Work Text:
No. 10 Carlton Terrace, Edinburgh. October 1866.
Jon's days have been quiet these past few years, now that they don't go out every night. Or any night, really; more often than not Jonah takes a nap in the afternoon as well. The natural consequences of an aging body. Jon tries not to dwell on it, given that he hasn't aged since the day Jonah bound him. When his mind strays, in spite of himself, to a future where Jonah's body has finally given out on him, he suspects that it might be a relief. He doesn't want to die, not like he did at the beginning, but he's—tired. As tired as Jonah looks. And he wouldn't care to have to adjust to someone new, and that's as far as he'll allow that train of thought to go.
He's always risen early, and he dresses himself, since most of the servants still won't talk to him. He doesn't know if it's out of fear or because they just don't think of him as a person, but either way, Jon's happier taking care of himself anyway. Breakfast is tea from the strong pot the cook brews first thing in the morning, and he spends this morning, like most others, tucked into a corner of the library with a stack of the latest publications. In a way it's a pity they don't go out any more; Jon thinks he'd rather like to meet Herr Marx, and he sounds like just the kind of person Jonah used to love to invite to parties, for the scandal if nothing else.
It's so quiet, in fact, that it's hours before Jon realizes that Jonah isn't in the house, and all the anxiety he didn't know he should have been feeling for all that time crashes into him at once.
Which is foolish, really, he tells himself as he searches methodically through the house for someone he knows he won't find. Jonah is a sorcerer of no little experience; he's perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Even if he is old enough to be growing frail, and Jon can't remember the last time he ventured out of the house without his Archive.
It's tremendously unfair, he thinks, not for the first time, that the bond Jonah has leashed him with doesn't give him any knowledge of Jonah in return.
He means to wait for Jonah to return, but he can't decide where to do it—in the parlor? The front hall? His bedroom, where Jon sleeps now more often than not, the strength of their bond more powerful than any willpower Jon still has?—and at any rate, he can't seem to sit still. He frets, and paces, and the servants all ignore him and carry on with their work. They're used to his petulance by now, he thinks bitterly, and they know exactly how much it matters.
When Jonah does finally return, as late as he ever had when he was young and adventurous, Jon is so attuned to his presence that he recognizes him immediately, even though the man standing before him isn't Jonah. He's far, far too young—younger than Jonah was when he fastened that damned collar around Jon's throat. He's blond, where Jonah had been dark; tall, where Jonah had been shorter than Jon. But he smirks the same way, and he has hold of the bond like it's a leash, and the eyes are exactly the same.
"How dare you," Jon spits, poisonous enough to eat through solid steel. Of course he knows what Jonah has done; he'd ordered Jon to do the research for him. Jon had refused. It's galling to have demonstrated for him so clearly just how meaningless that was. "How could you, I told you what I thought of your plan, it's obscene." The rage is almost enough to overshadow the wailing thing at the pit of his stomach that tells him you'll never be free of him now, you thought when he died you could die too, but of course he'd never let you go—
Jonah's eyes dance in a stranger's face. "My dear Archive," he purrs, shrugging off his greatcoat with a grace he hasn't possessed in many years, "you've forgotten your place once again." He moves close to tower over Jon, using his height to his advantage; Jon glares up at him, refusing to be cowed. Jonah lifts one gloved hand to cup Jon's chin, tilting his head to a more pleasing angle. "You are a tool, not a confidant. And certainly not an advisor."
Jon wrenches away from him, and he has to turn away because there's nowhere else to go that isn't directly into Jonah's arms. He had forgotten, is the terrible thing; no matter what the rest of the world thinks of Archives and their owners, Jonah hasn't treated him like a tool for some time. Jonah had always told him he was special, and sometime in the past half century, Jon had even come to believe it.
"I shall do as I please without any of your input," Jonah continues, as if Jon hasn't reacted at all, and Jon snorts.
"Clearly. There's certainly nothing I can do to stop you." He can't look back at Jonah in his young, stolen body; he refuses to cry in front of the man. But he's exhausted, he's angry, and above all he's disappointed, and he doesn't even know if it's Jonah or himself he's more disappointed in.
"At any rate." Jonah's voice softens a little—not apologetic, of course not, but with enough to make it obvious that the brash arrogance of youth is just another new face he's putting on. "It had become clear that I had no suitable successor to whom I could bequeath my Archive, and I could hardly allow my finest creation to simply…unravel upon my death."
It's not an apology. It doesn't pretend to be; Jonah has no regrets for what he's done. He never regrets anything, it seems. "Don't pretend this is for my benefit," Jon says to the wallpaper. Before Jonah can respond with something even more infuriating, he flees to his own rooms, small and plain and still maddeningly made up entirely to Jonah's taste.
There's dust on the bedclothes, when exhaustion finally hits and Jon crawls into bed. He hadn't realized it had been so long since he slept in his own bed. He wraps his arms around himself and scowls into the pillow until he falls asleep.
Jon's days are even quieter, now that no one speaks to him at all. It's horribly reminiscent of the first six months he spent as Jonah's possession, when he was never spoken to, only at. When it was only him and Jonah, not even any servants, and he had finally come to accept that this was going to be the rest of his life: him, and Jonah, and nothing else would ever again matter as much as that fact.
Except now there is a third person, or the ghost of one: the young man whose life Jonah has stolen in order to extend this whole mess for another lifetime. Jon doesn't even know his name.
His anger, the injustice of it, the unbearable knowledge that Jonah has done to this man something even worse than what he's done to Jon, sustains him for a few days. When he feels lonely he dwells on it, holding fast to the perfectly legitimate and reasonable anger at the fact that his (his…owner? employer? master? person on whose life Jon's very existence depends?) has decided to murder a stranger and steal his body rather than admit that he's mortal like everybody else.
(Which he isn't, now.)
Much too soon, though, it begins to feel almost petulant. What, after all, is the point of his anger? It can't change what Jonah has done, and it won't convince Jonah to release him, so sooner or later he's going to—if not forgive him, at least forget. The same way he forgave his own capture, almost half a century ago; the same way he has always ignored the things he knows Jonah does with the things he forces Jon to learn. It's that or become a mindless thing like the other Archives he's met, barely more than the tools that society claims them to be. In the end, he still values his own mind more than he values the purity of that anger.
So he begins to spend his days in the library again. It's barely a concession, as Jonah is never home; he seems to be making up for the time in which he allowed himself to grow old. Jon resolutely pretends he has no interest in whatever Jonah might be doing, whoever he might be meeting, and resumes his daily reading. It's hardly any different than it was before, in truth, although the feeling that he's waiting for something has changed. It's still there, but it's different than it was before—more dangerous, perhaps, now that whatever comes next will not be inevitable.
When it does come, it isn't with an apology, or even an acknowledgement; it's only with Jonah interrupting Jon in the middle of his reading, late in the afternoon, with a restrained, impatient energy that makes Jon's chest ache with familiarity.
"It's past time we return to work," Jonah announces without preamble. Jon would like to ignore him, to pretend he doesn't recognize the voice, but his eyes raise to follow him without volition. Jonah always had been impossible to look away from.
He opts, instead, for sarcasm. It, too, is familiar. "You seem to have done perfectly well for yourself; I don't know what you could possibly need."
Jonah smirks at him—the lopsided smirk that touches his eyes enough to look like something other than condescension. "Feeling unappreciated?" he says lightly. He's holding a book with a fresh new binding in the old style, the one in which Jonah has always bound his most…unique acquisitions. Jon's eyes are drawn to it as irrevocably as they were drawn to Jonah when he entered the room. Scientific and philosophical pamphlets are all well and good, but an Archive is made to live on less mundane texts, and it has been a long time since there have been new books of such a kind in Jonah's library.
Still. Jon refuses to delude himself; it's a peace offering. The book, and the fact that Jonah said nothing about Jon's refusal to help with his plans for immortality. He could spurn it, return to nursing his anger, and who knows, perhaps Jonah will leave him alone, even if he won't release him. Perhaps he will never again have to be a party to Jonah's callous disregard for other people in pursuit of his own goals.
Jonah holds out the book, casually enough that it might not be an offering at all, in case it should be rejected; and Jon, hating himself, takes it.