Chapter Text
Today was the big day. Jon sighed as he looked in the mirror and straightened out his blazer again, brushing off an invisible piece of lint from his shoulder. It was a bit more professional than his usual look, but he figured it was best to dress up for the new position. He needed to look the part of Head Archivist, after all. Once he was certain that his clothes looked alright and he’d pushed his hair back into something that looked remarkably tame, he nodded once at his reflection. He just wanted everything to go smoothly.
Jon grabbed his laptop bag and his lunch and slowly made his way outside. His commute was absolutely average. He took his familiar route down the road to the station, taking the tube most of the way to work. Everything went just how it had for the last four years he’d been working at the Institute. Jon didn’t know why he expected anything different, but something made him feel like today was just going to be so much more. He supposed those just had to be first day jitters or something. The new promotion had him nervous.
It wasn’t like he was even fully qualified for it, either. Who knew why Elias chose him specifically, rather than any of his other, more senior, colleagues. He could think of a few off the top of his head who would be better suited for the position. Still, he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He got all the train and made his way back up onto the street, letting the anonymity of the city engulf him. He always enjoyed his commute to work. He took a more leisurely pace and watched as the different people bustled around him. A woman clutching a stack of papers to her chest, clearly nervous about some presentation or something. Another person with a phone pressed to their ear, yelling about some business deal. A man holding a child’s hand, the little girl grinning as she held onto a pink book bag. All of them had lives and stories to tell and Jon wanted nothing more than to just be able to sit and watch them all walk past.
But alas, there wasn’t time for that. The people started to become less and less the closer he got to the Magnus Institute with just a few passing by here and there as he finally made it to the building.
He walked up the stairs and into the imposing building, nodding to the few people he recognized from research before making his way to Elias’s office. He never really had a reason to go there before, not before last week when he was called in to be informed of his promotion. It looked… fancier than the rest of the building with the big ornate portrait of Jonah Magnus, the institute’s founder, just behind his desk. It was a little imposing if he was honest, but Elias seemed kind enough.
Jon smiled at Elias’s assistant as he walked up, the woman giving him a skeptical smile in return. “Hello, um, I’m Jonathan Sims? The new Head Archivist?” he said, hoping she would know where to direct him or could show him down to his office.
Her face lit up in recognition, nodding her head quickly. “Yes, of course. Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Sims, I’m Rosie. Mr. Bouchard told me to expect you. He’s very busy at the moment, but I can show you down to the archives and to your office,” she said, standing up from her desk and smoothing down her skirt as she did so.
Jon let out a small breath of relief and nodded, gesturing for her to lead the way. “Of course. Thank you. And it’s a pleasure to meet you, as well.”
Rosie just waved a hand and grabbed a set of keys from her desk before heading down the hallway. “It’s no problem at all. I’m just glad we have someone who can fill the position so soon, what with everything that happened,” she said cheerily, making Jon furrow his brow.
“Right,” he said slowly, not wanting to pry too much. Of course there had been rumors that floated around Research, but… Well, the people there loved to gossip.
He followed her down the stairs and through the door labeled “Archives”. It seemed simple enough. There were three desks set in the room, likely for his assistants, a door off to the side that likely led to where the majority of the statements were kept, and finally a door at the back with “Head Archivist” written on the frosted glass. Clearly that would be his office. He followed Rosie through the main room and waited patiently as she unlocked the door and handed him the key.
“This one is all yours,” she said, glancing around the drab room but not letting that cheery smile leave her lips.
“Right, yes, thank you. I… Well, suppose I’m not sure where to begin quite yet,” he said, looking around at the mess. There were boxes of statements around the room and a few just left out on the desk.
“Of course. I’m sure Mr. Bouchard will have time in his schedule later to come down and give you the proper tour of the place and go over your duties.”
Jon nodded and looked around the room. “Right, of course. I’m sure he’s quite a… busy man. I can find some things to do in the meantime. Like… Working towards digitizing some of the statements and… filing,” he said, doing his best not to make eye contact as he spoke, looking around the office instead.
Rosie just raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Right, of course,” she said, picking up the nearest box of statements and setting them down on his desk flicking through some of the files. “You clearly have your work cut out for you.”
Jon just furrowed his brow further. “Did… Well, did the previous archivist… leave anything to outline what she was doing..?” he asked, somewhat hopefully.
Rosie frowned and stared down at the box more intently. “No, not to my knowledge. She was… getting a little bit older and I think things were getting hard for her before she-” Rosie said slowly, cutting herself off before she continued with that thought.
Jon internally cursed at the thought that he had nothing to go on, but his curiosity only grew at what really happened to her.
“Did you ever meet her?” Rosie asked, driving the conversation forward before Jon could ask anything.
Jon shook his head. “No, not really. Just remember seeing her come into Research a few times. She seemed… Well, I don’t think she liked anyone in the department much.”
Rosie gave a laugh at that, shaking her head as she looked at the empty chair behind the desk. “Not sure she liked anyone much, so I wouldn’t take it to heart,” she said, shaking her head.
Jon nodded a little, feeling a little bit better after hearing that. Rosie talking a bit more freely made that little bubble of courage in him swell, pushing him to ask the question brewing on his mind. “What actually happened to her?” he asked before he could stop himself.
That made her pause for a moment, glancing down at the desk as she likely thought of what to tell him. It made the pit in Jon’s stomach worse, but he didn’t want to give up so easily.
“You know, there were quite a lot of rumors floating around once the position opened up. Someone even said she died at the very desk,” he said with a small laugh, trying to lighten the mood and pry a bit more information out of Rosie.
The look on her face made him wish he’d dropped it. “Oh,” Jon said softly, wishing more than anything he could let his business professional mask fall. “Right.”
“Well, clearly she didn’t die at this desk. But… Well, we’re not entirely sure where she-” Rosie started, but Jon had already heard enough.
“It’s fine,” he interrupted, running his hand through his hair and probably mussing it up a bit. “It’s my fault for asking questions I didn’t want to know the answer to,” he added, wanting to bash his head against the wall. “Besides, I don’t believe in ghosts.” God, if Georgie heard him right now she’d tear him apart.
Rosie just gave him a look with a raised eyebrow and nodded once. “Right, well, if you won’t be needing anything else, I’ll be getting back to my desk,” she trailed off, taking a step towards the door and giving him another one of those polite smiles.
“Right, yes, thank you again, Rosie. Oh. And please thank Elias again for me,” he said quickly as she started walking out the door.
“I’m sure you can thank him yourself when he comes down later,” she said simply over her shoulder, the door already shutting behind her before he could say anything more.
With the door closed, his shoulders finally dropped and he let out a loud sigh as he glanced around the room again. So this was his office now. And he was sure his assistants would be in soon. God, Jon really had no idea how he’d gotten himself into this mess.
He figured he might as well make himself busy trying to look like he knew what he was doing, though, so he took out his laptop and tried getting started with recording a few statements. Digitizing things sounded like something he read online as an archivist’s duties.
He grabbed the first statement from the box, glancing it over for a moment before nodding to himself and clicking record on his laptop.
The whole thing seemed a bit ridiculous, but he couldn’t deny that it did make him feel a little uneasy. Like a story Georgie might cover on her podcast, something that could possibly be believable. He’d never admit it, though. Especially not here. He didn’t want anything thinking he believed in this sort of thing, let alone Tim and Sasha; he needed to keep up an image of professionalism.
Finishing the statement made him sigh in relief, clicking the stop button on his laptop. He was trying to get the audio to playback when someone threw open the door to his office and practically ran in.
“Hey sorry; you haven’t seen a dog, have you?”
Jon blinked in confusion, staring back at the man who was clearly not dressed in the state to be just wandering around the institute. “I’m sorry, what? In general, or?”