borrow any sort of power from.

It wasn’t as though he was able to know everything, just things relevant to caring for Jon. They were like little instincts that he somehow understood were being given to him like orders, whispered into his ears by silent voices. 

Martin knew he shouldn’t try to bring Jon to the hospital. They wouldn’t be able to do anything for him and he wasn’t in any real danger of succumbing to blood loss or any other medical emergency. Jon was breathing and at least had a pulse this time around so hopefully they wouldn’t need to call up Oliver to draw him out of another weird death coma. 

Martin knew he could wipe away the blood from his wounds, clean and tend to the angry red cuts as they healed over, but he should avoid covering them with gauze or bandages. They should be left exposed as much as possible, allowed to breathe and to see.

Martin knew that Jon would wake up soon, he just needed his rest. Martin tried to ignore how that knowledge seemed to be whispered with an edge of soft reassurance to it, like the silent voices were trying to offer him comfort.

He went through the motions of selfcare that he would do for himself on days where just getting out of bed was a herculean effort. He moved to the bathroom to start running a bath, always mindful of keeping Jon’s body within sight through the open door.

Martin took a moment to marvel, just as he had at Upton House, at the strange luxury of being able to feel warm water caress his skin again. The exhaustion and hunger weren’t hitting him as hard as they had when they encountered Salesa, but he could still recognize that those human responses had returned to him again, comfortably taking root.

He carefully stripped Jon of his apocalypse clothes, trying his best to rationalize the lack of consent involved with undressing an unconscious body. It wasn’t as if it was anything he hadn’t seen before. There was nothing that, during their interim period of peace before the Change, Jon hadn’t explicitly and happily allowed him to see or touch or…it was just strange when Jon wasn’t awake and able to give permission.

Martin carried on, lifting Jon in a bridal carry and lowering him into the bath. Rust-colored swirls filled the water as Martin gently wiped the blood and dirt from his skin with a washcloth. He glanced up occasionally to see if Jon’s face ever twisted into a grimace of pain or discomfort, but it never shifted from his expression of simple rest. Martin could only hope his condition wasn’t anything similar to locked-in syndrome.

Once Jon seemed sufficiently clean, Martin drained the tub and patted him dry. Pressing the towel down and lifting it up thankfully left very little bloody residue on the cloth. He carefully dressed Jon in a set of soft flannels and set him up to rest on the bed, maneuvering the clothes and the blankets in ways that allowed for most of the eyes in his skin to…see.

Martin drew in another breath, held it, and released it.

He reached down to check Jon’s pulse again and gently brushed a graying strand of hair to the side before he moved to refill the tub and wipe away his own apocalypse grime. Martin was properly exhausted by the time he had cleaned up, gotten dressed, and given up on trying to clean the fresh blood stains they had left on Daisy’s carpet. He collapsed into bed beside Jon and wondered, not for the first time, if perhaps he was a little too accustomed to what his life had become.

Martin probably should have given more of a reaction beyond a curious hum when he awoke the next morning to see glowing green eyes floating around Jon like a swarm of bees, but in his defense, it was quite early and it certainly wasn’t the strangest thing he had seen in recent times.

He reacted a bit more when the eyes noticed he had woken up and began to swarm him as well, more of them manifesting out of thin air to replace the ones that had left Jon’s side. Martin tensed and raised a hand that he just as quickly dropped, deciding he didn’t want to find out what would happen if he swatted at one of them. Instead he slowly eased out of bed, careful not to jostle Jon as he also didn’t wish to find out what would happen if he disturbed the thing the eyes were so clearly here for.

Martin hesitated, wondering if he should leave the room, but then decided he hated the idea of leaving Jon alone with them more than he feared their new guests. To be fair, they hadn’t hurt him or Jon yet, and they didn’t do much when he reached over to check Jon’s pulse.

Obviously, they were connected to the Eye, but patron or not, the gashes that covered Jon’s body clearly said that not every gift of the Ceaseless Watcher would be a good one.

After a few more minutes of observation, Martin decided they didn’t seem to be a threat. They did little more than hover around Jon, surveying the marks carved into his skin and the subtle way his eyes shifted beneath his eyelids. Occasionally one or two would flit over to where Martin stood, drift close and judge him with their equivalent of a narrowed stare, before darting back over to Jon.

Martin decided Jon was sufficiently…watched over, and felt comfortable leaving the bedroom in favor of the kitchen. The clock he passed in the living room told him it was already early afternoon so he should probably make something to eat but he hadn’t had a cup of tea since their stay at the Upton House. That experience had been tinged with paranoia over Annabelle trying to drug them so he intended to enjoy this cup to the best of his ability, even despite the circumstances.

He had just barely managed to strike a match to light the burner when a knock sounded at the door, startling him into dropping it into the wet sink. He froze, watching as smoke rose from the extinguished match head, and listened for any other sounds. Who the hell would be knocking at their door? No one knew they were here, not even the people he briefly interacted with from the village knew the exact location of the safehouse.

He supposed it could be a passing traveler, stopping to ask for directions or a place to charge their phone, but then the knocks came again. They could hardly be considered polite knocks, violent and insistent would be a more accurate description, and Martin began to question the possibility of it being some passive wanderer.

There was no good view of the front entryway from any window so Martin couldn’t see who it was, and the knocking had become so unrelenting that he doubted he could just pretend no one was home to answer the door.

Slowly and quietly he reached down and opened the cabinet, pulling out a sauce pan that he knew was stored inside. Makeshift weapon in hand and tucked behind his back in case it was an innocent visitor, Martin made his way towards the door. The knocking was coming without pause at this point. For a brief moment as he gripped the handle, he wondered if it would be Helen on the other side. When he finally opened the door, he wondered if he was relieved or disappointed that it was not.

“Basira?”

Basira dropped her fist with a huff, clearly displeased that she had to knock at the door for so long before receiving an answer. Daisy stood just behind her and immediately shouldered her way into the house once the door was opened. She snatched the pan from Martin’s hand as she passed and tossed it on the couch. Basira followed her in before Martin had a chance to say anything more.

“What did you do?” Basira questioned as Martin shut the door behind all of them.

“W-what?” Martin stuttered, mind reeling as it attempted to catch up with what had happened. “I uh, I don’t…”

“Where is he?” Basira aske as she craned her neck around, scanning the immediate area.

Daisy was silently pacing the living room, stopping every so often to pick up a pillow from the couch or a mug from the kitchen before replacing it to continue her patrol.

“Hey, woah just wait a minute,” Martin pleaded.

Surprisingly, Daisy actually stopped her pacing. However, the calculating gaze that she and Basira now directed at Martin made him wish that her attention was back on the mug in the kitchen.

“Martin, everything’s been reset,” Basira stressed as she took hold of Martin’s shoulders to center his attention on her. “One minute the apocalypse is happening and then woosh, everything back to normal.”

“Normal how?” Martin questioned, having not seen anything of the world past their view through the cabin windows.

“It’s like nothing ever happened,” Basira explained with a bewildered shrug as she released him. “Daisy and I had found Melanie and Georgie and we were all traveling together but then…it was like the world tilted and I blacked out for a second and suddenly I was back in London, alone.” She took a phone out of her pocket and waved it in the air. “I was still covered in blood and wearing the same clothes but when I checked my phone it said it was the same day as when everything went to shit.”

“Same with us,” Martin shared, noting how Basira seemed relieved to hear it. “I closed my eyes for a second and then we were back here.”

“I checked the news reports and saw they closed the investigation on the Magnus Institute.” She told him as Daisy resumed her pacing in the background, though it was less erratic than it had been before. “Labeled it a terror attack and reported the two individuals behind it had been found dead.”

“Trevor and Julia?” Martin checked, receiving an affirmative nod from Basira in response.

“Aside from that, just a handful of injured staff. No word on Elias but if he was able to walk out of holding then he probably had enough dirt on people to have them just throw out the case.” She shrugged again and shook her head. “No one’s talking about an apocalypse or fear domains or anything. I tried calling you but…”

“No signal here,” Martin murmured as the realization set in that Basira and Daisy had driven around ten hours up to the safehouse just because they hadn’t been able to reach him over the phone.

“I called Georgie and Melanie on the drive up here. They’re both back in Georgie’s flat and they remember everything too.” Basira gestured towards her partner. “Daisy woke up in the woods somewhere-”

“Sorry, what?”

“I went full Hunter during the attack and then booked it so I hopefully wouldn’t hurt anyone else,” Daisy growled defensively, the first thing she had said since their arrival. “I was hunting in the area around my dumpsite trying to keep myself distracted when the Change happened.”

“H-how…how are you feeling now?” Martin checked, memories resurfacing in his mind of the monstrous form she had taken during the apocalypse before Basira had managed to talk her down.

Daisy stopped pacing again and stood still for a moment, expression set in a thoughtful frown as if she hadn’t taken a moment to think about how she felt until Martin had asked. Her eyes narrowed and she stared at a corner of the room, gaze unfocused and unseeing.

“Still…” She rolled her shoulders, neck cracking as the joints settled. Something was clearly trying to seep in and take root, but rather than having it weigh her down, Daisy looked as though she was shrugging it on like an old, familiar jacket. “Still figuring that out.”

“I…don’t know if I want you near Jon,” Martin confessed, flinching when Daisy’s gaze sharpened once more and fixed on him.

“I’m trying to be polite here. Notice how I’ve been waiting patiently and not walking around my own safehouse,” She ground out, spreading her arms wide to gesture at the room around her before she hooked a thumb back in the direction of the bedroom. “I can smell him just fine. I know he’s in the bedroom.” Her hands dropped and she looked Martin up and down as she took a step forward, prompting him to take a step back. “You’re not exactly much of a fight but we’re not enemies, at least we don’t need to be so long as you stay reasonable.”

Martin suddenly realized why Daisy had him so on edge. She was an intimidating figure, sure, and he hadn’t always felt the most comfortable around her in the past but this was…

The pacing, the touching, the defensive attitude. This was a predator returning to their territory only to find it had been invaded by trespassers. They had entered her space, left their scent and evidence of their presence, and now Martin had the gall to try and tell her what she could and couldn’t do there?

Martin drew in a breath and his hand twitched, fingers instinctively reaching out to confirm the existence of a pulse to help calm his own racing heart. Daisy’s eyes tracked the movement and Martin repressed the urge to run.

She’d probably like it if he tried to run.

“Martin, we don’t want to hurt him,” Basira promised, cutting through the tense atmosphere. He glanced over to see a genuine expression of worry on her face. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened and we’re willing to bet it had something to do with him. Has he explained anything to you?”

Martin blinked and huffed out a strangled laugh. Basira’s concerned frown deepened and she shared a look with Daisy. He chose not to respond verbally or even acknowledge the expressions on their faces that clearly said they believed he may have lost it. Instead Martin began walking towards the bedroom. After a moment he heard footsteps following behind him and by the time he had entered the room, Daisy and Basira were hovering right by his side.

He continued his silence, deciding to show rather than tell as he swept his arm out in the direction of the bed. The gesture directed all attention to the form lying upon it, one covered in slowly healing lacerations and surrounded by floating luminescent eyes.

“What the fuck,” Daisy choked out as she quickly reached under her jacket to pull out a pistol.

“What the hell are those things?” Basira asked, frightened confusion in her voice as her partner aimed at the area where the cluster of eyes was the densest.

“Daisy,” Martin begged as the eyes began to dart about erratically, the sound of static filling the air. “Daisy, lower your gun.”

“Martin.”

“I-I know, I know they’re…they’re just here to protect Jon, I think,” Martin speculated.

“Martin, what happened?” Daisy asked, reluctantly lowering her gun.

“I think Jon made a deal.” Martin watched as the eyes seemed to settle now that the weapon was lowered. He wondered if a bullet would even do anything to them before realizing they were likely more concerned that there was a gun pointed anywhere near Jon. “W-we found Elias. I was locked out of the room as soon as we did but I could still…hear what was happening. Elias went power-crazy and Jon kept saying stuff about how the Eye wasn’t happy and how the Change wasn’t good because eventually there’d be no more victims so the Entities would fade.”

“What?” Daisy paused in the process of holstering her weapon, body suddenly tense.

Martin picked out the strange tinge of anxiety in her voice and questioned why it was there, what it was in response to. In the past she had been trying to ignore the call of the Hunt but perhaps the Change had amended her relationship with it. The call was no longer just bloodlust to her, it seemed to be her instinct. The idea of losing her patron had become upsetting rather than reassuring.

“The End was removing victims from a closed system,” Martin went on to explain. “Another, uh, avatar figured that out.”

“How the hell did he get these?” Basira had taken a step forward for a better look, her gaze not on the floating eyes but rather the ghastly wounds covering Jon’s skin.

“Elias was shouting more and getting angrier and then Jon sort of just went…silent for a bit?” Martin recalled. “Then when he started speaking again, he was using the same voice he’d use whenever he asked the Eye to kill the monsters we ran into. He said something about…the false God and the loyal Archivist a-and then…” Martin swallowed past the tightness in his throat, a telltale sign that he was in danger of crying. “Then the screaming started.”

“From Jon or Elias?”

“Just, um…just Jon. Though by the time I got in there…” Martin turned and rummaged through one of their suitcases he had dragged out of the closet, pulling out a towel-wrapped parcel. “Elias wasn’t doing all that great anyway.”

Martin unwound the towel to reveal an old mason jar he had washed out, two disembodied eyes sitting inside. He had put them in there the night prior, before he had started trying to wash out the bloodstains they had left on the floor. He didn’t like how…alive they still seemed to be and so he wrapped the jar up and stowed it away so he’d feel less watched.

Daisy took a step forward and peered into the jar as Martin held it aloft.

“Jesus Christ. Are those…”

“We can only assume. The iris matches at least,” Martin said with a shrug. “Jon was already like that by the time I reached him. I started thinking about what to do and then…poof, back in the safehouse. You guys know the rest.” He grimaced and began wrapping the jar back up. “I’ve just been…taking care of him best I can. Somehow, I just know how to take care of him. I think it’s the Eye’s doing.”

“And the eyes?” Basira asked, gesturing towards the hovering clusters. “The floating ones, I mean.”

“Oh, they showed up this morning,” Martin told them. “Haven’t done much beyond watch Jon and sometimes watch me.” He glanced at Daisy, eyes darting down to look at where her pistol was holstered and partially covered by her jacket. “Not too sure how defensive they can be…”

“I’m not going to hurt Jon,” Daisy claimed with a roll of her eyes.

“You’re sure?” Martin asked, not bothering to mask the skepticism in his tone.

Daisy huffed out a breath and, as if to prove a point, took a careful step towards Jon with her hands raised in the air. The static began to build again as the eyes flitted around her, wary and judging after her previous display. Daisy pulled a face but allowed them to dart about, her posture remarkably still for someone so clearly irritated. After a moment, the eyes settled once more and returned to their stations around Jon. Daisy took another step forward and leaned over him, assessing the damage.

“The blood doesn’t call for him anymore,” Daisy explained. “The Archivist is off limits.” Her gaze shifted over and settled on Martin. “Same with his Anchor.”

“Anchor?”

“Anchors are just whatever you have a connection to, something that keeps you grounded and brings you back…helps you retain a bit of humanity even.” Daisy briefly glanced at Basira before turning back to Martin and waving a hand vaguely in the area just below her chest.  “Don’t you remember him taking out his rib to-”

“Y-yes, yes and the rib didn’t work but the recordings did so I thought the statements were what anchored him,” Martin pointed out, thinking back to all of the tape recorders he had inexplicably decided to pile around the coffin.

“Anchors can change,” Daisy argued simply, as though the information was common knowledge. “Regardless, my instincts say…” She trailed off and looked back at Jon, her expression pinched and pensive. “I usually see things in one of three categories. Pack, prey, or other predators. You two…you fall outside of those categories now. You’re just…other.” Daisy shrugged, an uncertain motion that only served to remind Martin of how little they understood about all of this. “Off limits.”

Chapter Text

“You’re sure he shouldn’t be in a hospital right now?” Basira asked. “Those don’t look pretty.”

She was looking over Jon’s lacerations again, leaning in closer than Martin or the floating eyes were particularly comfortable with.

Daisy had stopped her pacing and posturing and finally taken a seat in a reading chair that had been pushed into a corner of the room. She was leaning forward, elbows on her knees and hands folded together before her as she stared off into the distance in silence.

“No, no a hospital wouldn’t be able to do anything for him,” Martin replied. “He just...needs rest.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know,” Martin shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried reaching out for a more concrete feeling concerning Jon’s care. “Not long, I don’t think, but I…I don’t know.” Still not grasping any information regarding time, he was instead given another answer, a thought tossed his way like a passing suggestion. “W-we’ll need statements, if you wouldn’t mind sending some once you get back.”

“For when he wakes up?” Basira guessed.

“And to read aloud to him while he sleeps,” Martin clarified. “It’s...I just know he needs them.”

“I guess I can do that. They’ll probably still consider me archive staff at the institute.” She walked over and leaned her head out of the bedroom, looking in the direction of the kitchen before she leaned back in. “You’ll need groceries and supplies too, right?”

“Right, um…” Martin silently cursed himself for overlooking those details. “I don’t want to leave Jon alone. I guess I could run to the village before you two leave, or maybe-”

“They’re not staying here.”

Daisy cut through Martin’s ramblings, her voice firm and measured in a way that made a chill run down his spine. Martin looked at Daisy whose gaze had shifted to focus on Jon. He looked back at Basira for interpretation but she was looking at her partner as well, expression showing she was just as confused.

“Daisy?”

“Listen, I get that this is your safehouse but-”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Daisy interrupted Martin again as her attention finally shifted over to settle on him. She tilted her head, cracking her neck on each side, before rising from the chair. “Both of you should come back to London with us. You heard Basira, they closed the investigation so the police won’t be looking for you and Elias is...no longer a factor.”

“But why can’t we just...stay here for a bit?” Martin asked, voice growing quieter with every word.

He had grown used to the cabin, grown fond of it even. This cabin had been his and Jon’s small space away from the chaos and the hurt when they made the choice to run away together. It was where their feelings for one another, finally confessed and laid out, and been cultivated and explored and cherished. It was not the same cabin of that Changed world, the thing that pretended to be safe and whispered sickly promises of comfort into their minds.

Why couldn’t they stay there? What was so important back in London that they needed to leave? Jon was in a fragile state and they had been just fine when it was only the two of them and Martin knew how to care for him and-

“You should be around people who can help,” Daisy reasoned, her argument so relevant to his thoughts that Martin had to wonder for a moment if the Hunt bestowed any powers of intuition. “I’m sure you can take care of Jon but can you take care of yourself on top of it?” Martin refused to meet her perceptive gaze and Daisy let out a sigh. “If you’re back in London and not ten hours away then it’d be easier for us to deliver statements and groceries to you and help watch over Jon so you can have a break. You said it yourself, you don’t know how long he’ll be asleep for.”

“That’s...strangely considerate of you,” Martin acknowledged, once again not bothering to hide his cynicism.

“It’d also be beneficial to be able to keep a closer eye on the Archivist considering he’s undergone changes that none of us know the exact details of yet,” Basira piped in with a shrug of her shoulders.

“There it is,” Martin muttered, validated in his skepticism.

Basira rolled her eyes and glanced at Jon again. Martin hated how he only now noticed that there was more than just confusion or worry in her eyes as she studied his sleeping form. There was a wariness, tinged with a brimming hostility that accompanied a tense readiness in her posture. Daisy may have been the one to pull a gun earlier but Basira had always been the more observant one, the one who waited before she acted.

“Martin.” Martin begrudgingly took his eyes off of Basira and looked back at Daisy. He was surprised by the sincerity he saw in her expression as she held his gaze, serious and genuine. “I held a knife to this man’s throat and he still jumped into an artefact of the Buried just to drag my ass out of it.” She stressed her words, sounding almost desperate in her attempt to make Martin believe her. “I owe him a debt. I only want to start paying it back.”

Martin looked away, back towards Basira and then back towards Jon before finally closing his eyes and pulling in a deep breath.

“Fine.”

The whole ordeal went by faster than expected. Jon and Martin had gotten fairly comfortable in the safehouse during their time there so Martin figured it would take a while to collect all of their things. Daisy, however, seemed able to pick out every little thing that they had brought and collect it all as if she already knew where it would be. She knew what belonged there and what didn’t, what belonged to her and what didn’t.

Not an hour later they were packed away into the car that Daisy and Basira had driven up in with Jon carefully laid out in the backseat, his head resting on Martin’s lap. The floating eyes had been buzzing quite aggressively while Jon was being moved but now they had settled down along with the rest of the car, their passive static filling Martin’s ears to create an almost soothing murmur.

“Where will you be staying, Jon’s place or yours?” Daisy questioned as she pulled away from the cabin and started down the dirt road towards civilization.

“Mine would be best, probably,” Martin replied as he gently tugged and adjusted Jon’s clothes to expose more of his eyes. The floating ones seemed appreciative, rearranging themselves to hover closer to the wounds. “At least then I’ll know where everything is.”

“Why is he asleep anyway?” Basira questioned, turning around in the passenger seat to watch Martin toy with the fabric.

“I think it’s a bit like a cool down period?” Martin guessed. “Whatever deal he made with the Eye…it’s clearly changed him.”

“Like a reboot after you install updates in a computer,” Daisy suggested.

“I hate how good of an analogy that is.”

“He’s got a pulse, right?” Basira asked as she reached out with one hand to press two fingers against Jon’s throat. “He isn’t like how he was after the Unknowing?”

“Of course he has a pulse,” Martin scoffed, trying his best not to tense or protectively pull Jon away from Basira’s reach. “That was the first thing I checked when I…” Martin trailed off as Basira’s expression morphed into one of confusion. He watched her hand shift positions, fingers skimming along his throat and pressing down at different points. “Basira?”

She remained silent, instead leaning back further to reach Jon’s wrist. She encircled it with her hand, index and middle finger pressing against the inside of it just below his thumb as she kept her own thumb in the air. The car remained silent and Martin watched as her expression shifted slowly to one of uneasy acceptance until she released Jon’s wrist and leaned back, offering Martin a sympathetic glance before she turned to sit back in her seat.

“He’ll be okay, Martin.”

The ride back to London was a long and silent one, filled only with occasional idle chatter regarding anything but the current situation and static filled songs from the radio. The move from the car into his flat happened just as quickly as their move back at the cabin had, hindered only by the exhaustion set in each of their bodies from the drive. Daisy checked through his flat to search for signs of meddling or intrusion before leaving with Basira, the two promising to deliver statements and supplies the next morning.

They hadn’t been settled in for very long, only a couple of days, before there was a knocking at Martin’s door. This knock was much gentler than the one back at the cabin and it was done in a playful rhythm which told him it very likely couldn’t be Basira or Daisy. They had already dropped off their supplies and would have called ahead to say if they were stopping by.

Really, it was his own fault. He hadn’t been back in his flat for a good few weeks and even before they had left, his housekeeping skills had never exactly thrived under the guidance of the Lonely.

That is to say, he should have done a better job dusting away the cobwebs.

“Annabelle,” Martin greeted, voice curt for the woman he had opened the door to see. “Heard we were back in London, did you?”

Annabelle smiled, a knowing smile that made Martin’s jaw clench.

The floral-print swing dress that she wore gave the allusion of joviality, puffed out playfully at the skirt by a petticoat. Her hands were kept behind her back, holding something hidden from view by the abundance of fabric. She looked dressed for a party but Martin felt as though she’d be just as content arriving at a funeral.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” She swung her hands around to reveal a woven basket filled with pastries, jars of preserves, and other sweets. “I brought a gift basket.”

“Did you make those?”

“Hmm, if I say yes will you assume that there’s something wrong with them?” Annabelle asked with a quirk of her brow. “May I come in?”

“No.”

“Don’t be that way, Martin.” Her shoulders slumped theatrically as she pouted, the very picture of mock offense. “Do you honestly believe I’m here to bring harm to our little sleeping beauty?”

Martin tensed. Knowing they were back in London was one thing but knowing about Jon’s current state was a whole other issue. He began to wonder how she could have gotten that information so quickly before a spider dropped down from the threshold of his door, its descent slowed by a glistening thread as it lowered itself into Annabelle’s open and waiting palm. She cupped the spider lovingly and raised it, tilting her hand to allow the creature to crawl onto her head and squirm underneath the patchwork of web that covered the crack in her skull.

“You-”

“I don’t understand why anyone from the Beholding’s lot is wary of spiders,” Annabelle mused, her grin twisting into something impossibly more conceited. “We’ve got so many eyes, great for watching.”

“So, is that why you’re here?” Martin challenged. “The Archivist is asleep so now’s the time to target-”

“Martin, Martin, Martin,” Annabelle tutted, silencing his accusation. “Hush now, sweet boy. I’m only here for a bit of conversation. I’m sure you’re lacking answers and I only want to share what I’ve learned so far.” She raised the basket in her hands higher in offering. “Perhaps over tea? There’s rosemary shortbread in here that’d be lovely with some tea.”

Martin hesitated for just a moment before sighing and stepping to the side to let Annabelle in. She gave another delighted smile as she passed, humming a nonsense tune as she made her way towards the kitchen. Martin shut the door and followed after her.

What else could he do, turn her away? She was already keeping tabs on them and while he absolutely abhorred the idea of asking an Avatar of pure manipulation for help, she likely did have information that he’d find quite useful.

He entered the kitchen just as his kettle began to whistle, water ready for their tea. He had put it on before Annabelle had even shown up at his door with the intention of only making a cup or two for himself. Something told him that she had timed her arrival for it purposefully and perfectly, already confident that he’d let her in.

Annabelle set the basket down on the little table in his kitchen and took a seat beside it. As she pulled out a sleeve of what he assumed were shortbread biscuits wrapped in muslin he noticed small, black shapes scurry out from inside the basket and quickly disappear into the darker corners and cracks in the room. Martin narrowed his eyes, displeased that Annabelle had brought more spiders into his home, but when she looked up and met his gaze, she merely gave an innocent smile in response.

“Why are you here, Annabelle?” Martin asked as he set a cup of tea down in front of her and took one of the other seats at the table.

“I told you that we’d meet again when you were feeling a bit more open-minded, didn’t I?”

“I’m still not interested in anything you have to say.”

“I’m afraid that you can no longer afford to not be interested,” Annabelle told him as she picked up a biscuit from the now unwrapped parcel. “You’re a player in all of this, a major one considering how close you are to the one who sparked this whole…oh, let’s call it a renaissance.”

“Renaissance?”

“The Entities are playing a different game now, Martin,” She explained, dipping her shortbread into the tea. After a moment and likely against better judgement, he picked one up as well. “Before it was every fear for itself but now…now they’ve seen the advantages of collaboration.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He questioned. “They’re working together now?”

“There’s no separating the Entities. They feed into one another, benefiting each other even whilst they benefit themselves.” She fanned the fingers of her free hand out, wiggling them as she took a bite of her biscuit. “The feeling of loneliness in the pitch-black darkness. The satisfying slaughter at the end of a successful hunt. The slow corruption of flesh once the end has claimed it. Don’t you see, Martin?” She pointed the other half of her shortbread in his direction, accentuating her point. “Trying to raise one above another is like trying to single out the best line of a poem. It may sound lovely on its own, but why sacrifice the whole piece for just a solitary stanza?”

“I don’t appreciate you using poetry to appeal to me,” He muttered as he took a bite of his own shortbread, immediately irritated with the fact that it tasted quite delicious.

“So, I’ve appealed to you then?” Annabelle asked, looking quite pleased with herself as she finished off the rest of her own treat.

“What does all of this have to do with me feeling more open-minded?”

“Collaboration requires cooperation, doesn’t it?” Annabelle mused. “Amity is the objective here but we still need to put in the effort of maintaining it. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other from here on out.” She gestured towards the gift basket and the makeshift tea party they had put together. Martin noticed there was also a bag of gummy candies that were made to look like eyeballs tucked into the basket. “This was my way of getting the ball rolling and extending an olive branch of sorts.”

“Shouldn’t you be dealing with the Archivist though?” Martin questioned. “Once he wakes up, I mean. He’s the Eye’s Avatar-”

“You sell yourself too short,” Annabelle chided. “Like I said, you’re a major player now. The others will be more likely to make contact now and I just want to be sure that you know that the Mother is always here for you, Martin.”

Martin spluttered, choking on the sip of tea he had just taken. Annabelle appeared entirely too amused by the display.

“H-hold on, what do you mean by others?”

“Avatars, servants…victims.” She picked up her tea, staring at him over the brim of the mug with curious eyes. “You’re a particularly interesting case. You were aligned with more than one Entity. Not just anyone can manage that.”

“I’m not aligned with the Lonely anymore.”

“Right, which means there’s a vacancy now, doesn’t it?” Annabelle acknowledged. Martin’s eyes widened as he processed her suggestion and Annabelle clicked her tongue. “Don’t worry too much about it. I only wanted to let you know that you may be receiving a sales pitch or two, and from more than just little old me.” She grinned and looked him up and down, her gaze hungry. “The Archivist’s Anchor would be a mighty fine thing to have on your side.”

“So…what?” Martin asked, voice shakier than it had been before. “I should expect to have homicidal mannequins o-or cultists made of wax vying for my attention now?”

“Oh, no, no, no. Things will be much safer going forward…at least…safer than they were before. Our patrons have spoken, there are new rules. No more rituals and much less infighting if we can help it.” Annabelle shrugged. “Not that the Web ever attempted rituals before. We like the world as it is, thank you very much.”

“I thought…I was told that there were no hard-and-fast rules,” Martin pointed out, hanging on to the wording she had used. “The Entities are tied to emotions and intuition but no one can be sure about exactly what they want. They don’t speak to us.”

“Did you hear that from Fairchild?” Annabelle questioned, her lip curling into a disgusted sneer. “Not a fan of him. He’s so vague and…open-ended.”

“Oh, like you give straight answers to anyone,” Martin accused, sighing when Annabelle appeared more flattered than offended by the allegation.

“Our patrons are bound up in emotion, of course. Their very existence is sustained by the fear of living things. But as for interpreting those emotions…it’s not as difficult as you might think, at least not for a proper Avatar.” She placed both of her hands on her chest, one over the other just above where her heart was, or potentially wasn’t, beating. “You know what your patron wants because it becomes what you want. Your desires, your motivations, your instinct…so long as you can recognize your own needs then you should be able to figure out what your patron needs.”

“Daisy said her instincts were telling her that the Archivist was off limits.”

“Good example from the little puppy!” Annabelle commended and Martin made a mental note to avoid having Daisy and Annabelle ever meet. “The name of the game is balance. Feed your patron, feed some others while you’re at it, but don’t get greedy or you’ll ruin the fun for everyone.”

“Why…” Martin sighed, finally accepting that he did want to speak more with Annabelle despite her fondness for twisting whatever he said to expose some potential deeper meaning. “Why doesn’t anyone remember the Change? You and I remember it, but-”

“Servants and Avatars, yes,” She confirmed. “Really anyone who was aware enough of the existence of the Entities beforehand.”

“Why just us?” Martin asked. “Wouldn’t the Entities want people to remember what happened, to be afraid of it? It’s almost as if the Change was for nothing.”

“There’d be very little benefit to having normal people remember the Change,” Annabelle explained as she swirled her cooling tea with another biscuit. “If anything, there’d be problems with it. They’d start to question the supernatural occurrences around them rather than just fear them. They’d start to figure things out, come to terms with it all. They experienced the worst of it in those domains. Returning to a world where things aren’t as intensified would be…lackluster.”

“I suppose.”

“And it wasn’t all for nothing,” She argued. “The Eye’s a fairly passive Entity but it’s not one to shy away from an opportunity.” Annabelle fell quiet as though that were explanation enough until Martin raised a brow, prompting her to roll her eyes like the act of explaining more was an immense task for her. “It wouldn’t be quite accurate to say everyone has completely forgotten about the Change. From what I’ve noticed, for many it seems to be lingering like a bad dream, one that’s too…muddled to form a complete picture. They don’t want to discuss or think about it for too long, and so connections are never made but the residual fear they experienced in each domain remains.”

“The Eye left them with bad dreams?” Martin drawled, unconvinced as he figured the Eye would do much more considering it had given up a world tailored to its own brand of fear.

“The Eye left them with trauma they can’t explain,” Annabelle clarified. “And where did people tend to go when they experienced things they couldn’t explain?”

Martin blinked before letting out a breath, his eyes slipping shut as he realized where this was going.

“To give a statement.”

He opened his eyes to see Annabelle smiling again and god was she ever not smiling? This grin was tinged with something he was hesitant to call pride, a strange sort of delight over the fact that Martin was keeping up with what she was telling him.

“And afterwards the Archivist will stroll through their nightmares, feeding his patron as he passively observes them relive their torment over and over again.” Annabelle wiggled her fingers again, excitement and childish glee in her movements. “Giving their statement forces them to reexperience that fear each night, continuously feeding whichever Entity victimized them to begin with.”

“Giving statements feeds the other Entities,” Martin pieced together. “And the other Entities are the reason most people give statements in the first place.”

“Collaboration,” Annabelle summarized as she threaded the fingers of her hands together, locking them in as one unit that she rested her chin down upon. She gazed at Martin with a heavy-lidded stare that exuded contentment. “It was always meant to be.”

“Did you know this was going to happen?” Martin questioned, once again hanging on her choice of words. “Did you…did you plan for this to happen?”

“Hm…what an interesting thought,” Annabelle mused, quickly standing before Martin had a chance to respond. “Thank you for the tea, Martin. Do give my best to Jon when he wakes up.”

“You-” He cut himself off and huffed out a sigh, already aware that he’d be getting nothing more out of her. “I…don’t know why I ever bother with you.”

“Perhaps you’ll see the merit in a bit of ambiguity one of these days,” Annabelle suggested, tossing the words over her shoulder as she turned to make her way towards the door. “And what a day that will be.”

Chapter Text

One morning, Martin’s front door was yellow.

He stared at it for a moment before moving on towards the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Not long after, he heard a telltale creaking and footsteps that echoed impossibly coming from the other room. The sounds moved towards the kitchen and a disorientating ringing began to fill his ears while the taste of metal crept along the back of his throat.

“Good morning, Helen,” Martin greeted without turning around, yawning away the sleep in his voice. “Are you the Avatar visit for today then? Annabelle warned me that I should expect more.”

“Well don’t sound too excited to see me. Would you rather have someone else come for a visit?” Martin set the kettle on the stove to heat up before finally turning to see Helen leaning against the threshold, body draped leisurely while still appearing contorted and angular. “Simon Fairchild, perhaps, or maybe Alfred Grifter could give you a private show. I’d be more than happy to track one of them down and bring them here through my door.”

“I’d prefer Grifter if those are my only two options,” Martin replied, turning back to drop some bread in the toaster.

So, sue him, he had been enjoying the preserves that Annabelle had put in the gift basket. Spiders be damned, the peach one made him actually enjoy peaches again after they had been soured by his experience hiding from Jane Prentiss. Honestly, if the Mother of Puppets had been more interested in baking and less interested in subtle and uncontrollable manipulation then maybe he’d be more inclined to join.

“You’d prefer the murder musician over the chaotic evil sky grandpa?” Helen questioned as she detached herself from the threshold and began wandering around Martin’s small kitchen, skimming her elongated fingers across various items.

“Alfred Grifter never threatened to throw me off a rollercoaster.”

“Hm, maybe there is a bit of Slaughter in you,” Helen mused, tapping her fingers against the handles of the knives resting in the block on his counter as if to suggest that his possession of them added credibility to her argument. “Makes sense with how much you encouraged Jon’s murder spree back in the apocalypse. I was hoping for Spiral but I’m sure we can coax that out in time.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you’re on the recruitment train too,” Martin groaned as the water came to a boil and his toast popped up in their slots.

“Always have been, sweetheart,” She confessed with a wink. “You’d make a lovely coworker.”

“No, thank you.”

Martin left the kitchen with his breakfast and headed towards the living room, multilayered laughter echoing behind him as Helen followed after.

“Worth a shot.” She did a slow spin around in his living room as he took a seat on the couch. Martin wondered if her curious observations were a bit of Helen’s instinct as a real estate agent slipping through the cracks. “If Jon had been just a little more like the archivist before him, you could have been me. Wouldn’t that have been fun?”

“Is that all you’re here for?” Martin asked, taking a bite of toast as Helen finally refocused her attention on him. “Lazy attempts at convincing me to serve the Spiral?”

“I’ve already told you, Martin. I’d like it if we could be friends.” She took a seat in his arm chair. The cushions seemed to warp around her. “Isn’t this what friends do? Check in on one another?”

“Fine then,” He allowed with a wave of his hand. “Do your check in.”

“Right.” She squared her shoulders and reached out a hand, curling it into a fist and pointing one long index finger towards the center of his face. He went cross-eyed trying to follow and felt like the room tilted ever so slightly the more he tried to focus on it. “You are well?”

“Sure.”

“Lovely.” Helen’s hand twisted in a way that normal bones and muscles would not allow to point at Martin’s bedroom door. “And Jon, he’s been eating?”

“E-eating…well, if you mean the statements, I’ve been reading some to him,” He told her, gesturing towards a file box that sat on the floor next to the coffee table. “We’ve got another stack of them for when he wakes up too.”

“Well, yes, those should do for now.” Helen rolled her eyes and they realigned with different colored irises. “But once he wakes up, you must be sure he has a proper meal.”

“A proper…meal?”

“Those statements are just barely sufficient and the Archivist is a growing boy,” Helen remarked with an accentuating clap of her hands. “He’ll need some fresh, live accounts of the terrors people have witnessed. Maybe even some compulsion practice while he’s at it, stretch his legs a bit.”

“Jon’s fine sticking with the written statements,” Martin ground out with a particularly violent bite of his toast. “Live statements can be much more…distressing for the statement giver. It’s better to go with older ones where there’s less of a chance that the person will have to suffer much from it.”

Helen grew suspiciously quiet as Martin continued to angrily pick at his breakfast. After a sip of tea, he finally looked over at her, expecting some sort of toothy grin or arrogant gaze that seemed commonplace for the Avatars who he had the pleasure of interacting with. Instead she seemed thoughtful, bordering on uncomfortable, like this wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have but it was going to be had regardless.

“Helen…struggled in the beginning,” She finally spoke and the gravity of her tone made Martin pause. “It bothered her to feed. She wasn’t quite ready for it yet and taking people still upset her as it would have before she became me.” She held up her hand, regarding the unnatural joints and length with awe in her expression. “I am able to exist as Helen now because we were finally able to shed all those nasty bits of humanity that were making her feel guilty.” She dropped the hand and looked back at Martin. “If that hadn’t been done…Helen would have starved.”

Martin narrowed his eyes.

“What are you getting at?”

“You can’t allow Jon to feel guilty for surviving,” Helen told him, sounding very much like an adult scolding a child. “He’ll have enough trouble as it is getting used to things without worrying about what others think. Your archival gang basically forced him into an eating disorder once already. He won’t survive something like that again, not with how he is now.”

“What does it matter if he feels guilty, hm?” Martin asked, defensive venom lacing his voice. “Maybe he should. People are supposed to feel guilty when they hurt others.”

“People are supposed to feel guilty,” Helen replied, unfazed by the hostility as she remained more level than an Avatar of the Spiral had any right to be. There was disappointment in her tone and Martin felt it carve into him like a hot brand. “How long is it going to take for you to understand that Jon doesn’t fall under that umbrella anymore.”

“Shut up.”

“Martin…” The disappointment was shifting into pity. “That thing lying in your bed is as much Jonathon Sims as I am Helen Richardson. He is as much the Archivist as I am the Distortion and as much an instrument of the Eye as I am for the Spiral.”

Martin pushed his plate away, appetite long gone, and dragged both hands across his face with a groan. When he looked back at Helen, she was observing him with something akin to building satisfaction, likely in response to the conflict that no doubt shone in his features. The Spiral lied and deceived but to see someone so blatantly lying to themself, denying and rejecting, was surely a feast.

“But he’s not some…some creature. He’s still…”

He trailed off, words useless in convincing Helen or himself of what was or wasn’t true anymore. He wasn’t even sure he believed half of the things coming out of his mouth and the sympathy in Helen’s gaze was beginning to look far too human for something that had supposedly long since abandoned its humanity.

Helen sighed, a sound that resonated like feedback from an amp and made Martin flinch ever so slightly. She stood and made her way towards her door, pausing only to look back once more.

“Take comfort in the fact that those people giving their statements get to walk away after all is said and done,” Helen reasoned, her yellow door swinging open on its own with a horrid creak to expose glimpses of a swirling hallway. “When people enter through my door, they don’t usually get to leave.”

Helen left by noon but her short visit had left Martin with a creeping migraine, one that he dealt with by retiring for a short nap in the dark after he checked on Jon. He occasionally felt too anxious to fall asleep with Jon being in the state that he was, but the presence of the floating eyes had gradually assured him that he was well observed even when Martin wasn’t able to do it.

When he awoke, sunlight was no longer trying to trickle in through the curtains covering his windows. Martin checked the clock by his bed with bleary eyes only to discover he had been asleep for hours and it was now evening, just past when he’d normally eat dinner. He wasn’t hungry but he lamented the fact that after napping for so long, he’d likely not be able to sleep well that night.

With his sleep schedule disrupted, he dragged himself out of bed. Passing by the coffee table and the file box beside it reminded him that he should probably read another statement to Jon. Thinking about it forced Helen’s words through his mind, taunting him and questioning his ability to properly care for the person he loved. The Eye hadn’t given him any instructions on live statements but perhaps that was because it would only become relevant after Jon woke up.

He’d be able to seek out his own meals once that happened.

Martin shook his head, aggressively rubbing at his eyes as he tried to force away the elephant in the room that would eventually need addressing. He blinked and dropped his hands, seeing spots from the pressure.

He was just starting to contemplate whether rubbing at one’s eyes annoyed the Beholding when there was a knock at his door, its wood no longer an eye-straining yellow. He didn’t bother questioning why someone would be visiting this late at night and just answered the door, common sense shoved to the side as he greeted the face on the other side.

It was not a face he had seen in person before but there were enough clues to piece together who it belonged to.

Inky black lines crawled along his throat where his veins lay, stopping their ascent just below his chin. Dark circles were stamped underneath his eyes, evidence of a perpetual lack of proper rest, but they did nothing to diminish the objective beauty of the rest of his face. His eyes expressed a vast array of emotions, all at once worried and hopeful and grieving and sympathetic.

“Shall I prepare spots at the dinner table for every Avatar or just the ones with a vested interest in the Archivist?” Martin muttered, lightly thumping his head against the threshold as he leaned against it.

“I suspect we all have a vested interest in him at this point,” Oliver Banks replied in a thoughtful tone. His lips turned down into a frown and a new emotion, something edging towards nervousness, joined the others in his gaze. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve properly met yet. Have I already managed to upset you somehow?”

“Y-you…” Martin sighed and stepped to the side. Helen had already made him reach his limit for lying. “Do you drink tea?”

“When it’s offered,” Oliver replied, stepping into Martin’s flat with a quiet murmur of thanks. “You have a lovely home.”

“Sure,” Martin said, closing the door behind him. He turned to see Oliver staring at the door to his bedroom and his eye twitched. “You aren’t…here to do whatever it was you did back in the hospital, are you?”

“I didn’t really do much, to be fair,” Oliver claimed, turning away to look back at Martin. “I only gave a statement so Jon could hear his choices.”

“Yeah but you were the only one who actually got through to him,” Martin argued as he moved to refill the kettle and set it on the stove. He eyed the mostly full bottle of gin sitting on his top shelf and contemplated how well it could pair with the chamomile he pulled from the cabinet. “He didn’t seem to hear m-…hear the rest of us.”

“Is that how I’ve upset you?”

Martin turned, leveling a stare at the Avatar before him. Oliver did not seem amused by Martin’s frustrations, he hardly even seemed pleased by it. There was genuine concern in his ever-saddened gaze, an expression of disquiet over the possibility that he had insulted someone before even stepping through the door.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Martin replied simply, turning back towards the kettle as it began to whistle.

“That wasn’t…that wouldn’t really apply here,” Oliver explained. He took a hesitant step into Martin’s small kitchen area, pausing as if to test whether or not he was unwelcome and would be sent back out. When Martin did nothing but begin to fill their mugs, he stepped further in and took a seat at the small table, the same chair where Annabelle had sat. “The End only holds sway in those still in possession of their humanity. Jon already made his decision to abandon that when he awoke the first time.”

“Are you saying he’s no longer human?” Martin asked, his tone already unapologetically defensive.

He brought over the tea and took his own seat at the table. Oliver was looking over the treats that remained in Annabelle’s gift basket, smiling slightly when he noticed the bag of gummy candies shaped like eyes.

“Not in the way that matters to The Coming End That Waits For All And Cannot Be Ignored.”

“Your patron needs a shorter title,” Martin muttered as he took a sip of tea.

“What defines humanity anyway?” Oliver turned and, as if he had just noticed that tea had been set in front of him, quickly murmured another quiet thank you. He placed his hands around the mug, appearing to soak in the warmth in favor of taking a sip. “The End has its own considerations, of course, but just because something lacks a beating heart or air in its lungs doesn’t mean it can’t think or need rest or express empathy.”

Martin paused. He had not thought that an Avatar of the End would carry such a blasé set of requirements for life and humanity. He somewhat appreciated Oliver’s words as they, in some strange way, offered comfort in the face of the turmoil Martin had been left with following Helen’s morning visit.

“You said that Jon already made his decision,” Martin acknowledged. He pulled out a wrapped parcel of scones from the basket and set it out on the table and Oliver gave a look of delighted surprised in response. “By the End’s standards, how long has he not been in possession of his humanity?”

“The End had taken all that it could from Jonathon Sims back in that hospital once he made his choice to wake up,” Oliver claimed as he picked up a scone and broke off a piece. “All that remains now belongs to the Eye. It’s no longer something that can die, not in the conventional sense at least.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, everything can die eventually in some way, I suppose,” Oliver proposed with a considering tilt of his head. “Ideas can die if they’re not discussed. The memories of things will die if they aren’t remembered. One day, even our patrons will fade with no one around to fear them. Every living thing and every Entity eventually belonging to the End until finally the End too would cease to exist. To put it simply…an extinction.”

“Extinction?” Martin repeated and groaned when Oliver nodded his head. “Christ.” Memories of Peter’s warnings and worries over an emerging fifteenth power flooded his mind, only overshadowed by a sudden thought that had Martin drawing in a sharp breath. The action seemed to startle Oliver who dropped the bit of scone he was about to eat.  “B-but wait, I thought the Eye reversed the ritual to avoid...”

“It will still happen, just not for a good long while. To assume that it won’t is to assume that there will always be living creatures capable of fear which is a…dreadfully naïve thought.” Oliver frowned and picked up the piece of scone he had dropped, brushing the crumbs he had created into a neat pile on the table’s surface. “The Changed world would have accelerated the process, sure, and while the End is rather indifferent to the speed of things so long as it’s not cheated…” He shrugged. “I figured I would at least share the information with Jon.”

“Alright…good, I guess.” Martin narrowed his eyes. “How did you know to come here?”

“Oh! I uh…I saw Jon in a dream, actually,” Oliver told him, perking up as he cheerfully shared the news.

Martin blinked.

“Come again?”

“We can apparently run into each other in dreams that overlap,” Oliver explained. He held his hands together, interlocking his fingers like two pieces of a puzzle fitting together. “It’s a little difficult to explain. It’s sort of like…domains intersecting? He’s a passive watcher in the nightmares of statement givers and occasionally the tendrils can lead me to one of his victims.”

“Don’t call them victims.”

Oliver tensed, caught off guard by the sudden cold hostility in Martin’s voice. He slowly dropped his hands from where they were held aloft for his visual demonstration and wrapped them around his mug of tea, finally taking a sip. Martin kept his expression neutral but held no regrets for the harsh delivery of his request.

“One statement giver had been marked by the End but their death hadn’t been imminent until quite recently,” Oliver continued. “Conveniently, Jon was observing this…individual at the same time I decided to check up on them.”

“So, you saw him. Were the two of you able to speak?” Martin asked.

“I waited while he watched the experience play out. Figured I ought to let him get a full meal out of it for the Eye since the lady would belong to the End soon.” Martin shot him a look of warning and Oliver cleared his throat. “He was surprised to see me at first but then we talked about why I was able to be there and he seemed…pleased to earn a new bit of information.” He nodded his head towards Martin. “Then he asked me to check up on you. That’s why I’m here.”

“He…”

“Jon knows what’s been going on out here, at least in the immediate sphere around his body.” Oliver’s gaze shifted away from Martin and he held up a finger to point at something. Martin glanced over his shoulder in the same direction to see a spectral eye floating just behind his shoulder, watchful and observant. Upon being spotted the eye quickly blinked out of existence and Martin turned back around when he heard an amused chuckle come from Oliver. “Probably because of those. He said he can see everything, just can’t wake up and react to it. He wanted to make sure you were doing okay...make sure that you weren’t feeling too lonely.” He gave Martin a nervous smile, preparing for more irritation to be sent his way in response. “So, Martin, seems like a stupid question but are you doing okay?”

“I…yeah? Best I can be given the circumstances I suppose.” Martin sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, mussing up the already bedraggled curls. “I just, you know, I uh…I want him b-back and…” He dropped his hands and shook his head. “I just want him back.”

Oliver was silent for a moment and looked quite pensive as he stared down at his tea, as if he were trying to decide whether or not he wanted to say something. Martin expected more commentary on humanity or perhaps the same warnings Helen had given him about treating Jon more like the Avatar that he was. They were all so nonchalant about their positions and their responsibilities, all acting like they knew what was best for the Archivist and that Martin couldn’t possibly understand the intricacies-

“You two…your relationship is really nice, you know?” Oliver told him, his voice soft and nostalgic. Martin’s eyes widened slightly and Oliver looked up, a small smile on his face. “Things get tough but you just get closer, support each other through it. I wish I had had that sort of resilience with Graham but…well, maybe it’s for the best that my breakdown caused us to split.” His smile turned bittersweet and he shrugged. “I can’t imagine it’s easy to love something inhuman.”

“Well…” Martin swallowed past the tightness in his throat and returned Oliver’s smile. “How important is it to be human these days anyway?”

Oliver huffed out a laugh and shook his head before checking the watch on his wrist. With his sleep schedule off, Martin wasn’t able to guess how late it had become.

“I should get going and leave you be. Thank you for the tea.” Oliver rose from the table and brushed his small pile of crumbs onto his palm, dumping it into the sink before he moved to leave. “And apologies again for upsetting you before we even had a chance to meet.”

“It’s…you didn’t…” Martin sighed and shook his head, collecting their mugs as he rose from the table as well. “You’re fine, Oliver, really. Much better company than the others, at least.”

“Not sure if that’s much of a compliment but I’ll take it.” Oliver held out a hand and after a moment Martin reached out and shook it. “I’ll be sure to update Jon if I see him again before he wakes up.”

“Thank you.”

Martin had ended up reading another statement after Oliver’s visit so the next night he decided instead to read aloud poetry to Jon, something he felt he could only get away with while Jon wasn’t awake to ridicule each line. He was absentmindedly running the fingers of one hand through Jon’s hair, gently untangling the long strands of gray and black as he murmured in a calm and melodic voice. The floating eyes hovered around him and Jon, swaying in time with the dips and surges in his recitation.

“Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, and feed deep, deep upon her peerless-”

“The Stranger is a better poet than Keats, I’m not afraid to say it.”

Martin froze, the book of poems dropping to his lap as his fingers grew slack. The room fell silent and the spectral eyes went still, hanging in the air as if they were awaiting command to move again.

Martin stared at the wall across from him. Had he just been hearing things? There had been moments before when he’d wake up in the middle of the night, still half asleep and caught somewhere between his dreams and reality, and hear Jon’s voice like the whisper of a ghost. There was a simple way to confirm if the voice was real or not. Martin only needed to look down and be reminded that Jon was still asleep, that he still didn’t have him back.

He just needed to look down.

Look down.

Look down.

L o o k.

A pair of wide-open eyes peered back at him, tinged with a luminescent green and filled with the knowledge of a thousand lifetimes. The eyes blinked, opening again to reveal soft brown irises and the knowledge of just one man who had lived just one life. Jon’s expression was indecipherable, a muddled mess of curious and detached and confused and enlightened.

“Jon?” Martin’s voice cracked. “Jon, are you…”

“Martin.”

Jon’s own broken voice, rough from lack of use, was Martin’s only warning before Jon was clambering up onto his lap with a surprising degree of speed for someone who had just been asleep for nearly half a month. Jon wrapped his arms around Martin’s neck, pulling him close and locking them together in a desperate embrace.

“J-Jon, be careful! You’ll reopen your wounds if you-”

“I’m sorry,” Jon whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t…”

Don’t what? Don’t apologize?

Martin was not so selfless of a man that he’d not accept at least one or two apologies for what Jon had put him through. Jon had been self-sacrificial again and Jon had left him alone again and Jon had…

They had both done stupid things that deserved apology after apology, an endless cycle of requests for forgiveness tinged with the understanding that another stupid thing would surely be done in the near future. It probably wasn’t the healthiest cycle but they didn’t exactly face the same circumstances as most other couples.

So instead Martin held Jon tight as the smaller man began to shake, silent tears dampening the collar of his jumper where Jon had his face tucked into the curve of his throat. He held him close and ignored the lack of a heartbeat coming from the chest pressed close against his own.

“Don’t ever do that to me again.”

Chapter Text

“Hey.” Martin’s voice was soft, a pleased sound passing from his lips when Jon finally padded his way into the small kitchen area. He had his hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea and looked so delighted by the simple sight of seeing Jon up and walking about. “Good morning.”

“It’s three in the afternoon,” Jon pointed out, ignoring the fact that he hadn’t looked at a clock even once between waking up to an empty bed and wandering out in search of Martin.

“So, do you not want the eggs and bacon that I’ve so lovingly made for you then?” Martin asked.

Jon glanced over at the kitchen table to see a plate covered in foil. Lifting it revealed two fried eggs and a few rashers of lean bacon. In the same moment, the toaster popped out a couple slices of toast and Martin brought them over to set down next to half-full jar of peach preserves.

Everything smelled delicious.

He wasn’t hungry.

“It could be three in the morning and I’d still eat anything lovingly made by you,” Jon swore as he took a seat at the table, joined only a moment later by Martin.

“Can I…” Martin set down his tea and reached out hesitantly. Jon immediately moved closer towards him, offering his hands and arms and anything and everything. “How are the uh…how’s it all feel today?” Martin carefully traced around some of the larger gashes covering his forearm, his fingers brushing over the raised edges. They were still a bit red but significantly more healed than they would be for someone who wasn’t Jon. “They look less…irritated lately. That’s good at least.”

From a quick glance it would have seemed like Martin was putting on an optimistic front but Jon did not need the blessings of the Watcher to know how bothered he truly was. The eyes that had been carved into him were now an inescapable reminder of the role he played. He knew that Martin was particularly not fond of the smaller ones strung around his throat.

They reminded him far too much of a collar.

His face was devoid of the scars that now decorated every other inch of him, a small allowance that Jon was thankful for. It wasn’t that he was a vain man. He had already collected so many scars before that adding more mattered very little to him. But Martin already put up with so much when it came to Jon and not having to stare at a hodgepodge of eyes every time he looked at Jon’s face was a fate he was glad Martin could be spared from.

An outsider may wonder why his face had not been touched by the carnage of his branding but they’d be mistaken in their assumption. There were still eyes there, buried just beneath the surface. He knew that they opened, just as the scars did, while he traversed the dreams of those who had fed their statements to the Beholding. He had a feeling that, with enough emotion, they would open outside of the dreams as well.

“I don’t think they could have gotten infected, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Jon assured him, tilting his head as a thought was gently nudged into his mind. “No, they wouldn’t have gotten infected. That’d feed the Corruption too much.”

“I feel like all of this is feeding the Flesh a bit, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps,” Jon mused as picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite. He could still enjoy the taste at least. “Then again, the effect was more important than the process.”

Martin made a sound, something caught between a thoughtful hum and a distressed whine. Jon waited for him to speak, to make the choice to voice his thoughts rather than search his mind for that which went unsaid. The Eye was displeased that its Archivist was refusing to seek out information but the favor it held for Martin was enough to keep the irritation at bay.

“Well, couldn’t you…I mean I’m not saying you should, but what if you just-”

“Scratched them all out?”

Martin made a sound again, this one leaning more towards distressed.

“It wanted you permanently bound to it, yeah?” Martin reasoned, though it was clear he hated the words coming out of his mouth. “That had to be the point of these. It wouldn’t be pleasant to undo but I don’t see how this is absolutely permanent if you can get rid of-”

“That wouldn’t get rid of all of them,” Jon corrected and Martin nodded in agreement.

“Right, it would leave your actual-”

“They’re on my bones too.”

Silence fell between them. Martin blinked and Jon took a bite of toast.

“They’re what?”

Jon sighed and dropped the toast as he reluctantly pulled his other arm from Martin’s steadily tightening grasp. He held up his hands, turning them to view every angle. The eyes varied in size and placement to cover his skin, even invading the hand shaped burn that wrapped around his palm. It was almost like the Beholding wished to erase the evidence of every other Entity, for there to be no doubt over who Jon belonged to.

“They’re carved into my bones. I can feel them,” Jon whispered. “We could get an x-ray to confirm it but I…I know that they’re there.”

“Oh, Jon.”

“I asked for this, Martin,” Jon reminded him.

“But you didn’t,” Martin argued back, gesturing his hands towards the multitude of healing lacerations. “Not for this. You just wanted to fix things and this was the price.”

“I didn’t die, kept that promise at least. And now I can’t die at all so…” Jon chuckled, an empty and broken noise that fell flat when it received nothing in return but silence from Martin. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t…” Martin cut himself off and sighed. “It’s okay, Jon.” Martin reached out, slow to allow Jon the option to pull away, and took back his scarred hands to hold within his own. “I love you. I’m happy that I still have the ability to say that to your face.”

Jon smiled, savoring the warmth that spread through him in a way that was so extraordinarily human.

“I love you too.”

“Would you be feeling up to a visit from Georgie?” Martin asked as he released one of Jon’s hands to pick up his tea. “She’s been dying to see you since she heard you woke up. Daisy and Basira too but I think that’s more because they want to check…”

“If I’ve transformed into an eldritch monstrosity?” Jon guessed and Martin hummed.

“They care in their own way.”

“Hm.” Jon picked up his fork with his own free hand and pushed around the eggs on his plate. He cut away a piece to eat so Martin wouldn’t worry. “Can we…just invite Georgie for now? I wouldn’t mind seeing her.”

“She’d probably bring along Melanie, if that’s alright.”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Jon said, his mouth twisting up into a wry smile. “Just ask Melanie if she wouldn’t mind waiting to throttle me after these have healed a bit more.”

“She came by when you were asleep, you know,” Martin told him. “Even left her in the room alone with you for a moment. She was very well behaved.”

Jon knew they had visited. It was between Avatar visits and Martin had just finished a statement when Georgie arrived, filled with a strange mixture of rage and concern. Melanie was close behind, towed along by Georgie’s arm linked with hers while she clutched a white cane close to her chest. Martin had been defensive at first, welcoming them while simultaneously making sure they were allowed nowhere near Jon until he knew their true motives.

In the end, they were really only there for answers. Basira had called to update them on the situation, but they wanted more details. Martin had shown them Jon, Georgie had described the scene for Melanie, and then Georgie had dragged Martin away from Jon’s side to talk which left Melanie alone with him.

The spectral eyes had buzzed, static ominously filling the air in a threatening bid to deter anyone from harming their Archivist. Melanie had merely laughed as she heard the noise and made jokes, speaking quietly in a one-sided conversation about how Jon was a greedy man for having so many eyes and that he should really leave some for the rest of them.

By the time Georgie and Martin had returned, the eyes had settled and Melanie was poorly braiding sections of Jon’s hair while she told him old ghost hunting stories.

“It’d be nice to see them,” Jon murmured, smiling softly at the memory.

“I’ll give Georgie a call then,” Martin decided. He reached for where his phone rested on the table but pulled back when a luminescent eye suddenly blinked into existence above it. “Oh! I uh…h-hello there?” Martin glanced between the eye and Jon. “I still don’t understand what these things are. Are they bad?”

“No, they’re not…they’re a bit like pets I suppose…o-or tools?” Jon tried to explain as more of the eyes appeared around him. “They’re sort of like Annabelle’s spiders or Jane Prentiss’s worms. They’re not exactly mine but…they’re like an extension of me but also of the Eye?”

“Got it,” Martin said with a slight nod of his head. “So does the Eye not…trust me or is there another issue I don’t know about?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just that these…little guys tend to st-stare at me? They even pop up when you’re in another room.” As if to prove a point one of the eyes hovered closer, forcing Martin to go slightly cross-eyed as it floated near his face. “Is it because the Eye is protective of its Archivist and doesn’t like other people being near you? I know I’m technically a servant too but I was aligned with the Lonely for a bit there so maybe…”

Martin trailed off as Jon frowned. To say that these eyes were extensions of himself wasn’t all that inaccurate. He knew how they felt because it was how the Eye, and by extension the Archivist, felt. He had always been aware of when their protective hostility peaked and not once had it ever registered around Martin. Jon cycled through everything the eyes had observed for him while he was asleep and found no such instance so why would he…

“Oh…oh, that’s not…heh.” Jon chuckled as he realized what Martin had been seeing. “They’re not watching you because they’re distrustful. The Eye views you as my…my Anchor. You’re what keeps its Archivist stable and content.” He enunciated the consonants in his words, the eyes swaying with his intonation, and gave Martin a shy smile. “The Eye is fond of you so I think it’s just watching over you. They also seem to follow my desires and I…do like to look at you so they just…”

“O-oh.” Jon watched as realization slowly dawned on Martin’s face. The curve of the spectral eyes could be interpreted as almost critical with their narrowed stare, but with a new perspective, one might call the gaze affectionate. “Daisy and Annabelle called me your Anchor but I didn’t think I was actually…”

“I’m sorry if that’s weird.” A few of the eyes were dancing around Martin’s head and Jon focused his thoughts on calling them back towards him, an order they seemed to reluctantly follow after a moment. “I’m working on controlling them.”

“No, no it’s fine.” Martin’s acceptance apparently overrode any control Jon could manage as the eyes immediately hovered back towards him. Martin smiled as they swayed around his head, content to watch over the beloved of their Archivist. “I’m okay with it. Although, speaking of eyes that may or may not be bad, have you figured out what we’re going to do with…”

Martin trailed off again and stood from the table. Jon stood and followed after him into the living room to where a box of statements sat on the coffee table. Martin lifted the lid from the box and pushed aside some of the files to reveal a jar tucked into one of the corners. Its contents were concealed by the swath of fabric wrapped around it but Jon knew what rested inside. He picked up the jar and began unwrapping it.

“The Eye doesn’t want them destroyed. That would be…sacrilegious in a sense,” He explained as he peered inside at the ethereal green shade of Jonah’s irises, still strangely bright for something no longer connected to a living host. “I say we put them in a box and leave it in a drawer somewhere.”

“Where? Right next to your jar of ashes and rib bone?” Martin questioned with a huff of laughter. “Are they still…active? Like if someone were to find them and, for whatever reason, stick them in another body would it-”

“It could bring Jonah back,” Jon confirmed, a twinge of foreign irritation lacing his thoughts as the Watcher expressed its displeasure with the possibility. “Not quite sure how long he’d get to stick around in a new vessel given how much he pissed off the Beholding but…”

“We could give them to Helen.”

“What?”

“All the Entities are more or less in favor of trying to keep things balanced now, right?” Martin argued as Jon stared at him in disbelief, his hands tightening slightly around the jar as if Helen would suddenly appear and snatch it away. “It could be like…a gesture of good will. Trusting another Avatar with one of our…artefacts?”

“Helen’s hallways would digest them.”

“Not if I didn’t want them to, Archivist.”

Jon let out an exhausted whine, not bothering to turn and address the creak of a door coming from the wall behind them. Martin looked over Jon’s shoulder, likely at their new guest, before looking back at the resigned fatigue that was settling in Jon’s features at the prospect of having to interact with Helen.

“O-oh, Helen, now’s not really…it’s not the best time for a visit,” Martin told her.

“It’s fine,” Jon assured as he took a seat on the couch and finally looked over at the Distortion, still lingering in the threshold of her door with a pleased grin twisting her features. “Could you, um…could you phone Georgie and maybe make some tea?”

“Are you sure?”

“I won’t hurt him, Martin.” Helen promised as she walked further into the room and held three long fingers in the air in a mock salute of honor. “Just a nice little chat between Avatars, yes?”

Martin rolled his eyes, clearly tired of being left out of the Avatars Only club meetings, but sighed and retreated to the kitchen anyway.

“It’s easier to look at you now,” Jon told her as the Beholding fed him a comprehension of fractals that would cause a normal mind to break.

“Hm, can’t really say I like that,” Helen confessed. “But I suppose you’re on a different level now that you’ve properly embraced your role.” She took a seat in the armchair, the same place she had sat during her previous visit. “Tell me, have you been eating properly? That’s very important, you know. Need to keep your patron satisfied.”

There was a clatter in the kitchen, the sound of mugs and dishes unceremoniously clinking together like someone had fumbled them. Jon knew Martin was listening to their conversation and was just reacting to the comment on eating.

When Jon had finally woken up the night before and settled after some crying and tripped over apologies, Martin had asked how he felt. Jon had been honest and told him he felt fine enough though he was just a bit…hungry. Martin had gotten a strange look on his face from that response and Jon was quick to take it back and explain it away as human hunger or just a strange feeling in his gut, anything to avoid seeing that look of wary disappointment he had always received from Basira and the others.

Instead Martin stood and softly suggested that they go for a walk to help Jon stretch his legs a bit. Jon had agreed but as they began walking the empty, late-night streets he realized that they had never chosen a set route and that Martin seemed to be following Jon’s lead. It wasn’t until Jon felt himself being pulled towards a small café a few blocks away that he realized what was happening.

Martin was letting him hunt.

The café was fairly empty, normal considering the hour, and housed only the barista on staff and a couple of customers who sipped on their drinks while reading or doing work on their laptops. Jon approached one of them, a young woman named Stephanie who was doing work on her laptop and had the red rimmed eyes of someone who had been crying for quite a long time. He sat down across from her while Martin ordered them drinks and asked her what she was studying.

She told him, without hesitation and with only an initial hint of confusion, that she was pursuing a degree in marine biology at Queen Mary University of London. She had always loved the mysteries and unknowns of the ocean and often went scuba diving with her classmate Adrian. On a recent trip he had told her he’d found a new diving spot rumored to have dropped cargo sitting at the bottom. It required them to go deeper than they ever had before and she was worried but he assured her it would be worth it.

It gets so dark down in the water.

They were supposed to stick together but Adrian was too excited and swam far ahead of her. Stephanie tried to keep up, tried to keep him in her line of sight, but then her dive light flickered out for just a moment. By the time she had managed to get it to work again, she’d lost sight of Adrian. She searched for as long as she could but her oxygen tank was running low and she still hadn’t reached the bottom and shouldn’t she have reached the bottom by now? It was meant to be deep but not this deep. She had to resurface and her last bit of optimism was wasted when she saw that Adrian hadn’t risen up like she had hoped.

The search parties still hadn’t found him and the police had recently expressed their halfhearted condolences to her, an unspoken sign that they’d no longer be actively looking. Martin came over with their drinks, purposefully ordered in to-go cups, and Jon told Stephanie he was sorry for her loss and that he hoped she’d keep her love for the ocean’s vast unknown despite what it had taken from her.

Martin had said nothing about it as he and Jon returned to his flat, only commenting on how the café made lovely hot chocolate and that they should visit again soon.

“The Eye is quite content,” Jon answered simply.

“Oh good. Just thought I’d check in and make sure since we’re all meant to be playing nice now.” Helen smiled, clearly amused by how Martin had reacted. “Have any of the others paid a visit or am I the first?”

“Since I’ve woken up? You’d be the first,” Jon shared. “I did see Oliver while I was still asleep. We crossed paths in a dream.” He leveled a heavy-lidded stare in her direction, settling with a look of disapproval in anticipation of the coming conversation. “Apparently Martin fielded a few visits as well.”

It was clear that he was talking about her visit in particular and the spectral eyes that floated around him all paused in their movements to direct their attention towards her. Helen smiled, playful and unapologetic.

“Just needed to remind him of some things.”

“You fed on him.”

Jon’s voice dipped low, an edge of hostility that aired more on the side of imposing than petulant. There was confidence in its delivery, a way of saying that there was no argument to be made and no defense that would suffice. She had been caught. He had seen it.

“He did that to himself.”

She argued anyway, though there was the flicker of something in her eyes, the ghost of something in her voice. She smiled, bright and distracting, but it was a façade. It was a waver, an uncertainty. Jon remained silent and watched as she grew less and less sure of the words that had left her, of the actions she had taken while he was not around to prevent them.

He watched and fed, just as she had fed on someone who she had no right to touch, and took from her just a fraction of what she would owe over time for such a transgression.

“Oliver and Annabelle visited as well,” Jon added, voice now cheery as he finally broke the silence and noted with amusement how Helen seemed to almost unravel with relief at being released from his hold.

“We Avatars are a social bunch, aren’t we?” Helen said with an uneven chuckle as she clapped her hands together. “We should all meet up for a drink one of these days, don’t you think? Get together to talk about balance and all that.”

“You don’t seem to like the idea of things being balanced.”

“I understand the necessity of it, dear Archivist, but I don’t much care for the concept.” She shrugged, the material of her manifested blazer shifting like skin over her pointed shoulders. “It’s in the nature of the Spiral to create confusion and instability. The idea of balance makes my bones itch, though I suppose I’ll just need to get used to it.”

“There’s something else, isn’t there,” Jon observed.

“Oh? Does the all-knowing Archivist need me to tell him something?”

“I was trying to be polite,” He told her, voice shifting ever so slightly back into that darker tone. “It may be easier to look at you but I’m trying my best not to look in you.”

Helen was quiet for a moment, a blessed rarity.

“I liked the Changed world,” She finally confessed “It could have been so much fun…for all of us!”

“All of us?” Jon repeated with a raised brow.

“The ones who mattered at least,” Helen reasoned. Jon knew she was only talking about other Avatars like them. Perhaps she also included Martin in that circle given his proximity to Jon and the protection that afforded him but she certainly wasn’t considering the other humans Jon still cared for. “But then you had to go and reverse it. I’m just a bit sour about it, you know?”

Jon could not see the future nor what the future could have been had things gone differently, but he could still see the disappointment that lingered in Helen’s eyes and knew how dangerous she could have been if they’d hesitated. The Spiral kept her in line now, made her play nice and accept the situation, but it was a questionable truce that Jon decided was best kept at arm’s length.

“Well…perhaps a gift will make you feel a bit better about things.”

“Oh?” Helen perked up, delighted by the offer. “I only caught the end of that conversation you were having with Martin. I promise I won’t let my corridors digest a gift.”

Helen held out her hands and curled in her fingers in a repeated gesture like a child asking to be given sweets, though with the length and angle of her joints, the motion only served to be unnerving. Jon picked up the jar from where he had tucked it beside him on the couch and handed it over.

“Good, because the Eye would very much like these to remain intact.”

Helen held up the jar, studying the contents within with the keen eye of the ghost of a realtor. Jonah’s eyes stared back, active yet inert. They were still able to observe, to watch and to experience, just as the Eye desired. Being kept in Helen’s hallways, endlessly subjected to the madness of the Distortion with no choice but to behold, would be a fitting prison.

“The Boneturner probably would have appreciated these a bit more but I’ll accept them nonetheless.” Helen wrapped her fingers around the jar, tapping at the glass. “Very spooky.”

“Oh! You gave them to her then?” Martin noted as he came back into the living room and handed Jon a cup of tea.

“I’ll keep them very safe,” Helen promised. “Would you like a gift from me in return?”

“No,” Jon replied firmly, not wishing to see what non-Euclidian monstrosity she would consider a gift.

“Good answer,” Helen commended as she stood from the armchair, subtly ducking away from the eyes that hovered near where she drew too close to Jon. “I should get going. Not really a big fan of how much I’m being looked at right now but I’ll adjust.” Her door creaked open and she paused in its threshold, tossing a wink over her shoulder. “I’ll be seeing you, Archivist.”

“Was that meant to be an eye joke?” Martin questioned.

“Don’t smile,” Jon warned as echoed laughter filtered through the closing yellow door. “It will only encourage her.”

Chapter Text

When Georgie entered Martin’s flat, she made sure that her expression was already set to a look of stern disappointment. She was trying her best to make her anger and frustrations clear and she had prepared herself in advance to give Jon a proper lecture once he woke up. However, as soon as she stepped in the living room and they locked eyes, Georgie’s expression softened almost immediately.

Jon made for a pitiful sight, bundled up on the couch in an oversized jumper and a mug clutched in his bony hands. When Georgie had seen him before during their first visit, the injuries and frailty were much the same but he had been asleep then. She wasn’t sure why she had ever thought that waking up would improve things for him, but to see him awake and moving yet still so broken was just…

He looked small...small and hurt and Georgie hated it.

Jon had never had the most imposing silhouette, not back in Uni and certainly not while he was on the run from the Institute and hiding away in her flat. None of it was helped by an apocalypse that was immediately followed by a supernatural coma. Melanie had explained to her that old written statements were the bare minimum as far as nourishment went for him and last she checked, that was all Martin could give him while he was unconscious.

This was all Georgie’s first impression and this was what made her stop in her tracks and let out a quiet whine. Melanie was tucked against her side and Martin was coming up behind them after closing the front door. Jon’s head had perked up when she entered and the smile on his face, though tired, was bright and excited enough to rally her forward.

“Jon,” She called out, her voice kept soft as if a louder tone would scare him away. Melanie let go of her arm, a silent indication that she was fine hanging back, and Georgie took a few steps in his direction. She held out her hands, hesitant and careful. The spectral eyes that floated lazily around his head had no reaction beyond an acknowledging hum of static. “Is it...is it okay to touch you? I’m sure those must sting if you touch them-”

She broke off as Jon quickly placed his mug down on the coffee table and reached out to her with a level of speed and energy she had rarely ever seen in the weary man. He may have looked frail on the outside but that had been only surface level. Something had changed underneath.

“Georgie,” Jon murmured, hugging her with a surprising bit of strength. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for, you loon?” Georgie questioned as she returned the embrace and joined him on the couch.

“He did start the apocalypse.”

Georgie pulled away slightly to whip her head around and stare at Melanie. Her girlfriend stood where she had left her, Martin hovering by her side and likely prepared to assist if she needed it. Melanie wore a proud grin on her face, one that was more teasing than malicious, and seemed very much unapologetic.

“Melanie,” Georgie chided.

“What?”

“He fixed it,” Georgie argued, turning her head back around to look at Jon. “You fixed it.”

“But I still put everyone through it,” Jon acknowledged with a sigh. “And now we’re back to where we started and sure, there’s no imminent danger of another ritual happening but...everything we gave up leading up to that point is still-”

Jon was interrupted by a sharp tapping sound, insistent and disruptive. All eyes in the room focused on Melanie as she slammed the end of her cane down on the floor once more, a final call to order and command that she be listened to. She held her cane slightly above the ground in warning and paused to make sure the room had fallen silent.

“If you’re talking about my eyes then I’m going to stop you right there,” She said, holding out her cane to point in the vague direction that Jon’s voice had come from. “You’re not allowed to use my trauma to fuel your pity party.” She lowered her cane and offered her arm. “Where is he? Bring me to him.”

Martin first looked to Georgie for approval before he gently guided Melanie over, kicking a filing box to the side and offering quiet directions for avoiding the coffee table along the way. She sat down on the couch, shifting to angle her body towards the dip of weight she could only presume was Jon. The spectral eyes changed formation to focus on Melanie, circling around her in slow cycles before returning to Jon’s side.

“Hello,” Jon hesitantly greeted, though he fell silent when Melanie slowly reached up with both of her hands to cradle his face.

Georgie watched as Jon let out a small breath but allowed Melanie to touch him. A glance at Martin showed he was holding enough tense energy for everyone in the room, the glint of protectiveness in his eyes making it clear that he’d be moving the moment Jon made any sort of indication that he was uncomfortable.

“Hm…just as I thought,” Melanie said after a few moments. She dropped her hands to her lap and Jon peered at her curiously as she flashed him a grin. “You look like shit.” Jon’s eyes widened and a shocked snort of laughter escaped his lips. “What are we going to do with you, Sims?”

Georgie sighed and fondly shook her head while Jon’s surprised chuckle morphed into proper giggles. Martin had calmed significantly once he heard Jon’s laughter and Georgie stood to join him in his observation point in the middle of the room, leaving Jon and Melanie to occupy the couch.

“Lock me away in my archives,” Jon suggested with a wry smile. “That’ll keep me out of trouble.”

“Putting you in the archives was how all of this started,” Martin noted before he silently pointed at the mug of tea Jon had placed down and looked questioningly at Georgie.

“Are you going back then?” Georgie asked after giving Martin an appreciative nod and watched him disappear into the kitchen area. “Back to the institute?”

“I need to,” Jon claimed. “Apparently Basira and Daisy have checked in and said they’re still operating as normally as they can considering both Jo-…Elias and Peter are gone so there’s no Head of the institute right now. I own it but that doesn’t mean-”

“Hold one, you own what?” Melanie interrupted.

“The institute,” Jon replied in such a matter-of-fact tone that Georgie had to wonder if she heard him right.

The three of them fell silent and Georgie turned to look towards the direction of the kitchen area where Martin had popped his head back into the room, a box of Earl Grey clutched in his hands. She shot him a questioning look but received only a shrug in response.

“Don’t look at me,” Martin told her with a shake of his head. “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“Well, it can’t really be owned considering its status as a non-profit research organization but if you have all the right pieces of information…” Jon went on to explain with a pondering tilt of his head. “Account numbers, passwords, locations of official documentation, agreements made both officially and unofficially with government officials and donors and affiliated parties, the knowledge of how to forge any signature.” He narrowed his eyes, expression shifting to something more pensive as if a thought had just occurred to him. “I basically have access to all of Elias’s money now.”

“Did Elias have a lot of money?” Georgie asked.

“He had a lot of other people’s money,” Jon clarified. “Not to mention some very convenient stock investments. The institute was built to be fairly self-sufficient, even if there’s a temporary lack of leadership. It’ll be able to run for some time but eventually it’ll need someone who knows how things work to step up.” He nodded towards the filing box on the floor. “They’re still taking statements so the archives can’t stay closed for very long anyway.”

“Apparently they’ve gotten an uptick in reports,” Martin shared as he returned with a cup of tea for Georgie. She accepted it with a smile that only grew when she noticed he had brought another cup, filled to a slightly lower level so it wouldn’t easily spill, which he handed over to Melanie after he approached her with a soft touch to her shoulder. “Annabelle said the apocalypse left a lot of people with dreams they can’t explain. People seem to…notice a lot more now too.”

“Well, the Eye needed to leave some residual mark on the world even after it was put back together,” Jon reasoned.

“Do you really need to go back?” Georgie asked. “Can’t you just pass along the information and tell them to hire a new archivist?”

“I need the archives. I need the statements the institute receives,” Jon argued as he shook his head. “I need to feed my patron or my patron feeds on me.”

“W-well, that’s not fair, is it?” Georgie argued back with a wave of her hand. She had only recently been thrown into all of the Entity drama that Jon and Melanie and the rest had been dealing with, but even she could tell that the situation wasn’t the fairest. “It already did…whatever this is to you. Aren’t you a little more important than just another servant now?”

“I am more important. I’m an Avatar of the Eye, its…perfect Archivist, but that doesn’t mean I can just use the power it’s granted me and pay nothing in return.” He shrugged, upsettingly nonchalant while discussing the subject of his fate. “The Eye views me as a chef views their favorite knife. I am cherished, I am favored, but I am ultimately still just a tool.”

“What do you even get out of the all of this?” Melanie questioned.

“The Change was reversed, for one,” Jon noted, his nose scrunching as he compiled the list of benefits. “Relative safety for the people I care about, the ability to Know and See so much more than before…I can’t really…die now, not the way normal people do.”

“What?”

“Think about it. I’m no longer a who, I’m a what,” Jon reasoned. “I am the archives. You can’t stab or shoot or bludgeon a catalogue of information.”

“You can burn it.”

“Melanie.”

Georgie’s scolding was lost under another round of laughter, though she couldn’t complain considering the laughter was coming from both Melanie and Jon.

“And here I thought you were with the Slaughter, not the Desolation,” Jon teased.

“I’m with none of them, Jonny boy,” Melanie shot back, gesturing a hand in the direction of Georgie’s voice. “The only one I’m with is the fearless beauty over there.”

The spirited joy in Jon and Melanie’s faces filled Georgie’s chest with a pleasant warmth, though she found herself unable to share in their enjoyment. Her mind kept snagging on the words Jon had been using, the way he had been describing himself.

“I don’t like that,” Georgie remarked as their laughter petered out. “You calling yourself a what and a tool. You’re not an object, Jon.”

Martin had remained relatively silent so far but Georgie’s words drew a hum of agreement from him. He looked at Jon with a tired pain in his gaze and some of the spectral eyes floated over to him, dancing about in what seemed to be some strange attempt at comfort or cheer. Jon sighed and reached out a hand for Martin to take, his own method of comfort.

“I-I know that, I just…there needs to be an understanding here,” Jon claimed as Martin squeezed his hand and let go, a silent acceptance. “We are well past the point of no return. Turning me back into what I once was is no longer an option.” He shook his head and cast a glance at Melanie, his expression already conveying the shame one would see in the face of a scolded child. “Trying to ignore my patron or avoid taking statements…that would be something that kills me.”

Georgie couldn’t quite tell why Jon suddenly looked almost scared of Melanie…no, not scared of her. It was more like he was tensed in anticipation of something she might do. Georgie still hadn’t heard every story of Jon and Melanie’s interactions in the archives but she knew he had done things Melanie thoroughly disapproved of. Jon liked to pretend that the opinions of others didn’t hurt him but for as long as Georgie had known him, he’d always aimed to please and impress on some subconscious level.

“Well that’s fine, isn’t it?” Melanie said after a moment.

“W-what?” Jon stuttered out, now more confused than worried.

“Not…not the being killed part,” Melanie clarified. “Look, I know I’m the blind one here but he doesn’t seem all that different to me.” Melanie reached out again to gently pat Jon’s cheek, a gesture that missed in its first attempt but landed once Jon redirected her hand. “Still a neurotic little academic who makes bad decisions and can’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag.”

“You’re too kind,” Jon drawled.

“So what if he needs to do the compulsion shit and take statements to survive?” Melanie threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. “He’s still the idiot we know and questionably love. He isn’t some monster.”

“You sang a very different tune before you left the institute,” Martin pointed out, his tone steely and firm in a way that left no room for denial.

Melanie fell quiet at that. Jon opened his mouth as if to say something before closing it and frowning. Georgie thought of saying something in Melanie’s defense but in truth, she didn’t have the full picture and she knew that Melanie was more than capable of standing her own ground.

“We did it so wrong the first time around,” Melanie’s voice was soft and pained when she finally spoke and Jon’s eyes widened in response to it.

“What do you mean?” Georgie asked, still lacking context for the tense atmosphere that had settled in the room.

“With his statements,” Melanie clarified for her. “Before it was…it was like a drug addiction, yeah?” She reached out and searched for Jon’s hand to hold within her own. “So sure, we kept you in check and restricted your supply but…w-we shamed you for it, we shamed you for something so far out of your control.”

“Melanie-”

“No!” Melanie cut Jon off with a shout. “It’s…it was so fucked and now it’s…this isn’t just some addiction anymore.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s right,” Jon argued.

“No, but a whole lot of things stopped being right a long time ago,” Melanie reasoned. “I mean shit, you all wonder why the hell I blinded myself. I’m done with it all.”

“Are you done with it?” Jon asked, voice quiet as he cast his eyes down and squeezed Melanie’s hand. “Truly?”

“I said what I said, Jon,” She replied with a sigh. “If we invite you over for dinner, you check your Entities at the door. I’ll always welcome you as a friend but we’re not getting involved with all of this again. Obviously, we’ll help get you settled but beyond that…”

“No, no of course not. I’d never ask that of you, not now,” He quickly agreed, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “It would make me very happy to have you as just a friend.”

Melanie pursed her lips and scrunched her nose. Georgie recognized it as the face she made when trying hold back laughter over a joke that hadn’t been told yet.

“Wow, just a friend?” Melanie repeated. “Does my offer of companionship mean that little to you?”

“Melanie,” Jon murmured, his voice shaky as he caught on to the jest and attempted to hold back his own laughter.

“Oh, no I get it,” Melanie carried on with mock anger in her voice. “It’s because I’m blind, isn’t it. You ableist piece of shit-”

“Melanie, stop.” Proper giggles were escaping Jon now as his face split with a wide grin.

“Here’s a snack for you, Mr. Archivist,” Melanie said as she leaned into him on the couch and nearly sent them both toppling off of it. “Statement of Melanie King regarding her very rude friend.”

“I hate you,” Jon claimed as he leaned back into her to balance the weight.

“You love me,” Melanie countered. “Admit it.”

Jon hummed, remnant giggles escaping him every few moments. Georgie couldn’t imagine how he must have felt in that moment. After such a long chain of terrible events, for Jon to have something to laugh about while he sat surrounded by people who weren’t there to hurt him in an environment that he knew was safe must have been near unbelievable. Some of those terrible things were still happening and they’d undoubtedly face new terrible things in the future, but for now they deserved a moment of silliness.

Georgie was pulled from her thoughts as she felt Martin tense beside her. She instinctively looked to Jon to see if he was the cause and saw that his smile had fallen, replaced by an expression of discomfort. He began to squeeze his eyes shut and open them wide, repeating the deliberate blinks for a few moments before he frowned.

“Is something wrong?” Georgie asked and Jon’s frown deepened.

“I’m…my eyes are…”

“Which…ones?” Martin checked.

Jon didn’t respond and instead began tugging at the sleeves of his jumper, pulling the overspill of fabric up to expose his hands. He paused for a moment before pulling the sleeve an inch higher followed by another pause and an inch higher after that. Eventually he bunched them up completely to his elbows, exposing the eyes wrapping around his forearms. Some of the spectral eyes dropped from their positions by his head to hover above the cuts, as if to note their progress in healing.

“It’s…sort of like wearing a blindfold?” Jon tried to explain, suddenly appearing more self-conscious. “It doesn’t hurt but after a while it gets to be a bit uncomfortable to have them all covered.”

Melanie grinned as she finally caught on to what had happened. Georgie expected her to make a joke about not being able to see until Melanie began to slowly clap, chanting with every beat.

“Strip, strip, strip, stri-”

“Stop that,” Jon ordered, the beginnings of a smile returning to his face.

“What? Martin agrees with me, right?”

“No comment,” Martin replied as he tried and failed to suppress a matching grin.

“Liar.”

“Door,” Jon suddenly blurted out.

“What?”

“Door,” Jon repeated. He was staring into the middle distance, gaze on nothing in particular. “Basira and Daisy.”

The room fell silent as they tried to process Jon’s words until a firm knocking at the door made everything finally click. Martin left to answer it and sure enough, the distance voices of Basira and Daisy filtered into the room. Georgie turned back to look at Jon whose gaze had become more focused once again.

“How-”

“Security cameras,” Jon murmured quietly, demeanor briefly settling into that same self-conscious state he had gotten from having to roll his sleeves up.

Before Georgie could comment further, Martin returned with Daisy and Basira. He already seemed even more on edge and Georgie would guess it was due to all of the people suddenly hovering around a newly awakened Jon. Basira was silent, expression neutral as she surveyed the room, while Daisy flashed them all a slightly awkward yet apologetic smile.

“We would have called ahead but-”

“Then we would’ve had time to hide all of the spooky things I’ve been doing,” Jon guessed as Basira’s gaze snapped over to him. He placed a hand over his heart and held the other up in the air. “I swear I’ve been nothing but a law-abiding citizen, officers.”

“I think I liked him better when he was unconscious,” Basira muttered.

Georgie watched as Daisy took a step forward before swinging her weight back to return to where she was. Her gaze was locked on Jon and it was clear she wanted to move forward but was hesitant to actually do so. It wasn’t until Jon shifted on the couch, moving closer to Melanie to free up space for another person to sit on the other side of him, that she finally moved forward and joined him.

Melanie had told her stories about Daisy, about Basira, about the whole archive crew and the things they had gone through. Of course, there was too much to tell for Georgie to have gotten every detail and certain things had left a bad taste in Melanie’s mouth so they were never mentioned.

Georgie knew enough, however, to appreciate the irony of Jon being protectively flanked by two women who had left scars on his body.

“How’re you feeling?” Daisy asked him, voice surprisingly soft for such an imposing woman.

“Sated,” Jon replied and Daisy huffed out a breath of laughter. “You?”

“I’m fine,” She answered with a shrug.

Georgie could tell, even as a near stranger to her, that Daisy was not fine. Her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes and the bloodshot sclera and shadowed cheeks told the story of a poor sleep schedule and even shoddier diet. She should know, she had seen it enough times with Jon over the years. Based on Jon’s empathetic expression as he took in Daisy’s appearance, even he could see she wasn’t doing well.

“We’ll figure something out for you,” He said simply, a response that had Daisy’s eyes widening slightly.

“Gang’s all here then,” Melanie suddenly declared as she stood from the couch and tapped her cane on the ground. “Let’s get drunk.”

“W-what, no!” Martin stuttered out.

“You’re absolutely right,” Melanie agreed, pointing a finger in his direction. “We’re missing Helen. She’s really become a part of the crew.”

“I’m not sure getting drinks is a very good idea,” Martin reasoned. “Jon is still recovering-”

“I could go for a drink or two,” Jon shared, prompting a look of disbelief from Martin that made Basira chuckle. The spectral eyes hovering around Jon blinked out of existence one by one. “It’ll be fine, I can hide the eyes for a little while.”

“Daisy and I will stay sober and look after you idiots-”

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind letting loose for a little bit as well,” Daisy confessed, cutting off Basira who stared at her with a look of disbelief that rivaled Martin’s.

“Well, well, well,” Melanie mused as she reached out a hand which Georgie took to pull her close. “Looks like the fear children learned how to have fun.”

“I’ll be a part of the water only club with Basira,” Georgie offered as Basira and Martin shook away their surprise to compose themselves. “Martin?”

“A-are you sure you’ll be fine going out in a public space?” Martin checked. “It won’t be like the café. There’ll probably be lots of people…lots of things you’ll have to avoid knowing.”

“It’ll be fine,” Jon promised.

Georgie watched as Martin brow furrowed while he struggled to come up with an argument before he cast a look at Basira. She knew Basira to be the more rational and practical pillar of the group and Martin was likely hoping she’d help make his case. Basira was gazing at Jon, her expression unreadable as he stared back.

“What happened to that door in your head that blocks out the ocean,” Basira finally asked.

“More like an observation deck now,” Jon replied after a moment of consideration.

Basira was silent. Georgie had no idea what they were talking about with doors and oceans but when Basira sighed and gave a small nod, she knew Jon had given a satisfying answer.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Martin repeated, shocked that Basira was on board. “You’re fine with this? You’ve been the least trusting of all of this and now you’re just fine with it?”

“You can’t keep him locked away in a cushioned space forever, Martin,” Basira argued.

“I’m not keeping him locked away, I just-”

“Martin’s just protective,” Daisy reasoned. “It’s understandable.”

“Thank you.”

“Bit of a Hunter’s instinct if you ask me,” She murmured with a smug grin. “Territorial and all that.”

“Don’t you start,” Martin ordered sternly. Daisy merely smiled back, her grin wide and sharp. “No recruitment.”

“The blood calls for what it calls for.” Daisy stood from the couch and began to make her way towards the door, clapping a firm hand on Martin’s shoulder as she passed. “And right now, it calls for a pint. Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

“I think the Web suits him quite well, actually.”

Martin let out a groan as Melanie tossed out yet another consideration. Evidently, everyone had latched onto his earlier comment about recruitment and the discussion had followed them all the way to the pub. He had foolishly hoped that once drinks and food had been purchased and passed around that everyone would forget about the theoretical and move on. He had apparently severely underestimated everyone’s interest in the fact that various Entities were now trying to sway him to their respective causes.

“Really?” Martin questioned, just as he had with every other suggestion that had been brought up thus far.

“The way you strung along Peter all that time and kept him away from the rest of the archive crew was a little bit of a puppet master move,” Basira offered, surprisingly engaged in the discussion.

Martin had thought she’d be one of the few he could rely on to change topics, but Basira had gone as far as putting away the book she had brought along in favor of throwing her own thoughts into the mix. Her first suggestion had been the Hunt but he suspected that it was only to please Daisy and oppose Jon.

“You also think spiders can be cute,” Jon muttered, pouting like a child as his words were muffled by the glass that he pressed against his lips.

Martin wasn’t sure what Jon’s limit for alcohol was and he certainly wasn’t aware of whether or not his Avatar status affected it. The drink he was smushing against his mouth was only the second but Martin couldn’t tell if his relaxed state was due to intoxication or the change he had gone through. Jon’s baseline posture had always been anxious and rigid, prepared to flee from the dangers that pursued him or rush into them in some self-sacrificial bid.

He seemed more serene now, and Martin was grateful for it regardless of the reason.

“Sure, but…” Martin grimaced as he considered the implications. “Am I a manipulative person?”

“Everyone’s a little bit manipulative when you break it down but you’re only considering the negative sides of them,” Daisy argued. She was on her third pint but seemed no more affected by it than if she had been drinking water. “In that way, I’m nothing but a blood-thirsty beast ruled by instinct and Jon’s a voyeur who’ll spill all your secrets.”

Jon blinked and thumped his glass down on the table with a less than gentle clink. A blush was blooming in his cheeks and Martin was certain this time that it was not a reaction to the alcohol.

“Hey now-”

“View them from a different perspective. Use them to your advantage to suit your needs,” Daisy continued on. “Jon seeks out knowledge and uncovers the truth for people. I can protect the people I care about by hunting the things that go bump in the night.”

“Fear isn’t always a bad thing,” Basira noted. “Sometimes it keeps people safe because then they avoid what’s dangerous.”

“Overrated emotion if you ask me,” Georgie teased with a theatrical toss of her hair. “Never needed it.”

“So…what?” Martin asked. “You want me to view these entities of pure horror in a positive light and then just…pick one?”

“No, of course not. You don’t need to pick any of them, Martin,” Jon assured him as he reached out to place a comforting hand over Martin’s. “Serving just the Eye is suitable enough.”

“Oh I see how it is,” Melanie said as she slammed down her own glass and pointed an accusatory finger in Jon’s direction. It ended up being pointed slightly over his shoulder so Jon reached out to focus the gesture more directly on him. “The only reason why Jon’s against recruitment is because he’s already got you. His focus is on retention.”

“The Eye keeps him safe,” Jon argued as he scrunched up his nose and looked at Daisy who caught the stare and responded with a toothy grin, canines flashing in the dim light of the room. “And it’s certainly less…messy compared to the others.”

“Hm, sure,” Melanie drawled. She was silent for a moment and Martin naively wondered if she was done making suggestions. “The Buried.”

It was Martin’s turn to slam his glass down on the table. He was suddenly thankful they had chosen a table near the back of the pub, far from the more crowded areas. They had done it just in case Jon suddenly couldn’t control his new eye companions and so that if he needed to shed a layer to be more comfortable then his healing scars wouldn’t be ogled by strangers. Now it held the benefit of allowing them to loudly discuss god-like manifestations of fear and slam their drinks around.

“Why?” Martin ground out, at a loss for why Melanie would toss out such an idea.

“I don’t know,” She admitted with a shrug. “I feel like the Buried doesn’t have many Avatars.”

“Because they’re probably all six feet under and happy about it,” Martin muttered as he went to take a sip of his drink before his mind caught up with the other thing she had said. “And I’m sorry, but now I’m meant to become an Avatar for one of them?”

“Why not?” Melanie reasoned. “Go big or go home. Get the full benefits package.”

“You could go the same route as Mary Keay,” Jon mused with a considering tilt of his head. “At a glance, she could have been aligned with the Eye but she never technically swore loyalty to any of the Entities. She just picked and chose when it suited her.”

“I-”

“Flesh!” Melanie suddenly shouted with far too much glee. “Then maybe you can put Jon’s rib back.”

“How romantic,” Basira muttered with a roll of her eyes.

“I’ve underestimated how many drinks I’d like to have tonight,” Martin murmured as he stared despondently at the dregs of beer swirling at the bottom of his glass.

“I can order another round,” Georgie offered as she began to rise out of her seat. “Same for everyone or any changes?”

“I’ll take the same but I’m going to step outside for some air first,” Jon told them as he stood from his chair. He was tugging at the sleeves of his jumper and Martin watched a spectral eye blink into existence by Jon’s shoulder for just a moment before quickly disappearing. “There’s a man sitting at the bar who thinks his sister may have joined a cult and the Eye keeps poking my brain because I won’t get his statement.”

“I’ll come with,” Martin offered as he downed the final sips of his drink, grimacing at the flat taste.

“Martin, I’ll be fine on my own for a few minutes,” Jon argued, though his weak tone made it clear that he wasn’t happy about having to tell Martin to stay behind.

“But-”

“I need to step out too,” Daisy said, stretching as she rose to let loose a series of cracks from her spine. She stepped away from the table, gently pushing Jon along with her so he’d have no chance of retracting his statement. She glanced back at Martin, taking in his anxious form as he watched Jon move further and further away from him. “I’ll make he doesn’t get mugged or anything.”

“Pretty sure he’d see it coming, don’t you?” Melanie quipped, flashing a grin as Daisy fondly shook her head and pulled Jon out of the pub.

Martin tracked them until they were out of view, shoulders slumping when Jon was finally out of sight. He sighed and lifted his glass, grimacing at the uselessness of the action when he remembered he had already polished off the rest of his drink. Georgie had left to fetch the next round and so he looked up to see if she had made it to the bar yet only to find Melanie…looking at him? He wasn’t sure if he could call it that anymore but her face was definitely turned in his direction.

“Mel-”

“Okay, what is up with you?” Melanie asked, dropping her own empty glass down on the table with an accentuating tap.

“What do you mean?” Martin asked, brow scrunching as he tried to think of a reason for her sudden outburst.

“You’ve always fussed over Jon but you’ve reached a whole new level recently,” She noted.

Martin’s brain stuttered for a moment and he opened his mouth to offer a retort only to be interrupted.

“Do you not trust him?” Basira questioned.

Martin glanced over and saw that she had pulled her book back out and while her eyes were scanning the pages, she was no less engaged in the conversation. Martin watched her turn a page and glance up at him, waiting for an answer to her question.

“N-no, of course I trust him,” Martin replied firmly. “He was unconscious for two weeks after starting and ending an apocalypse. He only woke up last night. I’m just a bit worried is all.”

“He seems fine,” Basira observed with a slight shrug of her shoulders and the turn of another page. “Better than he has been for a while if I’m being honest. I mean, visually he looks a wreck but he seems to have much more energy.”

“I don’t…” Martin’s brain continued to lag behind, fogging over from drink and the lack of a proper argument for the discussion that had been suddenly thrust upon him. “I don’t mean to hover.”

“It’s alright, Martin,” Melanie assured him, her voice soft. There was an edge of pity to it that he hated to hear but that he knew she didn’t mean to convey.

“It’s really not,” He muttered, tipping his glass back and forth on the table in an effort to distract himself. “Jon’s not a child, he can take care of himself…most of the time.”

“Then what is it?” Basira asked as she slipped a bookmark into her novel and shut it before directing her full attention on him.

Martin hated that.

He hated everyone’s eyes being on him, regardless of the fact that some of the eyes weren’t even working. One of the aspects of the Lonely he actually managed to enjoy was being able to vanish from situations he didn’t want to be in and he was almost tempted to see if he could still manage that ability.

How was he going to function with Jon? How do you manage to find time for yourself when the person you love has infinite eyes and a preference for watching you? How was he supposed to tell Jon that he didn’t want the Archivist to do the one thing that the Eye wanted him to do? He’d done it before and Jon always respected his wishes but things were different now and he’s sure that Jon wouldn’t be able to resist knowing-

Stop.

That wasn’t the issue right now.

Answer the question, they’re waiting for an answer.

Martin cleared his throat and glanced between Basira and Melanie, each of them waiting patiently and eagerly for his explanation. He took a breath and his fingers twitched to feel for a pulse that wasn’t there.

“I left him alone just before he read the statement that caused the Change,” Martin began. “We were separated when he made that deal with the Eye to reverse everything which I know was necessary, but the way he screamed…” His voice cracked slightly and he heard Melanie let out a sympathetic hum. Martin took another breath before he continued. “And there were all the times he was kidnapped or met with all these dangerous Avatars that left scars on him and then what happened with the Unknowing ritual and-” He cut himself off with choked laughter, bitter and derisive as he shook his head. “So many of the terrible things that have happened to him, happened when I wasn’t there.”

“And you think if you were there with him then it would have changed the outcome?” Melanie questioned, prompting Martin to grimace.

“I mean…no, I doubt my being there would’ve made much of a difference but…”

“At least then you could’ve been by his side while it happened?” Basira offered. “Shared in the pain.”

He blinked and nodded slowly, considering her words and realizing how well they fit.

“It’s stupid, I know,” He murmured.

The table was silent for a few moments, enveloped by the cheerful drone from the rest of the pub’s patrons.  At some point Melanie had found Martin’s hand on the table and she was patting it thoughtfully.

“Not really,” Basira finally spoke up. Martin glanced up at her only to see that her eyes were cast in the direction that Daisy and Jon had gone. “Sometimes…I wish I hadn’t been able to logic my way out of the Unknowing. The chances were slim but maybe if I had stayed behind…then maybe Daisy wouldn’t have had to suffer.”

Basira didn’t specify whether she meant staying could have prevented Daisy’s fate or if she just wished that she had joined Daisy in the coffin so she wouldn’t have had to suffer alone and neither Martin nor Melanie asked for clarification. Instead, the table fell into a thoughtful silence again until Georgie returned with their drinks.

Martin watched as Melanie leaned over to whisper something to Georgie, the latter’s face shifting to convey an expression of understanding as she looked towards Martin. He immediately knew Melanie had filled her in on their little conversation and he fumingly sipped at his drink as Georgie shifted her chair to be closer to him while Melanie struck up a separate conversation with Basira about the book she was reading.

“Go ahead, make your own comments about how I worry too much,” Martin drawled as Georgie regarded him with a knowing look.

She was quiet for a moment before she gave a smile, small and warm.

“Would you like to get coffee sometime? Just the two of us,” Georgie offered. Martin blinked and the expression on his face must have shown his confusion and shock because Georgie chuckled and went on to explain her sudden invitation. “I know I was with Jon at a very different point in his life but…I don’t think much has actually changed, at least not at a base level. We can talk about him, compare notes.”

“Talk about him behind his back?” Martin questioned.

“You can tell him what we’re doing,” Georgie told him with a shrug of her shoulders. “I doubt he’d mind, not if it’s just between the two of us. Jon doesn’t like to talk about himself but that doesn’t mean he wants you to be left in the dark.”

Martin considered the offer for a moment. For a being whose entire purpose is to know and reveal that which is unknown, Jon wasn’t the best at sharing. It wasn’t entirely his fault and he had expressed that he wanted to be better at it, but that was just how Jon functioned. There was no instinct for him to share unless he was prompted to do so.

Martin was aware that it wasn’t the most normal thing for someone to get along with the ex-partner of their significant other but when had they ever been a normal group. If Georgie could help him understand Jon just a little bit better and Jon was okay with her doing so, then how could he say no?

“Sure,” Martin finally answered, returning her smile with one of his own. “Thank you, Georgie.”

Her grin widened and she nodded her head before nudging his arm slightly with her elbow. He gave her a questioning look as she conspiratorially leaned in towards him, a mischievous light in her eyes.

“Any pressing questions at the moment?” She asked in a stage whisper.

Martin blinked, caught off guard by the sudden offer. The drinks had muddled his mind ever so slightly, forcing him to chase through his memories to see if he had any simple questions that could be answered before Jon and Daisy returned.

“Should I get him a ring?” He finally blurted out.

Georgie’s eyes widened and Martin realized all too late that he had unfortunately spoken in a less than quiet tone as Melanie and Basira both quickly turned to face him.

“How many drinks have you had?” Melanie asked, shocked laughter lacing her words.

“I…n-no, no that’s not what I…” Martin’s panicked mind tripped over itself in an attempt to explain himself as the three women continued to stare at him with a mixture of surprise and amusement. “I mean maybe eventually that’s something I’d want but not right now-”

“Martin, what did you mean by ring?” Georgie thankfully interrupted his desperate ramblings and Martin took a breath, thankful for her patient tone, as he stared down at his drink and tried to will away the blush in his cheeks.

“A simple black one. For his right middle finger,” Martin explained. He still didn’t look up but he heard Melanie give a hum of recognition as Basira chuckled. “It’s not very…it’s not like he openly talks about that part of himself but it’s still important to him and I don’t know if he’d even know what the ring meant but it’s…I feel like it’d be a bit of…a bit of normalcy, don’t you think? A-and normalcy seems like something we need right now.” He finally glanced up at Georgie and felt relief wash over him as he took in the delighted expression on her face. “Do you think it’d be okay?”

Georgie grinned and clinked her water glass against his pint in an informal cheers.

“I think he’d like that.”

Chapter Text

Daisy pulled in a lungful of crisp, cold air as the side door to the pub swung shut behind her. She and Jon had exited into the side alley that ran along the bar and aside from the bartender who had briefly stepped out to toss away some rubbish, they were alone.

Daisy leaned back against the bricks, cool and grounding on her skin after escaping from the warm and somewhat stuffy pub. She’d found her muscles to be more tense as of late, something to do with her always being on high alert even if she didn’t realize it until later. Stretching and using heat or cold usually helped her take a breath and lower her guard.

She watched as Jon paced for a bit beneath the dim light fixture that hung above them. He was flicking his fingers as he went and occasionally tapping his wrists against one another until all the motions gradually slowed. He looked up at the light and took a few steps back towards the edge of the area it covered. He looked back down at Daisy, expression neutral, and she raised a questioning brow as he silently took one more step back so he was out of the light and mostly enveloped by shadows.

“Can I have a cigarette?” Jon asked, his voice flat and deep.

It wasn’t his normal tone and the change was clearly purposeful. Daisy guessed he might have been making a reference to something but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it was.

“I thought you quit,” She tried instead.

Rather than answering, he gave a soft chuckle and shook his head before stepping back into the area of light.

“Ignore me,” He told her as he joined her side and leaned against the patch of wall beside her. “Just feeling a bit nostalgic.”

“So, you’re refusing to take a statement,” Daisy noted. “Is it fine that you’re ignoring your patron like that?

“I fed recently,” Jon explained. “It’s more like ignoring the temptation of a plate of sweets rather than having a steak placed in front of you after days with no food.” His eye twitched ever so slightly and a bemused smile began tugging at the corners of his mouth. “It annoys the Watcher but it’s an excused disobedience.”

Jon spoke of his patron with more respect than before, more affection. It wasn’t quite at the level of reverence that many other Avatars tended to have but his relationship with the Eye had certainly been reformed from the deal he had made. He seemed to view his position as Archivist less as a curse and more of a duty. Daisy felt relief in seeing his acceptance.

It made her feel less alone.

“You’ve been eating well then?” Daisy acknowledged, trying her best to keep her tone neutral and unassuming.

“I’ve stayed…healthy,” Jon replied and though he hesitated in his wording, the delivery was confident and sure.

It was clear in its message.

I will not be shamed for this.

She wasn’t stupid. She knew how badly she and the others had treated Jon before the Change and she knew even better now how damaging the restrictions they had placed on him had been. She had avoided hunting, avoided the call of the blood when she emerged from that coffin and it had left her weak but she was able to survive. She had figured Jon was the same, that he could avoid taking statements and still be just fine, if not frailer for it.

She realized now how much further Jon had been compared to her, how much of him had already belonged to the Eye. So much of her now belonged to the Hunt and while it had only been a couple weeks, avoiding a proper chase was taking its toll. It wasn’t a weakness or a cramping hunger. It was like she was crumbling away, disintegrating into nothing piece by piece as she failed to provide her patron with a proper meal and so she was consumed in return.

She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to survive it this time.

“Well, I’m sure the Eye will be much happier once you’re back in the archives.”

Jon gave a hum of acknowledgement before the two fell silent and continued to unwind in the chill air of the night. A chorus of voices sounded from the street and Daisy’s attention snapped towards it. A moment later a small group of people stumbled past the entrance to the alley as they made their way down the street, speech slurred and cheeks rosy in the way that told the story of a night of friendly drinking. They paid her and Jon no mind, not even glancing over at the odd pair of them.

“I want them to know.”

Daisy’s attention snapped back towards the quiet voice beside her as she let the noises from the street fade into the background. She looked down to see Jon staring vacantly at the brick wall across from them.

“Alright, I’ll bite,” She said as he failed to explain what he meant. “You want who to know what?”

“The Institute.” He glanced over at her, gaze refocused and sharp. For a moment she swore she saw a flash of green before he looked away again. “Everyone who works there. I want them to know what they’ve been unwittingly serving.”

“Is that…I mean, would that be a good idea?” Daisy questioned. “I feel like that’d just create-”

“Mass panic?” Jon finished with a tired chuckle. “Potentially, but I think it will be better in the long run. They’re too close to everything already. At this point the less they know, the more danger they’re in.” His eyes glanced over to her again before flitting away once more. “I also wanted to implement a more permanent form of security. You wouldn’t happen to be looking for a job, would you?”

“You want me to work security?” Daisy asked, skeptical of the idea. “There’s supposed to be less infighting.”

“Supposed to be,” Jon echoed. “That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? There’ll always be people or things that break the rules. Technically, most servants wouldn’t even be breaking any rules. That’s just how they are.” He held up a hand and regarded his healing scars with a strange mixture of melancholy awe in his gaze. “Destruction is how we often serve our patrons.”

“So, what would you want me to do about it?” She questioned. “Sounds like getting involved would step on a lot of toes.”

“Protect the Institute,” Jon said first with a decided nod. “That would be the primary thing. There’ll likely be servants who think they’re doing right by their patron and go a bit too far, get a bit too power hungry. Then there’s any statement givers who claim to be in danger. The number of times I dug out old statements given years before by someone claiming they were being stalked or watched…only to look into it and find out they died just a few weeks or even days after they gave the statement.” He drew in a breath and dragged a hand down his face, seemingly exhausted already by the idea of organizing the whole process. “Those can be looked at on a case-by-case basis.”

“Pick and choose who we save?”

“I wouldn’t call it saving,” Jon mused with a shrug. “You can still feel fear even if nothing comes of it. If anything, the longer someone lives, the longer they can feed that which marks them...or have the potential to be targeted by another.” Daisy couldn’t help but think with a grimace about how much this all sounded a bit like cultivating livestock. “But in the meantime, you could feed as well. Hunt the things that are hunting them.”

“I don’t know...”

Jon let out a sigh and suddenly Daisy felt like a child again, being scolded by her mum for not finishing the spinach on her plate.

“You need to feed, Daisy.”

“I…I managed after we escaped the coffin-”

“Just like how I managed by reading stale statements?” Jon mocked her argument with a bark of derisive laughter. Daisy nearly flinched, caught off guard by the acrid venom in his voice. “It’s different now. We’re different now. Fully realized and bound to our patrons.”

He knew where they both stood, of course he did. Daisy couldn’t lie to Jon. He didn’t even need his powers of Beholding to know exactly how she faired because he was in the same position.

“I didn’t even realize there had been a shift until Basira talked me down,” Daisy confessed. “I never…died, not like you have. But the way I was when I lost myself to my instincts and to the blood…a part of me died. I came back to my senses with something missing and the Hunt filled in the cracks.”

“What was the part you lost?”

“Hell if I know,” She said with a bitter laugh as she shook her head. “Pretty sure I’d need a therapist to help me figure that one out.”

“You seem more in control of everything now,” Jon noted, a hint of supportive pride in his voice.

“Yeah, something…something’s changed this time around,” Daisy acknowledged. “I think it’s Basira.”

“How so?”

“Before, she wanted me as a protector and to be someone she could rely on so that’s…that’s what I was for her. But once I went over the edge with it and lost myself in it…” Daisy let her eyes slip shut as she let out a breath. “It scared her. She just wants me as me now…she just wants me here with her.”

“Seems quite anchoring.” Jon’s words were laced with a teasing mirth that forced Daisy’s eyes to snap back open. “What was it you said? Anchors help you retain a bit of humanity?” She glanced over to see a mischievous grin on his face, a knowing smile that set her teeth on edge. “And then you looked right at Basira-”

“Oh, shut up,” Daisy ground out as a traitorous blush began to rise in her cheeks. “How did you even see-”

“You’re asking how I was able to see something…” He held a hand up over his face so that the scarred eye carved into his open palm covered his real eye, watching her in its place. “Really?”

“Touché,” She muttered before a nagging worry resurfaced in her mind. “Speaking of Basira…”

Jon gave another hum as he tried and failed to cover up the giggles he had caused from the teasing. Daisy shot him a warning look, more playful than stern, and he pursed his lips.

“Basira,” He repeated with a nod to acknowledge he was paying attention.

“Is she still…bound to the Institute?” Daisy asked hesitantly. “Because Elias made it sound very much like if anything bad happened to him then everyone else would get dragged down with him but-”

“Now his eyes are in a glass jar and everyone seems relatively fine?” Jon finished.

“Yeah.” She gave a nod as Jon hummed thoughtfully, his gaze beginning to grow distant. “So, was she really only bound to the building and not him? Is she…is she bound to you now?” She nearly regrated asking the latter. It was a valid questioned but she wasn’t sure if Jon would even give an answer if that were the case. “Would she get sick if she tries to leave?” Jon still wasn’t answering her and she waved a hand in front of his face, his eyes staring vacantly through the motion. “Jon?”

His hand snapped up and gripped her wrist to stop her hand from moving. The hold was loose and Daisy could have easily pulled her hand back but she found herself somewhat frozen in shock of how quickly he had moved.

“Thinking,” Jon murmured.

“I thought your job was knowing,” Daisy reasoned as she gently pulled her wrist from his grasp.

“It’s…complicated.” The focus had returned to his eyes once more as his nose scrunched up in thought. “The Institute is a temple to the Eye and through it people can become bound to the Watcher but the strength of that bond varies. Archival assistants do tend to have stronger bonds due to their proximity to the Archivist.”

“And Basira’s bond is…”

“She can leave,” Jon replied and Daisy let out a breath. “I can’t guarantee she wouldn’t feel a pull to return every once in a while, but she wouldn’t suffer any ill-effects from being away. The Eye enjoys having her out in the world.”

“Oh,” Daisy croaked out, brow furrowing as she considered his cryptic explanation. “Good?”

Jon turned his head to look at her and gave a bright smile before he nodded.

“Good,” He assured her.

“You really want to hire me on as security?”

“Why not?”

“Can the Institute even afford more staff?” Daisy asked, half joking and half serious. “How many donors have pulled out because you ruined the fun they were having in the apocalypse?”

“None of them,” Jon told her with a shake of his head. “The Fairchild and Lukas families were some of the largest contributors and they’re still funding us.”

“Even the Lukas family?” Daisy checked. “You killed one of them.”

“When people give their statements, it means the Entity that targeted them can continue to feed when they’re later forced to revisit the experience in their dreams. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship that they’re reluctant to sever,” Jon explained. “And the Lukas family isn’t exactly the most…sentimental beyond keeping all of their members in the same graveyard.”

“And you’re fine working with them?” Daisy questioned as she considered how Martin had faired under the guidance of Peter Lukas. Jon let out a sigh, already catching on to what she was trying to say. “After what the Lonely did to…”

“I’ve come to terms with the fact that necessary sacrifices are likely to become commonplace moving forward,” Jon said, his tone resigned yet firm. “So long as it protects what I care about.”

Sacrifices.

She wondered if that’s what she was to him. Was he making a sacrifice by asking for her to work security? Was it a necessary price to pay, keeping her around in exchange for the safety of his Institute and all it held?

Daisy realized she must have been staring at Jon for too long because his eyes had begun to dart back and forth between her and the wall across from them. At some point he had raised his hand to his throat and was skimming his fingers along his new scars…no.

Not the new ones.

He was only touching the one she had given him.

“Hey, Jon?” Her voice, though soft, startled him and his hand twitched where it lay against his throat. A spectral eye appeared by his face and observed her for a moment before it blinked away. “Are we okay?”

Jon was quiet for a moment and she watched as he swallowed, scarred skin caressing and constraining the motion. Daisy wondered for a moment if she needed to elaborate on what she meant exactly but figured that would surely be a foolish thing, explaining something to the Archivist.

“Do you want us to be?” Jon finally replied, voice even quieter than hers.

Daisy wasn’t sure if she could give a verbal answer to that. There was too much she wanted to convey in the answer she needed to give him and it overwhelmed her. She considered simply nodding but her body strained to keep still, to keep from startling the wounded thing beside her.

“Yes.”

The word cracked pitifully in her throat and she watched Jon’s mouth twitch into the start of a pained frown.

“I don’t forgive you,” He told her, voice somehow both firm and shaky in its delivery as his hand wrapped more protectively around the scar she had placed. “I…I can’t. Not for this.”

She swallowed and gave the slightest nod of her head.

“Right.”

“There’s a reason I went into that coffin,” He rambled on. “A-and I want us to be friends, but the way you made me feel when you held that knife to my-” Jon broke off, eyes squeezing shut as he let out a breath he no longer needed. “It’s weirdly selfish but…I think that’s a small part of the reason why I want to keep you around. So that I can be sure that you know that I don’t forgive you…and so I can watch you try and fix things.”

They fell silent once more as Daisy allowed his confession to sink in. She hadn’t expected that from him, an admittance to thoughts and desires that displayed a crueler, bordering on sadistic, side to him. He was being selfish, but he was owed that with her.

So many were owed that.

“I was angry with Basira for talking me down instead of taking the shot.” Daisy broke the silence first and Jon flinched ever so slightly at the sound of her voice, likely expecting something harsh to spill from her lips. “We split off from you two right after but you should’ve seen the pitiful mix of cold-shoulder and desperate clinginess I was throwing at her. But then I got to thinking…” Jon was looking at her fully now and his hand had fallen away from her throat which she counted as a small win. “I had thought killing me was the right thing to do because it would keep me from hurting more people but then…then I wouldn’t have had to face all of the shit I’ve pulled in the past. Death would’ve let me escape punishment.”

“You wouldn’t consider death a punishment in itself?” Jon asked, voice soft.

“Not enough of one,” She replied.

“So now you want to stick around and make amends for what you’ve done with the time you have left.”

“It’ll be in vain though,” Daisy said, not as a question but as an ill-fated fact she had arrived at on her own. “Trying to make amends.”

“Most likely,” Jon agreed.

Working for the Institute would be more than just employment. It’d be more than just a way for her to Hunt. Hunters were one of the few things that could tear apart another Avatar, making them a powerful thing to keep around. She’d be restricted, collared and put on a leash and only let off when the Archivist needed her so she wouldn’t wreak unnecessary havoc.

She needed that.

She needed restriction. She needed someone or something to keep her instincts in check when she wasn’t able to. If she was going to continue living then she had to damn well do something with that life.

“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t at least try,” Daisy murmured before she kicked away from the wall and turned to face Jon who looked up at her with curious, insightful eyes. Daisy held out a hand and after a moment Jon took it. “I’d like a proper contract, but you’ve got yourself a Hunter.”

Chapter Text

When Rosie received an email from Martin Blackwood, she had honestly thought it was going to be a notice of resignation. He, much like the rest of the archives crew, hadn’t reported to the institute for the last month at least. The only contact Rosie had with them was Basira Hussein occasionally stopping in to swipe a file box of statements and leave without much of a single friendly exchange.

The absences weren’t normal per se but the employees in the archives had always worked on their own schedule, an abnormality that was always approved of by Mr. Bouchard or Mr. Lukas. Rosie never questioned it but she also wasn’t an idiot. The Magnus Institute’s archives had a bit of a high turn around rate with its employees and on top of that, Martin had been working under Lukas before he disappeared and that position didn’t seem to be any better than working under Sims.

But no, the email wasn’t a notice of resignation.

It was a request for a meeting invitation to be sent to every member of staff followed by a request to reserve their auditorium that really only existed for the occasional research presentation or as a quiet area to eat your lunch. Rosie sent out the email and booked the space, too curious by the sudden requests to even bother asking why they were being made.

This was how she found herself seated in the auditorium amongst her chattering coworkers, near to the aisle and closer to the back than to the front. She had always favored this seat choice in her classes. It was optimal for people-watching but still gave the illusion of her being engaged in the presentation.

Martin was up on the stage, pacing as he waited for the last few stragglers to arrive. He had become a funny one to Rosie. She’d found him capable enough and she usually handed off archives business to him for sorting out. He’d shown a more independent side to himself while he was working under Lukas, establishing a confidence that let you know you could rely on him, yet he still hadn’t quite shaken the softness and sensitivity he’d held with him since he was first hired. It was like he knew what he was capable of but didn’t want you to know the same.

Though speaking of people who had changed, Jonathon Sims looked only mildly better than when Rosie had least seen him and that wasn’t saying much. The archivist had been a lanky, fragile-looking thing when he was first hired, comparable to a cactus needle both in stature and personality.

He looked less…prickly where he sat, curled up in a folding chair off to the side of the stage and wrapped in a jumper that was a few sizes too big. He looked less exhausted and less like he had been walking around with a rock stuck in his shoe all day, but still not…still not the best. There was a look of pensive concentration on his face that furrowed his brow, but every so often he’d look up and catch a glimpse of Martin and his face would light up and soften with such tender affection.

Rosie glanced down from Jon’s face and saw that there was a simple black ring on his hand, inconspicuous and nondescript. Her excitement peaked for a moment until she realized no, it wasn’t right. The ring was on his right middle finger, so not an engagement band then.

Ah, well…they’d get there in due time.

She mentally shrugged as she let her focus wander once more. The blonde standing by Jon’s side was a bit of an intimidating one, arms crossed and face stern. What was her name again…Detective Tonner, that’s right. Rosie had dealt with her enough in the recent past. Decently polite woman so long as you weren’t in her way, though she had never recalled her being so close with Jon. She looked as though she were standing guard for him, sharp eyes scanning the room for any potential threat.

There was a surprisingly good turnout for something marketed as updates for the future of the institute. Sure, Martin had requested that she mark attendance as mandatory in the email she had sent out but that didn’t always guarantee a full house. Most people tended not to care unless their job security was on the line.

Then again, they hadn’t been performing in the most stable work environment as of late. People likely wanted answers and hoped to get them here and now. Mr. Lukas seemed to be missing in action and Mr. Bouchard was…well…

The official story from the police was that they no longer had enough substantial evidence to hold him and they had released him from custody. They were unaware of his whereabouts and Rosie wasn’t about to request they file a missing person report for him. It was a shoddy story that was full of holes but she wasn’t paid enough to go play hide and seek with the boss who probably wouldn’t even bat an eye if she were the one to go missing.

That may sound cruel to an outsider, not caring about the wellbeing of another person, but Rosie had known for quite some time that she was working for something not quite normal, not quite…good.

However, that did leave the issue of a lack of upper management for the Institute. At the very least, she was pretty sure Bouchard didn’t empty the accounts before disappearing because the lights still turned on each morning and they received their paychecks on time each week. But she couldn’t keep responding to every email and phone call requesting a word with the Head of the Institute with a noncommittal ‘He’s out of the office at the moment. Can I book you for a later date?’.

“Right, uh…” Rosie’s mind refocused to the front as Martin cleared his throat and called for the attention of the room. “T-thank you all for coming! We’ll try to make this as brief as possible with it being a Friday afternoon and all that but um…no guarantees, if I’m being honest. Duration will likely be determined by the number of questions you all have.”

“Then here’s the first of many,” Someone from the back called out. “What is this meeting about? The email was pretty vague.”

Martin opened his mouth before closing it and looking over to Jon who seemed to be staring off into space.

“I honestly don’t even know where we’re meant to start with this,” Martin admitted, his statement clearly directed at Jon.

The smaller man blinked a few times and tugged at one of the sleeves of his oversized jumper before looking up at Martin.

“Gertrude tape.” Rosie heard Jon murmur, his soft voice carrying just enough for her to hear in the large auditorium. “Just to start. Remember?”

“But you…I…” Martin frowned and pulled back his ramblings before taking a breath and turning back to face the crowd. “Before we continue: It is very important to be absolutely clear this is not a joke. Nor is it any sort of prank, or game. What we are about to tell all of you is completely serious. And very, very important for you to know…”

Martin began to explain.

He began to explain…everything.

Rosie was unsure at which point her mind began to fuzz with a dissociating static, muddling enough to tune out the gasps and murmurs of her colleagues around her but selectively focusing enough to allow her to hear every last word that spilled from the mouths of Martin Blackwood and Jonathon Sims. Her stomach churned with the remnants of her lunch, protesting the sickening images that painted themselves in her mind.

This was their reality? This had been their world all along and they had played a part in it, none the wiser. Decay and blood and mannequins and wax and spiders and teeth and eyes there were so many of them all around her watching and waiting and feeding and why were they there and what did they want from her and why couldn’t she just…

She blinked.

The eyes were gone.

She squeezed her eyes shut and they were there, distorted and fading in the darkness. She opened her eyes to nothing. Perhaps they were never there to begin with but the look of seemingly unprompted guilt that had settled into the creases of Jon’s face when she looked up at him made her question if that were true.

There were…beings in their world. Entities or Fears or Powers or whatever you’d like to call them. They were there above them and below them and among them and they could do nothing about this. Rosie wanted so very much to just…not believe it. She wanted to laugh like some of the other members of staff had done early on but just like them, she had fallen quiet as Sims and Blackwood continued on and on and provided far too much horrid detail for it all to be called a joke.

They were servants. Unwitting followers of this…thing and-

Oh. Oh god. Was Rosie allowed to call the Eye a thing? Was that insulting? Would she be struck down or punished or ostracized or-

“Rosie.” Rosie’s spiraling mind snapped to focus on Jon’s voice as it dragged her back from the dark. Jon was up and standing beside Martin on the stage, hands twisted in the fabric of his jumper. “Breathe, Rosie.”

Rosie drew in a deep, ragged breath and glanced around the room. She wondered for a moment if Jon had actually called her name out loud or if she had just imagined it. No one else was looking in her direction as she struggled to keep her lungs filled and mind clear. She looked back at Jon who was still watching her with quiet concern, his brow knit and mouth set in an anxious frown. She gave him a shaky nod and his expression softened, turning to something closer to relief as he gave her a small smile and turned to look over the rest of the audience.

There were plenty whose reactions matched hers, those of quiet horror and barely restrained panic. Some looked pale and sick while others held a building rage in their expression, a flight of frustration and disbelief and irritation flickering in their eyes. A mere few appeared to be in awe, contemplative and thoughtful, though the sight of their accepting calm was enough to help Rosie crawl down a few notches from her place of dread.

Some were silent and some were murmuring incomprehensible nothings and some were…no…many were muttering variations of the same realization that began to settle in the minds of every employee of the Magnus Institute.

It makes sense.

It makes so much goddamn sense! How had they not realized this before? What building did they currently occupy? Which files and artefacts and books had they left behind in their workspaces to come to this meeting?

You don’t work for Elias fucking Bouchard and assume your job was a normal one. The noises that Rosie would overhear coming from his office and the smells and the look in his eyes when you spoke with him that told you he knew so much more than you ever would. It was never normal and Rosie was done with trying to convince herself that it was.

“So, you’re telling us that essentially every paranormal case that we’ve documented or researched or received statements for is…genuine?”

The first to finally speak was David, a man from their research department who always wore the most atrocious ties and sweaters that made Rosie smile whenever she saw them. His hand was up in the air like a student in class and all eyes in the room settled on him before flitting over to Jon and Martin in anticipation of an answer.

“More or less, and you’re taking it surprisingly well,” Martin replied with a mixture of amusement and concern in his voice.

“We study the esoteric.” That comment came from Sonja, a sweet young woman who worked in artefact storage. “We’ve spent years having our theories and beliefs roasted by the rest of academia. This is just like one big…validation party!”

“You’ve given us a foundation to go off of a-and a new system of categorizing occurrences and artefacts,” Diana, the unofficial leader of their library, called out which earned her nods and sounds of agreement from the colleagues around her.

“To be clear,” Jon cut in, voice firm. “None of this information should leave the Institute. Many would still choose to not believe it and for those who do happen to accept it…”

“Mass panic?” Diana called out as a guess.

“Mass panic,” Jon repeated with an affirming nod.

“So that parasitic worm infestation back a few summers ago…”

“The Corruption,” Martin answered. “Jane Prentiss was an Avatar whose aim was to attack specifically the archives and potentially set off a ritual. She was the hive for the worms.”

“Wasp larvae,” Jon suggested after a beat, prompting Martin to grimace.

“Hive for the…wasp larvae,” Martin corrected, though there was clear disgust in his voice. He looked over helplessly at Jon who seemed to be hiding the beginnings of a teasing smile. “Jon, I hate that.”

“What about all of those police investigations?” That comment came from Glen, tone clearly suspicious and a tad jaded. Rosie was fairly certain he worked in artefact storage and recalled that he hadn’t been a fan of all of the police combing the building and interrupting the workflow. “You were under investigation for murder.”

“Framed by Jonah,” Jon defended. “The…unidentifiable victim was Jurgen Leitner. He was giving me too much information so Jonah got rid of him. Jonah was also the one who killed Gertrude Robinson.”

God it was going to be an adjustment hearing that name so casually used. Jonah. Jonah Magnus had been their boss, strutting around in the skin of a dead man. Rosie wondered if there’d be any plans to change the name of the institute given the man’s crimes.

“I thought Leitner died ages ago,” Hannah questioned, understandably curious given how infamous that name was for anyone who worked in their library.

“He was hiding in the system of tunnels beneath the Institute,” Jon explained.

“We have secret tunnels?” Tom, another from the library who was sat next to Hannah, shouted with glee in his voice. “Oh, my day just got so much better.”

“No exploring the tunnels!” Martin quickly ordered, snuffing out the bubbling excitement and curiosity in the audience to leave behind childish groans. “Not without a guide at least.”

“And your scars?”

The question seemed to tumble from her mouth, unwanted and uncontrolled like a hiccup. Rosie positively hated how silent the room fell at the sound of her voice. She stared resolutely forward, not wanting to see the countless pairs of eyes that turned to stare at her. She stared at Jon who stared back, clearly thrown off guard by her question.

“My…”

“You’ve been collecting them since you started working as archivist,” Rosie elaborated as she felt her cheeks begin to warm from all the attention. Her voice grew quieter with every word she spoke as she realized just how taboo and potentially triggering her question had been. “More and more each time I saw you.” Jon remained silent and she gave a quick, nervous peep of a laugh and shook her hands in the air. “I-I don’t mean to be nosy about it, I just-”

“No! It…it’s quite alright, Rosie,” Jon quickly cut in. Rosie let out a breath as Jon shook his head and gave her a reassuring smile. He still looked so baffled. Had the question really thrown him off so much? It was as if he hadn’t expected them to care. “They’re…marks from various Entities.” Jon began to shed his oversized jumper to reveal the button up he wore underneath, its sleeves rolled up the elbow to expose his forearms. “Hazards of the position.”

“Jesus Christ, Sims.”

Rosie didn’t bother trying to figure out who had made that comment because she was too fixated on Jon’s arms. Even from her seat numerous rows away from the stage she could see that the skin looked to be borderline mutilated. She couldn’t quite make out the pattern of them. Were they swirls or circles or…oh god, they were eyes, weren’t they? Of course, they were eyes.

Rosie watched every member of staff walk through the front doors of the institute every morning. Some had their good days and some had their bad, but no one else had changed so drastically as the employees of the archive. Tim had had his pockmark scars to match Jon during the worm-…larvae infestation. Martin’s hair had gone a bit white once he started working with Lukas, though Rosie had chalked that up to the stress. Jon had always been the winner when it came to scars and injuries and she had seen the pockmarks and the burn and the cut on his throat and the steadily growing paranoia in his eyes but these…

These were new. 

“Tell me you didn’t do that to yourself,” Rosie breathed out, a sympathetic pain in her voice.

“No,” Jon quietly answered, glancing down at the ground as he did like a scolded child.

“Working as an archivist shouldn’t have hazards beyond paper cuts and the occasional migraine,” Ground out Henrietta from her seat amongst most of the research department.

Her tone was angry but the anger was clearly not directed at Jon. Henrietta oversaw many of the projects in research and Rosie knew she and Jon had worked together numerous times before Jon’s promotion to archivist. She was like a mother to many in the department, even the prickly ones like Jon. Her anger was protective, it was wrathful on behalf of Jon to make up for the passive state he was currently displaying.

“Yes, well…that actually leads quite nicely into our next point,” Jon mused with a weary smile, appearing happy to force the conversation in a different direction. “I am no longer an archivist. I am the Archivist, capital ‘A’ and all. I’ve become an Avatar for the Eye.”

Avatars had been explained to them along with rituals and a handful of other terms that no one had expected to learn that day. They were only servants, not quite active in their servitude due to being kept in the dark. The title of Avatar implied a whole other level of devotion, dependent on the figurative or even literal death of your former self.

“Why would you choose that?” Glen questioned.

“I was groomed for it by Jonah,” Jon explained. “It was his plan ever since he hired me and the pieces were actually in motion for it since I was quite young.”

“Then why…keep doing it?” Henrietta argued. “Jonah’s gone now. Is there some way you can reverse something like this?”

“Quit your day job, Sims,” David advised with a slight laugh, probably hoping to lighten the morose atmosphere that had settled in the room. “I doubt being an Avatar has benefits like dental.”

“I…can’t,” Jon claimed with a strained voice, almost appearing apologetic that he couldn’t do what they asked of him.

“The world underwent a horrible Change.” Martin finally jumped into the conversation when he saw how Jon was struggling to explain. “It was divided into domains of fear ruled by different Entities and the whole of it was observed by the Eye. None of you remember this happening and I don’t recommend you try to.” Martin looked over at the Archivist with an ache in his gaze that looked to be something only reserved for Jon. “Jon reversed it but there was a price he had to pay to do it. This…this is permanent.”

“Archivist is no longer a job for me, it’s what I am,” Jon carried on. “I am a catalogue of trauma and fear whose purpose is to Know and See for the Ceaseless Watcher. Moving forward, you may encounter the servants of other Entities who will only refer to me solely as the Archivist because that is all I am to them.”

There was a beat of silence, the audience mulling over this information as the Archivist watched them decide on their judgement.

“Can we still call you Jon?” Hannah asked, hand raised in the air.

Jon blinked, once again seemingly caught quite off guard that someone would ask such a thing.

“The Eye…y-yes, you can call me Jon,” He answered, the corners of his mouth quirking into the beginnings of a confused smile. “If you’d like.”

“You could have stayed in research and avoided all of this but no,” Henrietta called out, a few other researchers flashing small grins in response to her comment. “You remember what I told you when you were offered the position?”

“I believe it was something along the lines of ‘Screw Elias and his stupid archives, you should stay in research’.” Jon answered with a dry chuckle.

“Point still stands,” Henrietta maintained with a sharp smirk. “Though I suppose it’s not…Elias’s anymore, is it?”

“You can still call him Elias even though he was Jonah Magnus,” Martin began to say. “If that makes things easier for-”

“Not what I meant,” Henrietta interrupted with a wave of her hand. “We have no Institute Head anymore. And not saying I liked him any better, but unless Lukas is still around-”

“He’s not. I…I killed him,” Jon informed them.

Henrietta let out a breath.

“Great.”

“He was an Avatar of the Lonely and-”

“He could have been your grandad for all I care. He was terrible.” Her words were punctuated by Jon shutting his mouth with a click of teeth, leaving behind a slight smile that he quickly forced away. “But who’s our boss now?”

Her question was met with murmurs of agreement from her colleagues, all curious as to who was now in charge. Rosie felt very much the same as it was quite strange working as secretary to an empty position.

“I suppose…Jon should be the Head, right?” Sonja figured. “If this Institute serves this Eye patron…thing, then shouldn’t the Avatar be in charge?”

“Yeah, does the patron…want that?” David asked, hesitantly glancing up the ceiling as if the Eye would manifest to give its approval.

Rosie expected to see nothing and therefore was suitably surprised to see a small spectral eye looking down at David from its spot a few feet above his head. Many of her colleagues gasped, but as the eye blinked out of existence, Rosie heard muffled laughter coming from the stage. She looked back over to see Jon trying to stifle his chuckles behind a scarred hand, more of the spectral eyes hovering around him. Martin rolled his eyes, the action more fond than hurtful, as he nudged Jon with his elbow. The Archivist sobered slightly, coughing a bit to clear away the remnant laughter as the eyes faded away.

“I’m not exactly suited for upper management,” Jon reasoned with a shrug. “Additionally, given my position as Archivist, I wouldn’t want to split my time between the archives and the rest of the institute.”

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but hiring an outsider seems…wrong,” Glen argued, his suggestion met with words of agreement from the people around him. “At least for now while everyone adjusts to the new information.”

“I agree, it should be someone already employed here.”

“Let’s vote on it!”

“We can certainly hold elections if that’s what everyone wants,” Martin assured as he moved to grab a small notebook and pen from the stage’s podium. “Nominations can even be done right now and Jon could serve as interim Head until we have a proper vote, maybe give everyone a week to write speeches or-”

“I nominate Martin Blackwood!”

Martin fumbled the pen he was about to write with, nearly dropping it in the process.

“I-I’m sorry?”

“Oh definitely! I second the nomination for Blackwood,” Hannah called out. “Do we need to second nominations? How formal are we making this?”

“Oh, should I have nominated with a pro?” Asked the original advocate, a normally quiet young man by the name of Benji who worked in research. “I nominate Martin on the pro that he seems just as knowledgeable about all of this spooky stuff and also because of that one time I came into work very sad and he brought me some tea and it made me feel better.”

“That’s a fairly subjective pro.”

“It was fairly good tea.”

“Can I just put my vote in for him now or do we really have to wait?”

“H-hold on, hold on,” Martin quickly cut in, a growing panic in his expression as voices steadily filled the auditorium in support of his nomination. “Why are you nominating me? I’m just an archival assistant, I don’t-”

“But you were assistant to Peter Lukas while he was in charge,” Rosie called out, throwing in her own thoughts for the argument. She quite liked the idea of working under Martin. “And honestly you did more for the position than he did.”

“All Lukas ever did was sneak up on people and…get rid of anyone who complained,” Diana criticized. “He wasn’t exactly around when you needed him for actual administrative work.”

“Yeah, Martin handled most of it.”

“He hated computers,” Martin muttered. “Yes, well…alright then. If that’s really what you’d like to do then I suppose I…I accept the nomination. Any other nominations?” He scanned the crowd with a hopeful smile that slowly fell as his question was met with silence. “Any…other…any at all.” Desperation laced his words as he shook his head. “Oh, please don’t do this to me.”

“You know, if there’s only one nomination then we wouldn’t need to hold elections, right?” David reasoned.

“Right, and that would mean we don’t even need to wait to fill the position so Sims can stay down in his archives,” Hannah added.

“I support that,” Jon agreed with a teasing grin.

“Hush.” Martin sent him a glare before sighing. He dropped the notebook, no longer needed, back onto the podium. “Are we really doing this?”

“Martin Blackwood, Head of the Magnus Institute,” Jon announced, mock formality in its delivery. Martin was glaring at him again but Jon continued to smile. “Nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“I have a question,” Glen called out.

“Y-yes, of course!” Martin shook his head and put on a quick smile, ready to address the room.

Rosie stifled a chuckle at the quick response. He could deny it all he wanted but Martin was going to be a good leader.

“What if we’d like to resign?” Glen questioned. “I-I mean I don’t think that I want to resign at the moment. This is all quite exciting and I’d like to stick around but…I’m just curious if we’re allowed to leave or if this is a ‘you know too much’ type of situation.”

“Well of course we’d be able to…” Tom trailed off as his brow furrowed. “That’s a good question actually.”

“You said we were unwitting servants of this Entity,” Sonja reasoned. “Servants don’t usually have the option to just leave their service.”

“If you were contracted to the archives then it’d be…a little more complicated,” Jon answered. “But for the rest of you, I don’t believe it should be much of an issue. There may be some lingering pulls to return here but they shouldn’t be too difficult to ignore. Additionally, if you do choose to leave, you’ll always have the institute as a resource if you find yourselves in any danger.”

“Would we be in danger?” Hannah asked, panicked murmurs filling the room as others wondered the same. “From other Avatars and things?”

“Are we in danger now if we stay?”

“I have a wife at home. Will she be safe?”

“Clearly things didn’t work out for Tim or Sasha.”

“Allow me to introduce someone to all of you,” Jon quickly interrupted. His voice was raised to cut through the growing dread in the room and command attention. Rosie swore she saw a flash of green in his eyes before silence once again fell. Jon gestured to the side towards Detective Tonner, her chin raising slightly in acknowledgement. “Some of you may recognize Miss Tonner from her investigations on behalf of the London Metropolitan Police. She’ll be coming on as security for the Institute. She’s more than capable of handling any potential threats from other Entities.”

“Are you spooky as well?” Someone called out.

“I do serve the Hunt,” Daisy answered with a curt nod of her head.

“Do you have a title like the Archivist?”

“Hunter,” Jon excitedly offered with a smile that quickly fell when he saw the grimace on Daisy’s face.

“You can just call me Daisy,” She corrected.

“So, you’ll handle everything?” Glen asked, clearly skeptical. “Just one person?”

“Basira Hussain is still under contract with the archives. She can leave but…not for very long,” Martin added on. “She’ll likely be branching more into fieldwork moving forward but she’s also well-trained in security. However, Daisy will be the primary contact for security and defense. Avatars of the Hunt are incredibly capable fighters, so you’re well protected.”

“If I may?” Daisy requested with a nod of her head.

“The floor is yours,” Jon replied with a wave of his hand as he stepped back to give Daisy the space.

“I’d like you all trained,” Daisy announced, scanning the crowd with discerning eyes as she addressed them. “I will of course do my best to protect the archives and the institute but an understanding of what’s out there is incredibly vital. A more official module of sorts should be drafted but in summary, I want every member of staff educated on the dangers they could be facing and how to respond accordingly.”

“We face plenty with what shows up in artefact storage,” Sonja defended with a confident smirk.

“But would you know what to do if an Avatar of the Flesh were to show up looking to reclaim a cursed butcher’s knife that landed in your inventory?” Daisy questioned, her cold stare prompting Sonja to slump in her seat as some of her previous confidence left her. “Better yet, can anyone tell me what they would do if a nest of spiders were to appear in the corner of the breakroom one day?”

“Kill it!” Brian shouted. Rosie was fairly certain he worked in artefacts, recently transferred from research. He looked exceedingly pleased to have gotten an answer out, seemingly unbothered by Daisy’s daunting presence. “That’s the Corruption, isn’t it? Bugs and stuff. Burn it with fire.”

“No, idiot,” Sonja corrected, her voice teasing as Brian frowned. She looked doubly pleased to cover up her misstep from earlier by correcting her colleague. “That would be the Web.”

“Still burn it,” Brian muttered.

“Wrong,” Daisy admonished, voice firm. “There are certain Avatars who we have…questionably positive relationships with. If a nest of spiders were to appear, you should fetch one of us so we can consult Annabelle Cane. She’s an Avatar of the Web and we’d be able to work out with her exactly why she needs a nest of spiders to be growing in the break room.”

“We have to be nice to spiders now?” Brian groaned.

“No,” Jon answered.

“You should at least be civil,” Martin quickly amended.

“Who’s here from HR?” Mia, one of their HSE specialists, asked. Rosie watched her crane her neck around to scan the crowd. “Do you think we could make up some infographics with this information and post it around the Institute?”

Rosie watched as Brenda from HR wearily raised her hand in the air. Bless her heart, she already did so much for this place before these revelations.

“Infographics…something like ‘please report any strange manifestations of meat that appear in the breakroom fridge’? Or ‘if you see a random door that you don’t remember being there then don’t go through it’?” Brenda asked, already taking out a small planner to take note of the request. “That sort of thing?”

“So I’m not just imagining things!” Tom shouted. “There’s a new door in the back right corner over there. I come in here to take naps sometimes and it’s never been there before.”

The room nearly gained collective whiplash with how quickly every head swiveled to look to the back right corner of the auditorium. Sure enough, there was a bright yellow door tucked into the wall. Rosie knew for a fact that the paint didn’t match any of the other doors in the institute. Furthermore, that wall of the auditorium fell under ground-level to accommodate the decline of the seats and a door set into it should lead to nothing but dirt.

“How long has…”

Rosie glanced back to see Martin giving Jon a curious look. Daisy seemed more tense than before and infinitely more irritated as she glared at the yellow door.

“Helen’s been there for the last…ten minutes?” Jon said with a shrug. His nonchalant response encouraged many to look away from the door, though some lingering gazes remained to see if it would open. “She’s just eavesdropping, don’t mind her.”

“We may get questions from investors when they visit,” Brenda warned, bringing the conversation back on track as she wrote in her planner.

“Many of our investors are…also involved with Entities,” Martin informed her with a nervous smile.

Rosie watched Brenda blink and snap her planner shut before using it to tap her forehead one…two…three times.

“I need a drink,” Brenda finally announced as she dropped the planner to her lap. “Who wants to go for drinks after this?”

The suggestion was met with raised hands from just about every employee in attendance, including those on stage.

“Any pub we walk into with this many people is going to hate us,” Mia reasoned.

“Actually…” Henrietta began, a growing smile on her face as she glanced down at her watch. “We closed early today for this meeting. People could honestly just go out, buy some bottles, and bring them back here.”

“Impromptu institute party?” David suggested with a nod of his head. “Absolutely down for that.”

“Do we have the blessing of Mr. Blackwood?” Henrietta challenged with a teasing grin as she looked towards Martin.

“Right, what does the new boss think of this plan?”

“We’ll be discreet bringing the bottles in.”

“We promise we won’t set any fires!”

“Especially not near the archives,” Jon pleaded, a hint of fear in his voice.

Rosie looked around at the institute staff, smiling in response to the childish grins settling on their faces. She could already hear people whispering drink orders and suggesting places for food. They were researchers and academics and administrative professionals but a good party could get anyone feeling like they were young again.

She looked to the stage, to their Archivist and their head of security and their new boss. Daisy already seemed exhausted at the prospect of watching over a bunch of tipsy scholars. Martin was watching the crowd with a mixture of emotions in his expression, caught somewhere between bewilderment and delight. Jon had hooked an arm into Martin’s and was leaning into him, a content smile on his face as he observed the chattering audience. Spectral eyes were blinking in and out of existence around him, vibrating with their own strange excitement.

“Do what you want,” Martin finally conceded with a laugh, his approval prompting cheers to echo throughout the room. “It’ll be our little secret.”