Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The room is bright: the sort of bright that hurts your eyes, even when they are closed; the sort that stains your eyelids a vibrant red instead of the usual black. Sasha does not know where she is- well, it's bright, so probably not Artefact Storage. 

She, seemingly, hasn’t changed position since she fell backwards on to that hardwood floor, but the floor underneath her now is grainy carpet. Not the itchy fabric of a hospital bed, or smooth and sticky, blood-soaked laminate floor, just carpet. And it’s well-trodden too, she can tell that much without opening her eyes. 

The air she breathes feels thick, but not too warm- a conservatory in April, or carriages on the tube. And then there’s the matter that Sasha cannot hear anything. Nothing stands out at least. Sure, there’s some rushing air and ambient noise, but no carrying voices, no clocks, nothing. Not even the gentle click of a watch permeates the silence that surrounds her like a thick, dense fog.

The desire bubbles up to open her eyes, to see where she is and to try to get her bearings. She is sure it will hurt to open them at the moment, like looking directly into the Sun (or that time that Tim caught her eye with a laser pointer, except 1000 times more painful), so she waits until her closed eyes get used to the brightness. Once she believes she is ready, Sasha cracks open her right eye, followed by her left, and begins to observe her surroundings. 

She is staring up at a lightbulb, a searing LED tinged with purple, surrounded by an orange peel ceiling. Her fingers clutch at the charcoal-grey carpet as she begins to heave herself up to sit. She looks at her watch for the time- or attempts to at least, before she remembers that it ran out of batteries a few weeks ago. Convenient. It was the 29th of July when Jane Prentiss appeared, though of course, Sasha has no way of knowing this. Who knows what day it is now?

As she lets her left arm fall, a sharp pain surges through her side, just below her shoulder. It is hot like coals and cuts through her disorientation like a chainsaw through butter. She must have fallen quite hard. Taking care to not aggravate her shoulder, Sasha glances around. The room looks familiar, but… off. 

Uncanny, somehow.

Sasha sighs, an outward expression of exhaustion and confusion more than anything else, as she begins to recognise where she might be—

This is the break room, she thinks.

But it couldn’t be! Could it? Yes, the break room did have that stain by the sink where Martin spilt a whole mug of tea, it did have those tally mark scratches on the table leg started jokingly by Tim, until it became less of a joke and more about counting the days, it had the garish ‘Don’t Talk To Me Until I’ve Had My Coffee’ mug (that she always saved for Jon because she knew the gapping of the font annoyed him) turned up on the draining board where she left it- but this wasn’t the break room. No, no it couldn’t be. There was just something wrong with it: and though she didn’t know what that was, the more she looked around, the more she was certain.

For starters, she’s fairly sure the break room never had a TV. 

Chapter Text

Sasha finds herself striding across the floor towards the television. Not that she didn't mean to, it's not like she was being controlled or anything, but there seems to be a disconnect between her brain and her body.

Actually, it is almost like she's being controlled, like a puppet on a string. Hm. That scene from the Sound of Music appears in Sasha's head- the marionettes jittering around on strings and hooks for the entertainment of the party- and along with it, a memory of Rosie humming Do Re Mi under her breath.

She misses them, all of them- but why? I mean, it hasn't been that long since she last saw them, right? 

She walks, more smoothly than she would expect to, towards the TV, and scrutinises it. The film hasn't been peeled off yet, and dust from the hole in the wall sticks to the thick cobwebs around the oak cabinet it is placed above- so it's newly installed, then.

Sasha rips off the film in one fell swoop, taking simple joy in the peeling noise it makes. She slumps into one of the wooden chairs, wishing they were more comfortable, and observes it from a distance.

Why would you need a TV in a break room hardly anyone goes into? she thinks. I mean, no one actually comes in here except to make tea, so it's not like we're gong to sit down and watch Homes Under—

Without warning, the TV flickers to life. It does not make a sound, apart from a gentle buzzing, too quiet to hear, if you aren't looking to hear it. Words begin to appear on the screen.

Hello, Sasha.

The words linger on the black screen for a second, then disappear. Sasha thinks out loud, “What do you want? Is this a dream?”

That is hard to explain. But you have quite a bit of time to dwell now, I guess.

"What is this? Who are you?"

Oh all in good time! I can answer the first, briefly, if you would like. And in terms you can understand, of course.

The text on screen fades, as if making way for a new thought. Sasha mutters "This is absurd," under her breath, which is met with:

Oh, trust me, I know. Right, where to begin.

The screen does what Sasha believes to be an equivalent of clearing its throat, the text flashes once, twice, then fades to black.

This next sentence is accompanied by a voice, smirking and full of something like bravado, though for reasons Sasha didn't know.

"There is a lot to explain, but I can start with this: Sasha, you are dead. Um- surprise!"

"So let me get this straight," a sentence that the voice from the TV chuckles at, "I died,"

"Yes." the voice replies, exasperated at having answered this question about 5 times already.

Sasha is pacing back and forth in front of the screen, cradling her left arm, though it’s actually feeling quite a lot better already. It's more of a comfort thing. She slumps down, avoiding the chairs and instead opting for the (much comfier) carpeted floor, crossing her legs like an expectant schoolchild- a force of habit.

"And this is- what, the afterlife? How do I know that this isn't just a coma dream, or some sort of prank or something?"

"Oh you have no way of knowing. You are going to have to trust me, Sasha."

Sasha isn't sure what to make of this: the voice has been her only source of interaction so far, but the smirk was back in the voice, and she didn't like it.

"So, what happens if I just--" Sasha interrupts herself, jostling to her feet from where she'd been sitting, and walks towards the door. "What's out here?"

Normally, Sasha would know the answer to this- the corridor to the rest of the archives, Jon's office is to the right, the library is straight ahead up those stairs- but she thought it best to clarify. There was a light shining through the gaps between the door jamb and the door itself, searing bright, much like the light Sasha woke up to before. The voice stops her, hard and abrupt, barely concealing its desperation, just before her fingers touch the cold metal of the doorknob.

"No, you do not want to do that, trust me." Sasha watches as what looks like chains, heavy, thick and black, spring out from nowhere, fastening the door tightly shut.

"Why do you keep saying that? Trust you? I can't bloody trust you! You just locked me in the break room for God's sake! You're just a- just a voice, on a TV- I'm going mad- who even are you?"

"I suppose it is only fair if you know my name- after all, I know yours. That is all you are getting though, unless I change my mind. My name is..."

The voice hesitates slightly, and Sasha knows to take whatever it says next with scepticism.

"Anansi."

Sasha frowns, sure she's heard that name somewhere before, but for the life (or death) of her, she can't remember where.

"But enough about me," Anansi swiftly changes the subject, "I think you will want to see this, hold on."

The text fades once again, and the screen shifts to a dark grey, almost imperceptibly. It then starts to glitch and strain, showing crackling static interspersed with chopped bits of dialogue and faces- hang on, was that Tim?

"Yes. As I said, you will want to see this." The image on the TV focuses gradually on Tim and another person talking in the corridor outside Jon's office. They both seem to be quite subdued. Sasha braces herself, and resumes her position on the carpet.

Tim occasionally reaches up to scratch his nose- an old anxiety response that Sasha had grown to know increasingly over the past year- and the other, facing away from the viewpoint, scratches their head, just behind their ear. Sasha finds herself doing this too- an anxiety tic of her own. She can only make out snippets of visual and dialogue between the two through the interference, but she can hear enough. They are joking with each other, though Tim’s laughter carries a weight of unspoken events, bearing heavily down on his shoulders. 

"And then I --- through the --ll and found them mak-- eyes at each other a--"

"You burst thro-- the w--l?"

An apology from Anansi breaks through the static. "Sorry, trying to get a better connection. Hold on a second," The viewing angle changes, as if the TV has changed from camera 3 to camera 4, seeming closer and further down than before. The view is looking up at Tim and the back of the figure. All interference and static is gone, and Sasha can see Tim's gleeful face clearer than before.

Tim gives a disbelieving shake of his head and points to his chest, eyes glittering with mirth and feigned offence. "Yes! Oh come on Sasha, is that so hard to see? Am I not the first person you think about when you hear the words 'action hero'?"

The figure's voice is dripping with sarcasm, though from the tone, Sasha can tell they are smiling. "Oh yeah, my hero."

They both chuckle, dryly. Wait a minute, did Tim just say-

Anansi is silent. For once.

The figure rubs their ear, again. Except, it seems more forced this time, somehow purposeful. "Seriously though, thank you for taking care of me when I came out of Artefact Storage, especially after what you went through in quarantine." Tim seems to grimace at this, and pointedly scratches (or itches) at his arm. "I was proper out of it afterwards- I don't know how long I was lying there. I must have fallen and hit my head, or something. It's a miracle the worms didn't get me really."

They then turn their head sharply to the left as a voice- Jon's voice- calls from somewhere off screen. “Sasha, can I have a word?" 

The figure has forgotten to wince at the pain that is meant to be coursing up their left side. They walk away, getting a tentative wave from Tim as they exit the frame. 

Anansi is met with stuttered disbelief from Sasha. "What does this mean? Come on, serve me an explanation. It's got to be just... another Sasha, right? From somewhere else, one that I never met?  I don't know-"

The realisation hits Sasha that if Jon knows this person, then she definitely must have met them. He is- was- notorious for having no social life outside the archives.

"Maybe I've forgotten them, then. Or, or what- is that actually me? My 'corporeal body' or something?" Sasha is growing more flustered by the second, jumping up and beginning to pace in front of the TV. Her left arm is now feeling quite a bit better (the bruise is fading, not that she'd know that, of course) and it shows. Sasha gestures wildly to the TV, to her surroundings, to herself. And all the while, Anansi is quiet. Like they are drinking in the situation, a predator watching their prey tire themselves before pouncing. 

"What is going-- oh what, is there just another Sasha in the archives now? Are they just collecting them? Honestly Anansi--" Sasha drops her attitude as soon as she notices the unusual lack of interruption from Anansi. Roots of fear and dread begin to coarse up her skin, icy tendrils snaking their way up her back to her neck and plunging into her brain stem. Goosebumps arise in tidal waves and Sasha suddenly finds that she feels quite light-headed.

She grips the back of the chair she was ignoring for favour of the floor, half to steady herself, half to remind her that this isn't a dream- that it can't be. "Anansi? Are you there? Can you answer me?"

"Of course, Sasha. Whatever I say, please promise to take it well. I will give you a visual aid."

The roots dig deeper into Sasha, reaching far down into her amygdala. She swallows as she sees the images on the screen rewind and scratch, like an old tape, and freeze on a side profile of the figure. They are shorter than Tim, have blonde bobbed hair and are much paler than Sasha, and yet...

Anansi exhales, and the text does the equivalent, fading away to the image below, skirting around the figure's head. "They think that person is you, Sasha. All of them do- well as far as I know anyway. The Archives staff certainly do. You were right in a way- you have been replaced."

Chapter Text

It has been some time since the revelation of the thing Sasha is calling Not-Me, taking inspiration from one of the statements she snuck a look at a while ago. Actually, her case bears a lot of resemblance to what she can remember about Ms Patel's: she has seemingly been replaced by an entity that is, decidedly, not her, but nobody has any memory of her previous form. There is one key difference though: Ms Patel could see through the disguise- she could see that Graham wasn't who he was before.

No one had done that for Sasha.

Anansi had dropped in with live feeds occasionally over the past... time period, but they were generally of the Not-Me with one of her past friends. It almost seemed like gloating- Anansi wouldn't speak, Sasha would just hear the TV buzz to life, and take in the laughing voices of her friends, before Anansi eventually got bored and cut the feed again. There was one occasion where they did speak to her though, albeit briefly: to announce the arrival of one Melanie King to the Archives. 

Sasha had run into Melanie during her last visit, and couldn't believe she was back. Sasha was tasked with damage control duties after Melanie and Jon had a 'disagreement' (Jon's words, definitely not Melanie's), and so they had a chat about what had happened in the dispute. This led to the two becoming acquaintances over lukewarm cups of tea, a chat about haunted pubs, and a new subscriber to the Ghost Hunt UK YouTube channel. And it also led to a vow on Melanie's part to never come back to the Institute, let alone the Archives, at least while Jon was around.

But apparently, people change.

The view on the TV seems to be on a shelf or cabinet of some sort, partially obscured by a book with a crimson spine and black writing. Some sort of book about a haunted school or a spooky flat, probably-  Sasha thinks.

Sasha places the view as in Jon's office, due to the dreadful lighting and the boxes upon boxes of statements that litter the room. Jon is fiddling with the buttons of something, probably one of those tape recorders, and Melanie is sitting opposite him at his desk. She is clearly no happier to be in Jon's presence than vice versa- she is leant forward, head in her hands, right leg bouncing and thudding a steady rhythm like a bass drum on the floor. 

"Statement of Melanie King, regarding her further researches into..." He looks to Melanie expectantly, eyebrows raised.

Melanie whips her head up and shifts uncomfortably in her seat, feeling uneasy as so many others did under Jon's scrutiny. "I'm just calling them war ghosts." 

Jon presses his lips together until they turn white, and glances down at his papers, before clearing his throat. "Recorded direct from subject, 13th of February 2017. Statement be--"

The feed cuts out. Sasha's mind is too preoccupied to care. She knew the day of the attack from Prentiss was the 29th of July. 2016. Or was it the 27th? Late July, either way.

“Has it really been that long?”

"I am afraid so, my dear. They have all forgotten you, and it has been half a year since you have been, well... wherever this is."

"Shut up, Anansi."

Anansi makes a sound of delight, as if that is exactly what they wanted from Sasha. Hearing this, Sasha grinds her jaw as tight as a vice.

"Oh, hold on," Static fills the screen again as a different image appears. The view has shifted slightly forward, and the hands on the clock in the corner of the frame have moved out of view.

Melanie stands and grabs her bag. That's a shame, Sasha would have liked to hear her statement. "Oh! Where's Sasha by the way? I wanted to say goodbye."

Sasha's stomach drops. She wants to form the words to say TURN IT OFF but she finds that she cannot.

"I'm sorry?" Jon's face is, for once, the picture of innocence. 

"Sasha, your assistant? I haven't seen her in a while. You didn't fire her did you?" Melanie grabs her chair to tuck it in, but just grips the back hard instead. Sasha and her would have gotten on: a pity, really.

"I'm not sure I understand, she brought you down here."

"No... is that another Sasha? Are you collecting them?" Sasha grins at a sentiment shared, silently pleased with herself at her past remark. Melanie's weight shifts, becoming more defensive, closing off even more from the man behind the desk.

"No, there's just... there's just Sasha."

"You know who I mean. Tall, long hair, glasses... She was here when I first came in. Back last April? We had a long conversation about haunted pubs." 

So she remembered her- looks and all. Melanie King was her ambassador, carrying the memory of Sasha- the real one- forward to the rest of the world. And if there's one thing Sasha knew about Melanie, it's that she did not back down easily.

"No, I- I remember, But that is Sasha."

"Are you trying to gaslight me or something?" Melanie has shifted the chair to her left and is now standing, leaning over Jon, who is only just matching her intensity.

"What, No! Melanie--"

"Is this a joke to you?" Melanie slams her hands on Jon's desk, resulting in general dismissive murmurs from him. This was the first time Sasha had actually seen her boss properly scared of something. Discounting the spiders that seemed to like living in his office.

"Because I am not crazy. And that is not the same woman I met before."

Melanie now has one of her hands on her hip, one pointing at Jon's darting eyes, her breathing turning ragged and quick. And that is the tableaux the TV leaves Sasha with as it shuts off with a click. Melanie's position of defiance, her clear insistence of Sasha existing despite there being no concrete evidence, is burnt into her eyelids. It is there when she attempts to relax again, or to shut out Anansi's smug retorts.

Melanie has given her hope- which can be a very dangerous thing indeed.

Chapter Text

It is the 16th of February, 2017. A fact that Sasha does not know and has no way of knowing, but one that Anansi delights in. They can feel that something's going to happen today- no, they know. And they also know that they can spin Sasha some particularly good tales today. Lay some threads down, and wait for them to be woven. Now's the time.

"Sasha! Come look," they call, in that sing-song voice. Sasha begrudgingly opens her eyes. She can't sleep here, not really, but she thought she would try to have a quick ten minute 'nap' of sorts. Except she didn't really know what counted as ten minutes anymore, or an hour, for that matter. She scrambles to a seated position in front of the screen, legs crossed once again. The view jumps around between a few angles, before settling on an awfully close picture of Jon. The view seems to be coming from directly on his desk, like the camera was inside it or atop it.

"This thing, this Not-Sasha, it's tied to the table. It..." 

Sasha rolls her eyes, in spite of the fact that she herself has no clue what is happening. “So just kill it while it’s tied up then, Jon?"

Anansi interjects here- "No, love, not literally. The entity that took your place is bound in spirit to a table in Artefact Storage. Or so Jon thinks, anyway."

Jon rubs his chin absentmindedly, and sighs a little, before declaring: "I found the tapes." As Jon fumbles to insert the tape into a player, the screen freezes and glitches, before returning to smooth motion once the tape is securely in.

And then, Sasha hears her voice. There it is, loud and ringing as the peal of a bell. Tapes have a way of preserving the beauty of the voices within them, maybe Martin was right about the whole 'lofi charm' thing. The way her voice rises at the end of her sentences, the joking smile her tone holds as she lectures Jon on the pronunciation of Calliope (or was it kah-lie-oh-pi?), the fact that she even had this conversation at all, moves Sasha. She begins to feel her throat close in on itself, crushing under the weight of grief at the life she never led, and a sort of sick gratefulness that her death was finally being avenged. Her eyes burn and her breathing quickens as she inches closer to the screen. 

Jon has put in another one of Sasha's tapes- the one where she talks about her encounter with Michael. The screen crackles with static as it plays. She remembers how everyone treated her with such caution after she walked into the Institute that morning- eyes landing anywhere but her face, and skirting around her blood soaked arm. Hell, even David wouldn't talk to her that morning! David, ever the office gossip, didn't even approach her that morning with a story of any kind- he just treated her like some sort of expensive vase. One labelled THIS WAY UP and FRAGILE and JUST GOT STABBED, MAKE A BIG DEAL OF IT PLEASE.

"It's just a scratch, Jon. I'll be fine. Can we begin?" She was so stubborn- she should have asked for help when she had it there, available to her.

Sasha's breath hitches, and tears threaten to break their dams and sweep her off her feet.

This next tape catches Sasha off guard, momentarily stopping the tidal wave from knocking her down completely.

It is that day. Sasha vowed to herself that she would never return to Artefact Storage, except for an emergency. And the threat of parasitic, burrowing wasp larvae that she had to dig out of her colleagues with a corkscrew seemed an emergency enough.

"Hello? I see you. Show yourself." Her voice trembles, though she tries to inject as much venom in to it as she can muster. 

And then it appears, from the depths of the tape hiss. Sasha can still see it, the way its limbs, long and wrapping, reached for Sasha. The way its smile did not move, though its eyes got hungrier and hungrier. Its voice rises, infected and gravelly, a cruel mockery of Sasha's last words.

"Hello? I see you." then louder, "I see you." 

Jon comes back in to fluid motion, his eyes intense and almost glowing with maddening fury. "And now I see you."

“Oh my God. Oh-“ Sasha has to sit down. She inhales, shakily as she hugs herself, her thumbs stroking her elbows. 

Anansi decides not to mention that the Not-Sasha is released by Jon's rash actions, or about the ensuing events, until after Sasha has recovered. They know how she'd react, and it's a conversation they want to happen later.

Chapter Text

Tim is slumped on the sofa, in what Martin so lovingly christened 'The Worm- Free Room'. He needed some space after the last meeting, and Martin guided him here. He said it's where he goes when he needs a bit of time to himself too.

What's left of the Archives staff aren't handling the events of the meeting very well either. It's not every day you find out that your boss has beaten Jurgen ‘Creepy Books’ Leitner to death with a pipe in the basement of your office. 

But that’s not what Tim is focusing on at the moment. Jon left quite soon after the meeting and didn’t explain the full situation of it all, but his sentence rings like a knell. 

“Sasha died almost a year ago.”

And then Elias, with a sick sort of satisfaction, “The thing you remember as Sasha was nothing like her. It toyed with your memory. If I showed you a picture of the real Sasha now, you’d have no idea who it was.” 

She is dead.  And has been for a year, and Tim didn’t even know. Jon or Elias or anyone never had the decency to tell him. He wouldn’t be surprised if Jon was the one that did away with her- everything’s gone pretty hellish since he became the Archivist.

Life in research was simple- days flavoured with iced coffee and gossip. He misses his friends from upstairs- Archives ‘work’ has got him caught up at the moment.

He misses Linda and her baking, David the chat machine, and he never really sees Rosie much anymore, either. He misses the stapling chats and the road trips listening to Foo Fighters, he misses wearing whatever he wanted to without feeling the weight of Jon’s judgment on his back.

He could have just stayed there. He should have.

Tim sighs and places his feet up on the box being used as a makeshift coffee table, then quickly pulls them back as he realises he's just trod on a stack of paper. Hurriedly, he searches for a place to put them, while trying to brush off any dirt that had tracked on them.

A title at the top of the page catches his eye, scrawled in looped handwriting. It looks like Martin’s, and says ‘Epiphany’. He skims through the titles of the sheets: Blossoms, Streets, Yonder, a particularly messily written one called Filed Away, and then printed copies of La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Requiescat. Tim makes a mental note to tease Martin about this later, especially since he had always said he ‘didn't really like Wilde’ and that he was ‘too overrated’. Yeah, like Keats isn’t overrated at all.

He places the stack under an old tape recorder, labelled 'MARTIN'S- KEEP OFF'.

The view on the TV shifts slightly upwards, and Sasha watches as Tim strolls back to the sofa and resumes his previous position. He leans to his left and slides out his phone- a gleaming red with a clear, floral case (updated since Sasha last saw him)- and types something in.

Sasha is no longer in his contacts book, but he knows her number by rote. He holds the phone to his ear, the cool glass a pleasant shock in the warm room. The phone rings, once, twice. He hopes that what he once read about number reassignment isn't true. It goes to voicemail- expected, but it doesn't hurt any less. It is a final physical representation of his loss. But Tim won't hang up. He's got this far.

And so, he bites the bullet and begins to speak. Sasha squints past the glare on the TV to see his face clearer, looking on with bated breath.

"Hey, Sasha. Um, got you a cronut! I know you can't eat it anymore, but- look I'll... I'll eat it for you, okay?" Good start.

This is much harder than he thought it would be. Obviously he expected to be calling his old friend's voicemail and talking to her like she is still there to be hard, it's just-

He inhales, trying and failing to steady himself. The exhalation comes out shaky and sputtered.

"I'm so damn sorry I... I just thought you finally-"

He breathes in again, and Sasha's heart aches. She wants so badly to be there with him, but no matter how hard she reaches, she knows she will never be. She will never be there to hug him, to feel the fabric of his shirt against her face or to laugh away their wet shoulders and puffy eyes. 

"I just thought you were finally getting tired of me or something last year." Sasha knows he cannot see her, but she shakes her head all the same.

"I didn't know that you were already gone." At this Tim's left hand obscures his face even more, and though Sasha cannot see his expression, she knows. She knows by the shaking of his shoulders and back, and by the choked sounds emitting from the TV.

He inhales, and sighs as he rubs his tear-stained cheeks with the palm of his hand. It comes away gleaming, reflecting the light in the room. "I'm gonna have to change my catchphrase now, y'know?" He chuckles, but it is dry and joyless. "Um- hello. My name is Timothy Stoker: you killed my brother and my best friend."

Tim inhales and sniffs slightly before rolling back his shoulders and finishing the quote. "Prepare to die."

With that final, definitive statement, Sasha steps back and glances away from the screen, one hand clutching the top of her left shoulder, the other firmly clasped to her mouth.

She attempts to cease the sobs that rack her body, but the pain she feels is too strong, too sudden to be quashed. She grabs the lip of the cabinet, ignoring the build up of dust that comes away on her hand, and bows her head.

As she does so, she sees the floor begin to pattern a polka dotted dark grey, as what feels like years of repressed emotions bubble up and overflow- like an uncorked bottle of shaken champagne.

Sasha lowers herself, still cradling her arm, into the oak chair and rocks back and forth. Her thumb rubs her left forearm as she hugs herself tighter- her mind darting from one possibility to the next, taking massive leaps between each.

Sasha gasps for air as each thought hits her like a tidal wave: he knows and he is sorry. He cared enough to send this message out even when Sasha was definitely dead. And though she knows, despite her hopes, that he cannot picture her without seeing a blurred face, at least he hasn’t forgotten her existence wholly.

Roots of grief reach across time, across space, and tie the two together. Though they are apart, this sadness at the loss of a life that could have been lived connects them, even across planes. It as though a string is tied to Sasha’s heart and leads to Tim’s, and that maybe by grieving the string will get shorter and they would be together. Together again.

Finally, Sasha breaks. It is as if the pain and hurt she has supressed for her whole life has all come flooding back, frothing violently and thrashing like a tsunami. It is devastating, and all Sasha can do is weep until it is over.

Chapter Text

Sasha is sitting on the floor, once again, legs crossed. Her head is slumped in her hands, hair sprawling and spilling over from the nape of her neck like a waterfall. Her shoulders are still shaking, but she thinks the tears have stopped coming now.

"Sasha?" She looks up at the screen, covering all but her eyes with her hands. "Sasha, I know that this is not the best time, but I have something to confess. And I rather think I should do it now, before things progress too far."

Sasha attempts to take a controlled breath, and wipes at her face with her jumper sleeves. "What are you talking about?"

"Do you remember when Jon played those tapes of you? And talked about tracking down the Not-Sasha, well--"

Sasha suddenly shifts to laser focus. "You never told me what happened to it. Or to Jon. Is he okay?" She thumbs at the hem of her t-shirt. 

Anansi's tone is higher and more strained than usual. "Oh, yes. Yes, he is alive. But what I wanted to talk about was what Jon did that night: he took an axe to the table it was bound to. And this, in turn, released the Not-Sasha. Jurgen Leitner ended up trapping it in the tunnels beneath the institute, so all is well now, do not worry. But I rather thought--"

"Anansi, why didn't you tell me this before?" Sasha's face is deadly serious. So much must have happened since then, why haven't they told her?

Anansi responds. "Well, I saw the state you were in after Jon played those tapes, and you would not have wanted to know, it would have ruined your moment."

Sasha's hands have lowered from her face now, and they are crossed, tight as a lock. "Don't you think you should have told me since then? Or- or maybe not right after Tim called my old phone and left me like, well, like this," Sasha gestures messily to herself. Her face is slowly recovering, turning less puffy and inflamed by the second. But that doesn't mean she's any less angry.

"What on Earth made you think that now was the right time to tell me something that happened..."

When did it happen?  Sasha tries to do the maths in her head before she realises she has no point of reference for the dates. God, she hates this.

"Admittedly, it did happen a while ago, Sasha. My sincerest apologies. If we go from the time of Tim's message to the Not Sasha incident, it would appear that about a year has passed on Earth. I am so sorry, Sasha,"

A year.

A year of her friends meeting and knowing new people, losing connections, nearly dying, and other things Sasha didn't even know about. Why was she up here if Anansi wasn't going to tell her about these things? Half of Sasha's brain is focused on her friends, the rest on escaping from wherever the hell this is. All of it is aflame with white-hot anger.

"That's not really going to be enough, is it? They are all down there suffering while I watch and they gain a year for every nap I take? Next you're going to tell me they've all retired. Or died! Just--" Sasha strikes out at the oak chair to her side and it topples over unceremoniously with a soft thunk. Not even a small thud. Nothing worked in her favour here. 

She might as well accept that Anansi knows more than she does.

"I'm just- I'm sorry, Anansi. Just promise me you're going to tell me what's going on, from now on, okay?"

A pause, long and deafening. Sasha's neck prickles as static begins to rise.

"Have I not done enough for you, Sasha? Is that not quite selfish of you?" This comes out of nowhere. Anansi's voice is louder than normal and more bassy. The words keep coming, a thick torrent of muddy spieling vocals. They crawl into the crevices of Sasha's brain through her ears and rattle it like a child's toy. Sasha struggles to her feet and towards the door, hands clamped tight over her ears. She stretches out her right hand and aches to feel the cold metal against her fingers--

Then it's almost as if it never happened. Sasha is back on the floor next to the chair, arms crossed. Anansi's voice is quiet, and smiling. "Apologies, my dear. I will attempt to show you things if and when I can."

Sasha can already feel her memory of their conversation ebbing away, like a message in the sand- washed away more with every wave. Before she drifts off, she reaches a shaking hand to the table leg and drags her nail down it, attempting to play it off as a casual action. She places her head in her hands again, and feels her eyes close. A nap would not hurt, would it?

Chapter Text

If Anansi didn't know Sasha as well as they do, they would be worried. Since the end of their last conversation (we can just pretend that did not happen), she has been laying on the carpet, knees bent and eyes fixed on the peeling ceiling.

Sasha's mind is racing, each thought entering and bouncing off of the walls of her skull before escaping in the form of a muttered whisper.

"What was that, Sasha? I do not think I heard all of what you said,"

"You weren't meant to. But now you've interrupted my train of thought, so," Sasha sits up and glares at the TV. "I might as well tell you. I've just been worried about Tim and the rest- I know they locked away that Not-Me thing, but there's got to be other things out to get them? Like Prentiss or Michael. Do you know if there are?"

Anansi hesitates for a moment, trying to think of how to explain this concept. “Well, what I can say is that there are other things like the Not-Sasha, or that serve the same entity. For example, that delightful mannequin who kidnapped Jon and gave him a nice facial--"

Sasha’s posture has gone straight as a metal rod and her hands are raised as if to stop Anansi. "Hold on, Jon was kidnapped? You didn't tell me this? Anansi, you need to tell me these things."

"More than once, and I am fairly certain I did, dear. It seems too important of a situation to not tell you about."

Sasha is still uncertain. She's sure she's had a conversation with Anansi before about telling her important things. She thinks it had something to do with Leitner, maybe? 

"What do you mean by entity?"

"The Not-Sasha serves an entity known as The Stranger or I Do Not Know You, as does Nikola Orsinov, the mannequin. It manifests as a certain fear of the unknown and the uncanny. The other avatars you mentioned serve other entities to The Stranger, however. Michael, or I suppose Helen now,"

Sasha looks puzzled once again, but Anansi continues nonetheless. "They serve The Spiral, representing deception and madness. And Jane served a lovely little entity known as The Corruption. It deals with feelings of disgust, disease and decay."

"Great. So these three are working together to kill all of my friends?"

"Not just three. Fourteen. Jon found this out himself not too long ago, actually. I think that was on his second kidnapping? As well as those three, there is a main one you should know about. It is called The Eye, or Beholding, and it deals with being known and watched constantly. The institute happens to be a stronghold for the Beholding, and the man you know as Elias is an avatar. And Jon will be soon, I expect. That is how Elias did that to Melanie, poor thing."

Sasha’s hands are raised again. She hates how Anansi keeps dropping these things into casual conversation, as if they’re listing off what they got from the shops.

“What? What happened to Melanie? Is she okay? You never showed me any of this!"

"I did, dear, but I can see if I can find the one where- ah yes, here it is. Now, since this was a while ago, I can only find the audio, but you don't need the visual to understand it. Are you sure I have not shown you already?"

Sasha nods, and braces herself for what’s to come.

Chapter Text

“Are you sure you are ready? I do not want you getting hurt, and this may not be the best for you.”

”Play it. Please.”

“As you wish, dear.”

Anansi’s voice fizzles out, as the hiss and whirring of a tape fills Sasha’s ears. She can hear someone breathing very heavily, as if attempting to restrain themselves.

Elias begins to speak, over the breathing. "Your father was your last real anchor, wasn’t he?" His voice is the smirking tone of someone who knows (and delights in the fact) that they are in control. And not unlike the one Anansi sometimes adopts.

Melanie speaks through gritted teeth, "That’s none of your business."

"Perhaps. Five years is plenty of time to grieve. It’s a real tragedy, isn’t it. Dementia? Especially so early. But he always remembered you, didn’t he? 'Little moth'."

Sasha always thought Elias wasn’t that bad- he seemed nice enough to her, and although he didn’t make her archivist, she didn’t mind him as a person. But now- this blatant manipulation made him appear out of the depths of Sasha’s mind, bloodthirsty and grinning, staring out of all of his eyes directly into her soul.

Melanie’s anger is hardly restrained now, (and rightfully so, Sasha thinks.) “Shut up."

"At least you got him into a decent care home. Hard to afford on an irregular income like yours, but your mother’s life insurance helped plenty. And Ivy Meadows wasn’t as expensive as some of them. It’s a shame about the fire. But I would have thought it would offer something of a relief."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh. Of course. They told you he died in his sleep, didn’t they? Smoke inhalation. A real tragedy, but at least he didn’t suffer."

Something within Sasha has an appreciation for his theatrics: he’s really pulling the strings quite well here, but she cannot bring herself to praise his actions. She squashes this voice down into the deepest corner of her mind, and continues listening.

Elias’ voice gets louder as static begins to flood the background. He speaks in a low, mock-soothing voice. He’s practiced this. "Do you want to know what really killed him?"

Melanie gasps as the tape distortion swells in volume. As it diminishes, Sasha can hear the unmistakable sound of sobbing. Deep cutting and guttural.

The audio cuts off abruptly, leaving Sasha in stunned silence.

She rubs her face and takes a deep breath, trying to gather her thoughts. "That's-- that's just…” amazing, “horrible.” Sasha finds it harder to push down her thoughts this time, but she manages. 

“Is Melanie okay? There must be a way to stop Elias before he hurts anyone else, right?"

Anansi doesn’t respond. "Right?"

The silence is squirming and loud.

Again, Sasha is met with pointed and smug silence- it is squirming and loud. They seem to have mastered a method of getting Sasha to talk: just leave her in silence and control what she can see.

"Anansi, I'm getting tired of this. I don't know why you're keeping me here, or why you only answer some of my questions, or why you keep saying you've told me things when I'm pretty sure you haven't- but I've had enough of it. All of it. You know what, I'm going to leave."

Sasha knows what she is doing (however, only partly). She knows that her next few actions might be dangerous for her, but she scrambles to her feet anyway. She walks- not too fast, not too slow- to the door, which is still clad in black chains.

Sasha braces herself as she reaches her hand to the doorknob and gets a flash of a dream: her hands are tightened around her ears and the floor is rumbling with the force of what sounds like a million voices. But nevertheless, she reaches forward still.

Anything to get Anansi to talk to her.

"SASHA, Sasha, no. I am sorry but you have to stay here. I just--"

"Why? Why do I have to stay, Anansi? So you can have a puppet to play with? To manipulate?"

Anansi seems lost for words at Sasha’s frustration. They attempt to soothe her. "I... cannot tell you. I apologise. I really am sorry. All in good time, love. But in the meantime, what can I do to make your existence here more comfortable?"

”Just— just update me when any of them are in danger, please. I thought we'd been over this? I don’t want to find out that they’ve died a year after. Tell me things, please, that’s all I ask. I know what you’re doing, Anansi.”

Sasha did not, in fact, know what Anansi was doing, but she thought it would make them squirm. She was enjoying this. It was going according to plan.

Chapter Text

"It looks like it’s decided. Myself, Daisy, Basira, and, uh, Tim are all going to be heading off to this House of Wax. We’re to sneak in as best we can."

Sasha is sat on the edge of the table. She did try the chair, but it was so uncomfortable she found herself changing position every five seconds. So she is sat atop the table, legs swinging, and facing the television.

Sasha can only see Jon's back. The view seems to be coming from on top of something behind him: a filing cabinet or a box of some kind. 

Anansi had woken her from a stupor, the third since their last conversation, with news of a plan. The Archives staff were to go to the House of Wax in Great Yarmouth to stop Nikola Orsinov ('that mannequin who gave Jon a nice facial') and to, presumably, save the world. Martin and Melanie had their own plan to distract Elias, and Sasha was told it involved arson. Of all people, she didn't expect Martin to be the one ending up committing arson, but people change.

Sasha desperately wishes they wouldn't.

“But Tim isn’t going to sit home and wait, and Elias seems pretty insistent I go along." Oh yes, and apparently Tim is hellbent on avenging his brother's death. Sasha can't blame him, really. From what she's heard of Danny's death, she would want to do the exact same.

But this doesn’t stop her from being worried. Obviously she can’t really intervene, but she’s just scared Tim will do something stupid like get himself killed. Or that any of them will.

"I do worry about Martin and Melanie, and leaving them behind with… I suppose that’s part of trusting someone isn’t it? Letting them help how they can."

Melanie and Elias’ confrontation plays in the crevices of Sasha’s mind. The forefront of her thought drifts to Anansi: they’ve been a lot quieter recently.

They’ve been showing Sasha a lot more from the Archives so she can’t complain, really, but it still feels like there are things they aren’t telling her. She keeps getting deja vu for the weirdest things: yawning, tilting her head a certain way, grabbing the table leg. 

The tallies. Sasha glances down at the table legs- and there are two legs with tallies on them. One of them is Tim’s from forever ago, and one of them looks more recent. The recent one only has one tally on it, and Sasha wonders when she even did it. She can’t remember doing it. Maybe it wasn’t her? Another mind game from Anansi, perhaps.

Without Sasha realising, the screen has switched to a view of Basira (she thinks that's her name?) from what seems like a shelf. The red book hasn't moved since the last time Sasha saw it there, and it's accumulated a collection of dust. Sasha whips her head back up and watches.

"I just hope Jon can keep it together. And Tim… gosh, Tim. I know they’ve been through a lot, but they’ve never taken something like this on before. And if it’s anything like when we went after Rayner, it’s going to get bad." Basira has the demeanour of someone who knows what she's doing. Her posture is rod straight, speaking into the tape recorder with authority, and with the sense that she's done this before. Sasha doesn't know what Rayner is, but from what Basira said, it must have been pretty bad. Something in her stomach drops, and she takes a deep breath. They'll be fine. 

"How the hell did I end up having to save the world?" The TV turns to static once again.

Sasha sighs. "Anansi?"

"Yes, Sasha?" Finally, they're speaking. Their voice seems genuine, actually inquiring, rather than how tired and dull it's been as of late.

"Do you... this is a stupid question. Are they going to be okay? Can you see that?"

"Oh, love. I am sorry, I cannot see that for you. We will find out together, I suppose." Anansi seems to have gotten infinitely more tired. They sigh at the end of their sentence. Sasha wonders why their demeanour changed so rapidly.

"New person is coming in now. Melanie, I believe."

Sasha brightens slightly at the mention of Melanie. Does it count as a parasocial relationship if the person you're watching is the only one who knows you ever existed? Sasha thinks it's almost the opposite.

Melanie seems a lot more agitated than when Sasha saw her last, but all her old mannerisms are still there. Leg still thumping at the floor like a drum, same habitual hair tuck (despite the change in colour to blue).

"They don’t get that the only way to deal with something like him is to watch his eyes go dead with your hands around his throat. I’ll play it their way, for now, but when it comes down to it, I want to see him dead." Sasha smiles at this. Though something in her is shocked by the violence, she thinks Melanie deserves to feel this anger. Sasha heard what Elias did, and she would have liked to see the same. 

Melanie sighs, and Sasha sighs with her. She's been doing that a lot recently. "Good luck, Jon. I do hope you win. But I also hope it hurts."

Static once again. In the intermission between showings, Sasha shifts position to the floor. Somewhat for comfort, but mostly to inspect the tally. It looks quite recent, so it must have happened while she's been in there with Anansi. Some of the varnish is peeling away where it's been scratched hurriedly, and Sasha pokes at it. Sure enough, her thumbnail has bits of the varnish stuck under it, wedged in the gap between her skin and nail. 

Before she can think further on this (conveniently), Martin's voice comes out of the speakers.

Sasha brightens at his face, remembering his humour, and shuffles around, fully facing the TV.

Chapter Text

Martin starts to speak. "I know, I know, I’m not gonna die, I’m not even going to be on the incredibly dangerous mission. Me and Melanie, well… I don’t think death is really the worry. It’s just, this feels like an ending?"

Sasha always told Martin not to jinx things. On his first (and, thankfully, only) date with David, he had a bit of a panic and came to Sasha for help. She had to quickly instil some semblance of confidence in him- 'You'll be fine! You're a good man, you like him, and what's the worst that could happen? You're not going to die.' Sasha is very glad to see that even though the woman who told him that looks completely different in Martin's mind, at least the message hasn't been lost.

"Corridors; evil, all-seeing managers… Suppose you can get used to anything." Disembodied voices, a facsimile of your old break room, being dead for Christ's sake. You really can get used to anything.

Martin hasn't really described the plan for him and Melanie, but he seems to be quite proud of himself. "Now it’s my trap, and, well, I think it’ll work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but it felt good weaving my own little web." Anansi makes an amused sort of 'hm' at this comment.

"Oh, oh, Christ, I hope Jon doesn’t actually listen to these." Sasha's smile grows as Martin's posture straightens, a caricature of his boss. "'Good lord, is Martin becoming some sort of spider person?' No, Jon, it’s an expression, chill out!" Martin's impressions haven't gotten any better then, that's comforting. 

"Besides, spiders are fine. I mean, yes, people are scared of them, obviously, but actual spiders, they just want to help you out with flies."

"Have you ever been scared of spiders, Sasha?" Anansi makes Sasha jump. 

"Uh, not particularly?" Sasha's heart returns to normal, eventually. "No, I just put them in a glass and put them outside. I was never terrified of them like Jon is."

"Jon is so terrified of them, isn't he?" Anansi sounds somewhat cheerful, some semblance of their old personality bleeding back in.

"He really is! I had to come and intervene after a web started forming under his desk. A full deep clean- they were crawling everywhere. It's a proper phobia for him."

Martin continues. "Oh, and I hope the world doesn’t end. Obviously. Just… just don’t die, Jon. Or, or Tim, Basira, or… Daisy, I guess? Just… can everyone please make it back home?"

Sasha’s brain echoes the same sentiment.

The screen rapidly switches to Daisy. She pokes her head in, sighs and says:

"Okay."

Then the screen turns to black. Wasn’t really much of a statement but… whatever works for Daisy.

Sasha scrunches her face at her reflection in the black screen. It’s too blurry and far for her to make out her actual face, but the shape of her hair and the colours are there. She scrunches it again, but nothing changes.

Sasha moves closer to the screen to get a better look at her face, but instead of her own, she is met with a man’s. Someone very familiar. 

Tim.

"All right. I don’t know what you are, I don’t even know if you’re listening. I don’t care. Just, if you’re there, I want you to know that I hate you. I hate you for, for witnessing what’s happened to us."

That hurts. Sasha knows he isn’t addressing her but seeing him so bitter hurts. So much. 

Actually, how do I know he isn’t addressing me? I have been watching them all since I left. Maybe he does hate me.

Tim looks… dishevelled. He’s obviously taken to wearing whatever he likes since the Archives descended into hell- a graphic T-shirt for some 80s band is hanging loosely off his frame. His hair has changed partings, but it looks like he hasn’t brushed it in a while. And his eyes are the worst part: tired and almost dull, not filled with the spark Sasha was so used to seeing. She looks down as he continues to talk.

"I’m gonna hurt them, though. I’m gonna hurt the thing that stole my brother and wrecked my life. I’m the distraction."

Sasha can’t bring herself to look back up at him. So much sadness has leaked into his voice, along with a bitter sort of hatred. She can’t bear the notion of Tim, the Tim she knew, being so hateful and violent.

But people change.

"Honestly, I hope that Jon learned something from Gertrude because,” Tim pauses, but his silence speaks a thousand words.

”Because I don’t expect I’m going to be coming back from this. I don’t know if I want to.” Sasha looks back up, and sees the track of a tear making its way down to the corner of Tim’s mouth. He wipes it away dutifully, sniffs and carries on.

Sasha knows that if he wants to get some sense of vengeance for his brother, this is the best opportunity he’s ever going to get. Christ, it’s not like she can do anything to stop him.

She just wishes he wouldn’t—

”And if he needs to pull the trigger, to use me to stop it… well, he’d better have the guts to do it."

—do that. Tim grabs the table to haul himself up, and presses a button near the camera. The screen turns black once more. 

Sasha’s brain echoes its hopes once more. Please let everything go to plan.

Chapter Text

Sasha wakes from her nap on the floor with a deep pit in her stomach. She is cross legged, head slumped in her hands. Her head is swimming and it feels heavy and tight. She scrunches her eyes a couple of times to get rid of the feeling, but it only intensifies. Sasha finds herself wishing for painkillers. Or whatever the afterlife version of them is.

She feels like she’s still dreaming. Anansi’s voice pokes at the edges of her vision, the volume throbbing.

“Sasha, something has gone wrong. I— I am not sure— hold on,”

The pit turns into lead and plummets to her feet. Sasha’s vision begins to blur again, and her heartbeat speeds up to an unhealthy level. She can feel it in her ears, an army of a thousand soldiers marching in her chest.

”What’s— what’s wrong? What’s going on?” Sasha’s voice is hoarse with fear.

”I can show you some images from the House of Wax. They are very unclear and I am having trouble focusing on one thing at a time. It is all quite overwhelming. Do you want to see some of it?”

Sasha stares at the black screen, waiting for her foggy brain to understand the sentences just spoken.

”Yeah, okay. Is everyone alright?”

Anansi doesn’t answer, and the screen turns on.

It’s unlike anything Sasha has ever seen. What Sasha can make out looks like a theatre, rows and rows of seats watching the stage with bulging eyes. They vary in shade, but all look far too skin-like. The colours at the edges of the screen blur and shift hues from deep reds to cool blue. People flash up occasionally, sometimes a clown, sometimes a writhing mass spilling over the stage.

Multicoloured fractals flood the screen as Jon’s badly beaten face comes into view. 

“I-I don’t understand.” The cuts on his face heal and crack back open before Sasha’s eyes.

The clown bends down and stares deep into Jon’s face. “Of course you don’t. You can’t. Not anymore.”

“What? I don’t… I don’t… who are you?”

“It’s me, Jon. It’s…” The mannequin hesitates. Her plastic eyes click shut and open to meet Sasha’s through the screen. Fear courses up her spine like growing tree roots. The clown looks sharply back to Jon, as if she’d never been looking at Sasha in the first place. “It’s Tim.”

”Jon. Jon?” Jon’s left hand pats at the back of his head, where his hair is slowly becoming razor sharp.

“Yes, that’s your name, and I’m Tim, your friend.” The fear turns to white-hot anger, Sasha’s knuckles bursting into flames.

“Tim? Can you… if you could, I’d – I’d value your input on it…”

“Now let’s take a look at this.”

”Please.” Jon holds something in his shaking hand, and the clown’s clicking joints close around it. It looks like—

“A handheld remote detonator.”

”A what?”

“It talks to a bomb. I imagine if you’d used it, we’d all have come to quite a nasty end.” A pocket appears on the side of the mannequin’s neck, and she slots the detonator neatly in to place.

The fractals appear again, and Jon’s screaming face fades out of view.

Sasha hears the growling anger before Daisy appears. She is facing two unnaturally tall men, clad in plain brown. Or is it grey?

“I’ll kill you.”

“Will you now?” The first of the twins snarls in an exaggerated accent.

The second mimics. “Ooh, pretty scary. If you can, that is.”

”You don’t even know what a gun is.”

Daisy digs her back foot into the crawling carpet and smiles wide, flowers blooming from the bloodstains on her top. She laughs. “I don’t care.”

More fractals, this time in shades of pink and blue. They wriggle like insects across the screen. Some dark part of Sasha appreciates how creative the transitions are. All humour vanishes when she lays eyes on the next scene.

Jon is hanging from the floor, hands grasping the leathery seats. Tim and Basira are crawling on the ceiling in the background, Tim looking amongst the grass for something. Basira is walking around on her knees, seemingly talking to herself. The mannequin stands proudly upright amongst the chaos, grasping her cane.

Jon spits something dark out of his mouth. “Who are you?”

“Why, I’m…. Tim of course! Who else would I be?” The clown’s smile is unmoving as she inches closer to Jon’s face.

”You’re not. You’re not Tim.” Basira’s body disappears off screen.

“Oh, you caught me! I’m Sasha!” Tim’s head whips around to the scene below him. He begins to roll closer to Jon.

“Shut up!”

“Really, it’s me! Sasha… whatever-her-name-was! Back from the dead, just like you wanted!” As the screen darkens to jump to another tableaux, Sasha sees her face reflected where the clown’s was. Her knuckles burst into flames once again.

Blue and yellow spirals this time, coiling around each other like desperate hands in the winter.

This scene looks entirely different. The players seem to be on the stage, Tim stood on a platform that’s tiered like a wedding cake. The throbbing mass that was once centre stage has been resigned to the wings, and Jon is laid on the floor amongst the discarded shells of two people. The clown stands squarely in the middle, shiny hands stiffly hanging by her sides.

“Wait, Tim! What do you see?”

“I see my asshole boss!” Tim shoots a glance down to Jon that could kill. 

Unnatural green static begins to blur with the spirals, vignetting Sasha’s view.

Tim’s mind seems to clear. “Or – or… wait… wait. Grimaldi.”

The clown’s face drops sharply to a maddening caricature of a frown. “Once. A long time ago, before Orsinov made me. And sometimes, even now, for special occasions. Like your brother.” Her face contorts into that of an old man and she leans forward into Tim, putrid breath running over his skin. “SHALL I?”

Jon shouts up once again, prompting more static. “Tim, what’s in your hand?”

“It’s… I don’t…” His mind clears once again, and Tim blinks at his hand. “The detonator.”

The view jumps slightly, the shadows of more spirals coming in for a split second. The figures have moved- Jon is collapsed on his front now, and Tim and the clown are face to face.

“The world is ours! That toy won’t help you now.”

“So come and take it.” The clown doesn’t move. “That’s what I thought.”

“I am losing my patience.” She sends one of her lackeys forward to retrieve the detonator, but they stop once Tim shoots out his hand.

“Back! Get back. That’s right. Jon. I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can… then I don’t forgive you. But thank you for this.” He sighs, clearly preparing himself. Sasha utters a silent prayer to a God she doesn’t believe in.

“You idiot! Do you really make the world will fare any better under the Watcher? You think you’re saving anyone?”

Tim laughs bitterly. “I don’t care.”

“You can’t even save him!”

“But I can hurt you.“ His thumb touches the edge of the button.

“It will not end like this.”

“You sound stressed. You know I hear the great Grimaldi’s in town. You should go see it, cheer yourself up.”

”That’s not funny.” The clown strides forward, sharpened hands reaching for Tim’s wrist. 

He smiles, wide. “I know.” And he presses his thumb down.

Sasha hears the explosion all around her. That terrible din of death surrounds her, all encompassing. Tim.

"Anansi! Anansi, what happened? Are they all alive?"

"No. No they are not all alive. I can try to see who—"

Sasha tunes out the rest of Anansi's speech. "Who died?"

Anansi hesitates. Then finally, "Tim. And, I cannot get a clear read on Daisy. Jon is very close, and Basira is fine but injured."

Sasha can hear coughing behind her, chesty and deep.

Sasha can hear coughing behind her. 

The figure bathed in bright light stands in the corner of the room, right hand outstretched. Slowly it lowers its arm, shaking it to regain feeling. It pats its chest, and pockets, and face, as if checking it brought its whole body. 

Anansi speaks louder this time. "Tim is dead. I am so sorry, my dear."

The figure steps out of the light, slowly opening its eyes.

"I'm what?" That voice is so familiar. Painfully familiar.

"Tim?"

Tim whips his head around and stares at Sasha's face. "Who are you?"

Chapter Text

It is all Sasha can do not to run up to Tim and throw her arms around him, to sob into his shoulder, to tell him how much she’s missed him. She wants to, so desperately, but Tim doesn’t even know who she is. He can only ever remember the notion of her.

”Are you okay?” Sasha must have been staring at the floor a little too long, because the man who just died is asking if she’s okay.

”Yes, I’m… I’m fine. Are you? You’re dead, Tim.” Bit blunt, but it does the trick.

Tim nods slowly. ”Yeah about that, couple questions. Where am I, who are you, and how the fuck am I here? How do you know my name?”

”You might want to sit down.”

Tim perches on the corner of the table, and Sasha lowers herself into the oak chair, facing him. ”Okay, where to start. This place,” Sasha gestures vaguely around the room, “is… a sort of afterlife? It’s not the break room, it just looks like it. That’s the way I understand it. I’ve been up here for a while so—“

”Alone?”

”Sorry? Oh no, I haven’t— well. Anansi?”

”Yes my dear? And sorry, Tim, for making you jump.”

True to form, Tim is clutching at his heart. Sasha thinks that about 40% of that is real fear, and 60% is a humour reflex.

”I’ve been with Anansi up here. They’ve been showing me some of what’s been going on in the Archives, what happened in the House of Wax. Still not really sure how but… I take what I can get.”

Tim’s hand lowers itself from his chest. ”I recognise that name from somewhere.”

”What, Anansi? Yeah I thought I did as well, but I can’t quite grasp who it is.” Sasha’s fingers claw at the fog of a memory. She wonders if the tallies have increased recently, and makes a note to tell Tim about them when she thinks Anansi’s distracted. She also makes another note to figure out if they even get distracted.

”So why am I here but not other people that’ve died in the institute? Like Leitner?”

”I’m not actually sure? Anansi?”

Anansi is pointedly quiet. Of course.

Tim rubs his eyes. ”Right. Well that answers things. Who are you? How do you know my name?”

”I know you’re not going to believe me but just… listen okay?” Sasha stands and looks at Tim with pleading eyes. “I am Sasha. The real—“

”Shut up. I’ve already had someone pull that on me today. I’m getting tired of being manipulated.”

Sasha thinks, well you won’t get much of an escape from it here, and carries on speaking to Tim’s turned head.

”I would do that whole ‘I can tell you something the real Sasha would know’ thing but I think it took my memories, so it wouldn’t really work. But I saw that voicemail you left me.”

”Saw?”

”Yeah. Anansi let me see it on the screen.”

Tim’s head snaps up at that. His eyes are beginning to sting. ”Which one was it? What did I say?”

”I don’t remember much of what you said word for word,” Sasha lies, “but I know that you picked up some sheets of paper and put them on a shelf. Your new phone is red and you have a floral case.” She smiles. “You got me a cronut.”

When Tim speaks again, his voice shakes. ”I still don’t know if you’re actually her. This could be another trick. It’s—“ His speech catches and he gives into sharp temptation, letting tears begin to flow down his face.

Sasha panics slightly. A man she’s known all her life who doesn’t believe she existed is sobbing over, amongst other things, a croissant doughnut hybrid.

Let’s just say it’s a unique situation.

Her comforting instincts kick in. ”Hey, hey c’mere. Can I hug you?” Tim nods dejectedly.

Sasha grabs the back of Tim’s T-shirt and pulls him in close to her chest. “I know it’s hard, but you’re going to have to trust me, okay?” She feels Tim nod into her collarbone. 

Tim pulls away, and Sasha reaches out to wipe a tear making its way to his chin. She changes the subject as naturally as she can. ”So what did I miss? I mean, I’ve been seeing some of what everyone’s been doing but outside of the archives… I have no idea what’s been happening. How’s everyone upstairs?”

Tim sniffs and wipes at his face. ”I honestly couldn’t tell you. The last time I actually talked to anyone up there was just after Leitner died.”

”Never mind, then.”

”Oh, Martin has a crush on… guess who.” Tim’s eyes light up, even if it is only with the brightness of a match. 

Sasha grins. ”It’s not David again is it? Or, oh is it Hannah? She’s pregnant!”

”She had her kid a while ago.” Tim swallows. “But uh, no. One more guess.”

Sasha hesitates for a second. “…Rosie?”

”It’s Jon.”

Sasha gasps and shouts, ”I lost the bet!” as Tim says, “You owe me a fiver.”

Tim glances up at Sasha again, as if assessing her. ”So you remember that then?”

Sasha nods, lips pressed tightly together. She changes the subject, “How are all the other relationships going? Did you meet anyone?”

”No I— Christ, no. Melanie and Georgie have been together for a bit, they’re cute. Oh Melanie’s this person who—”

”Yeah I know her. Knew her. But Georgie, Jon’s ex Georgie? The Admiral Georgie?”

”Yeah that Georgie. They seem to understand each other quite well. Other than that, nothing. The Archives hasn’t exactly been the place to foster healthy relationships lately.”

”I understand why.” 

They sit in a comfortable silence for a while. A silence that would invite you in for tea in the winter, maybe even wrap you up in a blanket. 

Tim’s mind is occupied with his surroundings. He’s walking around now, neck craned and looking into every corner he can. “This place is pretty accurate, right? The attention to detail is scarily good.”

He points to the table. “Oh look at that! I used to tally the days! I stopped doing that after a while.” Tim walks over to the table leg and strokes the ridges where his pen knife once scraped.

The other leg catches his eye. “What’s—“

Sasha shakes her head and mouths not now. 

Sasha isn’t entirely sure that Anansi doesn’t know about the tallies, but she’s doing her best to keep them a secret in case they find out and can somehow erase the tallies along with her mind. She wouldn’t put it past them.

“So uh…” Sasha swallows slightly, “What did you do with the new Sasha? Did you go anywhere together? What did I miss out on?”

Tim perched on the table. ”We went for drinks a lot. Post-work Friday nights, you know. No concerts though. More museums and galleries and things. Which I don’t mind but… you know, I missed getting in mosh pits with her. You.”

”Oh my god, remember the Royal Blood concert? What did you do with that drumstick?”

”Framed it. It’s my most precious possession,” Tim laughs. 

Sasha does too. ”That was fun.”

”So what do you do up here, then?”

”Not much, really. Watch stuff when Anansi offers it. Sleep. Time works,” Sasha wiggles her fingers on the next word, “weirdly here so luckily it hasn’t felt like two years of doing nothing. But now you’re here, so it might not be as boring.”

”Oh, how flattering,” Tim scoffs.

”You should be flattered. I’m amazing!  Yeah, this… It’s going to take some getting used to.”

”Yeah. It’s going to take lots of getting used to. At least you’re here.” 

The two smile at each other, eyes glittering, happy that they’re getting to know each other again.

Chapter Text

”Yeah. It’s going to take lots of getting used to. At least you’re here.” 

Sasha grins. “Damn right.” 

”I am sorry to disturb such a…” Anansi hesitates, “lovely moment, but I have something both of you might like to see.”

”Oh! This is what I meant by Anansi can show us things. Most of the time it looks like it’s live, but sometimes I can hear events that I’ve missed.” Or that Anansi’s ‘forgotten’ to tell me about.

Sasha continues, “What is it?”

”It is Jon.” 

Tim gasps slightly. ”He’s— where is he?”

“In hospital, at the moment. In a coma, I might add. I just thought you two would want to see him. Like caring colleagues would. You did like Jon, did you not?”

Sasha looks to Tim with wide eyes. He licks his lips. ”Yes. It’s uh— it’s complicated. Thanks, thank you Anansi.”

”It is quite alright, Timothy. Or would you prefer Tim? Timmy? Timbo?”

Timbo chuckles. “No, just Tim is fine, thanks.”

”So polite. Do you hear that Sasha? Tim here is always saying thank you. Where is your gratitude?”

Sasha laughs politely, but inside she feels her stomach churn slightly. She can’t help but feel like Anansi was actually scolding her lack of thanks. But it was just a joke, right? It must have been! Must have been.

They sigh in unison. “Ready to visit the boss, Sasha?”

”Are you ready? This is your first one! It’s not all that exciting really but—“

“Shh! Don’t ruin the moment!” Tim places his hands on his crossed legs, like an obedient five year old in a maths lesson. Or an overly enthusiastic meditator. Or— 

The screen sputters to life. What first appears as crawling static morphs into an image of a hospital ward, papery curtains drawn. Jon is laying in the hospital bed, tube down his throat, and a well dressed black man is sat at his side, at a right angle to the bed. He is bouncing his knee.

Tim has to fight the urge to say he’s at a loss for words. Sasha would be pleased to know he hasn’t changed much.

“So he’s really alive then.”

Sasha changes the subject to give Tim some time to think. “Who’s that? They look cool.”

Tim interjects. ”Really well dressed. I wish I could ask them where that suit came from cause,” He makes an OK symbol with his hand.

”That, my dear, is Oliver Banks. Antonio Blake to some. And he is quite cool. I shook hands with him once and felt cold for the rest of the day.”

Something in that sentence rings a bell for Sasha. Where had she heard that name before?

Tim looks straight at Sasha and mouths My Dear?

Sasha whispers back, “They’ve been calling me it for a while? I just accept it now, really.”

Oliver continues to speak, and Sasha and Tim actually listen.

”As soon as I woke up, I knew we had finally reached Point Nemo.”

Tim’s hand shoots up. ”Ooh! I know this one. Point Nemo is the furthest you can ever get from land. I looked it up during an edgy period and then remembered I didn’t like the sea.”

”A… a what? Did you just say edgy?”

”Yeah? You know that teen period where you’re like ‘I hate everyone’? Turns out I wanted to get as far away from everyone as I physically could.”

Sasha thinks for a second. Then, ”You could have gone to space. That would’ve worked.”

”Not a massive fan of open spaces in general, really. Sea or land. Or space.”

They fall quiet again, and Oliver speaks through the chatter of the hospital. “I barely got the first word out before the falling satellite debris hit the ship at 200 miles an hour, killing us instantly.”

Sasha sucks in a breath and says, ”Ouch!” just as Tim says, “Mood killer!”

”God, imagine that. It’d probably be quite a quick death I guess.”

”It was not. By any means. Many who were not killed by the crush ended up drowning. He is still speaking.”

Oliver seems to shift his position in the chair to face towards the camera. As if saying, ‘here I am’. He rubs his hands together and speaks his monologue. “Honestly, I’m still not exactly sure why I’m here. But you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what she asks.” 

“Who’s she?”

”Listen, Sasha. For once.”

Tim seems to brush this off and start listening once more, but Sasha’s chest feels tight. She deserves better than to be told off like a naughty child for asking a question. Even so, she closes her mouth and listens, for fear of the comment being repeated.

“You’re not quite human enough to die, but still too human to survive. You’re balanced on an edge where the End can’t touch you, but you can’t escape it.” On cue, the light in the corner of the break room begins to flicker. Once, twice, slowly. Then switching to an almost-strobe, so bright Sasha and Tim close their eyes.

Oliver talks over the chaos. “I made a choice. We all made choices. Now you have to—“

”Can I help you?” Another voice. Familiar, but unidentifiable to Sasha. Tim, however, knows exactly who that is.

The lights have stopped flickering.

“Sasha, that’s—“ Tim groans as he opens his eyes. “That’s Georgie. Melanie’s girlfriend. Jon’s ex? I don’t think he knew about them two being together. She’s nice, it’s good to see her visiting. Do you want to… open your eyes any time soon?”

Sasha begrudgingly opens them.

The TV is still playing. Georgie is alone in the room, looking aimless. “Did…”

She trails off, as she spins to face the door. “Hey! Hey, get back here, I need to talk to you!” 

The last image the two see is the door out of the ward swinging shut. 

“Well, that was… Sorry, Sasha, but I can’t imagine living a whole life just watching other people’s lives. Not a life, but you know what I mean.”

”Well, have you tried to leave?”

The door that would normally lead to the Archives glows in response. The thick black chains around it seem to throb.

”It’s chained shut, Sash.” 

That nickname hurts. A reminder of what was, what could have been. What was with someone else. Sasha doesn’t know why she begins to say her next sentence, but by the end of it a great sense of pride overcomes her.

”Just try the doorknob. I promise.” Sasha gets a flash of a reoccurring dream: walking to the door, hands clamped over her ears, the bassy noise making the floorboards shake. She waits for Anansi to intervene, but they are silent. Almost deliberately so, as if they’re waiting for something.

Tim’s fingers reach for the cool metal handle, aching to twist it and be met with whatever heaven (or horror) lies beyond it.

They clamp down on a sphere, warm and slick with something like oil. Tim’s ears begin to ring. He lifts his hand away and catches a metallic scent lifting off of his hand. The doorknob is dripping red. He feels his mouth stretch, but doesn’t hear the scream that comes with it. 

Sasha grabs him from behind, and places him down on the oak chair. She doesn’t regret telling him to try the door, even in the state he’s ended up in. Some would call it Schadenfreude. A part of Sasha is just glad someone else is experiencing Anansi's manipulation—

Until she realises that Anansi was silent. It was all Sasha. Her thoughts begin to spiral. No, I still like Tim. What I did was bad. I need to apologise. Anansi should apologise. I'm sorry, Tim. I love you, I'm so sorry.

All this thinking does no good. She winces as she feels the first roots of a silk thread knot into her hair.

Chapter Text

The two are sat on the floor. Not the most comfortable position, especially since the carpet is thin and trodden, but no supernatural sofa has appeared recently, so they have to make do with the resources they have already. The one with a touch of new grey in her hair is staring at something just beyond her reach, brain separated from her body. The one with a red-gloved hand is asleep- or as asleep as he can be- on the other’s shoulder. Their chests rise and fall in unison. 

The vision of the grey-haired one blurs between memory and reality.

She is in the graveyard, feeling long pin fingers root around in her veins. She is at the pub, laughing and running her finger across the rim of her glass. She is in a mosh pit, and someone next to her has tucked a drumstick under their t-shirt. She is in an air-conditioned room in the humid summer, writing furiously in a blue notebook, ink smudged up her little finger.

She is in the library, sipping gently at a cafe hot chocolate that burns her tongue. The smell of death and aging paper surrounds her, and it feels almost comforting. Her friend (friend? Who is that person?) leafs through a book a couple of shelves away, and she can hear the glue and the leather creaking with every movement. 

An elderly lady enters the room and demands that she come and assist her ‘for a minute’. As the younger one leaves the library, her colleague shouts after her,

”Don’t cross her, or you’ll end up full of spiders.”

She laughs it off, and exits after the cardigan-clad lady, admiring the colour of the wool. It is a sparkling grey, not unlike a web covered in dew.

After she arrives back at her post, the woman takes up conversation with the other resident researcher.

”Where did that spiders thing come from?” The woman shelves her book from earlier, strumming her fingers across the spines to find the correct place to slot it in.

”Oh, I don’t suppose you remember, do you?” The researcher shifts in their seat, getting into an appropriate story telling position. As they do so, their face shifts into that of someone else’s, but the woman cannot pinpoint quite who either is. The first was a white man with slender fingers, and shaggy brown hair. The second is black, with a short crop of blonde hair. Same thin fingers, though.

The new person continues. ”Apparently Gertrude had an assistant once, Emily or Amelia, I think. Long story short, she betrayed Gertrude and ended up covered in cobwebs. She died though. House burned down. A shame really, I heard she was quite nice. Always knew the right thing to say to people.”

“That’s horrible. Do you think Gertrude…”

The researcher looks appalled. ”Oh, Christ, no. I doubt it, I mean have you seen her? No, probably just an exaggerated yarn to stop people from betraying her.”

They continue chatting while the woman starts to stare at something in the background. “I have never really minded spiders, really. They can even be cute! But when they come in, I just get a cup and—“

”Why am I back here.” Not a question, but a statement. 

The researcher stops mid-breath. Then they sigh.“That is not a question for me, Sasha.” 

”Sasha?”

”That is you.” The tone of their voice, Sasha thinks, makes them sound an awful lot like Anansi. Deep, dismissive, sighing.

”Is it? I don’t know who I am really. I haven’t seen my reflection in so long. I’ve almost forgotten my face. I can feel it, sure, but… and then there’s my personality too.” Sasha grips the back of the chair closest to her.

“Every day I feel like I’m getting further away from who I used to be. Like what I did to Tim. I’m scared of myself. I don’t want to do that to people. I don’t want to make them do things. It doesn’t… feel good.”

The researcher has morphed into someone she does recognise- Martin. ”It must feel good for someone.”

”Not for me. I care about Tim.”

”I know. You should probably tell him about the whole thing. I think he’d appreciate it.”

Sasha’s chest is getting tighter and tighter. She changes the subject. “I haven’t spoken to you in so long.”

”And you still aren’t, not really. I’m not here. At the moment I’m… well I don’t know. Probably in my own little hole, in my office, alone. But you’re not really here either, Sasha. Are you?” Martin’s face has twisted into something cruel. Sasha’s never seen him like it. He begins to shout. “You need to leave. You need to WAKE—“

“—Up Sasha!” 

Sasha awakens sharply. Her eyes take a while to adjust to the light. She is lying on the floor, Tim nowhere to be seen around her shoulders.

A voice behind her. “I laid you down after I got up. I didn’t want you falling asleep still sitting up, that’d be weird.”

Sasha’s voice croaks. “Tim.”

”That’s my name.” He clears his throat. “I washed my hands. Turns out there’s somehow still water in that tap, which means, theoretically, we could have tea?”

”Tim, I haven’t eaten in two years. I don’t think we need to drink tea.”

Tim clicks his fingers. ”But we can, and that’s what matters. Do you think there are any teabags anywhere?” 

Sasha finally turns around to see her friend. Yes, a good friend. Tim has marks from the folds of Sasha’s shirt on his face. He is pottering around the little kitchen, occasionally glancing at the table. When he finally glances at Sasha, his eyes narrow slightly in concern. Sasha’s eyes, however, are the size of moons and she’s breathing very heavily, as if she’s just run up three flights of stairs.

”You okay, Sash?”

”Yep, fine. You laid me down.”

”Yeah? Sorry if that wasn’t okay, I won’t do it again.”

Sasha can’t help but smile with relief. No wood varnish under her nails today. “No it’s fine, thank you.”

”Are you going grey?”

“I suppose so? They’re cobwebs, I think.”

”Those spiders must work quickly.”

Sasha let’s put a contemplative hm. “Would you… you don’t have to, but would you mind taking them out for me?”

Tim walks over jauntily, a slight bounce in his step. As soon as he reaches the back of Sasha’s neck, his demeanour seems to drop. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

”Bad dream, that’s all.”

They sit in silence for a moment, as Tim gets to work in Sasha’s hair. He used to knit, so his fingers are used to tricky movement (luckily). Sasha closes her eyes for a second, allowing her guard down. She focuses on her breath. And on Tim’s breath, brushing over her neck. She focuses on her hair, eight fingers working away.

Her trance is broken suddenly. Tim whispers in Sasha’s ear. “Want to talk about those tallies? I’ve been thinking about what they could be for ages.”

”They’re—” Sasha lowers her voice even more. “They’re every time I think Anansi has been manipulating me, or has tampered with my memory in some way.”

”How would you know that?”

”Dreams, sometimes. Sometimes I just get a foggy feeling and wake up in a place I wasn’t before. Which is why I was so concerned when I woke up.”

”What should we do?”

”I don’t quite know.”

”How about we sort of play along, for now, and gather some evidence. You know, get a sense of what’s going on. And then you can have the whole ‘I hate you so much, see you never’ moment.”

”Sure.”

”Oh, by the way, thank you for saving me from that door. The things I saw when I touched it… god. And the blood too.” 

Sasha doesn’t have it in her to tell Tim that she knows. She could have stopped him. Yes, it was a foggy memory she was counting on, but it was still a memory. So she’ll let him believe. That information is like a breeze by a house of cards- the wrong wording could send their relationship toppling.

She’ll tell him another time.

”Yeah, no problem.”

A beat, as Sasha figures out how to word her next sentence. 

“Tim?”

”Ja?”

Sasha swallows. ”What do you know about the entities?”

”Smirke’s? Oh, quite a bit. I did loads of research on him. The Web, the Eye, the Stranger all that.”

”The Web?”

”Yeah that one’s spooky. Fear of manipulation.” Sasha’s stomach drops. She doesn’t remember this one.  “And spiders, obviously.”

Sasha gestures to her hair. ”I think this might be a sign. From the Web. About manipulating people. I don’t know, the person in my dream said it was about betrayal, I think?” As Sasha says this, the dream hooks on to a passing breeze and floats away from her grasping hands, leaving words unformed in her mouth.

”Why would you need to worry about manipulating people? Or betraying them? You were always so loyal.” 

Oh, god. Sasha will definitely explain another time. Definitely. Martin’s voice crops up in her mind, for some reason. “I don’t quite remember what they said exactly. Just, I need you to promise me that you’ll stop me from losing myself? I’m scared, Tim.”

”I promise. Same vice versa, too, okay?” Then louder, “All done! There, that wasn’t too hard, was it?”

Tim fixes Sasha with a glance that says, You’re going to be fine. He sits down next to her on the floor, cross legged again.

“Anything happening at the moment, Anansi?”

Chapter Text

A play in 4 acts. Please ignore the ropes tying you to the chair, and do not try to analyse what they are made of, it will just make you more panicked. There are not any spiders in them, I promise. Applause is compulsory.

ACT I- Recovery

[TIM and SASHA are sitting cross-legged facing a large television screen. ANANSI is a disembodied voice, constantly in the wings, microphone on, waiting to step in. Sometimes they edge too close to the stage and the audience sitting on the far side catch a glimpse of their shadow.]

TIM: Anything happening at the moment, Anansi?

ANANSI: Apart from the whole Melanie debacle? Nothing, really.

[A pause here- for audience laughter. They will not laugh.]

SASHA: The ‘Melanie debacle’?

ANANSI: Ah yes, I forgot how bad your memory was, Sash. Tim’s got an excellent memory, do you know?

TIM: (slightly ashamed, like a child being made to snitch on a friend to their parent) Melanie had… like a ghost bullet- I don’t really know how to explain it- in her leg, and Jon tried to cut it out. Wait, hold on: Melanie is a new worker at the—

SASHA: Yeah I know. I’ve seen them. She was the only one who remembered me. So… obviously I’d want to know about her having a ghost bullet inside her.

TIM: Ah. Well, yeah, and Jon took advantage of their sleep meds, got a scalpel and just cut it out, I guess.

SASHA: Was this while I was asleep?

TIM: (He can’t remember when it was either) I… don’t think so?

SASHA: ‘Cause I feel like I’d remember that. It’s not everyday someone gets non consensual surgery for a ghost injury done in the basement of an Archives. It’s got to be a first, right?

ANANSI: Sash?

SASHA: (gritting her teeth, but maintaining politeness) Sasha, please. Yes?

ANANSI: Do you want to hear what happened? I’m sure I could find it for you. I’ll try and play it at a quieter volume, I’m sure you don’t want to hear all the screaming too loudly—

SASHA: No, it’s— it’s fine. At least now I know. Is Melanie okay?

TIM: Physically?

SASHA: Sure.

TIM: I believe so. I mean, probably in pain, and their mental state probably isn’t the best, but… yeah. I think so. She’s got Georgie, at least.

SASHA: (only half-joking) And I’ve got you.

TIM: Yeah! We’ve got each other. Lord knows we need company. I can’t imagine how it must have been, alone, up here.

SASHA: Yeah it… (bravado) wasn’t great. And the worst part was I could see everyone forgetting me. I could have lived quite peacefully without that. 

TIM: [He pats SASHA’S shoulder in support.] Now I’m here. 

SASHA: You’re here. [A beat.] It didn’t take you very long to believe that I was me, I was honestly quite surprised.

TIM: Well, I just thought ‘Even if it isn’t her, will it matter? I believed the other one for so long, would living in blissful ignorance be so bad?’ And I was lucky in the fact that I was right, this time. Thank god. 

ANANSI: (after a while) Are you sure you don’t want to hear the surgery?

ACT II-  Grounded

[JON and DAISY’S voices are quite muffled, as if they’re speaking through walls. SASHA, TIM and ANANSI’S are piercingly clear in comparison. The two are sat in the same position as before, but shifted slightly for comfort. Tim’s shoulder brushes SASHA’S often and deliberately. SASHA does the same.

JON and DAISY are talking in the background. SASHA and TIM chat over them.]

SASHA: So… it’s a coffin full of dirt?

TIM: Full of claustrophobia, maybe?

SASHA: Oh my god. Is it the one with the orange juice? You know the one… (she clicks her fingers a couple of times) that sung or something—

ANANSI: Yes. Once belonged to a man called Joshua Gillespie, or so I have heard. Remarkably clever man.

TIM: Oh yeah, and he put the key in the fridge or something. I remember that now.

[The three fall silent, listening to the TV intently, two chins tilted up in wonder.]

JON: (from the screen) I know.

DAISY: The way out?

JON: No. I know where we are. There is no out, not here. This is forever deep below creation. Where the weight of existence bears down. This is The Buried, and we are alive. There isn’t even an up. Oh god.What have I done?

[A long and squirming silence. DAISY and JON breathe out of sync.]

TIM: Not the first time he’s made a bad decision, right?

SASHA: Oh, god no. They released the Not-Sasha, you know. Cut the tether, or whatever. 

TIM: They were literally on the run for murder for a year? Out of all the jobs in the world, I never thought being a bloody Archival assistant would be as dangerous as it is.

[The TV continues.]

DAISY: Not alone, though.

JON: (barely a whisper) No. No, not alone.

[Tim and Sasha smile weakly at one another. Then, a jump on the screen. More static is present, high and squealing.]

JON: Here! Here, come on – push!

DAISY: I am!

[JON and DAISY groan loudly as they heave the coffin lid open. As they come out, they sigh in relief, taking in air that isn’t fetid and damp. There are… objects, surrounding the coffin, and they seem to be emitting JON’S voice.]

DAISY: We’re out! We’re really out! I can’t believe… What? What is it?

JON: Tape recorders. Must – must be dozens of them.

[The creak of a door.]

BASIRA: Jon, you stupid idiot! What did you think—

DAISY: (softly) Hi.

BASIRA: Oh my god.

[SASHA and TIM’S faces are illuminated in bright grey static for a couple of seconds- long enough for TIM to turn away and want to start another conversation. He is cut off by the voice of MARTIN.]

MARTIN: (sighing) I’m listening.

PETER: (smiling, as naturally wide as a mouth can be stretched, but still not looking happy. There’s something behind the eyes, a white flame.) Good. It’s about time.

PETER: (cotd.) There are two powers that, to my knowledge, have never attempted to fully manifest. Never had followers set them up for a ritual. Mother of Puppets, and Terminus. The Web and the End.

[TIM rubs his eyes.]

PETER: (cotd.) The Web, I’ve never really been sure about. If I were to guess, I would say it actually prefers the world as is: playing everyone against each other. And so on. The End, on the other hand… The End doesn’t really need one. It knows that it gets everything eventually, so why bother?

[TIM buries his head in his hands, as SASHA rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. They both stop at the same time. As they do, the TV image jumps.]

MARTIN: He’s not a moron.

PETER: (hesitantly, ‘yes he is’) If you say so. Regardless, he’s in there three days and then what do you know? He manages to pull himself out of the coffin like a… grubby Jesus, and he even brings a penitent thief along, in the form of your pet murderer. Does this seem about right to you so far?

[MARTIN hmphs.]

PETER: (cotd.) What does… puzzle me though, and I mean that genuinely, is why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin while Jon was in there. [A beat. The air tightens, and so does MARTIN’S chest.] It’s a question, Martin, it’s – it’s not an accusation.

MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just felt like it might help. He’s always recording, and I thought it might help him… find his way out.

PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled?

MARTIN: I don’t know. Maybe? I definitely wanted to do it.

ANANSI: That is the beauty of the fears’ compulsion. One can never separate the wants of the puppeteer and the puppet.

SASHA: That’s… rather philosophical of you. Very deterministic.

TIM: Reminds me of my uni roommates.

ANANSI: It is true, though. If the puppeteer lays your strings a certain way, but you never know they are there, then how do you know your actions are your own at all?

SASHA: You always have to have the last word, don’t you?

[A long pause.]

ANANSI: Yes.

[Pause for audience laughter and/or applause (mainly and). As the curtains lower, a pair of scuffed boots step on to stage from the wings. The shadow stemming from the heels is long and twisting, but disappears with the stage.]

[Interval. The audience chatter among themselves. A few, on instinct, shift as if to go to the toilets with 20 minute queues, or to sample the tiny pots of ice-cream, until they remember their restraints, and groan. Spider webs are surprisingly good ropes- for these people at least. Weight for weight, stronger than steel. Apparently. Some are still clapping as the curtains rise for Act III. They just can’t stop.]

Chapter Text

‘A play in 4 acts. Please ignore the ropes tying you to the chair, and do not try to analyse what they are made of, it will just make you more panicked. There are not any spiders in them, I promise. Applause is compulsory.’

ACT III- Tolstoy

[TIM and SASHA look as exhausted as it is possible for two dead people in the afterlife to look. TIM is lying on SASHA’S lap, and they’re both on the edge of sleep.

ANANSI, however, is far from it.]

ANANSI:  (suddenly) Have either of you ever read War and Peace?

TIM: (perking up slightly) My brother actually lent it to me—

SASHA: (overlapping with Tim) —Have you?

ANANSI:  That was sweet of him. And yes, twice actually.

SASHA: (bitterly) I imagine it’s quite hard to understand the first time around.

[TIM smiles secretly at this. It’s a line worthy of a high five, but not right now.]

ANANSI:  Is that some bitterness I can sense there, Sash? I cannot lend you a copy, my apologies. But what I can do is—

SASHA: Don’t call me that. Please.

[ANANSI’S voice begins to pop in and out, rogue vowels coming and going.]

TIM: Anansi?

[The air fills with a crackling sort of silence, electric with the absence of ANANSI’S voice. TIM sits up warily.]

SASHA: Peace and quiet.

TIM: Yeah. I don’t like it. 

[A click. The faint hum of the television starts, along with the ambient noise of the scene playing.]

JON: (from the TV) I see it. Uh – Hand me that brush?

[The floorboards creak as JON bends over. One of their knees pops slightly.]

BASIRA: Is that what I think it is?

JON: (sighing) Yep.

[The document he is holding rustles in his grip. It sounds like a thousand whispering voices, the susurration of secret scheming.]

JON: Official Institute paper and everything.

BASIRA: Goddamnit.

JON: Statement of Annabelle Cane. She left it for us.

[A slight jump on the TV here. JON’S voice changes slightly. He is reading a statement, that much is clear by his cadence of speech. His voice has dropped, to aid drama, possibly.]

JON: Free will is a funny old thing, isn’t it Jon? Can I call you Jon? I’m going to call you Jon.

TIM: (with the sarcasm of ten Craig Revel Horwoods) What else would he be called? Tim?

[SASHA emits an amused little ‘hmph’ here, but it is quite devoid of emotion: she is listening.]

JON: Most of one’s life is simply spent looking back and convincing yourself that you chose deliberately to act like you did. Hm. Have you ever read War and Peace, Jon?

[TIM takes a little gasp here. SASHA seems to sigh slightly.]

JON: (cotd.) I know, I know; I had to read an extract for a literature class once, ended up reading the whole thing. Another life. It’s not actually as boring as people say, and its central thesis is that the tiniest, most insignificant factors can control the destiny of the world.

TIM: That’s a… weird coincidence.
[Silence. SASHA turns her head to TIM and shakes it slowly, eyes wide. Her fingers tap on her left arm, while the cogs in her head turn.]

SASHA: Anansi? [She falters slightly on the first syllable- attempting (badly) to make a point. It comes out more like ‘An…ansi?’

There is no reply.]

SASHA: Do you think—

TIM: Could just be a coincidence. A really weird one. Could also be Anansi trying to mess with us. Or… I mean they were talking about War and Peace, and they’re not available right now- where else do they have to be? Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t get an ‘Anansi Physics’ degree, but I assumed they were just a sentient being that had control over this room? I don’t know. Plus, Anansi and Annabelle literally share the same first syllable. If it is a disguise it’s not a great one.

SASHA: But we don’t know enough and we can’t contribute enough for it to make a difference to Jon’s life anyway. They know that much.

[TIM hmms.]

SASHA: (cotd.) While they’re gone… or ‘gone’, rather, maybe we should make a sort of plan. ‘Cause if they are here and just listening, it’s not going to do much. What are they going to do, kill us?

TIM: Trap us in an eternal hell, maybe? Worse than this one?

SASHA: Good point. Fine, still going along with Anansi then? It seems like we’re going to be waiting forever. Just… waiting.

TIM: (counting on his A Level English knowledge to seem smart.) For Godot.

SASHA: Never read that either.

TIM: It’s alright. The play I mean- I didn’t love it really. Just two people talking for most of it.

[A pause, as if expecting audience laughter at this heavy handed irony.]

TIM: (cotd.) We’ll figure out something, I promise. I just think we’re both a bit lost at the moment. Especially since that door seems to be a no-go for me.

SASHA: Yeah. [SASHA takes a sharp intake of breath, as if bracing herself for her next sentence.] I— Can I tell you something? Promise not to be angry at me, please.

TIM: (hesitantly) Okay. (That word goes up at the end- a question.) I promise.

SASHA: When you touched that door… I feel like I could have stopped you. I think I’ve done it before, and I didn’t stop you. I’m so sorry, Tim.

[SASHA’S voice is shaking slightly, but her composure is maintained. TIM has turned to fully face SASHA, and extends his hands. She grabs them.]

TIM: It’s… it’s okay. What do you mean by ‘I think’ though? 

SASHA: The memory’s really foggy. Like, it’s like I’m looking through a window that’s steamed up. I think I might have been wiped, just not very well?

TIM: That’s not your fault, Sash. At all. Please don’t blame yourself. I’m not going to let you take responsibility for that, okay?

SASHA: Thank you. I think— I was just so scared I was unknowingly manipulating you, or something, I don’t—

TIM: Surely if it’s unknowingly, it’s not manipulation, right? It doesn’t make me love you any less, don’t worry. [If the two were alive, and we listened really closely here, we would be able to hear two heartbeats increase in bpm, ever so slightly. Those two words were thrown out far too casually than either of them would have done on Earth. But you only live once, right?]

TIM: (cotd.) I think we have someone else to blame for letting us both touch that door. Okay?

SASHA: Cool. Yep. Thank you, Tim. Really. [A beat.] Did you ever read War and Peace then?

TIM: No. Got about 20 pages in and then… you know. Danny happened. I couldn’t stand to be around the book much after that. It felt like it was taunting me. Funny thing is, I sort of want to read it now. All this silence must be sending me mad.

JON: (in the background, SASHA and TIM lightly chatter over his speech) I don’t like the idea of being important to the Web. [A beat.]

A mix of JON and ANANSI: (voices overlapping like strands of fraying rope) That is a really bad place to be.

ACT IV- Pointed

[The lights fade down, and then up again. SASHA and TIM are in the same position as each other, laying on their backs, arms rigid. Particularly eagle-eyed members of the audience may notice one of the lights reflecting differently on the table leg- another scratch has appeared.]

[They sit up, groaning. SASHA yawns.]

ANANSI: (uncharacteristically chipper) Good time-of-the-day, folks! How are we feeling after that nap?

SASHA: Yeah, fine I guess?

TIM: (overlapping) A bit weird, actually.

ANANSI: Good. I have got a present for you two! 

SASHA and TIM look at each other, concerned.

ANANSI: (cotd.) Oh, trust me, it is a nice one. How about a visit from your dear old Melanie?

[SASHA pales slightly at the mention of MELANIE through ANANSI’S voice. The TV flickers on with a burst of static.]

ANANSI: (cotd.) Remember when Jon told the staff how they could quit the Archives?

TIM: No? No, we couldn’t quit the Archives. That was the whole point of… No, it was impossible. (He trails off.)

ANANSI: Sasha, you remember, do you not? Admittedly you do have a terrible memory, but—

SASHA: (is not a very good liar. But she says this anyway.) Yeah, I remember.

[She notices something under her nail and falls silent. TIM turns to SASHA, on the verge of something that is either anger or tears. Or both. He can’t quite remember the difference.]

JON: (from the TV) You sound like you’ve made a decision.

MELANIE: I have, yes.

JON: (knows what’s coming. They would make the same decision themself if they were in Melanie’s shoes.) Right.

MELANIE: Thanks for telling me, by the way. It didn’t look like it was easy for you.

JON: It wasn’t. I don’t think, uh… I don’t think it wants to lose anyone, but I thought you of all people deserve the option.

MELANIE: Yes.

JON: (hurriedly) But I understand it’s a big thing. We’ll keep looking. Maybe there’s another way –

MELANIE: No, Jon. I’m going to do it. I’m quitting.

JON: Oh.

[A beat. A long, writhing beat. JON begins to fiddle with the collar of their top.]

JON: (cotd.) You’re sure you’ve thought it through? I don’t know if we can look after you, you know? Afterwards.

MELANIE: You won’t need to. I’ve – I’ve made a few arrangements, and… (shaky breath) it’s going to be okay. Honestly. I think it is. I – I can’t be a part of this anymore and if this is the price, then I think I’m okay to pay it. (inhale) It’s – it’s the rest of you I’m worried about.

JON: We’ll be fine. Always have been.

MELANIE: Not always.

JON: No, I guess not. (He swallows. Trying to figure out the right words to say.) …Well, if you’re sure.

MELANIE: I won’t be around after this, but I’ll leave details in case you need to get in touch, um, but…

JON: I understand. How are you planning on doing it?

MELANIE: Got, uh, got one of those awls from the book repair suppliers, up in the library? (shakily) If it can punch through books it can punch through, uh… Well it – it should do the trick. No reason to try and make it too complicated.

SASHA: (All of this is dawning on her too quickly. Put simply, she is afraid: for Melanie, for Jon. For the all of the Archives staff.) They’re taking out their eyes. 

TIM: That’s how? God, nothing was ever simple, was it?

[SASHA resumes picking at her nail.]

TIM: (cotd.) That’s got to hurt though. Those things are sharp as—

SASHA: (somewhat distracted.) I think that’s the point. 

[TIM pulls a face, on the border of laughing but also fully knowing he shouldn’t.]

SASHA: Pun unintended. (She turns her attention back to JON and MELANIE)

MELANIE: I’ve left a proper resignation letter on Lukas’s desk. It was quite satisfying to write, actually. Almost made me wish it was Elias. He would have hated me not serving out my two weeks notice, heh. Not sure Lukas even knows who I am… probably for the best.

JON: (putting on a brave face. His voice is strained.) We’ll miss you.

MELANIE: (wryly.) Wish I could say the same.

JON: Yeah. Do you need any, uh… help?

MELANIE: No. I’ve got this. But if you, um… If you could… In five minutes, I would appreciate it if you could call me an ambulance.

[MELANIE smiles sadly at JON, and lingers for a moment in the doorway before exiting. The TV returns to static.]

ANANSI: I expect that is the last you will be seeing of Melanie for a while. If all goes to plan, that is.

[SASHA turns to the bright light in the corner of the room. The same one that TIM appeared from, that she laid under when she first arrived. TIM shifts positions in her periphery, but she is focused.

The light flickers slightly.]

Chapter Text

The air in the room feels different. Heavier, somehow. Sasha’s eyes ache behind their sockets, and she waits for something to change. Something to remove her from this endless purgatory. Some sort of… Archive Afterlife. Her head aches whenever she tries to make too much sense of it all, as if the bass on a speaker in her ears has been turned up far too high.

Nothing changes, though Sasha wishes it would.

She doesn’t know how long it’s been. The most recent conversations with Anansi have felt broken up- each inhale a day, each exhale a month. Those in the Archives could all be dead and she wouldn’t know.

Speaking of, the Archives is a person down. Melanie, the only person who remembered Sasha’s face even vaguely, has now left the main place Anansi could see. Obviously, the others are still there, but every thought of Melanie puts a sweet sort of sadness in Sasha’s mind. 

And Martin! I haven’t really seen much of him at all, and—

“Hello, folks!” Tim groans as Anansi’s voice shocks him awake. Sasha does so inwardly, annoyed at the interruption. 

“So I have some news about Martin. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

“I’d prefer the bad, to be—”

“So the good news is that he is alive! And he is perfectly okay. In no harm whatsoever. Now, the bad news,” Anansi pauses here, as if to compose themselves, “is that he may not be for long. I sincerely hope that the Archivist can help him out, the poor man.”

“What’s happening?”

“Well, Martin has been placed into the Lonely by Peter Lukas and Jonah Magnus,”

“The Jonah Magnus? Isn’t he a bit… dead?”

“You would think so. No, he is not. Unfortunately. He inhabits the body of the man you knew as Elias, and has done for a good 30 years. Anyway,” Anansi continues flippantly, “Martin is in the domain of the Lonely, and the Archivist has gone in to rescue him from his impending doom.”

“Can we see them?”

“I believe so. I think Jon took one in with them, hold on—”

Sasha and Tim breathe in exasperation as Anansi falls silent. There is so much they want to ask, but—

“He has indeed. Are you ready?”

Anansi does not wait for an answer before showing the images on the TV. 

Jon is walking. The camera bobs with every step he takes, and his feet look impossibly far away. The mist gathering on what is presumably a beach clouds most of the camera’s view. 

Sasha speaks up, before anything too significant happens with Jon. “How long has it been since… since Melanie?”

“Around six months, I think? My mental maths is not particularly accurate, though.”

Anansi continues to talk over the crunch of Jon’s boots on the wet sand. “It is rather a shame that Peter got to Martin when he did. If he had not got there first, Martin would have been a prime contender for- oh look!”

The picture glitches ever so slightly, and another pair of feet appear in view. The camera tilts upwards, and Sasha and Tim lay eyes upon Peter Lukas. An old man, pale through the mist. Impossibly deep blue eyes, but with nothing behind them. Empty, hollow vessels leading to a skull full of swirling grey.

Jon stutters from behind the camera. “I-I don’t understand.”

“And you won’t. Not from me. I’m done,” Peter says, adamantly. Something in his jaw tightens.

Jon seems to compose himself, and controls an exhalation. “Tell me.”

The edges of the screen begin to flare a horrible glowing green, rogue pixels crawling and writhing around the fog.

“I’m… not saying… another… word.” Peter remains stubborn, but his eyes widen ever so slightly.

Jon steps closer to Peter. “Tell me, or I will rip it out of you.”

“No…”

“Answer my question!”

Peter’s mouth gasps open, and his shoulders begin to heave with every breath.“No! Leave… me… ALONE!”

Jon repeats through gritted teeth, “TELL ME!”, their voice hoarse with a terrible rasping grief.

There is a moment to breathe, to pause.

And then, the screen all but explodes. First it fills with that green, reaching like tentacles into the sockets where Peter’s eyes once were. It pours into his mouth and out of his nose, feelings its way through every crevice in the space in Peter Lukas’ empty skull. It all gets too much, pressure building and building and building until.

Until. His head gives way, and what is left of Lukas falls to the floor.

Jon spits at him, “Stubborn fool,” and Peter Lukas squeaks his last breath, fading into the mist below Jon’s feet. 

Tim gapes at the screen, trying desperately to erase the image that just splattered the TV. Sasha looks anxiously over at the light in the corner. It is flickering softly. She taps Tim on the shoulder, and tips her head in its direction. He gapes wider, before pressing his lips closed.

“What do we do?”

“He’s not here yet.”

“I don’t want him here at all, Sash. You saw him! He was an absolute nightmare.”

“You met him then?”

“Yeah, he…” Tim pauses. “Yeah I did. I’m sure I did.” 

Jon’s breathing becomes more erratic, and far louder, so Tim and Sasha can’t help but watch them. “Martin. He’s gone, Martin. He – he’s gone.”

The camera settles on the sandy floor, tipped up to face Martin’s head. He appears to be kneeling down, and his head seems to be fading into the sky around him. “His only wish was to die alone.” Martin’s throat catches, and his glasses fog up even more. So much so that Jon can’t see his eyes.

“Tough. Now – listen to me, Martin. Listen.” Jon repeats.

Martin fades somewhat back into consciousness. He smiles, as if he’s seeing an old friend. “Hello, Jon.”

Anansi hums happily, seemingly delighted at something Sasha and Tim cannot see. What is it? Sasha thinks, offhand.

“Nothing, dear. Listen to the show!”

“Listen, I know you think you want to be here, I know you think it’s safer, and well – well, maybe it is. But we need you.” Jon’s voice has thickened, and shakes with every new word he utters. Martin fades further into the beach, and the light in the break room flashes slowly around, like a lighthouse. The confession escapes Jon’s mouth before he has a chance to stop it, three weighted syllables.

“I need you.”

Martin’s brow tips upwards. As Jon’s hands attempt to grip his shoulders, they just slide through mist. Martin smiles sadly. “No, you don’t. Not really. Everyone’s alone, but we all survive.”

“I don’t just want to survive!”

“I’m sorry.”

Sasha walks over to the light. It is bright now, too bright to see underneath it clearly, but she can just make out the outline of a body: head tilted down, clothes sandy, kneeling on sea-wet jeans.

”Tim?” Sasha’s voice rises sharply at the end, sour with concern.

”Is it Peter?”

Sasha turns back to face Tim. ”No. No it’s, it’s—”

“Martin.” Jon’s voice and hands get more and more desperate as he realises the person he needs- the person he loves- is slipping away from him. “Martin, look at me. Look at me and tell me what you see.”

The same green pixels infect the screen, and embrace Martin’s head like a fluorescent halo.

“I see… I see you, John. I see you.” The light in the room fades, slowly but surely.

Sasha, Tim and Jon breathe sighs of relief in unison. “Martin.”

“I… I was on my own. I was all on my own.”

Jon grabs Martin’s shoulder, now fully solid. “Not anymore. Come on. Let’s go home.”

Martin stands, and briefly glances down towards the camera. A flash of concern and confusion crosses his face, before he meets Jon’s eyes again. “How?”

“Don’t worry. I know the way.”

Then the screen turns to black, and Sasha and Tim are left sitting with the echoes of their once friends. 

“Well. That was sweet.”

Chapter Text

“That was quite sweet, you know. I’m glad I lost that bet,” Sasha says. She nudges Tim, but he seems in a world of his own. “Tim? You alright?”

He starts. “Yeah, Yeah. Fine. Just… trying to remember where I saw Peter. It’s like every time I try and remember I just see, like, cotton wool. Does that make sense? It’s all blurry and unclear and just… my head hurts.”

”You don't have to explain it, it’s okay.”

Tim nods, absent-mindedly. 

“Do you want me to talk? Or just to sit in the quiet for a bit?”

”First one?”

”Yeah? Okay,” Sasha prepares a topic to spiel about that’ll make Tim laugh. “Oh I’ve got one. So, do you remember when we went to see Martin at his dance show? I think it was just after we moved downstairs. You got a box of Maltesers and got told off by that old lady for rattling it too much. And I had to stop you from clapping during his solo.”

”Was Jon there?”

”No. Or, not that I remember. Imagine them two doing a pas de deux.” 

Tim does, and the ghost of a smile reaches his mouth. “That’d be sweet.”

“You okay?” Sasha tried to reaffirm, but Tim murmurs in reply. He leans his head on to Sasha’s shoulder, where it seems to fit perfectly. Like the first two puzzle pieces to fit in a 2000 piece puzzle.

”If you thought that was nice, I have an update on them, if you would like to see?”

Sasha attempts to prepare herself for whatever Anansi would show her today. ”All good things, I hope?”

”Well, of course! For now at least. Nothing is permanent.” The TV switches on before Sasha gets a chance to retort. 

The camera seems to be placed on a shelf of some sort, high up, with a wide view of the room around them.

The house is small, full of dark wood. The walls are washed with a dark red paint, like a dying fire. There are things everywhere. Things: books and clothes, paper strewn over walls and tables, empty holdalls lying on the floor like puddles of oil. 

Jon looks… different. He looks like he’s been taking some more care of himself, which is good. He’s wearing his signature eyeliner, but in a rich glittery blue rather than the black he must have reserved for work. And they’re smiling. Sasha hasn’t seen them smile in a long time. She’s happy for him. She just wishes she could be there too. Even Tim musters a half-smile when they walk into frame. 

They cross the screen, and open a drawer. “I don’t think she’d come here. Doesn’t look like this place has been used for years.”

Martin perches on the grey sofa. He seems a lot more at ease than before- but that’s easy to say since the last time Tim and Sasha saw him, he was nearly dead. He pushes his glasses back up his nose. “And if she does?”

“Well. At least we’ll know where she is.”

”Who’s she?” Tim speaks, with a croaky voice.

”Daisy. I assume. It is her safe house, in  the Highlands. Perfect for a—”

Jon sits next to Martin. ”Besides, I’m more worried about the other Hunters. Or the… Sasha thing. Last I heard, they still hadn’t found any bodies. A lot of destruction, a lot of blood. But that’s it.”

Though Sasha is sitting, her heart drops to her feet. Her head can’t make sense of all of the thoughts that enter her mind, bouncing off the walls of her skull. They overlap in canon, morphing into pulses of static.

“You think they’re still out there?”

”Hopefully a long way out there.” Jon reaches out to grasp Martin’s shoulder, softly. “But I think we’re okay.”

They both smile. And the vignette stops.

Sasha and Tim lay their eyes on blurred reflections, two outlines of people- not clear enough to make out any features. Like what’s underneath the apples in a Magritte painting.

Then, as if they hadn’t been gone in the first place, 

“Still, she did manage to talk them out of burning the whole place to the ground? – and, ooh, actually, that reminds me,” Martin reaches down into one of the holdalls on the floor. The light quality in the room looks different- brighter- and they’re both wearing different clothes. Martin in a checkered blue coat, and Jon in a baggy shirt of some sort of 80s band. Aerosmith maybe?

“Ah, these, these are the statements.”

Martin presents a stack of paper, takes the bag and sits next to Jon. “Yes. Basira said last week she’d send some up as soon as the Archives weren’t a crime scene.”

“Yes.”

“And she wasn’t sure which ones you’ve read already, so she just said she’d send a bunch.”

“There are tapes in here as well. Did she say anything about tapes?”

“She didn’t mention it? But I didn’t check it until after the call. I assume it’s her attempt at a varied diet? Eating your greens, you know?” Ah, how Sasha had missed Martin’s awkward jokes. He was never really any good at them.

“Probably. I’m sure it’ll work fine.”

“Cool.” Martin slaps his thighs and stands, in the way that dads do when they feel it’s getting a bit late. Usually accompanied with an over-exaggerated look at their watch, or a sigh. “Well, as fun as listening to you monologue is, I will give you some privacy. Go for a walk.”

Jon smirks, an inside joke crawling to the forefront of his mind. “Let me know if you see any good cows.”

Martin smiles back. “Obviously I’m going to tell you if I see any good cows.” The door swings open and shut, and Jon smiles contentedly. 

Tim speaks over Jon’s opening spiel, a sequence of words he’s heard too many times to count. “I bet they have a cow or something. Out the back of the house. Seems like that sort of place.”

Sasha chuckles. “What would you name a cow, then, if you had one?”

”Oh god, I don’t know. Random question. Um… maybe something like Dolly?”

”That is such a basic cow name, oh my god.”

”I’ll have you know it’s actually a sheep. The cloned one. I’m branching out, if anything!”

Sasha concedes. “Right. I’d name mine Christie. Seems like a nice name, I don’t know.”

”Maybe we could double barrel it. Dolly-Christie.”

“Tim Stoker, will you make me the happiest person on Earth and co-own a cow with me?” Sasha mock proposes, but Tim is turned away from her, watching Jon. She can’t see Tim’s face, but his shoulders are tense.

Sasha turns to the TV, and her smile fades like fog in the wind. 

“I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading; there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself. So just listen.”

Jon’s hands are shaking horribly, as if he’s attempting to resist movement, but the puppet master is pulling on his strings incessantly. When he begins to speak again, his voice takes on a wetter, more smirking tone.  “Now, shall we turn the page and try again?”  

Jon’s body relaxes in to a new posture. They pull their head up, roll their shoulders back, and sit with crossed legs, reading calmly from the statement in front of him. “Statement of Jonah Magnus regarding Jonathan Sims, The Archivist. Statement begins.”

The light in the corner of the room palpitates before flickering completely off, leaving Sasha and Tim sitting in the dark. Everything is blurred, and in shadow. It is impossible to make out their actual surroundings from the spaces their brains fill in: Tim was pretty sure that the door was never that close to him before. Sasha never remembered seeing those wide stains on the carpet. Both of them had never seen the walls pulsing like that before- bending from their middles inwards and outwards, concave and convex.

”Sash? You alright?”

“Yeah I’m okay. You?”

”Yep. What’s going on?”

”Anansi? You there?” There is no reply.

”God, they’re never here when we need them. Bloody convenient, eh.”

Threads of Jon’s- Jonah’s voice- infiltrate all corners of the room, despite the screen remaining off.

I am to be a king of a ruined world

And I shall never die.

I convinced Smirke to work on Millbank

I could see everything

The lights of the room begin to flicker, a strobe effect. The room seems to crumble before Sasha’s eyes. The paint cracks and plummets blue dust down to the floor. Spiderwebs stretch their limbs across the ceiling corners.

You are a record of fear

You are a living chronicle of terror.

Do you see where I’m going?

Just rotten luck

Marked by the Web

You had been sent by the Spider

Anansi’s voice interrupts, as if continuing a sentence neither have been able to hear. They sound desperate, shouting over a noise neither can hear. ”Sasha? Tim? You will be okay, this is all part of th—”

When Jane Prentiss attacked

I watched eagerly

The screen reluctantly buzzes back on, illuminating the dilapidated room in swathes of green light. Verdant static surrounds Jon’s head like a halo.

One of the Stranger’s minions had infiltrated 

A pleasant bonus

Sasha’s encounter with the Distortion

A ready target

Sasha stands and moves closer to the screen, enraptured. 

The Unknowing

Posed no actual danger

Tim stands too. He begins to breathe too quickly, and he cannot bring himself to stop.

You will keep an eye on him when all this is over

Won’t you?

You’ll get used to it here

Ceaseless Watcher.

Neither can pull their eyes away from the screen. It will all happen, and they will be forced to watch, eyes propped open by invisible needles. Neon light glistens in the whites of their eyes, opened impossibly wide. Sasha feels herself falling. Tim grasps the table as his knees buckle.

Come to us. I open the door.

Chapter Text

The lights of the break room thunk on: one, two, three. Each illuminates a different section of the environment, another section of the change. 

One: the walls are cracked and two toned- blue paint standing out against the white underneath, now exposed and stained with azure dust. The floor is covered in a wash of blue, the ocean floor. Two pairs of feet lay askew atop the navy flakes that shroud the floorboards, the right foot of one touching the left of another.

Two: spiderwebs have crept their way around the room, stretching across the ceiling corners, and covering the cabinets. Mould grows in the sink, an indeterminate colour in the current lighting, but somewhere between red and violet. Now covered in branching fungus, the mug turned upside down atop the draining board has cracked just below the ‘Don’t Talk To Me’ line. 

Three: there are two bodies on the floor, laid like a clasp undone- where one is leant forward, the other leans back. They are breathing in unison, in and out to a metronome no one can hear. They lay in the middle of a mess, oblivious to their destroyed surroundings, eyes closed and flickering, both lost in a dream.

The screen, miraculously uncracked, buzzes on. It presents the image of a girl in a red dress and her rag doll playing noughts and crosses, and along with it comes a searingly high beep. 

Sasha starts awake, taking in a gasp of dust and immediately attempting to cough it back out again. Her mouth tastes of iron, and her scalp feels heavier than usual.

Tim rubs his eyes, tracking red on to his lids and around his sockets. He feels the wetness, touches a finger to his eyelid and pulls it away to examine it. His whole hand is tinged with something crimson and dark. And so is his other hand.

”Tim?” Sasha croaks through a mouthful of dust. 

“Jesus,” Tim grunts. He puts his hands on the floor by his sides, but his slick hands slip and he loses his balance.

Sasha strokes a hand across her hair nervously, but her fingernails get caught on strands of silvery white that twine her hair like tinsel on a tree.

Tim stands, and brushes himself off. His trousers gain a dark stain from his hands. Tim glances at Sasha. “You okay?”

”Uh, yeah. I suppose. Yeah. Are you?” Sasha looks back up at him. Then his hands. “Oh my god, are you bleeding? Is that a thing here?”

”Who knows at this point. It— it doesn’t hurt, or anything, it’s literally just red. And smells like blood. Like it’s someone else’s. Your hair is—”

“Yep. This is… this is weird.” Sasha pauses, and looks up at the screen.

The girl smiles down at them. As does the rag doll, with a face that looks a little too human. It states unblinkingly at Sasha, and she half expects it to come to life.

But it doesn’t. It just stares, with its dull green eyes. Shiny and plastic, and very much not alive. 

As Sasha stares it down, its face begins to cave in, like a deflated football. The stuffing oozes out and the screen fills with a crackling, grey static.

The whole screen buzzes with a billion black flies, and crackles like a fire. There is no sign of Anansi.

The flies dissipate, and reveal a decrepit theme park. Glitter and dust litters the pavement and rust graces the rollercoaster, in the background, which splinters in the middle and caves in upon itself.

Two pairs of feet shuffle themselves along the floor, and scuff to a stop. The camera switches channels, as if another CCTV camera has become active.

Two people: one with long, tied black hair, and another with mousy brown, congregate in the middle of the destruction. They are dressed in walking clothes, though not as layered as a typical hike in Scotland. It is the summer after all. And it’s the hottest it’s ever been.

“There’s a merry-go-round at London Zoo, or was one at London Zoo. Big old thing. Went quite fast, actually. Surprisingly thrilling.”  The black haired one says. They have a loose demeanour, but their partner looks like he’s on the edge of laughing.

“Seriously?” The brown-haired one laughs.

If they were alive, Sasha and Tim’s heart rates would lower from their peaks after hearing these two voices. There’s something so comforting about familiarity. And also about knowing that your friends haven’t died (in what you assume is an explosion of sorts?) since you last saw them. 

“It was years back, before the Institute. I was in a weird place. Had a good time, though!” Jon laughs, and points to something off camera. The object in question produces a twinkling, off-key waltz in response to its acknowledgment.  “Obviously I wouldn’t want to ride this one, we’ve had quite enough thrills already.”

“Are you sure? I could speak to an attendant,” Martin teases. 

“I would advise against doing that,” Jon laughs.

“So you said the riders were the victims… where’s the monster?” says Martin.

“Victims? Jesus, of that explosion?” Tim queries. This is bigger than he ever thought.

Its bigger than Sasha ever assumed, too. “Must be something like that. Pretty far reaching then. How did it not kill Jon?”

“His spooky eye powers or something, I don’t know. None of this makes any bloody sense!” Tim cries, exasperated. He runs a hand through his hair, and it drips crimson. 

Martin is similarly exasperated at Jon.“Please don’t tell me there’s an evil clown doll down there.” 

Tim’s mouth opens with protestation, and then closes again, wordless. A drop of red snakes its way from his scalp to his eyebrow.

Jon shakes his head. “No. Nikola died with the Unknowing; it’s, uh…”

Tim catches on before Sasha does. Which is unusual, but given his experience, well… of course he’d recognise the subject of conversation. Her face, her hair, her too-wide smile, the weird turn his stomach always did when she walked into a room- as if something was slightly askew and everyone knew but him.

Sasha’s brow is furrowed. Tim stares at her, eyes filled to the brim with apology for something that is not his fault.

Jon sighs, and words his next sentence delicately. “It’s an old friend.”

Then the screen turns to black. Sasha looks towards Tim, and finds him already looking at her.

“Sash, I… it’s,” Tim’s throat catches.

“What? What’s wrong?” Sasha wipes the scarlet streak from Tim’s head with her thumb.

Something in the walls coughs. 

Not like a dusty cough. Much more like a polite ahem inserting itself into the conversation.

“Anansi? You there?” Tim shouts, a hopeful edge in his voice that there will be no reply.

“Yes, Tim. I am. And so are you both, I see. What have you done to this room?”

“It… we woke up and it was like this. All weird and stuff. After that thing with Jon happened?”

“Ah yes, that. You may want to sit down.”

The two do so.

“I am not sure how much you know about the entities of Earth, but Jon mainly serves The Watcher. The man you once knew as Elias used this power to… there is no light way to say this. He brought about the apocalypse, using Jon as a vessel. Him and Martin have been travelling with an aim to reach London, and so far it seems to them that it is a worldwide event.”

Sasha stands, and directs her anger at the walls, slowly revolving. “If you knew all this, why didn’t you show us? Or wake us up? Or something? Can you fix the room?” She turns back to Tim. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

The TV butts in. Sasha hides her anger.

“How much further?” Martin wails.

“I think we’re past the worst of—” The camera is removed from the couple, far enough away that no one would ever notice the instrument lurking among the rubble.

There is a low rumble, like thunder in the earth, that makes itself known. It transforms into a high-pitched strain, and Martin covers his ears.

Jon, however, stands taller. “She’s here.”

“My dearest colleagues.” The screen begins to crawl with multi-coloured worms of static as the figure makes herself known. She staggers out of a crater towards the two, long, sharp teeth snarling with desire. 

“Get back!” Martin throws something dark and rectangular towards the figure. It hits it with a thump, but falls away having not dealt any damage. The figure proceeds forwards.

She clasps her hands in mock sadness. “I can’t believe you’d decide to pass through my neighborhood and not say hello to dear, old Sasha.” 

Sasha’s head aches, numbly. Her eyes dart across the screen, back and forth, attempting to comprehend what—

“It is the not-Sasha, dear.”

So this is her. If Sasha’s frank, it’s not a very good impersonation at all. Needs work. But this, this is the one that Tim thought was her for years. This is the one that replaced her face in his memory.

“Just ignore her, Martin.” Sasha wishes she could do that, too.

The not-Sasha’s voice drips like syrup. “Oh, you wound me, Archivist. And we used to be so close.”

“I have nothing to say to you.” Jon says. He stands his ground, and holds on to Martin, who is stood back. 

“Nothing to say! Well, you crush me, bury me in the foundations of your little temple for a year, and now you have nothing to say?”

Jon speaks through gritted teeth. “Leitner did that. And Peter released you. All I’ve done to you is to not die.”

Not-Sasha laughs: once and bitterly. “Oh, and I would say that is quite rude enough.”

Jon grips Martin’s hand. “Leave us alone. I won’t warn you again.”

“And what if I let you choose this time? Which one of you would I wear next? Martin looks very comfortable, positively roomy. Wouldn’t you agree, Archivist?” the not-Sasha says.

Jon drops Martin’s hand, and walks towards the not-Sasha.

“Jon, do we need to run?” Martin shouts after him. 

“Oh yes, Martin. You very much do.” The not-Sasha claps her hands. “I’ll even give you a head start!”

She smiles down at them, with razor sharp teeth. But Jon does not run, or falter. He begins to laugh. Genuinely.

“You’re bold, I’ll give you that. Desperate for one last morsel of terror from us?”

Not-Sasha snarls, but Jon continues to circle it, their rhythmic steps providing percussion against the stony floor.

“A final sip, and then we’re gone? Somehow we manage to keep just ahead of you and get away.” Jon’s voice is thick with threat. “God forbid you actually catch us. Doesn’t bear thinking about.”

“Jon, what are you talking about?” Martin says.

”She can’t touch us. We’re so far beyond her now. She’s just like everything else here: ruled by the Eye, and she hates it.”

“Well of course you want to wallow in my shame like your voyeur master. Do you know how it feels? To be anonymous? And yet known!” The not-Sasha almost sounds on the edge of tears, the one real demonstration of emotion she has shown since crawling on screen. “To have all the sweetest dread I can create tainted by the relentless gaze of that damned Eye. I’ve suffered enough.”

“Pathetic,” Jon spits. “Martin, let’s go.”

Not-Sasha explodes. “Not as pathetic as your little friend when I ate her life.”

There is a long, blazing silence. Jon inhales, then exhales. He grabs the reins.

“What did you say?”

The silence gives Not-Sasha time to think. Think about the person she is threatening, and exactly what they could do to her. “I-I’m sorry.”

Jon discards her hollow apology. “You were wrong, you know. There is more suffering than you can ever experience, so much more. The horror of your victims, their constant, senseless agony. Feel it now. Understand it. You have drawn out so much despair, and now finally, it’s your turn.”

Jon commands an army of green static. His hair blows in the wind, as the neon tendrils pass through his fingers and snake towards not-Sasha’s chest. They collect over where her heart would be, wrapping her tight.

Jon steps closer to not-Sasha, looking upon their prey before the killing blow. “Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this wretched thing.”

Sasha watches in relish as the thing that stole her life falls to her knees and begs for mercy. There is no mercy. Sasha’s scalp begins to ache. She smiles, transfixed by not-Sasha’s power ebbing away, in a long drawn out scream.

Sasha feels a clammy hand on her shoulder, and turns away from the screen suddenly. 

Tim’s face looks pale, and his eyes look as if he hasn’t slept in weeks, stinging and bloodshot. He sniffs. “I just want to say… you know, I’m so sorry, for what… and god, it’s so much harder knowing you watched all of it.”

“Oh, I didn’t see everything. It’s not that good.” Sasha remarks, gesturing to the now off screen. “And it wasn’t your fault.”

”No, but I always had this feeling, you know? Like something was off. But she was just so comforting, and… and I thought she was you.”

”Tim, look at me.” Sasha cradles Tim’s jaw in her hand. “You have nothing to apologise for. This is not your fault. None of it.”

Tim nods into her palm. Then, “Can I hug you?”

”Sure,” Sasha smiles, as her hand traces from Tim’s jaw to the crevice between his shoulder blades. She leans her eyes into his shoulder, and his jaw rests on top of her head. 

Tim kisses her scalp. Cobwebs and all.

Sasha adjusts her position, to stare up at Tim.

”Oh, god, sorry if that was too much, I—”

Sasha steels herself. “Can I kiss you?” 

Tim gulps slightly. “I— I haven’t done it in a while. But I want to.”

“Neither have I. We can learn together?”

Tim nods. He cups Sasha’s face, and kisses her gently, once. 

If Plato was right, or Hedwig was right, these two would be a prime example of the children of the moon. Two halves, split by forces beyond their scope, finding each other once again, and finding love once again.

Two halves of one whole, breathing in, and breathing out, and breathing in. And, once again, in perfect unison.

Sasha smiles against Tim’s mouth, and kisses him back.

Chapter Text

Tim sighs contentedly. He is leant against a notched table leg, with Sasha’s head in his lap, his hand (covered in dried red liquid that he really should have washed off) on her shoulder. This is the first time he’s been calm, been happy in… well. A long time. He smiles softly, feeling the tide of Sasha’s breath beneath his fingertips. Just them. No interruption, nothing to care about but their time together. Not in this moment.

Sasha turns the corner. The earthen wall crumbles away against her fingers, which trace the corridor, gentle as silk. The legs of the thing she has been following, oh so valiantly, slink their way around another bend in the hallway, and Sasha’s worn boots thump on the ground as she chases after it. 

But it is of no use! Chasing it is much like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick, and Sasha is rather more aware of this fact than she would like to be. 

Suddenly, she spies some light in her periphery, and flies down the remainder of the tunnel, watching helplessly as the spindly legs silhouette their departure against the bright white sunrise. I shall get it next time, I am sure of it, Sasha thinks.

As she stares out at the horizon, something tugs at her shoulder. A grey thread has wrapped its body around her right arm, and tugs and tugs away. She falls to her knees, both with exhaustion and due to the incessant pulling. Another thread springs up and wraps around her head. It caresses her as a warm hand would, then turns to marble and sends her falling forward, floundering face-first for a dusty, unforgiving landing below the towering cliff face.

Upon her descent, a wave of salt water begins to gush from her eyes, falling from her tear ducts as small and hard as diamonds, but then expanding into an ocean’s worth of tears to break her fall. 

Before Sasha knows it, she is up to her chin in salt water.

I wish I hadn't cried so much! thinks Sasha, as she swims about, trying to find her way out. I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That shall… this sounds familiar. Hold on.

Before she has a chance to finish her thought, she hears something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and she swims nearer to make out what it is: at first she thinks it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then sees a wet, blue head poke its way above the water.

The head swims its way to the shore of an island (which seemingly appears out of nowhere) and as it clambers into to the shore, Sasha can make out the shape of a familiar person, though they now look slightly different to how she remembered. People change, Sasha thinks bitterly.

The blue head turns to face Sasha. Melanie’s face has not changed, barring the lack of eyes in her sockets, but she is wearing what seems to be a cat costume. She wrings out her (also blue) tail as she calls to Sasha, ‘I say! What on Earth were you thinking, flooding my resting place with so much sea-water? O, my tail! It will never get dry enough for the match now.’

‘The match?’ Sasha queries, dumbfounded, as she climbs on to the sand.

Melanie pulls a quizzical expression. ‘Why yes! The croquet game! Do you not know? I shall take you there, Sasha.’

‘Why are you speaking like that?’

‘Whatever do you mean?’ Melanie furrows their brow. She senses something on the horizon and gasps, pointing. ‘There it is! The croquet lawn.’

Sasha turns her head to where Melanie points, and a cool wind brushes past her face. Flamingos mill their way around a lush, verdant lawn, leaving footprints of crushed grass. A flapping of feathers reveals two figures in the distance, dressed in green and grey respectively, walking through a thick fog towards Sasha. 

‘They shall be with you soon,’ a vaguely familiar woman dressed in a blue butterfly outfit remarks, before linking arms with Melanie.

‘I am afraid it is our time to leave you. It has been so very pleasant to speak to you, Sasha! Send my regards to the Hatter for me, will you?’ Melanie smiles widely at Sasha, before disappearing into the day with her partner. The two from in the fog seem to be walking in the same place, never getting closer, but perpetually moving. 

Sasha overhears the voice of one of them, the higher pitched half of the couple, floating on the wind: ‘I do not like this place!’

“Once again, Martin, that’s sort of the point!”

Sasha wakes up groggily, to the sound of the couple in the fog chatting away. 

She can feel the imprints that Tim’s trousers have left on her face, and wipes roughly at the place some tears escaped on to the fabric as she was sleeping.

“Morning! You okay?” Tim smiles, voice croaking slightly.

Sasha rubs her eyes and nods like a five year old up past their bedtime. Her mouth opens to yawn, and the inside of it flashes at Tim like the inside of a snake’s- smooth and pink. 

“The Corpse Routes.” Jon says. 

“Yeah, that. Well, it feels… it feels like it’s—” Martin hesitates. 

“Waiting?”

“Yeah! This is the one with the death guy, isn’t it?” Martin queries.

This instantly seems to pique Anansi’s attention. “Ah, Oliver Banks! An old friend of mine. You remember him, Sasha? Tim?”

“The guy that did that weird speech while Jon was in a coma?” Sasha asks, but Tim still looks confused. “Suit guy.”

”Oh, suit guy! Yeah, him. Point Nemo guy.”

“Precisely.”

“So it’s him that’s waiting.” Martin asks from the screen. 

“Not just him, but yes.” Jon replies.

Anansi laughs quietly. It does not escape Sasha’s notice, and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

Martin smiles slightly, too. “So, are you gonna smite him, then?” 

Jon does not reply. Anansi stops laughing. This somehow puts Sasha on edge more, and she begins to feel her heart in her throat, somehow beating. 

“Uh, hold on a se—” Anansi’s voice cuts out, leaving just the ambiance created by Jon’s silence. 

The camera view on the screen changes, to one directly opposite Jon. Sasha and Tim can see their full face, and Martin’s full… hair. 

Jon’s wide eyes seem to flick to something just below the camera, then quickly back to Martin as if nothing is there, or as if he’s used to seeing whatever it is that is there. 

After a bit more hesitation, Jon rubs their face. They then say, “I heard you the first time. I don’t know.”

“Why not?” Martin asks. “Can’t you just do what you did what that Sasha… thing, make the Eye see him, and all that?”

The justice makes Sasha smile. She is suddenly more conscious of her hair, but she can’t feel anything new knotting itself into her scalp. In fact, her hair feels completely back to normal. Did it ever have those cobwebs in it? She never really saw them properly, and she never let Tim finish what he was saying about her hair. What if she was making it all up?

Jon ponders Martin’s proposition. “I… could, I think.”

Tim’s eyes flicker over to Sasha. Her brow is knit tight, and she is rubbing her left arm with the thumb of her right hand. He interjects, sensing something like concern begin to bubble up in his throat. “Sasha? You alright mate?”

She looks over to him, like a deer in a trap. “Yeah, yep. Sorry, I feel like I never ask you how you are. How…” Sasha laughs timidly. “How are you?”

“Uh… yeah. Good? I suppose. As good as one can be in a death box, so.”

Sasha nods. She doesn’t believe him. Who would feel good here? “Just… just know you can be honest with me. Okay? This is a two-way thing, you know?”

“Thanks,” Tim replies, but seeming unsure. Sasha doesn’t blame him for the lack of trust he has in her.

They both turn back to the screen. Jon and Martin are sat on some rubble a couple of metres away from the camera. Jon is turned towards Martin, but Martin faces away from him. 

Jon nudges Martin, half joking, half concerned. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

“No, I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine!” There is a long, cold beat. “I’m sorry.”

Jon smirks, teasingly. “Martin…”

Martin shakes his head. “I said it’s fine.”

Jon’s smirk is still there, as if it’s painted on his face. “Are you jealous?”

Martin gives up the ghost, turning back to Jon with a half smile of his own, but still with an air of frustration. “I told you not to know things about me!”

Jon chuckles. “I really didn’t have to.”

“I – Y-You – Good. Because I’m definitely not.” Martin stammers. 

“Alright!” Jon suppresses the urge to laugh in the silence that follows.

Martin breathes in, sharply. “Look, I’m fine, alright?”

“You said.”

“Yes, I did! And even if I was jealous, I would be perfectly justified anyway, so!”

Another laughably long lapse of speech. It feels like a lifetime.

Jon stokes the flames. “But you’re not.”

“No! I’m fine.”

“Alright!”

“Good. Great.”

Martin fidgets with the buttons on his coat. “Alright, fine, yes, yes, I am jealous, alright? Yes, if you absolutely must know.”

Jon nods. “Because he woke me up.”

“I was there weeks, and nothing. He talks to you for five minutes and suddenly you’re back on your feet, and bouncing around like a spring chicken!” Martin exclaims in exasperation. “I mean, what’s so special about him, that you wake up for him and not me, hm? Enlighten me.”

“I mean, that’s not really how it worked. It – It wasn’t…” Jon pauses to formulate the next sentence. “Look. Martin, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I’m not going to kill a man just because you’re jealous.”

“Why not?”

Jon just stares at his partner, waiting for the ridiculousness of the question to sink in.

“Okay, yeah, fine.” Martin goes back to fiddling with the buttons on his coat. 

Then Martin leans his head on Jon’s coat and stares up into their eyes, as pleading as it gets. “Please?”

Jon leans in to Martin’s head. “Who knows. Maybe he’ll try to stop us getting through the routes, and I’ll have to.”

They smile at each other, before freezing and disappearing from Tim and Sasha’s view. 

“They’re cute, eh?” Sasha quips.

Tim smiles reluctantly. “I hate to say it… but yes. Yes they are.”

”You know who else is cute?” 

Tim regards Sasha with wide eyes, confused but elated. Sasha slowly lifts a finger as if to point to Tim.

Tim grins. “Is it me?”

”I was going to say myself, but you too I suppose,” Sasha laughs. Then adds, “Joking,” on the end, for good measure. 

“You’re cute too,” Tim whispers. 

Anansi announces their arrival with a buzz of bassy static. “So. I have sorted everything now. I thought everything was in danger for a moment but, with a little prompting, I think we should be fine. How are you two getting along?”

The couple both mumble something along the lines of, “Yeah, all good, yeah, thanks,” and sit in silence. A warm silence, though. An inviting one, not one born of disconnect or hatred. The only sound present is the ticking of the office clock, which is somehow still working, though stuck at 11:55.

Sasha clasps Tim’s hand. He looks up at her and nods. She nods back. The grins on both of their faces spread at the same rate.

”Ah, here we are,” Anansi states, heralding a burst of colour on the TV.

“I can’t destroy everyone I cross paths with… No. If Oliver will not seek me out, then I will leave him be. The Avatar of Death shall live. Martin’s going to be thrilled.”

Jon disappears.

“That is a relief. I thought we might lose our old Mr. Banks for a moment! And we would not want that, would we?”

Sasha shakes her head, not knowing how else to respond to Anansi’s question. It seemed rhetorical, but Sasha knows better than to ignore Anansi at this point.

The clock seems to get louder.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Still stuck at 11:55, the second hand flicking up and down constantly, the progression of time seemingly a Sisyphean feat. 

“You know what? I am sitting down.” Martin seats himself on a decrepit, crumbling sofa by the side of a road. It seems to heave a sigh of ash as he lowers himself down on to it.

Jon tries to stop him. “Are… you sure? That thing is… that’s not in great shape.”

“Neither am I. I have been on my feet for a literally uncountable amount of time.”

Martin shuffles about a bit, prompting sooty breaths from the fabric with every movement.

”I wish we had a sofa,” remarks Tim. “It’d make things a lot more convenient. And comfortable. I feel like I’ve worn down this bloody carpet.”

Jon laughs, off screen. “How is it?”

“Great! It’s great. Lovely couch.”

“Right. Well, rest up, I suppose!”

Martin pats the space next to him on the couch, inviting Jon with a cloud of black dust. “It’s a two-seater!”

“Yes it is! Hard pass, thank y—”

Jon’s voice glitches and drips like a burning film, and the picture disappears.

“This can’t be good.” Tim says. Sasha nods grimly. 

The two listen intently for a bassy voice to tell them their next instructions. All of their actions are subject to their will, a life-size puppet show. 

“Anansi?”

Chapter Text

The picture glitches and distorts, more than it ever has before. It spirals in and out of itself, squirming around the screen.

Finally, it organises itself to form a desolate, grey landscape. There are two silhouettes, getting progressively closer. One a tall figure swaddled in a thick cardigan, the other wearing what seems to be a 70s style flared jumpsuit, belted at the waist. The cold does not seem to bother them. 

Martin and the other person are somewhat amicable, and seem to be chatting. 

“Oh, but you can’t just tell me or Jon. Oh no, no, that would be far too straightforward,” Martin says.

The other chuckles slightly. “I could. But it’s much better if you see it for yourselves. And he would not have come willingly. He needs to think he’s coming for you.”

“He can see literally everything, Annabelle. I’m sure he probably knows it already,” Martin says, somewhat proud of his boyfriend.

“In a way, perhaps. But I guarantee that being here in person is something very different. Come on.” Annabelle beckons Martin to speed up. 

The two approach a looming, dark rectangle, which is vaguely house-shaped, but shifts in the wind. 

Martin notices something nestled in the crook of a shadow. “You told me not to bring a tape recorder.”

Annabelle walks on. “No. I said we wouldn’t need one. We have plenty of tapes. We’re here.”

”Where’s here?”

”Hm?”

”Where’s here? Where do you think they’re going?”

”Oh, your guess is as good as mine,” Sasha says. “I feel like we’ve missed a good chunk of time. Like, how did those two even end up together? Where’s Jon, you know?”

”And Anansi’s offline… oh, speaking of,” Tim leans in to Sasha conspiratorially. “Did you think Annabelle sounded a bit familiar? I think it could be Anansi. I know we thought that before but I’m sure it’s their voice.” 

Sasha’s mouth falls open. “They don’t seem to be in two places at once. Here and down there, I mean.”

A lightbulb turns on behind Tim’s eyes. ”Interrupt them. Oh my god, that’s it. See if it is. When Annabelle starts speaking, we should just start shouting or something, see if it distracts them.”

Sasha glances towards the (still black) screen, as if turning away would mean missing something vital. “Let’s do it.”

Annabelle sits casually in a white armchair, which itself sits on a dusty and dilapidated floor. Martin stands before them, as if he is on trial.

Annabelle smiles down at him. “You always managed to get what you wanted through smiles and shrugs and stammering a that weren’t nearly as awkward as they seemed.”

Martin nods. It does not appear to bother him that Annabelle can see his motives, his past and probably his future. “Point taken.”

Annabelle sighs, as if in shame at something they were wrong about. “But I didn’t foresee how deep you would fall into The Lonely. Or—”

“I AM THE VERY MODEL OF A MODERN MAJOR GENERAL, I’VE INFORMATION VEG-E-TA-BLE ANIMAL AND MINERAL.”

Two voices pierce Annabelle’s thought. Martin, kneeling and still as a frozen leaf, does not seem to hear them at all.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, (or rather, back in the afterlife) Sasha and Tim are wracking their brains for the next line of a certain song from The Pirates of Penzance.

Annabelle pinches the bridge of her nose to rid a momentary headache. They clear their throat. “Excuse me. How deep you would fall or how far the Archivist would go to get you back. It made things… awkward.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Martin says.

“Because explaining things, giving answers, like this… it’s not what I am. It’s difficult, against my nature.” It is impossible to tell whether Annabelle’s speech is actually genuine or if it is fabricated truthfulness. They continue nevertheless, “I’m trying to practice.”

Sasha and Tim stare at their blurry reflections in the black screen.

“Okay, okay. So, Annabelle did do that pause thing. When they—” Tim imitates the nose pinch. 

“We can’t be sure though,” Sasha says, with a smirk. “Want to try it again?”

Tim smirks right back at her. “Hell yeah I do.”

Right on cue, Martin appears, suspended from each limb by thick white strands of thread. He has been placed over a gaping chasm in the floor of the house. 

He screams various questions, all rhetorical and fuelled by pure shock. Annabelle paces around the edges of the hole, leaning in to Martin.

They speak to him calmly. “The web? It’s for your safety. So you don’t do anything… unpredictable. I’d hate for you to fall.”

Martin stutters, “When Jon gets here, he is going to kill you.”

Annabelle smiles, resigned. “As long as he listens to me first, it won’t matter.”

Something in the ambient noise changes. More clicking, shutting, as if a thousand machines have juddered to life in canon. 

Then there are voices— no, a voice. Jon’s voice.

“So just listen—”

“Listen, Martin, you should know—”

“Now, listen to me, Martin, li-listen—”

All overlapping like strands of yarn in a scarf being spun.

The pieces click together in Martin’s head. He never was any good at puzzles. “Wait… The tapes…”

“A fine material to spin a web with, don’t you think?” Annabelle says.

“What? All this time, through all of this, it, it was just you spying on us?”

Before Annabelle speaks, they hear a quiet voice in their head: “Wait, what? Sasha, are you hearing this?”

Annabelle turns their attention back to Martin. The corners of a smile flicker by their lips. “Oh Martin. You have no idea who’s listening, do you?”

The hissing of the tapes builds, slowly at first, then into a cacophonous crescendo of voice and poetry, plaited and woven and becoming one. It carries on, volume increasing—

Then the sound, and the visual, abruptly stops. 

Tim is the first to speak. “So all that time… the tapes. It was the Web all along.”

”What, just… just the whole time?” Sasha can’t quite cope with the fact that her life is a pawn, front and centre on the chess board of some malevolent god. Some… malevolent spider god. 

“Wait, this makes sense,” Tim realises, “I hate to say it but it does. Think of how many people have died, right? Since you’ve been up here. Even those who are associated with the Institute proper, the upstairs. And how many are in this spider-death box?”

“Just us.”

“And we worked in the Archives. We’re just puppets.”

A heavy silence falls over the room, like a blanket of ash.

“I mean on the plus side, I suppose the Web likes to keep us informed of current affairs,” says Tim.

Sasha is staring at the door, and at the heavy, black chains which bind it. She looks to the notched table leg, then to the door. 

The chain seems to shimmer before Sasha’s eyes. It begins to look a bit more brown when the light catches it a certain way, like it’s reflective. Or maybe it’s a trick of the light. 

Sasha takes a tentative step towards the door, toes first, rolling down to the heel. The slowest she has ever taken a step in her life. 

She reaches, hand outstretched towards the door. Not towards the handle, as she has done before, but to the chain itself. Her arm fizzes with energy, ready to pull back her hand at any moment, as if a purple bolt of lightning might jump from the chain into her fingers.

But it doesn’t. Sasha’s fingers brush the chain, then press down firmer. As she presses, the chain seems to crumple around her fingers. 

“Tim?” she says, “Look.”

Tim whips his head up to see what Sasha is pointing out. To him, it seems as though her whole hand is encased in strands of tape, twisting themselves around her arm like hungry snakes.

“Oh shit.”

The people on screen are conveniently paired up: Jon stood with Basira; Martin tied to a mass with too many legs that one can assume is Annabelle Cane, in their full glory. 

Basira begins the conversation. “And how exactly are we supposed to destroy the Archives?”

“Many years ago a draughtsman made an unfortunate and egregious error on certain city planning documents,” Annabelle says, in a voice somewhat more distorted than the one they usually adopt. “As a result, an unusually large and dangerous gas main just happened to be constructed directly—”

“I KNOW THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AND I QUOTE THE FIGHTS HISTORICAL—”

Annabelle begins again with renewed fervour. “Directly below the building you knew as the Magnus Institute, in a place where it would be protected by the tunnels of Robert Smirke, unchanged by the world’s reformation. You need only ignite it.”

“Ignite it?” Jon says, blanching slightly at the prospect. 

Annabelle replies, “Indeed. And it just so happens that the perfect tool was once delivered to you as a—”

“FROM MARATHON TO WATERLOO IN ORDER CATEGORICAL—”

Annabelle mutters something profane under their breath that no one can quite hear. Then they continue: “A certain tool was delivered to you as a token of appreciation. Though you really do need to learn to keep better care of it. Somehow it always seems to slip your mind, doesn’t it?”

“What?” Jon says. 

Basira nudges him. “Jon, it’s that stupid lighter of yours.”

“My what?”

Something within Jon’s pocket makes itself known, almost singing the lining of his jacket with the acknowledgment of its importance. Jon grabs the warm metal and feels the ridges of the engraved spiderweb that covers the body of the lighter. 

He pulls it out of his jacket and flicks open the top, whereupon it ignites, sending the screen into a flicker of burnt orange before it blacks out completely. 

“Sasha,” Tim says, “I don’t know any more lyrics.”

“I mean, I feel like we’ve limited ourselves with the whole Modern Major General thing, we can just say anything, right?”

“But we know it’s them now, right?” Tim says. “Unless Annabelle just happens to get sudden headaches only as we start being loud.”

“It’s not impossible,” Sasha says, “But yes, I think it’s them. I think it’s better to be more suspicious than not in this case, so let’s go with that.”

“Being suspicious of things served you well in your time,” Tim says.

“Not well enough, though.” Sasha sighs, ruefully. 

The pair sit in silence, before chiming in with speech at the same time.

“I think the problem was—”

“So the door is—”

“No, sorry, you go,” Sasha says. 

“The chains on the door look like they’re made of tape, then.” Tim says.

“Yeah, felt like it. Weirdly flimsy. Like if we could unravel it then we could get to the door. But obviously we can’t touch the handle: which is like, why put the chains there in the first place if the handle repels you when you touch it anyway?” Sasha asks, “Why not just have a normal door?”

“Maybe to stop us trying to leave more?” Tim posits. “Or a symbol of the cage we’re in, something like that. The Web likes their metaphors.”

“Hm.”

“What did you want to say earlier? Sorry I sort of spoke over you,” Tim says.

“Oh, it was just… no, no it’s gone. I can’t remember now.” Sasha says. She glances towards the table leg, but nothing has changed. This is just a natural lapse of memory. A good old human error. Sasha has missed those. 

“Hello, you two! I see you have not burnt the place down. Yet.”

Anansi enters the scene, as enigmatic as ever. There is no acknowledgement of what Sasha and Tim now know, about Annabelle and about the Archives staff down on Earth, but the silence seems to speak for itself.

“Well, this is not the welcome back I was expecting, but I will take what I’m given, I suppose,” Anansi says, voice tinged with discomfort. “I’ve got some news on Melanie and their partner, if you want to know. But clearly you do not seem to care about that at the moment, so.”

Anansi trails off. Everyone in the room knows what they’re doing.

There comes a point, when you’ve known a person for a while, where you can use your past knowledge of their manner and behaviour to predict what they say or do, and why they might say or do a certain thing. Needless to say, Sasha and Tim have both seen the plain face of the manipulation they have endured, and decided to not play along anymore. 

Their focus now: to escape; to escape with each other.

Anansi sighs slightly, and the screen shows what they were describing.

Melanie, Georgie, Martin, Jon and Basira are sat at a round table, in various states of contemplation, desperation and despair. 

They are surrounded by the huge arch of a metallic, old tunnel, in which they have made a makeshift home. Sleeping bags and air beds litter the background, as thick particles of dust float around the five— swirling like Starry Night. 

Melanie is the first to speak. She brushes a strand of green hair out of her face and twists it as she talks. “If the decision is to do it, maybe they’d be grateful we saved them the guilt.” Their speech is measured and precise, calmly calculated. 

Martin bites his lip. Then he speaks up. “If it’s just a matter of guilt, then I’ll take it right now. I’d rather live the rest of my life lying awake wondering if I made the right choice, over lying awake listening to the screams of everyone on Earth being tortured.”

“What? So it’s better for a thousand times more people to scream as long as  we can’t hear them?” Jon asks, taken aback at Martin’s thought process. 

“No! Because Annabelle said it wouldn’t be like that. Wherever they go, it’ll be like it was here before, with the Powers just lurking on the edges.” Martin replies. His voice is strained, and a lump is beginning to rise in his throat. 

Melanie provides Martin with some support. “And our world survived like that for… for what, all of history?”

Martin hums in agreement with Melanie. Jon rubs their face and falls quiet. 

The visual jumps slightly, but not much changes: everyone stays in the same place that they were in previously, but look a little more worse for wear. Basira’s head is in her hands, and Martin is standing, fists pressed against the table, looking down.

Martin whips his head up suddenly. “I just can’t accept its really that hopeless. There’s got to be a chance that these other universes will figure something out that we didn’t.”

“They’ll have as much of a chance as we did. More, maybe,” Melanie replies. “The Fears had a long time to get a foothold in our world.” 

“Assuming time even works the same in different dimensions.” Jon responds. 

Georgie speaks up for the first time in a while. She steels herself, seemingly knowing what the response to her statement will be before she even utters it. “We’ve got to hope.”

Jon shakes his head, incredulous. “Hope that our actions don’t destroy countless other worlds!”

“It’s better than the certainty that they’ll destroy this one!” Georgie shoots back.

There is a horribly tense silence which covers the scene like mist. It falls over the break room too, as Sasha and Tim sit abs watch, transfixed. 

Jon takes in the still faces of those around the table. “Sounds like you’ve all decided, then.”

“Seems that way.” Basira says, lifting her head. 

“Shall we vote on it, or something?” Georgie says. 

“No need. Seems pretty much unanimous at this point,” says Jon. “We take out the Panopticon, and just hope for the best.”

“Yeah.” Martin nods, and places a hand on Jon’s back, but they shrug it away slightly as they leave their chair. 

“Fine. I’m going for a cigarette.” Jon leaves the frame.

As he does so, the display in the break room immediately changes, like the switching of a channel. 

On this programme, Jon and Martin sit on dilapidated stone steps, their hands intertwined. The tunnel is to their right, the mouth of it emitting a faint orange glow, from candles and LEDs. The warm wind brushes past both of them, blowing their air backwards in the breeze. 

Jon’s head is on Martin’s shoulder, which the eagle-eyed may observe is slightly wet. They speak into the fabric of Martin’s coat. “Sometimes I imagine if none of this had happened. If we had just… met. Been together, without all of this.” Jon gestures vaguely to the world, to the Archives. 

Martin smiles faintly. “Me too.” He pauses. “But we wouldn’t have, would we? Been together, I mean.”

Jon lifts his head to look at his boyfriend. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we had that, didn’t we?” Martin says, “Almost a year of just working a normal job together, and you hated me.”

“I didn’t hate you,” Jon says, a smile beginning to appear on their face. 

“No, no, no. I listened to those tapes. At one point you explicitly said you’d be fine with me being chopped up by that old jigsaw lady,” Martin says. 

“Oh god, Angela! Ha! She’s still about, you know? Lording it over a nasty little Flesh domain,” Jon says. “Anyway, I didn’t explicitly say it. I… implied it.”

Martin looks straight into Jon’s eyes. He brushes a strand if hair away from their eyes as he speaks. “Face it, Jon, it took almost two years of crisis and trauma to even make us compatible. And that sucks. But here we are,” he sighs. “And I don’t want it to be for nothing. I won’t let it.”

“That’s very sweet of you, Martin. Sort of. Thank you.”

“Wherever you go, I go. That’s it.”

The lovers embrace on the stone steps. Martin strokes Jon’s head and kisses him gently on the scalp. He can feel Jon’s hand squeeze his: once, twice. Two pumps mean I love you. He squeezes back, twice. 

Somewhere else, unseen, another pair of lovers embrace one another. Tim wraps his arms around Sasha’s waist, and presses his forehead into her shoulder. He feels her hands come up to meet his, feels her head loll to the side to touch his. 

They breathe together, exist as one. This only lasts for mere moments, but those moments are all they need.

Out of nowhere, no doubt fuelled by the atmosphere of love, Tim mumbles, “I’m glad we got another chance, you know.”

Sasha brings Tim’s hand up to her mouth and kisses it gently. “So am I.”

Chapter Text

“So they’re going to do it then,” Sasha sighs. There is a heaviness to the sigh that plummets to her feet fast, like a weight falling out of a fifth storey window. 

“Yeah. Do you think they’ll…” Tim nods toward the light in the corner of the room, which lightens and darkens with anticipation.

“Who knows. Let’s hope not.” Sasha realises how this sounds. “I mean, I like them and everything, and that’s why I don’t want them to come here. To a weird spider death prison.”

Sasha and Tim are sitting on the (now worn down) carpet, staring up at the TV. For what might be the last time.

They watch as Jon makes his way up the stairs of the panopticon. He is shaking slightly, and squeezing his fists so tight that his knuckles are perpetually white. 

Suddenly, the picture changes. Jon is standing in a stone atrium, holding something metal which glints in the light. The dust is so thick that it almost looks like snow as it blows across the screen. A figure kneels, crumpled, in the corner of the picture. It is breathing raggedly.

The figure speaks. “It was wonderful while it lasted.”

Sasha turns to Tim. “Elias,” she says. Tim nods, gravely.

Elias — Jonah — continues. “I’ve seen more than I could have lived in a thousand lifetimes, and every moment was so—”

“Shut up!” Jon interjects, gripping the object in their hand tighter. “It ends now. All of it. I am going to take this world that you used me to create, and I am going to burn it out. It’s the only way.

“I’m going to leave it a barren, lifeless void, cold and unafraid and then finally, when everyone’s gone, and I am all that’s left, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I’ll be leaving these things that you serve trapped and starving in their own private hell.”

“That we serve.”

Jon smiles, but there is something behind their eyes that is cutting. “Not for much longer. I wonder if they’re even capable of fearing their own ends.”

Jon pauses. Then says, “I look forward to finding out.”

Jon begins to walk slowly towards the figure, as one may have walked in an art gallery (when those were places of enjoyment and not torture as they are at present). Heel, toe. Heel, toe. 

Jonah begins to back out of frame, but the camera follows him. There is no escape. “Look, Jon, as fun as all this melodrama is, enough is enough. We both know you that don’t have it in you—”

Jonah is cut off by a fist connecting with his mouth. Jon shakes his hand, preparing for another punch to be thrown. 

“That was for Sasha,” Jon says, breathing heavily.

A lump rises in Sasha’s throat. She has forgotten how nice it feels to be remembered. 

Jon swings again. “For Tim,”

A ghost of a smile appears on Tim’s face. He wraps his arm around Sasha, and she leans into him.

Jonah pleads. He is scared now — properly. “Please Jon!”

Jon hits him once more. “For Gertrude, and all the others.”

Blood begins to rise in Jonah’s throat. He spits it on to the stone floor, and it glistens like a ruby. He pleads again, “Please Jon, I don’t want to die.”

Jon inhales, collecting himself. They grip the metal object tighter. Sasha can see the curve of the blade in the light, the black handle. Just a switchblade, that’s all that is needed to save the world. “Neither did they.”

Jon bends to Jonah’s level, and looks him dead in the eyes. His voice is soft, somewhat comforting. “But no one escapes at the end.”

Jon breathes in one last time, adjusts their grip, then swings their right arm up and down, where it intertwines with Jonah’s chest. Jonah contorts in on himself, a writhing knot of pain, but Jon will not let go. His wrist twists the handle, then pulls it out in relief. Drops of crimson fall off of the blade on its journey up, and spot the floor.

Elias chokes his final breath. He smiles, wetly. “Good luck.” A knell sounds somewhere in the distance.

“He’s gone,” Tim says, triumphantly.

“Yes, he is,” Sasha says, turning her head to the corner, where one particular light has begun to flicker, like the palpitations of a heart. 

“Oh my god. Oh my god,” Tim cottons on. “Oh. Shit. What do we do? What do we…” Tim eyes the drawers in the kitchen area of the break room, by the sink. “Do you think we can kill him here?”

”We can try,” Sasha says, walking over to the drawers. She yanks one open, but it’s far too light in her hands and doesn’t rattle at all. Nothing. 

She opens another. Still nothing.

The light flashes in and out, pulsing.

“Tim?” Sasha says, an edge of panic seeping in to her voice. “Tim, there’s nothing here.”

“Check the cupboards,” Tim says, subsequently walking over to check the cupboards himself.

The cupboard Tim checks is bare, and covered in blue dust. Empty. So is the next. 

There is nothing for them to use to defend themselves. Nothing within reason: Sasha concludes pretty quickly that brandishing a whole television at Jonah might be a bit more awkward than useful. 

“SHIT!” Sasha yells. She rubs her temples, but when this doesn’t help, she lets out her anger and kicks the leg of the table.

The light goes back to palpitation.

Sasha kicks the table leg again, a more measured action this time. The leg shifts, diagonal now. Another kick, another, another. 

Finally, the leg comes loose enough for her to grab. It never was a good quality table.

“Tim,” Sasha shouts, over the noise of Tim banging various cupboard doors open and shut, “Get a table leg! Kick it!”

Tim prises a leg free from the table, and breathes a sigh of exhaustion as he turns it in his hands. “Hah. This is the one I used to put notches in ages ago. Weird.”

Sasha turns hers too. Hers has tallies too, of a shallower kind, and they look more recent than Tim’s.

The light brightens to a blinding white, then dims sharply. Sasha and Tim tighten their grips on the table legs. 

Any minute now. 

Any. Minu—

“What are you doing.” Anansi says. This isn’t a question, but a clear statement of disapproval. 

“Forgive us if we don’t like Jonah Magnus that much,” Tim manages, speaking through a tight jaw.

“Jonah?” Anansi bursts into peals of laughter. “Jonah in here? Oh my, no. No, no. Oh you do tickle me, Tim.”

“What do you mean? What was all that then?” Sasha motions with the table leg to the lights.

“Who knows,” Anansi says. Sasha can not see them, but she knows they are smiling.

Knowing that Anansi can hear it, Sasha thinks, You do, don’t you. Anansi chuckles, out loud, in return. 

“It was a wise decision to not dismantle the television. There is still so much occurring. But what in the name of all that is holy have you done to that table? First you deface its legs, and then you chop them clean off! And it is not like it would have protected you from Jonah, anyway.”

Sasha and Tim sit back down. Sasha still clutches her table leg. 

“Ooh, I think you will like this one,” Anansi says, regaining the jovial attitude they usually hold. 

The curtain rises on Jon, surrounded by a  halo of green static. His eyes roll back in his head as he speaks, the words being pulled out of him like teeth.

He speaks, in a flowing manner. “And so The Web drew its plan to escape not only this ephemeral cage of non-existence, but even the very reality into which they might break, and it chose its fool: The Great Eye, the most unwise of all the fragments, forever seeking and consuming knowledge that it could not comprehend.

“It played and twisted, and through The Eye brought about a new world, a wide and unending vista of terror and agony, and the place from which it might spread, and spin another web far grander than anything conceived of in the minds that birthed it.”

Jon pauses, and breathes deeply before uttering the closing line. “Finally, it would find its escape and with it… apotheosis.”

The static dissipates as Jon comes to, as if out of a faint. He blinks, calmly, when the picture changes—

He is kneeling on the dusty floor, facing a standing figure who is pacing slightly off camera. 

The figure’s boots step in to frame, and they speak. “You’re not listening! You never listen! They are down there fighting those things, and lighting it right now!”

Jon shakes his head. “It’s fine, Martin, I’ll call off the servitors. They can’t light it, they don’t have…” Jon pats his pockets. “They don’t… Wait—”. Jon turns their pockets inside out. There is nothing there. A thick veil of panic falls over his face. “Oh. Oh no.”

As Jon’s face falls, so too does the panopticon around them. The ceiling cracks, and thick chunks of stone and plaster crash to the ground. Clouds of dust erupt from new craters being made. Jon and Martin both disappear into the grey air. 

The light in the break room goes out completely. 

Sasha and Tim can’t see the couple, but they can hear them.

“Jon!”

”Martin, I— AH!”

“Jon, we have to get out of here!”

A hand appears amongst the mist: Martin’s, reaching to a person he cannot see. 

“I can’t. Martin, I’m part of this place.”

“Goddamn it, Jon!”

Another crash, as Jon heaves a slab of rock away from him. ”I can… withstand it. I just need to hold on…”

Martin’s hand stretches further. “Come on, Jon! Come on!”

Sasha’s nails dig in to the table leg that she is still clutching. 

“No! I can feel the pull. The Web, the tapes, it wants… No! I won’t let it!”

“For god’s sake, Jon, move!”

“I can’t! Martin, get out of here! What’s going to be left of me after this, you can’t see that.”

“No!”

“I can’t protect you from this. Go!”

Martin sounds like he is crying. His voice is thick with tears of indignation. “I’m not leaving you trapped here killing the world while I watch!”

“If you stay, you’ll die!”

“Then I’ll die!”

“No! Martin, please! I can’t lose you. Not like this.”

“Tough! Okay? Where you go, I go!”

“That’s the deal… Okay.”

A metallic object arises from the rubble. The dust clears to reveal Jon and Martin facing one another: Jon sat on the floor while Martin reaches towards him. 

“What?”

“Do it! The knife’s just there. Let them go.” Jon spreads their arms wide, indicating Martin’s target.

Martin sniffs, “I’m not going to kill you!”

“Cut the tether. Send them away. Maybe we both die. Probably. But maybe not.” Jon grabs Martin’s hand. “Maybe, maybe everything works out, and we end up somewhere else.”

“Together?”

“One way or another. Together.”

Martin bends over to the knife and picks it up. He handles it gently, like a rare feather. He considers for a moment, then shakes his head. “I don’t think I can.”

“It has to be you. The Eye won’t let me do it.”

“Are you sure about this?”

They are both sobbing now. As for Sasha and Tim, tears seem to have sprung up in their eyes too. Anansi’s emotion is undecided as of yet. 

“No.” Jon wipes his eyes. “But I love you.”

“I love you too.” Martin replies.

Jon reaches his hand to Martin’s face, and kisses him. One last kiss. More of the ceiling crashes down as Martin raises something high into the air, where it glints. He wipes at his face, closes his eyes, and swings his arm downwards. 

Jon’s scream sends an electric bolt of terror through Sasha and Tim. There is no other word for it but terrible. It tunnels through the crevices of their bodies and shakes them to their cores. 

It gets louder, and louder. Louder still. Martin’s cries can be heard over the scream, as he pulls the knife out from Jon’s chest. 

The screaming comes to a gurgling stop. Martin embraces Jon’s lifeless body in his arms, and sobs into his shoulder.

Sasha promptly turns her attention to the light, which does not flicker. Rather, it gets increasingly brighter — almost like a sunset — and reveals the silhouette of a person, kneeling and clutching at their chest.

Jon gasps for air as he falls out of his kneeling position, and on to all fours. The light dims again. 

Jon’s hands scramble across the fabric which lays over their chest. Not even a scratch. 

They breathe a sigh of relief, and try to regulate their inhalation, when they catch sight of two people looking down at him. One of whom looks very familiar.

“Tim?” Jon croaks.

Tim just nods.

Jon’s eyes travel to the other person. Something about them pulls at Jon’s memory, like something heard in the middle of the night, which fades away as soon as it makes itself known. 

The person smiles sadly, as if they knew this lack of knowledge would happen. But it seems to be painful to them too.

They hold out their hand to help Jon up. “My name is Sasha,” Sasha says. “Nice to meet you again, Jon.”

“Sasha? Oh my… Jesus. Okay. I suppose that’s not the oddest thing I’ve had to deal with,” Jon says. “It’s nice to know you, finally.”

Jon ponders for a moment, looking around the room. “This is the break room. Or it looks like it.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Hi, Tim. It really is nice to see you.” Jon says, sincerely.

Jon goes quiet again. Tim and Sasha wait for him to speak, to process. 

He then breaks his own silence. “So, my theory is some sort of afterlife? Lord knows I never believed in that sort of thing, but… where’s Martin? Oh my god. Where is he? Is he okay?”

“Jon! Nice to have you with us, at last. Martin will be with us shortly. Be patient, now.”

“Annabelle? How… how do you know?” Jon asks the room. 

“That is one of my names, yes. Please, call me Anansi,” Anansi says. “Think of me as the owner of this room. No one can come in without me…”

“And no one can leave,” Jon says, glancing at the chains over the door in the corner. “I’ve left my life in the hope that this manipulation wouldn’t continue, and now I’m in the afterlife and The Web still has its ties on me? Sounds like an unfair deal, Anansi. Why did you lie to me? To us?”

“I did not lie! I did not, do not lie. I merely… withheld the truth.” Sasha mutters something under her breath which Anansi pretends not to hear. “Thank you for the summary of my own actions, Jon. But the manipulation was never just on you: our Sasha here almost turned out to be the prime candidate for the Mother of Puppets! The very first avatar who had been converted after death — it was an experiment myself and Banks were eager to undertake. It did not quite work out the way we expected, but that does not mean that the results have been insignificant.”

“So I was your guinea pig this whole time. Yours and Banks’,” Sasha says, then realises why the name sounds so familiar. “Of course. Your old friend, if I remember rightly.”

“You do. Maybe those naps were not powerful enough, you were not meant to remember that. Oh well,” Anansi says, “I believe someone else is about to arrive. Have fun.”

The light in the corner of the room flashes slowly in and out, as if a lighthouse was shining through the bulb. Through the light, a body materialises. It is crumpled in the floor, heaving with sobs.

Martin continues to sob as the lights return to normal. Nothing intercuts the noise but the air, which swishes around the room like a scythe. 

Martin takes a couple of deep intakes of breath, accompanied by short, quick exhales, and attempts to collect himself.

“Martin?”

Martin stops, in shock.

The voice repeats his name. “Martin?” then, “Love, it’s me. You’re okay.”

Martin feels a hand on his shoulder, it is warm and familiar, and smells like —

Jon smiles down at his partner, whose eyes are so blue they look like deep wells, or puddles of sky. All contained in one eye.

He kneels to be level with him, and they embrace immediately, nestling into one each other’s shoulders. 

Jon mutters, “You're alright, you’re alright,” repeatedly into Martin’s hair as they rock back and forth on the carpet. Martin only grips Jon tighter.

Sasha’s eyes begin to well, and she places her arm around Tim’s waist. He pulls her in, cradling her hand. 

The four embrace the silence that Anansi gives them, and cherish the time that they can with one another. There’s nothing like death to reinforce relationships. Two pairs of slow dancers sway to imaginary music, intoxicated with love for one another. 

Chapter Text

Martin slowly pulls away from Jon’s embrace — as much as he doesn’t want to, he’s aware that this should not be happening. He blinks the last warm tears out of his eyes, and glances up at the room around him, which appears in his vision slowly, fading in to view. 

“Jon, where are we?”

“That is a very good question,” Jon says, somewhat exhausted. They reach out a thumb to wipe a stray streak of water from Martin’s face. 

“I’m not sure. For once. Which is nice. But there are some people that can answer that,” Jon prompts, and points Martin towards the couple standing in the corner of the room, by the massive television. 

Sasha waves timidly to Martin, who waves uncertainly back at her.

His eyes flicker to the man by Sasha’s side, and his mouth falls open.

“Tim!” Martin exclaims, and simultaneously almost bowls the object of his surprise over with a violent hug. Tim gladly accepts. 

Sasha stands by the two. She forces her lips up into a smile, and blinks at the ceiling, attempting to stop the sting in her eyes from developing into anything more.

Martin pulls away from Tim, grinning. “You have no idea how nice it is to see you again, oh my god. It was… we all missed you.”

Tim sniffs. He glances over at Sasha. “Oh, Martin, this is… well, there’s not really an easy way to say this but—”

Martin, however, gazes upon the person next to Tim with wide eyed realisation. “Sasha?”

Sasha presses her lips tightly together and nods. A choked sob makes its way out of her closed mouth, and she clasps a hand to her lips.

“Sasha. It’s… oh my god can I just hug you?”

Sasha nods again, silently, and grasps Martin as hard as she can. After a few moments of quiet, Sasha collapses into sobs. She can’t help herself. Her breath feels as though it is being ripped away from her, slowly tearing at her lungs and ripping through her throat, leaving it sore with sorrow.

Martin speaks into her shoulder, “We gave you a proper send off, you know. After we knew you were gone. It was… it was beautiful. I think if Tim had his way we would have buried you in cronuts but…” Sasha laughs and pulls away to face Martin. He continues, wiping tears away from his own eyes. “We couldn’t bury anything, but we had a celebration, did some things we thought you would like. Went to a karaoke bar and got drunk, that sort of thing. Oh my god, Jon’s version of Total Eclipse Of The Heart — honestly I wish you could have seen it, it was astonishing.”

“-Ly bad,” Tim finishes. 

“It was better than your Wuthering Heights, so don’t even…” Jon starts, but trails off when they see the look on Sasha’s face: a burning mix of grief and unbridled anger.

Sasha laughs, but not out of humour. It is a teary, bitter laugh. “No, no I could have seen it. That’s the thing.” Sasha turns to face the ceiling (she’s spent so much time in the room and still hasn’t figured out which direction is optimal for speaking to Anansi — they probably see everything anyway). “I could have. Couldn’t I?” Sasha shouts, tears still welling in her eyes. “Eh? I mean, it’s not like you’re restricted to the Archives, are you? We know that, you went to Scotland and everything.” Sasha wipes her nose on her sleeve as she waits for Anansi’s response.

The reply comes slowly and carefully, trying to mediate. For once, it doesn’t work. “Sasha, dear, I am very sorry, but…” Anansi pauses, as if interrupted. “Yes Martin, it is me. You knew me as Annabelle on Earth, I suppose. I can hear your thoughts, so be careful.”

Martin shifts his arms, and wraps them around himself in a gesture of self defence.

Anansi continues, “Sasha, all I can say is that I am so very sorry that you feel this way. There is no other word that will portray my sincere apology.”

Sasha scoffs, “No, that’s not sincere. Nothing is sincere with you, is it? I could have seen that, and you kept it from me. That is a fact. So you showed me Tim’s phonecall, and the not-me fine, but not that? That’s on you. That’s not me feeling that, that is you.”

“Have I not done enough for you, Sasha? Are you forgetting about all of the—”

“Oh, forgetting? About that,” Sasha walks over to one of the broken table legs that lay on the floor, and picks one up, turning it to examine the notches scratched into it. “Mind telling me what this is? I can, if you’re not sure.”

Anansi does not reply, though this is not an indication of their uncertainty.

Sasha turns to Martin and Jon. “I have been here for around five years, in Earth time. Hasn’t felt like it, time moves weirdly here. Also wasn’t as dusty when I first came here. Anyway, I’d take a nap and a month would have passed. And so,” Sasha brandishes the table leg, “I would try to mark this every time I felt myself dropping off, because I found very quickly that I was getting lapses in memory. So many lapses. And on here, there are 147. That’s just the ones I thought to put down. 147 forced comas, essentially, where I was slowly forgetting things I’d done, people I knew, where I was.”

After a pause, Jon mutters a hushed “My lord,” echoing Martin’s faint expression. 

“We’re gonna get out of here,” Tim says, with more determination than he’s ever said anything in his life (and death).

“Yes we are,” Sasha says, her voice shaking. “You hear that, Anansi? We are leaving. And you can’t stop—” Sasha winces as she feels something pinch her scalp. The pain is so sudden, so sharp, that it feels as though it is burrowing into her skull. Another springs up at the back of her neck and reaches towards her brain stem. Sasha falls to her knees, breathless.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sasha becomes increasingly aware of the colour of the floor. Where Tim is standing, a puddle of red is beginning to bloom over the usual grey and blue of the carpet, dripping steadily from the palms of his hands. Tim himself looks as though he is about to faint, and slowly sits himself on the red floor, breath uneven.

The puddle of red on the floor widens as Jon’s shirt darkens too. They fall to their knees, clutching their chest and groaning in pain. As they pull their hand away, they find that the blood they had been grasping has turned to something dark, stringy and thin, unspooling and unspooling forth from their heart. 

Martin — well, no one is paying attention to him. And that’s rather the point: he is lost in a swirl of fog, rapidly dissolving into thin air. His mouth moves, in the shape of the name Jon , but he cannot be heard. The mist makes the hairs on Sasha’s neck stand up. 

The webs wrap around and around Sasha’s neck, and she can feel the legs of something on her back, something which causes Jon to scream even louder. A cacophony of suffering, and it can only—

“ANANSI, STOP.”

The din stops. Sasha feels her hair: just hair, no more webs. Tim and Jon’s hands are empty, other than holding Martin.

Anansi’s voice fades in, full and bassy. “You cannot do anything without me. Do you not understand? You are dead. All of you. I thought that my giving you another chance would make you grateful, but no. Apparently not.”

“All of that was you. The doorknob, what you did to Tim, that was all you. I am not going to blame myself for your actions anymore.” Sasha’s throat is tight with anger. 

“Hm,” Anansi mutters, seeming genuinely contemplative. “Okay. Well I did warn you.”

There is a piercing crack from the corner of the room, where the door is. The strands of tape which combine to make the chain looped around the exit pull themselves away, one by one, like the tentative legs of a spider, until the white paint underneath is fully visible. A bright light pulses under the crack of the door, and through the keyhole, scattering dancing shadows on the walls of the break room, falling over the group’s faces like hope itself.

“Where does it go?” Martin says.

Anansi does not answer. 

“Where’s the light coming from?” Tim asks.

Anansi does not answer.

“Why are you doing this now?” Jon asks.

Anansi has no answer to give. Instead, they sit in silence, watching, waiting. 

“Only one way to find out, I suppose,” Tim says, reaching towards the doorknob. He swallows, then stops himself. He tries again: taking a deep breath and reaching, before pulling away quickly. “Sash, I can’t.”

“It’s okay. Hold on to me,” Sasha says, clasping Tim’s hand in her left, and reaching to the door with her right. Her fingers reach the cool metal, but no webs attempt to pull her beneath the carpet. Instead the knob turns with a light click, and the door swings gently open. 

The world beyond the door is ethereal, light and dark simultaneously. It is not accurately described in any language, gesture or facial expression, and the sight is impossible to describe further than one word: to the group, it feels like home. They each take a deep inhale of breath, and a slow exhale, as if they are taking their first breaths again. Or their last. 

Jon looks over to Martin, who views his partner with the same loving look. Something dawns on them concurrently, and their eyebrows curve up in acceptance. Wordlessly, Jon grabs Martin’s hand and smiles, and they walk to the door. Before they reach it, Martin lifts Jon’s hand to his mouth and kisses it. 

“May I?” Martin smiles.

“You may,” Jon replies. 

They turn to Tim and Sasha, but do not leave their spots: instead each fixing them with glances as meaningful as volumes of poetry. 

They share a look, a stanza, one last time, before both lift their right foot and step beyond the threshold of the door. A grassy platform comes up to meet their feet, and the couple walk on into the distance. 

The last thing Sasha sees before the clouds swallow her friends is a cottage, warm and autumnal, with cows in the field adjacent, and children running up the hill in the background. Martin helps Jon up the steps to the cottage, and then they are gone. The door to the break room closes itself, as gentle as it opened.

Tim turns to view Sasha, who is not looking at him, but instead at the ceiling. 

“Anansi. I know you won’t answer me, but just in case you will: please, tell us why you did this. It’s all I ask.”

“Please,” Tim joins, squeezing Sasha’s hand. 

But this time, Anansi does answer, as much as an avatar of The Web can ever answer anything. “That is a story for another time, dear.”

“Another time,” Sasha whispers back, turning back to the door. 

The two stand in peaceful silence, broken at last by Tim’s whispered, “You okay?”

Sasha nods wordlessly. Then she replies, “They looked really peaceful. When they went. It looked nice.” She glances at Tim with wet eyes. 

“It will be,” he replies, wiping her face.

“If it is another place, another time, what if you don’t remember me? What if we’re just doomed to forget each other  wherever we go? Like a repeating pattern?”

Tim’s face is grave. “I will never forget you, Sasha. Never.”

“I won’t forget you either. Not that you were worried about that, but…” Sasha sighs, relieved. “What if it’s just another reality where we’re doomed to be controlled like this? Why is Anansi letting us go? It just… something doesn’t feel right, you know? I have so many questions and I can’t—” 

“It’s okay not to know. You put so much value on knowing all the time, it’s alright to not be omniscient. I think the important thing is to be ready to face the unknown, and it’s not even the unknown really — you’ll know me.” Tim pauses, formulating his next sentence. “I’ll go when you’re ready to, and only then.”

“Okay,” Sasha says. She looks up at Tim, and feels her eyes brimming with something warm. Love, or sadness, maybe? The feelings are hardly distinguishable, but that doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters but Tim, and his face and his lips. The two kiss, the final kiss of theirs that will taste like the dust of the break room. 

“Okay,” Sasha repeats, “Let’s go.” She feels a finality in her throat, and knows she has made the right decision, however painful it is. 

The two link hands, and share a last look that seems to last lifetimes. It might well do, who’s to say — there is no Earth for them now, so this does not matter. 

They place their right feet through the door simultaneously, and find their heels met with wooden floor. As their left feet step in, a dark oak building builds itself around them, from the ground up. Frames swing into place on the walls, blank for the moment, but begging to be filled with pictures from the film camera which sits on the side, untouched. An old Polaroid picture of Sasha and Tim from another time and an old drumstick sit pride of place on the mantelpiece. Books of various vibrant spines line the walls and the tables, paper and leather alike, enough reading material to last forever. The candles and the hearth fire flicker to life without needing to be lit, and the record player in the room spins in the middle of an album, Freddie Mercury singing bring it back, bring it back. The seats are warm and inviting, and there are fresh biscuits in the kitchen. A grey cat sleeps, purring, atop a knitted blanket on the couch. Through the window, purple and yellow flowers sway gently in the breeze, and a robin perches on the sill, tweeting sweetly. 

Outside, it is snowing, but the two don’t mind. It will be endless winter, and they will not mind. They feel free, and that is what matters. The two make their way to the couch, and sink into the seats as they take in the new world around them. The cushions seem to welcome them with loving arms, like the two were always meant to be there. 

A spider crawls its way on to the arm of the couch, but is swiftly swatted away by the tail of the cat, which is now wagging feverishly in its sleep. As the partners sit, and Sasha’s eyelids begin to droop, she feels the mass of Tim’s head meet her shoulder softly. She smiles gently, and leans her head to meet his. And then, Sasha James closes her eyes.