Chapter Text
Whatever Jon had been expecting, it wasn’t this. Which could be said for a lot of things in his life in the last few years, if he was being honest.
Jon had tried not to struggle too much as Julia all but dragged him down the hall, Trevor following behind, towards a door that had several sturdy looking locks, keeping it bolted from the outside.
“P-please!” Jon pleaded, “You don’t understand, i-if I don’t get back soon…”
“We heard you the first time, lad,” Trevor said, casually blocking the way back down the hall as Julia began unlocking the door.
“Just gonna have a little chat with Officer Mustermann now that he’s got lungs again,” Julia informed him,” figure you’ll have more luck asking your questions in here.” And with that she shoved Jon through the door, shutting it behind him. The solid, repeated clicks of the locks slotting back into place caused his already rabbiting heart to skip a beat.
Inside, the room was lit by a single electric lantern, which sat on a cardboard box situated against the opposite wall. There was little else in the room, save for a cot tucked into the corner next to the lantern, and the man sitting on the cot.
He was thin, bordering on scrawny, with long limbs that suggested he might actually be fairly tall if he stood. His hair came just shy of his jaw, black save for an inch or two of dirty blond roots that had grown out. He couldn't have been much older than Jon was, if looks were anything to go by (which Jon was increasingly coming to find was an unreliable indicator).
But what stood out more than any of these other details, were the small, black shapes tattooed on every joint of the hand that hovered over a notebook on the bed, where the man had clearly been reaching when Jon was abruptly shoved into his space. Eyes, small tattooed eyes, Jon thought distantly.
"G-Gerard? Gerard Keay?" Jon stammered out, surprise getting the better of him.
Trevor had offhandedly mentioned he'd need to talk to Gerard, but he hadn't been sure what he'd meant, and Jon certainly hadn't been expecting this. He stood there, jaw slack in shock, as the other man stared at the door behind him. He didn’t look away from it until the sound of footsteps had retreated further back into the cabin and away from the door.
"You're new," Gerard said, turning to look at him warily. Slowly, he picked up the notebook he'd clearly been reaching for, pulling it close to himself.
"Oh, uh, I suppose? I-I’m Jon. I’m with the Magnus Institute." Jon paused, fidgeting slightly under Gerard's heavy gaze.
"...I'm the Archivist," he added, almost reluctantly, uncertain of the reaction it would receive.
Gerard’s gaze lingered on him for a long moment, then he looked away, letting out a weary sigh. “When did she die?”
“About a year after you… after you were hospitalized.”
“Was it peaceful?” A look passed across Gerard’s face as he asked, but Jon wasn’t able to pin down exactly what it was.
“...No.”
“Heh, good. Don’t think she would have wanted that. God, I can’t imagine her dying in bed.” Gerard let out a soft chuckle, and Jon dropped his gaze to the floor, looking away from the brief flash of grief in the other man’s expression. The silence that followed the words hung heavy between them, broken only by the muffled sounds of Julia and Trevor moving around elsewhere.
“So you’re the new guy, then? Following in her footsteps?” Gerard asked suddenly, startling Jon.
“I mean, some of them. They… don’t exactly lead where I thought they would,” he admitted.
“Heh, yeah, she was like that.” A small smile crept across Gerard’s face, faintly amused.
“I-I’m trying to stop the Unknowing,” Jon said, and watched as the smile slipped from Gerard’s face as he let out a tired sigh.
“She didn’t manage it, then?”
“Not before she, uh.... I need your help.”
Gerard snorted. “Do you now?”
“I’ve been retracing her steps, trying to… to figure out what she’d learned, that’s why I’m here in America, that’s how they caught…” The words tumbled out of Jon in an almost desperate rush, and he realized he was clutching the tape recorder to his chest. He wasn’t about to let go of it though, especially since he wasn’t sure what the shift in Gerard’s expression meant. “She thought she’d found a-a way to stop it. I think. If anyone knows what that was, it’s you.”
The silence returned, stretching between them uncomfortably as Gerard considered him.
“No.”
“What?” Jon sputtered, “ W-Why not? If, if it happens, if the Circus –”
“Yeah, the world changes in horrible ways. But there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do about it from here. So why bother?” Gerard sighed again, running a hand through his hair, exhaustion plain in every line of his body. “Besides, I’m tired of being their bloody monster manual.”
Jon felt the worry rising in his chest, and did his best to push it down.
“They can’t, I have to-”
“What, you thought they were just going to let you leave? You’re The Archivist, as far as they’re concerned, you are one of the monsters. And even if they don’t kill you, they’ll keep you around if you prove useful enough. So unless you’ve got some brilliant escape plan, what’s the point in me telling you anything about what we found on the Unknowing?” Bitterness and resignation weighed Gerard’s words.
The worry morphed into panic and began to slip in, settling as cold dread in the pit of Jon’s stomach and closing a fist around his throat. He couldn’t do this again, he just couldn’t. He was on a deadline with dire consequences. If he missed it–he couldn’t let them kill him. And he couldn’t let them keep him here either, he couldn’t do another stint being tied up and manhandled and who knows what else with no end in sight.
Would the others even think to look for him? Martin might notice something was up if Jon didn’t text him back, but would that be enough to raise any alarms? Even if they did try to find him, how would they, all the way across the ocean and in a country as big as America? Elias certainly wouldn’t help. No, Jon would be trapped until he died or the world ended, and there was precious little he could do about it.
“Hey, hey now.” A voice broke through Jon’s staticked, spiraling thoughts. His vision cleared enough to see that Gerard was now standing in front of him, a look of worry on his face.
“Why don’t you sit down, c’mon,” Gerard gently coaxed, and slowly, carefully reached out, his hand hovering just shy of touching Jon’s shoulder.
Jon slid to the floor, setting the tape recorder to one side, and Gerard sat next to him, taking his hand back and leaving a careful buffer of space between them. In his panic, Jon had somehow managed to back himself into an empty corner of the room, where he and Gerard now sat in awkward silence.
Once Jon’s rabbiting heart had calmed enough that he felt he could think somewhat clearly again, he took a deep breath.
“Sorry, a-about that. Don’t know what came over me.”
“S’alright, things happen,” Gerard said, shrugging. He watched Jon from the corner of his eye for a long moment, before sighing and leaning his head back against the wall behind him. “Didn’t mean to freak you out. Just doesn’t seem likely you’ll be able to get back in time to do much, and even if you do, I doubt what I’ve got to say on it will make a whole lot of difference either way.”
“I mean, I doubt it could make things any worse, if you told me,” Jon said, trying not to sound too sullen.
Gerard chuckled slightly. “Fair point, I suppose.”
Taking a deep breath, he let it out slowly. “I don’t know exactly how it could be stopped, but… me and Gertrude went all over, tracking clowns and skinwalkers, trying to find a way to mess it up. I didn’t find much, but Gertrude, she figured a few things out. She reckoned it could be delayed, but nothing we could do beforehand would actually stop it properly. Even the Dancer could be replaced. But, once it starts, then it might be vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable to what?”
“I dunno.”
Jon only partially managed to suppress a frustrated noise.
"But! She did say she thought she had something that could do it." Gerard continued, "Not long before I ended up in the hospital, she told me that if something got her first, I was… There’s a storage unit on an industrial estate up near Hainault. She said she rented it under the name Jan Kelly, and hid a key for it somewhere in the Archives."
"Oh," Jon perked up, "Uh, I-I think I found that."
"Well, it’s in that storage unit. Whatever she thought might disrupt the ritual, stop the Unknowing, that’s where it’ll be."
"That's somewhere to start, I suppose. I-if I can get back." Jon sighed shakily.
“I guess.” Gerard gave another shrug.
It was his own fault really, taking off on his own, inconsistently checking in with the others. But the other option was to take one of them with him, or call them constantly and involve them further than strictly necessary, neither of which were options Jon wanted to even entertain.
Pulling his lighter from his pocket, he fiddled with it absently, just for something to do with his hands. He glanced over at Gerard, who seemed to have retreated into his own thoughts momentarily.
"What-- what happened, at the hospital? I was under the impression you, well, died?" Jon asked, tentatively.
Gerard gave him a flat look. "Yeah, that's what I wanted people to think." He said, an edge to his tone.
Jon flinched slightly, and Gerard sighed.
"It was just… easier that way. It was going to be risky, and take a while, trying to treat my cancer, and Gertrude needed to keep moving. I thought if I survived and got well I could reach out to her again, maybe rejoin her work. But when I tried… I couldn't get through to her, and then the Hunters caught up to me, and ever since it's been trading what little I know about their Dracula of the week in exchange for weeks of my life."
Gerard’s head thunked back against the wall lightly as he chuckled humorlessly. “Least I know now why she didn’t answer me.”
“Why not just go back then?” Jon asked, curiosity getting the better of him. “Even if you couldn’t reach… I mean surely you didn’t have to wait on her. Why stay in America?”
“I mean, it seemed like a good idea at first. I was mostly in and out of the hospital initially, and then I thought maybe I’d just… like a break from it all, you know? In the end it didn’t really matter, I ran out of money at some point, couldn’t get in touch with my one contact back in London, and then the Van Helsings out there got on my trail, so it’s not like I’ve had much choice.” Pulling his knees up and crossing his arms on top of them, Gerard rested his head on them, tilting it to look at Jon.
“What about you?” he asked. “You’re the Archivist now.”
“Whatever that means,” Jon huffed.
“Heh, can’t help you much there. Gertrude was always kind of cagey about it.” Gerard gave a slight one-shoulder shrug.
“Sh-she never showed any… er, abilities, or talked about… I don’t know, destiny? Like she was… b-becoming something?” Jon asked, trying to tamp down the slightly desperate edge in his tone.
Gerard hummed thoughtfully. “Well, she could make people tell her stuff, sometimes. They’d suddenly get real talkative, and lay out whatever she needed. She didn’t do it often though. I don’t think she liked it.”
“Oh, er, I can do that, too,” Jon said, perking up a bit.
“Huh.” Gerard tilted his head further, considering Jon. “D’you like it?”
“I-I don’t know. I never really thought about it,” Jon admitted, frowning slightly. “Yes, I… I suppose I do.”
Gerard hummed again, continuing to watch Jon.
“Did she read statements?” Jon asked, trying not to fidget under Gerard’s gaze.
“Sometimes,” Gerard said. “If she was getting shaky. They perked her up, I think. Feeding the Eye, you know? I’d sometimes hear her through the wall, just reading into the air, feeling it all.”
“She… she didn’t use a tape recorder?” Jon found his hand inching towards his own where it lay on the floor next to him.
“Not when I was with her. She traveled light, left things behind.”
Jon swallowed against the strange knot that rose in his throat at the look of disappointment that passed over Gerard’s face.
“Kind of sounds like you didn’t… trust her,” Jon said carefully.
“Yeah, I didn’t. I wanted to, I really did, but it was always the work.” Gerard sighed harshly, shaking his head ever so slightly.
Jon hesitated, considering, before he finally asked, “...What was Gertrude’s work?”
Gerard gave him a puzzled look, brow furrowed, and Jon tried to clarify. “I-I mean, I – Sorry, I-I know a lot about what Gertrude did, but I don’t really know… why she was doing any of it, or w-what her intentions were.”
“Same as you, I think,” Gerard said, still sounding a bit unsure.
“Stopping the Unknowing?”
“Not just the Unknowing. All of them.”
The horror of realization dawned as Jon took in what that meant. “There are more rituals…”
And over the next fifteen minutes or so, Gerard carefully laid out what he knew, countering Jon’s pushbacks and making plain what he’d spent his whole life immersed in. The rituals, the entities, and even the messy little corners of the work Gertrude was doing to thwart them.
“She worked out they’d all be happening quite close together,” Gerard concluded. “She’d already been doing it a while, and the Unknowing was the next on her list. That and the Watcher’s Crown.”
“The what?” Jon perked up, concern and interest starting to bubble up.
“Uh, the Rite of the Watcher’s Crown,” Gerard explained. “It’s what she called the ritual for the Eye. She didn’t tell me much about that one, just that she knew how to take care of it.”
“Right, well, I suppose I’ll add it to the list of things to look out for.” Jon sighed, flicking the lid open and closed on the lighter a few times.
“Suppose so,” Gerard said, watching as Jon turned the lighter over in his free hand. “You got a cigarette?” he asked abruptly.
“Hm? Oh, yes.” Jon rummaged around in his pocket, producing the battered pack. “Can… is it alright to smoke in here?” He cast a nervous eye to the still-bolted door, the sounds of movement beyond it still distant enough, then glanced around the room, gaze landing on the small, barred window set into the wall opposite the door.
“Huh, probably not right now.” Gerard paused, his own gaze following Jon’s to the window. Quietly, hesitantly, he went on. “Sometimes they… they’ll let me smoke by the window, if one of them stands in the doorway to keep an eye on me.” He chuckled, a small, strained sound.
Jon shoved the lighter and cigarettes back in his pockets, trying to hide the growing tremor in his hands.
“I-I’m sorry, is there anything I could do to help…?” He started to offer, and cut off as Gerard let out another humorless laugh.
“Sure,” Gerard said, not even trying to mask the bitterness creeping back into his voice, “just steal back my stuff from the hunters, spring me from their secret kill house, and spirit me away back to London. Other than that?” He sighed, the venom bleeding out in an instant, replaced instead with that same bone-deep weariness Jon had spotted earlier. “But it’s been nice, having someone other than them around, even if it is just for more interrogations.”
Unsure of what else to do, Jon folded in on himself a bit. “I-I’m sorry, about that. But I appreciate the help, I mean it.” He chuckled slightly, “It is nice to meet someone who doesn’t have any immediate motivation to harm me, for once.”
Gerard snorted. “Sounds like a rough life.”
“Well, it has been a difficult few years, and none of this was in the job description.” Jon paused, and gave Gerard a small smile. “Thank you, Gerard.”
“...Gerry.”
“What?” Jon asked, a bit surprised.
Gerard looked surprised as well, as though he hadn’t meant to say it. But after a moment, he continued.
“Gerard was what my mum called me,” he explained, giving a faintly embarrassed laugh. “I always wanted my friends to call me Gerry.”
“Well, thank you, Gerry.” Jon gave him another small smile, which Gerry returned.
Just as Gerry opened his mouth to say something else, the noises from further into the cabin changed, and began moving down the hall towards the door. They both scrambled to their feet, Gerry hurrying back to stand closer to the cot, just as the locks began to click and the door opened.
Julia stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip and a contented look of satisfaction on her face. Jon couldn’t help but notice the small spatter of blood along her cheekbone and under her nails, and tried to swallow down his unease.
“Did he tell you what you needed to know?” she asked, her gaze shifting to Gerry, who stood with his arms crossed loosely over his chest and his gaze downcast, shoulder hunched defensively.
“Y-yes, yes, he did,” Jon said, and her gaze snapped back to him.
“Great. C’mon then, Trevor and I need to have a little chat with you about a few things.” She stepped aside, allowing Jon to step out of the room. As the door closed, he looked back, catching one last glimpse of the miserably lonely look on Gerry’s face.