Work Text:
When you see Georgie again, it’s like a muscle uncramping.
You talk about your new job. You notice her eyes widen, just a little, before she settles herself into calm once more.
“What?” you say.
“Nothing,” she grins, a little forced. “Just surprised, didn’t think you set much stock by them,”
“It’s a job,” you say, “it’s actually in our field and it pays,”
“Sell-out,” she teases.
“Oh, coming from you, Miss Bedcetera?”
She groans. “Shut up, don’t remind me,”
You proceed to make spooky noises at her until she chokes on her drink and threatens violence on your person. This reminds you.
“I don’t know if you heard – about Jon, I mean?” You’ve never been the most tactful person, but even you are aware bringing up the fact that an ex is on the run for old man pipe murder is at best a delicate subject.
“Heard what?” she says, studying the bar in front of her.
“He’s sort of – on the run? for murder?”
“Oh! That’s – that’s surprising,” This is possibly the least normal response she could have given.
“Yeah, they think he beat an old man to death with a pipe in the archives,”
“Well,” she says, slowly, as if trying to buy time. “I doubt he did it,”
“You never know, maybe he finally snapped.”
You’re mostly just finding this funny now.
“I wonder where he is, anyway,” you add, casually. “Given that the police don’t seem to know. Can’t imagine who’d want to put up with him,”
Georgie very determinedly studies her drink, definitely not stiffening.
“You didn’t,”
“I said nothing,” she hisses, but there’s a smile to it.
“And yet you’re still a terrible liar,”
“Shut up,”
“Georgie Barker, criminal associate. Who’d’ve thought it?”
“You know he didn’t –”
“Yeah. Obviously.”
“That place –” She trails off and shakes her head. “There’s something not right there.”
A chill goes through you then, a little throb from your leg, but you brush it off.
“Ah well, I can always quit, if it’s that bad,” you smile. “And I don’t even have to work with him,”
You sip your drink and look at Georgie, really look at her. She looks like she wants to say something else, but stifles it.
“You’re the first person I’ve spoken to properly since –” You gesture vaguely, “the whole thing,”
Georgie had texted after it happened, of course, but you were in no state, and weren’t in the mood for the post-just-had-a-memeable-breakdown conversation anyway. You ignored her. She’s not annoyed, you don’t think. You know, in fact. She’d say if she was.
“Really?” Georgie replies. “Not even Andy?”
“Nope.” You spit out the “p”.
“Well, fuck him then,” she replies, to the point.
You laugh. No better way to put it really. In some ways, you don’t blame him. A holiday, though. Seven years of friendship, and he couldn’t even say it to your face.
You talk some more. It’s the easiest conversation you’ve have since Ghost Hunt UK broke down, since a while before that, if you’re honest.
Your leg throbs, hard. Time to leave.
“It’s been nice,” you say, “really,”
You hope she understands what you mean. When she smiles, you think she might. Whatever it is, that smile sticks with you, all the way home.
***
Somehow, your co-workers manage to be the strangest part of your new supernatural research job. The job is mostly just cold-calling and paperwork, and a lot of cross-referencing. They – you put it down to a reluctance to change, at first. Fine. A shitty workplace culture managed by none other than Jonathan fucking Sims. Suspected old-man-pipe-murderer Jonathan Sims, although you’re still not buying that one. That doesn’t explain Tim showing up at 11am each day, sometimes later, sometimes not at all. He’d seemed nice when you met him, before, funny, not the sort of person who’d keep looking at you like that, his gaze hardening as soon as it fixes on you. It doesn’t explain Martin’s constant flinching, why he twitches and cagily refuses to explain. It doesn’t explain why Sasha is missing and why they won’t talk about her. It’s annoying, and it’s weird, and you’re sick of it.
You do your best not to think about the way the others flinched at your hiring, how their rejection seems a little less like condescention and a little more like fear. You don’t think you’d mind so much, if you were all in it together. But they seem determined to keep you out of the loop.
When Tim asks you what the other Sasha looked like, you don’t know what to say. You only met her once. She was warm. Interesting. More than you can say about most people, but not exactly news to someone who knows her. Tim stares at you, and you say nothing. He skulks from the room.
You corner him, later, in the kitchen. You wait deliberately until Martin has already made tea, so you won’t be disturbed.
“Do you have a problem with me?” you demand. “Or is this just what people Jon hires are like?”
Tim laughs, mirthlessly. Mirthless is his brand at the moment. You’re not here for it.
“Yeah. Given enough time.”
You’re not in the mood for his crypticisms.
“What the fuck does that even mean?”
“Look, Jon’s not – he’s not right. But more than that it’s this place. It’s got its hooks in him, somehow. And now we’re all trapped,”
“Oh, right. The spooky curse,” you say. You don’t quite roll your eyes, but your tone suggests it.
“Exactly,” says Tim. You stand in silence for a few moments. Tim stares at his coffee cup like he’s trying to burn it with his mind. Then he turns and leaves, leaving the undrunk mug on the side.
When Jon texts you, asking to meet, you agree. If the others won’t tell you what’s going on, maybe Mr Murder will. He tells you about the worms, about Sasha’s disappearance, and you feel a pang. You did like Sasha. And it does explain the others, at least a bit. But that isn’t a space you know how to fill, and it isn’t one they want you to. You’re stuck here, as yourself. You don’t really understand what happened, even after your conversation with Jon. He’s not making the most sense. You know the supernatural is real, that whatever you met in that train carriage and in Amritsar was a Something. But a woman made of worms? and Sasha’s disappearance is obviously awful and tragic but he keeps talking about her having a different face and what the fuck does that even mean, that some new Sasha took the place of the Sasha you knew, the Sasha you probably would’ve asked out for a drink (at a non haunted pub) when things got less – just less, honestly. And when you ask which Sasha he crumples in on himself and says yes, exactly.
***
You have been an employee of the Magnus Institute for months when you’re called in with the rest of the archival staff and told how badly, exactly, your life has been destroyed.
You’re going to kill Elias Bouchard. The knowledge settles surprisingly easily. You’ve never really planned on murdering anyone, but it seems a natural progression at this point, and what do you have to lose, really?
You could have liked working here, that’s the worst part. Jon, for all his other faults, does take the work here seriously. They all do. They have real documentation, real proof. If it weren’t for the – for the supposed horrific death curse binding you here, you’d probably be pretty happy. The pay is even good. You took a gamble, went with your great unbeatable instincts and where has it gotten you? Fucking trapped. So you’re going to kill Elias. The whole “if I die you all die” thing seems a bit too convenient to be true. As far as you can tell, he is the curse. You don’t know why Jon’s playing along with it. You’d very much like to scream at him, but he’s barely around, and more and more haggard when he is. At least you now know for sure that he didn’t beat an old man to death with a pipe or kill Sasha. Yippee. Not that you ever really thought he did. Georgie trusts him – or she did – and that, at least, is a metric to rely on.
***
You’re supposed to be doing some follow-up, but your computer won’t fucking work and IT says it’ll be a few hours, because they’re all wrapped up. So you go to make some coffee but you’re out because someone drank the last of it and maybe it was you but whoever it was didn’t fucking remember to go to the fucking shop and get some new so now you’re stuck in this grim fucking kitchen on your own at a job you hate with people who annoy you and your leg is fucking pulsing so you throw your mug on the ground to watch it shatter to pieces. it doesn’t do anything. you just stare at it, breathing heavily.
You see Tim in the doorway, watching. He raises an eyebrow.
“Spooky curse,” you say.
“Spooky curse.” he nods. He crouches to open a cupboard and comes out with a dustpan and brush. He hands it to you. He doesn’t quite look at you.
You’re not friends after that, exactly, but you know where you stand.
***
Seeing Georgie is the only thing keeping you sane. You go for drinks, and she bullies you into doing terrible karaoke and watching documentaries about dolphins. (“They may have the capacity for evil, Melanie! You cannot tell me that’s not brilliant.”) Or you just get drunk. Georgie tells you about her latest What the Ghost? shenanigans and you commiserate, offer to ream out whoever she’s having difficulties with. she laughs. For a moment, that’s all you need.
***
“You got the better name,” you slur one day, as you’re walking home. As she’s walking you home.
“Melanie?” she’s significantly more sober than you.
“No – no, what the ghost? That’s funny,” you say.
She laughs. “Thank you for the seal of approval,”
“Ghost Hunt UK, more like, Worst Hunt UK,” you reply. “Ghosts are mean,”
You’ve reached your doorstep. You fumble with your keys. Your leg throbs, your shoulder, too, but it’s dulled by the alcohol.
“Melanie,” Georgie says, softly.
You don’t look at her. You know she’ll be nice.
“Are you alright?” she says.
You rest your head on your front door. Dark green, not your colour. The wood is smooth, or the paint is. You don’t say anything. She doesn’t push it. She takes the keys out of your hand, unlocks the door. Her fingers are cold. She turns on the light. You stumble in after her. The flat you rent isn’t the nicest, but you weren’t usually there before, anyway. And now you are, you’re just too tired to do anything about it.
“Thank you,” you say.
She looks at you, and you can see that she’s worried. It’s not a feeling you’re used to. Usually you’d squirm away from it, but at that moment you’re too warm and uncentred to really care. So what if she’s looking at you? It’s a different kind of looking than you get at work, less probing. Seeing for its own sake. You smile at her as she drifts in and out of focus.
“Any time,” she replies. “Seriously. I don’t know exactly what’s happening with – with the Archive, and Jon, and the ghosts, but if you ever need –”
You wave her off. “Ah I’m fine, me. Great unbeatable Melanie King.”
You don’t mean that to sound as bitter as it comes out, probably.
“I’ve had worse than this – whatever it is,” you say, tapping your leg, right where it throbs. She does not miss this, because she’s Georgie. And still, she doesn’t ask, because she’s Georgie. She knows things take time, but sometimes you wish she’d just rip it out of you, because it’s festering and it hurts and you can’t seem to say it.
“Much worse than Archives of the Magnus Institute” you say, doing your best Jon for the name. Maybe goading her, just a little.
“I know,” she says, and she still doesn’t ask. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
She steers you up the stairs, helps you take your shoes off, gets you under the covers, fully clothed. Closes your curtains.
You lie there in silence for a few moments – or minutes, you can’t tell. Just watching how her hair coils out from her scalp, not quite tickling the top of her cheeks. The good kind of spiral.
Your leg throbs.
She must think you’re asleep, because you can feel the weight on the bed shift, the creak of the floorboards under your shitty rug.
“Georgie,” you say, not whisper, because you refuse to let the dark make the rules, and you hear rather than see her turn back.
“Yeah?” she says.
“Please stay,” you can’t look at her.
“Okay,” she says, and clambers over you to lie in the free space.
“You realise you’re supposed to lie under the covers, right?”
She laughs.
“That’s me told,” she says, and joins you. You curl towards her, despite yourself. And then groan a little as you try to shift the weight off your leg again.
“You ok?” she says.
“Got shot by a ghost,” you say, and you laugh. and then you don’t. “It really hurt,”
“I know,” she says, again, and you know she does.
Georgie stays with you, quiet, present, until you fall asleep.
***
You try to kill Elias. You fail. You don’t tell anyone. You go out for drinks with Martin and Basira instead. They’re waiting in your usual booth, Basira’s page neatly bookmarked with a receipt. you put on a smile.
Things you do not talk about:
- Elias (no one wants to think about him)
- Daisy (Basira is not in the mood)
- Jon (you think martin might combust)
- the nightmare in which you have somehow found yourselves tangled
Instead, you day-drink. You play darts. You are disproportionately competitive. Basira finds it funny. She says it reminds her of Daisy. You’re sick of reminding people of other people. Martin does not find it so funny and calls an early one, citing some excuse or other, but you don’t really care. It feels good to intimidate someone.
“Some job we have,” says Basira, when you’re done with darts.
“Unoriginal,” you say.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t make it less true,”
“Fine,” you echo, grudgingly. “some job,”
You drink in silence for a little while. She tells you about her research for a bit, her theories. Normally the kind of stuff you’d be all over. Today, though, you zone out, and barely register when she says she’s going to call it a day.
“See you tomorrow,” you say.
“See you,” she replies, a grim smile on her lips.
You check your phone. A missed call from Georgie. Texts you haven’t replied to. You put your phone back down on the table. You’re not – you don’t want to be Jon.
You think about how you can make sure that next time it sticks.
***
Turns out Jon was kidnapped, but that doesn’t make him not letting you stab Elias to death less annoying.
***
You’re supposed to go to drinks with Martin and Basira. You don’t. All you can think about is your dad, the only person you ever let call you Mel. The rot creeping through him, taking him over, melting him, slowly, making him watch his own body become a biohazard. You want to die. You barely remember the actual words Elias said to you, but you remember the threat in them. You can’t face it.
You don’t want to go back to your flat, full of unsellable Ghost Hunt UK merch and laundry you don’t care enough to wash and paper everywhere. Hundreds of tabs on your laptop that there’s no point in reading.
You look at your phone. No missed calls, a text from Basira. You don’t want Elias to be right. You don’t want to be shockingly devoid of human connection. It’s selfish, but you call her.
“Melanie? You good?”
“Yeah,” you fail to keep your voice steady, to your own annoyance. “Course. Can I – can I come over?”
You’ve never been a shy person, but suddenly your mouth is dry. He really will be right if she says no, which she should. You should hang up now, really, before it’s too late. Save yourself the disappointment and the anger you’ve never felt towards her before. You want to keep her like that. Away from it.
“Sure,” Georgie replies, after a small pause. “See you soon.”
You stare at your phone. You walk. You’re blank. When you get there, you knock, once, twice.
“Jesus,” she says, opening the door. “You’d better come in,”
“I don’t want to talk.” you say.
“Okay,” she replies.
She puts Pointless on the tv. You don’t watch it. You sit on the edge of her sofa, taut. She sits next to you. You don’t make fun of the hosts how you usually would. She reaches an arm out towards you, so carefully you want to scream, but you’re too tired to care. You don’t lean into it, but you don’t move away, either. She keeps a gentle grip on your arm. Tears start running down your face, but you don’t move to do anything about them because you don’t want to draw any attention to them. You let the salt run down your face and itch, and you don’t say anything when she gets you a tissue and gently wipes your face, when she puts her arm around you and waits for you to stop sobbing.
You wake up on Georgie’s sofa with a pounding, dry headache and a light blanket over you. There’s a glass of water on her living-room table. You want to hurl it at the wall. You stare at it for a long moment. Your skull feels too big for your head. You fold up the blanket. You dump the water in the sink. You leave.
***
She calls you. Of course she does. You don’t pick up. She leaves a voicemail. She says she knows things are hard but that doesn’t mean you can just walk in and out of her life when it pleases you.
“I want to be there for you,” she says. “but either you’re here for me, too, or I’m not having it, Melanie, I’m not,”
You don’t call her back. She gets the message.
***
The Unknowing approaches. A stupid fucking suicide mission but the only chance you have. Or that’s what Jon thinks, anyway. You’re not sure how convincing you find him. Everyone’s on edge, wanting and notwanting time to pass faster so they can finally do something.
You find Tim in the kitchen. Him, at least, you understand. He’s unpleasant, yes, but he makes sense. He’s staring at the cupboard with mugs in it, or rather at one particular mug with a stupid little cartoon ghost on it. It had been on Sasha’s desk the day you met her, you realise. You turn to him.
“She was – she was tall. She had long brown curly hair, and glasses. Big frames,” you say.
“What?” he does a double take.
“Sasha.” you say. “You asked a while ago and I – I didn’t get it. So if you wanted to know then. That’s what she looked like. We talked about the history of haunted pubs. It’s not much, but –”
“Thank you,” he says. He doesn’t look at you.
“You can stop being a prick now,” you call after him as he walks away. He doesn’t laugh, but you do see his mouth twitch.
“No chance,” he says, and leaves. You don’t see him again.
***
You ask Martin to call Georgie, to tell her about Jon.
“What?” you snap, when he looks at you, insufferably knowing, “She’s basically the only person who gives a shit if he lives or dies at this point,”
“I care,” Martin says.
“And don’t we all know it,” you snarl back. He doesn’t even blink.
“I’ll call her,” he says. “Do you want me to pass on a message?”
“No.” you say, and you stalk off.
***
The hospital is grim. You don’t go often, but when you do, you consider smothering Jon. Although given that his heart isn’t beating you’re not sure how much that would actually do. Some part of you says that if you just cut his head off brain function wouldn’t be an issue. At least it would be something. Maybe he’d just grow it back. Maybe he’d die. Maybe you all would. You don’t know if that’d be such a bad thing, honestly.
***
You knew the Flesh attack was coming. Staff have been seeing viscera near the entrance to the institute for some time. Indistinguishable scraps mostly, but more recently there’s been a few fingers. Once, memorably, an eye. You mostly ignore Martin and Basira has shut down, basically. She’s competent as ever, observant and prepared to a fault, but the side of her you’d grown to like, the warmth in her, disappeared when Daisy did.
It’s a typical day when the attack happens, although Martin’s at his desk for a change. You hear a small eep from the kitchen, and are on your feet with Basira before you’ve even consciously registered it. The small pile of sick in front of Martin gleams sweatily. You pull him behind you. The flesh has worked its way up through the drains, mincing itself through the plughole and reforming on the other side, leaving behind a sticky residue on the white porcelain. You pull out the knife you’ve kept on you since the Unknowing, and you can finally fucking do something that isn’t slamming down a mug too hard on the counter or snarling at people on the tube, and it feels so fucking good. When you come back to yourself, Helen is there, smiling. She helps you pull still-groaning Jared into her door. You tell him to fuck off. Helen laughs, and you relish the pain of it. She tells you she’ll see you soon.
You sink your teeth into the way Martin won’t quite look you in the eyes, even as he thanks you. The way even Basira’s hesitance shows, just for a second. You walk home, delight in the few people you see all skittering to the other side of the road when they see you. There aren’t many, as Basira had talked you into waiting until it got a little dark before walking home, into washing the blood off your face. You shower and scrub the blood off you, until the skin is as red as it was before anyway, and watch the blood disappear back down the drain, just as it came up. Your thigh pulses with bright, hot pain. You love it. This is the way things should be.
***
You live in the Archives from then on. You seethe and wait and wait and you hate it here. The high of the Flesh’s attack has worn off, and all you want to do is rip something to shreds. At least you have a role. You can protect the others, if nothing else. Your archival work is non-existent without Elias, and you don’t see Peter enough for him to have any real impact. It’s just you, and Basira, and Martin. And the rest of the staff, you guess, but they tend to give you a wide berth. Ghost cheese touch. Martin avoids you too, mostly, which is probably a reasonable decision. Apparently he’s avoiding Basira too, but you don’t really think about that much, just listen when Basira brings it up. You really don’t care. You spend most of your time with Basira. Even if she’s not fully herself, she’s still funny and sharp and in want of a partner. You don’t talk about Daisy. You don’t mention it when you hear her at night. You don’t get nightmares any more. Just the same dreams as your daydreams; murdering Elias, slowly enough to see the look of surprise on his smug face when he realises that he misjudged you, and now you’re going to end him. Sometimes you think about murdering Jon, instead, but it doesn’t quite have the same bite to it. Plus, with Jon, you can’t help but think about Georgie, and you don’t think about Georgie. There’s nothing you know how to put there, so you just don’t.
When you’re not with Basira, you listen to some of Jon’s old tapes. They’d be funny if you weren’t so – yourself. Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, is so awkward, so eager to prove himself, so quick to dismiss Gertrude and the statement givers. He didn’t understand anything. You hear Sasha’s voice again, the real Sasha, and you hate him for not noticing. You hear Tim, as he was before you knew him, and you hate him more. You hate him for not being good enough at his job, for not being able to stop any of it, for not realising what he was getting himself – getting all of you – into. Stupid, self-satisfied, sanctimonious fucking prick.
You listen to the statement on Ivy Meadows care home and throw up. You stand up and then hit the wall, over and over and over, until your hand is bloody and painful and right. Then you take statement #0121911 and throw it onto the ground, and stamp on it with your bad leg until it’s just shattered plastic and twisted strips of now meaningless black tape.
You don’t listen to any more tapes after that.
***
When Georgie calls you for the ninth time in as many minutes out of the blue, you pick up.
“What?” you say.
“Hello to you too.” she replies. “Can you – can you get down to the hospital?”
“Are you alright?” you answer, something small in your chest clenching.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” says Georgie. “It’s Jon – there was a man – he’s waking up, I think – the doctors do, too,”
“Fuck,” you say.
“Yeah, that’s about how they reacted,” she replies. “Can you come? They say he probably won’t be conscious for a while, but knowing Jon –”
“I’ll be there,” and with that, you hang up. You breathe heavily. Your heart is pounding. You stare at a spot on Basira’s sleeping bag, and try to figure out what to do next. Really, you should kill him. You should – get it over with before whatever’s there does whatever its spooky plan is and gets more people killed. You know it’d feel good. You know it would feel right.
Basira walks into the room you’ve been using as a bedroom, gives you a long look.
“Who was that on the phone?” she says, straight to the point as ever. You tell her. She raises an eyebrow, waiting for you to elaborate.
“Apparently Jon’s waking up. She wants me to come down.”
Basira hums thoughtfully. “And you don’t?”
“Did I say that?”
“I mean yeah, basically,”
“Fuck off.”
Basira grins.
“I’ll go,” she says. “Probably best you stay anyway.”
***
Basira was right. That probably was for the best, because when you see Jon, it’s all you can do not to black out. You want to kill him so badly, it hurts. It pulls through your sinews and muscles. If it had been Elias, you wouldn’t have hesitated. But Jon is so weak, so unwilling to fight back that there’s no joy in it. It’s just pathetic. So you throw something at him, and you shout, but you don’t kill him. You hit him where you know it’ll hurt, Tim, Daisy, because it’s what he deserves if he’s even still him and you can’t kill Elias so this will have to do. You’re shaking so hard from the restraint your muscles burn.
***
You avoid him for the next week. You snarl or walk out when he enters a room. You notice Basira trying to wrangle you more than usual. You want to scream, the unbearable pressure in you which has been building up for weeks now, months, years, a lifetime, threatening to take over until you’re nothing but that. You’re not hungry, ever. You want to use your teeth, sure, but you’re not hungry. You look at your hands shaking and the only thing which eases it is that memory of your nails tearing through flesh, the screaming. You barely sleep. You stare at the ceiling, at the vents, at any point of entry, and you seethe. You wish your thigh would hurt more but none of it is enough, none of it.
***
Jon’s been back for two weeks when you wake up to a sharp pain and something missing. You react on instinct, knowing even half-asleep that the violence is hollow, that it’s not making you whole as it should. You scream and slash and refuse to be calmed until suddenly the exhaustion overtakes you and black holes unfurl into your vision. You wake up who-knows-when, head pounding, mouth dry, aching all over. It takes you a moment to place the difference. Your thigh still hurts, yes, but it’s not the pulsing, driving pain of before. It’s steady, and sharp, but there’s nothing substantial to it. Nothing to pull you or ground you. You don’t know how long you lie there, enveloped in the novelty of tiredness.
Basira comes in, holding a glass of water. She looks warier than usual.
“How are you feeling?” she says, placing the glass on the floor by your bed.
“Bad,” you say. you fumble for some comprehension. “What actually – happened?”
“You know when you got shot?”
“Obviously.”
“India, yeah? Well, Jon says the bullet was still there in you.”
“The doctors didn’t seem to think so,”
“The doctors couldn’t make head or tail of Jon, so –”
“So I got shot by a ghost bullet.”
“It was the Slaughter.” you give her a look. “Okay, yeah, ghost bullet basically.”
“So Jon –?”
“He pulled it out.”
“I see.”
She puts the glass of water down on the floor by your bed and walks away. She pauses at the door, turns as if to say something. You watch her.
“Sleep well,” she says. You’re grateful that she didn’t apologise.
***
The days pass. It’s strange, how weak you’ve become. You’ve never been so weak. You stand up and the Archives swim before you; you have to let yourself flop back downwards. You enjoy the small drama of it.
Jon leaves you well enough alone, but you find yourself not minding him, as much as you had. Or that’s not quite right. But it’s different. When you walk in on him trying to cut off his own finger, you do feel a pang of something. You make a joke about botched surgery and he pales, and you feel – not bad, but you don’t relish it. You try to explain and he lets you. You talk about wanting it, how badly you wanted it. You think he, out of everyone, should understand. You’ve always been too similar, really. You don’t let him apologise.
The nightmares wrack you every night, finally getting to wreak every vengeance you’ve ever dreamed of, blood hot and red and pulsing through you, music to your ears. And then you come to yourself, and there’s Georgie’s body on the floor, and Jon is watching, watching, pitying, and so is Elias, and you really are so very devoid of any human connection, aren’t you, Melanie?
You wake up and you feel exactly the same, sticky, sweat drenching your bed, unable to move, trapped. You seem to be specialising in that, lately. You watch Basira sleeping, her face more relaxed than you ever see it in daylight. The dim light (no one can sleep in real dark, now) brushes against her features and you’re struck by how beautiful she is. And then you start crying. You haven’t found anything beautiful in so long. It’s all been background to the never-ending pulse, the bloody heat waiting to take over. So you sit on your bed, and stare at Basira, her face turning from a person you know into an abstraction of shapes and colours, a wonder in the sheer variety that composes it, from the puffy, purple-brown bags under her eyes to the strong line of her nose, the way her lips meet and part with her soft breathing. You just look at her, for a little while, until she transforms again, back from shape and tone into a face, into your – friend doesn’t seem right, but coworker definitely isn’t. Into Basira, whatever thousands of things that means.
You go for a walk around. The sun is just beginning to rise, and it fills up the dead air, slowly, the dust becoming something living under its rays. You have to sit down soon enough, your legs still too shaky to support much exercise at all. You feel – content, somehow, just to watch the colours of the corridor change, watch the old boxes come to life and even the manky carpet looks – new, somehow. A brilliant, boring, stodgy grey. You still feel watched, of course, but with the wall at your back, cool, and your eyes closed, you can pretend it’s just the sun.
you start to nod off, and it all flashes in succession once more: the hot blood; the joy of it, the song; Georgie, dead; Elias, smirking.
You won’t let it happen. You won’t. You are Melanie King, and you have something to work to now. Something which won’t eat you alive. So you will.
***
A plus side of being totally alone in the world, if you want to be dramatic about it, or living at work and having a well-paying cursed job if you don’t, is that you have a lot of savings. So when you decide that actually, therapy is probably a good idea, you find the best, closest therapist in the area with the most immediate and frequent availability, and you make an appointment.
It takes you three sessions before you manage to say anything of more substance than your categorical refusal to have your sessions recorded. You were trying, but you can’t tell whether her voice sounds quite right, if that spider is really just a spider, if the painting on the wall is just a painting.
When she asks you what she can do to make you feel safe in the sessions, you laugh. She tells you to think about it for next time.
“A handshake,” you say, when you get in the door. “I need a handshake,”
She holds a hand out. A little too warm, maybe, but no sickly spongy texture, nothing wrong, nothing inhuman. You can work with that.
“Alright?” she says. “Anything else?”
She lets you move the paintings out of the room, lets you check for cobwebs and spiders and eyes. When you’ve done that, something unclenches a little.
“Better?” she says.
“Much.” you reply.
“Would you like to start talking now, do you think?”
Your mouth dries up. There’s so much.
“How about we start with what we just did? Why was that helpful to you?”
You take a breath. It’s this or let the Archives eat me, you think. you can’t explain everything, but you give her the broad strokes – your job is bad, evil, objectively morally wrong, but you can’t quit, physically, it’s not even an option, you’ve had to live there, some bad things, awful things have happened, you’ve been one of them, and the things you did in here, well, there, they keep you safe.
“Feeling safe seems like it’s a key issue for you here. Do you think there are any other ways you could feel safe? Are there any people you could talk to about it? Anyone outside of work?”
“There is – there was someone,” you say. “But I treated her very badly, when I was in the midst of it. I don’t think she’d want to talk to me, and I don’t think I should even if I did,”
“Is that a decision she’d want you to make for her?” she replies.
“I don’t know,” you reply.
“Consider it,” she says. “That’s about time, thank you, Melanie, good session today. I’ll have things ready for you next time,”
You thank her, you leave. You consider it.
***
Jon goes into the coffin. He apologises, in his note. You drop it on the floor. You’re completely – you’ve barely been in a room on your own since he dug a bullet out of your leg, and you certainly haven’t been alone in the Archives since long before then. Basiras always been in the next room.
Helen comes by, as she does.
“Hey, Helen,” (had fun terrorising anyone lately? she laughs. of course! you smile. you can’t judge her, not really. not when she never had a choice.)
“Oh, he’s gone in the coffin now?”
“Yeah. Do you think you could – get him out, if he needed it?”
She gives you a smile which hurts your eyes.
“Shut up. I’m just – wondering.”
“I rather think he’ll be alright,”
You roll your eyes. You almost ask her to stay, but you haven’t got quite to that point yet. Helen is something like your friend, avoiding definition as she does, but she is also the fear of insanity turned incarnate. Sort of. You tend to leave the metaphysics to Jon and Basira.
You keep vigil over the coffin for a while, but as time passes it makes you itch, and you feel you can hear singing, very far away. You need to get out of the room. So you go down to your camp bed, but that feels too empty and cold and alone. You sit on the camp bed. You sit and wait and twitch and time passes but Jon does not come back. You text Basira but she doesn’t reply. Probably no signal, wherever she’s gone. Nothing to do, really. You need to get out of here, but you haven’t left in months.
You think about what the therapist said. You think about Jon and his anchor, his rib. You call georgie. She doesn’t pick up. That’s – fair.
The typing bubble shows up for a significant amount of time.
what is it?
I’m so sorry
for everything
and if you never want to speak to me again I get it
but I’d like to apologise and explain
if you want
I’ve really missed you
The next moments pass with excruciating slowness. She types and stops typing and types again.
ok, I’m listening
I’m at my flat now, if you want to come over
I’ll be there
By the time you reach her flat, you’re shaking so hard it’s difficult to stay upright. Between your leg and the fear and the fact you haven’t been out in London in months, you feel like you’re on fire. You manage to knock, eventually, and hear rather than see her shock when she sees you.
“Jesus, Melanie, come in,”
It feels horribly like the last time you were here, before. But it’s not, you remind yourself, digging your nails into your palms. You think she must be thinking the same thing, because she hovers awkwardly in the hall, eyeing you warily.
“I just need to – use your bathroom, and then we can talk,” you say, barely aware of the words as they emerge.
She gestures you through. you sit on the floor, and curl up very small, as tightly as you can, willing your heart to stop beating so hard.
It takes you a minute, but you eventually slow your breathing, the familiarity of your surroundings helping to calm you, the Georgieness of it all, too.
You stare in the mirror, and are struck by how gaunt you’ve become. It infuriates you. Things should just be better, but they’re not, and it’s not fair.
Which is why you’re here, a small voice tells her. You’re here to make it better, if you can.
You make eye contact with yourself. You are Melanie fucking King, and you have done worse than this for less than this. It’s Georgie. You open the door, and try not to look too grim.
“Hey,” you say, with your best approximation of a smile.
“Hey,” she says. There’s a mug of black coffee on the table for you, alongside her horrifically sweetened abomination. That makes you smile for real.
“So,” you say, “How’ve you been?”
She laughs. “Good,” she says. “What the Ghost? is picking up a bunch more traffic lately, and I have some good ideas in the works – remember that old school down in Chester? I’ve got a bunch of cool leads. other than that – ” she trails off. “good, yeah, I’ve been good.”
“I’m glad,” you say, because it’s true.
“I’d ask how you’ve been but. at the risk of sounding presumptuous I’m going to say not great?”
You laugh. It’s a sort of horrible sound, which seems fitting. You think the meaning comes across.
“You could say that. But in some ways – things are better, in some ways,”
“You seem – calmer,” she says, still careful.
“Yeah,” you pause. “That’s why I’m here, really. I – I don’t really know where to start, so I’ll just say I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Georgie, for how I treated you. I was a selfish thoughtless shit and you deserved better. Do deserve better.”
You force yourself to look at her for the apology, even though you’d rather look anywhere else.
“I’ve missed you. A lot. That’s not enough reason to let me back in your life, if you don’t want to. I refuse to be that person.”
I refuse to be Jon, you think, but you don’t think saying that would go down well, not here, not now. The kitchen is quiet.
“I’ve missed you too,” she says. “but I meant what I said before, Melanie. I want you in my life, but you can’t just – you can’t just vanish again. I can’t take that,”
You want to cry, and it makes you furious. You take a breath.
“I get that,” you say, because it’s more than you deserve. “Would it help if I – explained, do you think?”
“I’d like that,”
It takes you a long, long time to get through everything. By the time you’re back up to the present day, you’re both a little drunk and more than a little tearful. She tells you about Alex. You sit in the quiet. You look at the blue of her sofa and you want to cry.
“Why today?” she asks, and you wince.
“Jon – went into the coffin, to find Daisy, this morning,” you say, because it’s not your job to decide what Georgie gets to know.
“Oh, Jon,” she says, to herself mostly. She closes her eyes. You watch her gather herself.
You check your phone. Shit. Approximately 900 texts and 20 calls from Basira.
“I have to go,” you say. “Basira just found out,”
“Ah,” she says. “Probably for the best,”
“I’ll be back,” you promise. “If – if you want, that is,”
“I do,” she says. “See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” you say. “I’ll let you know if Jon – I’ll let you know if anything happens,”
You leave.
On your way back, you call Basira, because it means you don’t have to think quite so much about your surroundings and every single person who could possibly burn you or maim you on the way back to the Institute. She’s not happy you left, and she’s really not happy at Jon.
“I’ll be back tomorrow sometime,” she says. “I don’t know when,”
You’re just heading into the Archives.
“I don’t think he’s – hang on a sec,”
There’s a certain feeling, to the Archives, when the Archivist is present. And you suppose he is, as the coffin is. But inside the coffin isn’t inside the archives, really. That feeling isn’t there. There is something. A familiar, prickling texture to the air. A low, dry voice.
You walk into the room w the coffin to see hundreds of tape recorders, spinning more frantically than usual, somehow, if that were possible, and Martin, his hand on the coffin, a familiar expression on his face. He doesn’t notice you.
You stand in the doorway, and watch. Neither of you say a word. There’s something you should do, you’re sure, but you don’t know what it is. When you start to hear singing, you leave.
***
It’s a little easier walking to Georgie’s the next day, after you’ve been thoroughly reamed out by Basira for being so stupid, and watched the coffin a little while longer.
She’s very quiet, and you can’t blame her.
“He’s tough,” you say, “he’ll come back, I think,”
“But what if that’s worse,” she says, and then crumples in on herself. “I didn’t mean – I just. How far is he going to go?”
“I – ”
“Maybe don’t answer that,” she says, drawing herself together.
“Hey,” you say, “you’re allowed to care about him,”
The room is silent, the air thick.
“But that’s the problem,” she says, very, very quietly.
“You’re allowed to care about him,” you continue, “and also not be able to do it any more.”
***
You go for coffee and she picks you up from therapy and you learn how to be a person who goes to supermarkets again. You learn how to hold her hand, without possessiveness, without terror, just for the quiet joy of her presence.
You don’t understand what’s in it for her, why she would possibly want to be around you after everything.
“There’s not – there’s no list of qualities I can give you, because that’s not what people are. You’re trying. And you’re you. You’re Melanie. What more could I possibly ask for? I love you.”
You don’t think she meant to say that last part from the way she blushes. You find yourself suddenly furious, the taste of it familiar as air. You feel small and bristle with it. You want to scream. Instead you look at the table and take a breath.
“Thank you,” you say, curt.
You walk out.
***
You turn up the next day with Hungarian food. You do not say sorry. You do not say I love you. But you do set out the shopska salads on her table, and start eating one, complaining dramatically about how salty it is, about the damage this will surely do to your blood pressure. Georgie laughs. You smile, unclench your jaw.
***
When Jon tells you the way out, you already know you’re going to take it. You’ll rationalise, take a few days to consider, but you do know what you’re going to do. You’d made that decision a long time ago. You tell Georgie, of course. She doesn’t ask if you’re sure. She, too, knows you well enough to know that you’ve already made your decision.
“I don’t want you to do it,” she says, curled up next to you on the sofa.
“Not going to lie, stabbing my eyes out was not exactly on my vision board for this year,” you say.
“As if you’d make a vision board,” Georgie snorts. She has a point there.
“You know me too well,” you say. She smiles, then sobers.
“Is there nothing –?” she trails off. She already knows the answer.
“You sound like Jon,” you say, and it comes out sharper than intended. You take a breath. “It’s like you said. You always have choices. I can’t stay there any longer.”
You’re both quiet, then. You try to drink in every moment of sight you can, trying to memorise your flat, because it’s more like home than anywhere you’ve been since – well, since your dad died. The stain on the ratty sofa from God knows how long ago. The bright rug which covers most of the carpet, because it’s horrible and the landlord won’t let her change it, and Georgie insists that rugs are a necessity anyhow. The Admiral’s nest on the sofa, not that he uses it much when laps are so readily available. The cracks on the ceiling. Georgie’s art from an old uni friend. Her bookshelves, mostly fiction, (including her full Austen set, which you’d always refused to read, but which she insists are fascinating deconstructions of social class in the eighteenth century), a book on human anatomy, and some newer ones, on grief, mostly. You stare at them a little. The longer you look, the less anything seems to make sense – things turn from discrete objects into surfaces and colours and light, no distinction between them. You do not know how to hold onto this. Maybe you can’t. You’re reminded of being a child, having eaten seven eighths of your icecream, realising that it is going to end, no matter what you do, and trying to eke out each morsel, as if making it take longer will make it be more. You know that isn’t the case now. You cannot cling onto these rooms; this flat; even your own hands. You cannot eke out vision for your future self. All you can do is drink it all in, the shadows pooling at the base of Georgie’s neck, the crook of her elbow, the shine of the lamp off her skin. You watch as light changes the room, as night falls slowly.
“I love you,” you say.
Georgie flushes, smiles. “I love you too,”
You go to bed. You don’t think about the morning.