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1
Jon was a petulant, horribly annoying child. Really, he was. He knew it, in the way you know the sky is blue even when it's bleeding red from the sunset, he knew it in the glances of rolled eyes his teachers gave each other when they thought he was too absorbed in a book to notice, he knew it in the way his grandmother taught him the simplest meals she knew before making herself scarce until morning whenever he got home from school.
His memory was full of warm hugs from his mother that he'd squirmed away from, hating the way his skin felt wrong after he was touched, gentle words she whispered to him when he asked where his father was, the first time he was old enough to understand he should have one; he felt off kilter, after her death. He'd never fully righted himself.
At times, he thought his grandmother felt the same. She'd already raised a son, already taken in her daughter-in-law when her parents passed and she was too wrought with grief to do much other than cry. It was no wonder all of their interactions felt stilted; all of her maternal instinct had been used up, and now he was a leech on whatever she was using in its place.
Jon used to be a good kid, before his mother's death. He was quiet, kind, and mostly stood just behind her, blinking innocently at people, who cooed over him delightedly.
He'd always been scared of heights, his mother warning him away from ladders and steep hills and ledges with a desperate tone, horror stories of what happened to his father and hundreds of other people swimming in the back of his head from the things she'd told him.
After that day, he was scared of hospitals, too.
Weren't they supposed to help?
So why did she-
When his grandmother took him in, Jon's first moment of stubborn obstinance was when he flat out refused to go to his bedroom on the second floor, shouting something awful and getting damn near tears at the sight of the rickety, splinter filled railings and warped steps.
She ended up picking him up and carrying him there herself, both their faces still stained with tears, one too tired to fight any longer and the other too hurt to stop.
Things spiralled from there.
He couldn't sit still, she complained. Really, he couldn't. Jon could attest. He had this constant need to bounce his leg and flick his fingers, only sitting still when he had a task - and nothing could ever quite capture his attention like a book.
Once he got fully into something, he tore it apart, pages of notes and details and analyses, or he read it once and never touched it again, but would talk about it constantly.
At first he'd loved fantasy.
He thought it would be amazing, much better than historical fiction or nonfiction or any of the informational books that used words too big for him to understand.
After his third book in the genre, though, he'd come to realise how predictable they were.
He hadn't touched a fantasy novel since.
His grandmother bemoaned this fact at least twice per day, citing all the books she'd gotten in preparation that she ended up donating to his school.
He tried apologising once, in the wordless way his mother had always appreciated, making chole bhature instead of his mother's boxty recipe he'd made in the past, figuring it would mean more if he chose a dish she'd shown him.
She'd been too busy going to the umpteenth parent teacher conference about his behaviour to notice, and he didn't try again.
He couldn't blame her for anything, truly.
Who would believe the child known for irrational fears and his silly way of going about life when he claimed a boy had been eaten by a spider in front of him?
When the missing persons report cropped up a week later, she didn't think twice, merely called his parents and sympathised, giving them the gajar ka halwa he'd made while trying to think about anything but the way the shadows dancing around his door frame looked like legs.
That isn't to say she didn't have times of soft fondness; there had been plenty of nights where his nightmares kicked him awake and he bit down on his knuckles to muffle his sobs, creeping down to the kitchen for water to stop his headache only to find her there, staring knowingly, two mugs of tea freshly made and steaming on the table in front of her.
His was a gentle vanilla lavender with two spoons of honey; hers a sharp ginger and cinnamon spice that reminded him of the yule log cake his mother baked and let him ice every winter solstice, while last year's wood crackled and popped in the fireplace, moments away from catching the rest ablaze.
They didn't talk on those nights, and they didn't mention them in the morning. Even at such a young age, he knew they were fragile, delicate moments, something to be cherished.
Despite the strange way their relationship worked, Jon loved his grandmother. He did his best to show it, making her breakfast before he went to school and dinner when he got back, crocheting her little versions of whatever thing he'd fallen down the research rabbit hole of most recently, even reading her favourite book despite the way some of the metaphors eluded him in the most frustrating of ways.
It made it hurt all the more, he mused, much older, sitting in his singles dorm in uni, a feat achievable solely because of the scholarships he'd gotten from his own status as a first generation immigrant and his parents being deceased. His phone blinked up at him cheerfully, a dozen missed calls to his grandmother wavering as tears clouded his eyes for a moment.
He blinked them away before they fell.
She was just busy.
She still cared.
(Long gone were the mugs of tea and silent comforts; when he did visit, she rarely engaged in conversation, and often he'd arrive to an empty house and no note, waiting until late in the night for her to return, just to help her to her room so she could sleep. His parents he couldn't prevent, but he was certain if he'd just tried harder, if he'd just been better, his grandmother would've stayed. Would've still loved him, when she passed, half a dozen faces he didn't recognise staring at him when he attended her funeral, taking his first day off from the institute since he started working in research the year before. Nobody asked where he'd been, when he returned. Maybe that hurt a little, too.)
2
He knew he'd brought the situation upon himself.
What was he thinking, really? It didn't matter how paranoid he got, how many nights he tried to sleep, tried to close his eyes, lights on to stop the darting shadows from morphing into the forms of people staring at him or long, creeping, insectoid legs, only for them to dart open again a moment later because he thought he saw a flicker of movement. It didn't matter how much it affected him, because that didn't give him the right to hurt the others.
He'd known it was a long time coming, when Tim shouted at him the first time.
It didn't stop the way he'd frozen, and had to stiffly exit, cutting Tim's tirade off as he made his way to the small bathroom in the archives, bones aching and half-healed worm scars twinging, so he could crouch down and try his best not to cry, breath remaining stubbornly even despite the panic curling around his heart and scratching at him from the inside.
It didn't stop the disappointment on Sasha's face as she looked at him, before going back to comforting Tim.
The second time Tim shouted, he was marginally more prepared, and by the fifth, he'd learned to recognise the warning signs; his hand would clench, his nose scrunched a little, he'd release all his air and then draw in a large breath - Jon managed to make himself scarce whenever he spotted two or more of those at once.
Martin had certainly noticed, shooting him puzzled and concerned glances every time he limped out of the bullpen and into his office as quickly as he could. It happened while he was making tea, once, and Martin had brought him a new mug.
He told himself he should drink it, even as his mind ran through a hundred different ways it could be poisoned or laced with something or worse, and he ended up tipping it into the sink once everyone had left and it was long gone cold.
He wished he could say it all came to a head when the thing pretending to be Sasha was revealed, that that was the big thing that helped Jon realise what he'd done wrong so he could apologise and they could be civil, be friends, but, well.
He'd always known it was wrong, to watch his coworkers.
It didn't really stop him. He wasn't certain anything could have, when he was that deep in the throes of paranoia and constantly looking for a threat that didn't exist. Or did exist, he supposed, in the way he never truly suspected.
When he returned for the first time since the not-Sasha was killed, one of the first conversations he had with Tim was confronting Elias, when Jon was still covered in mud and blood, his sleeve stained a myriad of reds and browns and blacks, the end scorched off where he'd shaken Jude's hand. It wasn't exactly the friendliest environment.
His whole life, Jon had struggled with words, and it didn't magically get better when he needed it to.
So the situation remained unresolved, even as he was kidnapped by Nikola and returned by what was once Michael and was now Helen. He made a bad joke about his skin being nice, had a small exchange of words, and promptly passed out for about an hour before the altercation with Melanie and Elias.
He was fairly certain someone told Tim what happened, because for a little while, he was oddly… Gentle, with Jon.
Nobody really did that, without provocation, not for Jon. Martin was kind because of his awful first day, and the way Jon was so cruel about his mistakes, Sasha was kind because it was either that or constant bitterness about the position she should have had, and Tim-
Tim used to be kind because that was who he was, and he couldn't ruin that image in front of Jon. Now, he was being kind because he was pitying him, conflicting rage and sorrow, hurt and concern, sympathy and contempt, dancing just behind his eyes whenever he saw him leaning heavily on his cane to get from the shelves of statements back to his office.
Like all good things, it came to an end.
Slowly, Tim eased back into his usual behaviour, and they were back to playing hide and seek so that Jon didn't get yelled at, on days when Tim bothered to show up.
Martin still made tea, though Sasha's mug had been smashed and replaced, leaving one that didn't quite match the set the assistants had gotten for themselves and Jon in their first week for Melanie to use.
Most days, Jon's was only half empty by the time everyone left for the night.
He'd often leave to clean it up at around ten, and spend a moment looking at the remnants of a day's work - or lack thereof - scattered around the bullpen.
A pile of files on Tim's desk, gathering dust, the edge of a photo of a wax figure poking out, and he had to look away from the memories that threatened to bring back before he could make out any identifying features, a lovingly worn copy of the Keats, edges wrinkled and hundreds of multicoloured sticky notes and tabs poking out, and the pale, pastel blue Polaroid camera covered in little sharpie doodles.
There were photos of all three of them; one of Martin holding a statement and a phone and looking decidedly shocked to have his photo being taken, one of Melanie throwing her arms around Martin and Tim, grinning ferociously, Martin laughing at something with one hand over his bright smile, and Tim with a crooked smirk, a sight that was understandably rare, these days.
There were more, strung up with clothespins, but Jon didn't have to look at them to know the one constant truth: he wasn't in any of them.
It was mostly his own fault, as was almost everything happening to him these days.
Belatedly, a few days before the Unknowing, he wondered what would be different, if he'd been more open. If he'd told his assistants more about himself. If he'd let them in when they insistently pounded on the walls he built up, instead of just building more.
The day of the Unknowing, before he had a startlingly tender exchange with Martin, he had a brutally honest one with Tim.
"I have not and never will forgive you," he'd said simply. "I said it in the recording you had us do, and I'll say it now: you need to grow a spine. Be more like Gertrude. Or be her opposite. But choose, goddamn it, don't act like you're my friend one moment and then- then follow me home the next! Are you going to try to be nice to everyone and have your actions reflect that, or are you going to be ruthless and effective? " He paused, and took a deep breath. "I'm not getting out alive. You probably won't get out unscathed. I've made peace with that. Will you ever?"
And Jon, desperately, had searched for an answer. His words failed him, as they so often did. He didn't know what side he could possibly choose. He knew he wasn't able to trust anyone on his own anymore, he wasn't able to be naturally kind, but he still made the conscious decision to try, as best he could, and he didn't want to lose that.
Tim sighed, shaking his head with a look of sorrowful disappointment, and maybe a little disgust.
Jon knew there wasn't any care left for him, only that burning fury directed towards the Circus that left the old Tim as nothing more than ash, and that all encompassing sadness, constantly on the verge of dousing the flames and leaving him adrift, nothing there to keep him going.
He thought that, maybe, that would be scarier than a Tim that can't stop yelling at him.
(And later, when he woke in his hospital bed, when he first talked to Melanie, when she blamed him for Tim and Daisy's deaths, only one of which he saw coming - he couldn't help but agree. It was his fault, wasn't it? Now, he had to live with it. Tim's words echoed in his head. He would do more than live with it. He repeated that like a mantra as he stepped into the coffin, one rib left outside, to no avail.)
3
Once, Jon had really thought he'd found an ally in Basira.
Or, no, that wasn't quite true - he'd always known she didn't trust him, he had far too much practice recognising that. But he couldn't trust on his own anymore, and he so very much wanted to, so when Basira showed up, all clean, unwrinkled clothing and crisp perfume, such a sharp contrast to how far Jon had fallen in his spiral, and when she actually helped?
Well, then her motives didn't matter as much.
At least with Basira, he knew she was fully capable of killing him. He didn't have to worry about years of tentative companionship or half-stuttered compliments and pleasantries all being false.
She wasn't an ally, not really, but she never… Actively worked against him. Not at first. She'd even admitted to being somewhat fond of him, at one point - he was sure that wasn't true anymore, though.
After the Buried, everything was a lot. He spent most of the time in the first few days laying on the floor of his office, wearing just a thin, moth themed poncho Georgie had gotten him years ago and a loose black skirt, everything else putting too much pressure and dragging his mind back to that awful crushing prison. Soon enough, though, he got dizzy enough when he stood to get water that he nearly slammed his head on the edge of his desk, and he knew he needed a statement.
They didn't let him out often, other than when he and Basira went to stop Manuela's ritual, and especially not after Martin staged the intervention.
Daisy understood, of course. She was the only one who understood everything, from the Buried to the starvation bleeding him dry from the inside out.
Being in his office, in the basement, was difficult.
Melanie didn't care, though, and Basira just sighed, and chided him sternly, reminding him she had the key to his office, where they'd moved his cot.
Daisy rested her hand next to his, knowing that, despite how it was their tether in the Buried, he hated touch. She told him it was temporary, that they just wanted to ensure he didn't hurt anyone.
He knew that, and he knew that what they were doing was right, that he was a danger to people - even Martin, gentle Martin, kind Martin, had seen that he was more danger than he was worth, when he had access to the outdoors.
The contrast in how Basira withheld statements as much as physically possible before it was quite literally a matter of life or death versus when she tried to encourage Daisy into hunting Julia and Trevor so she could feed was… Demoralising. If he had the energy to be in more pain than he already was, he would say it hurt.
No matter how much living off of the old, stale statements felt like drinking a glass of water to stop hunger pangs, he knew that it was infinitely better than the alternative.
Besides, despite the ultimatum of compliance or death, it wasn't like Basira was being cruel - she cracked his door open when Melanie hip checked it shut, she stayed silent when Daisy slipped into his office despite being instructed not to at least a dozen times, she gave him his statements whenever the headaches and dizzy spells combined with his joint and scar pain became too overwhelming for him to function properly - she was just taking precautionary measures to keep the innocent people outside of the institute safe.
She even let him grab Martin's old first aid kit from document storage, after Melanie stabbed his shoulder.
Sure, there were barely enough bandages left to wrap the wound, nevermind the lack of disinfectant, but they'd cleaned the scalpel well enough before the surgery, and Basira was too busy to run to the store for more, so he was sure it was fine.
When he and Martin were in the safehouse, she called him once to confirm that they would pick up the statements before some hapless postal worker stumbled upon them, or before Jon lost control and gave in and Asked for the person who ran the corner store's statement (the one he Knew had an encounter with a Flesh aligned Leitner that mutilated and then ate their son).
They texted, of course, but with the archives as a crime scene and Jon's history as a murder suspect, calling wasn't the best choice (and maybe, maybe, some part of him whispered hoarsely, maybe if he'd insisted, if he'd taken initiative to call her, their almost-friendship wouldn't have slowly deteriorated like it did).
As most things did after the Change, it, for lack of better word, changed.
She couldn't have known, he told himself, as blood dripped from his nose and eyes, a small trickle welling in the back of his throat (but never enough to stop him from reading, no). She couldn't have known, he told himself, as the world ended around him.
In the twisted, gnarling path of Daisy's domain, it was hard to tell what was in and out of the domain.
When he and Martin left it, he took one furtive glance behind him, and Saw: it had followed Basira. It always had, morphing and changing itself to fit her, until it couldn't anymore, collapsing in on itself around the very person who held it up.
She had always been Daisy's anchor, the one thing keeping her even remotely human.
Jon gripped Martin's hand tighter, and walked away from where she was mourning.
(If things had gone differently, maybe all three of them would have been there, would have comforted each other. If things had gone differently, Martin might have felt the same grief, been able to empathise, rather than a sort of secondhand blanket of sadness, too used to seeing Daisy as nothing more than someone who hurt others. If things had gone differently, maybe Jon could have mourned for longer, without running the risk of soft white fog consuming the both of them. Even towards the end, when Basira jumped with him, he knew that regardless of if they both survived, they would never be able to go back to that semblance of friendship they'd had all that time ago.)
4
Jon's time in uni always felt like a lifetime ago, even when he was freshly graduated. Maybe it had something to do with his and Georgie's breakup happening only six months after the end, maybe it had something to do with how, after the Mechanisms agreed their time was up, he dove head first into professionalism, leaving his rule-breaking and rebellious days (mostly) behind; he honestly couldn't tell you either way.
He was sure that if he and his grandmother still spoke, at that point, she'd have told him that he hadn't changed a bit since he was young, in that way people said things they thought about you to make you feel unsure of yourself, to question whether or not it was a compliment.
When he'd met Georgie, he'd wondered if she and his grandmother would have gotten along.
She never responded to his messages asking if they could visit, though, and the next time they spoke, on the phone for two minutes when she was on her deathbed, they had broken up a long while ago.
Georgie had told him matter-of-factly that it was alright, after he met her parents and admitted his grandmother probably wouldn't want to see her (or him, but he didn't mention that).
They went to a little graveyard back in Bournemouth together, twice a year, Georgie clutching his hand and Jon too exhausted to argue.
It was his lack of ability to set boundaries, she informed him when she left, not unkindly. He didn't vocalise his discomfort, or show it in any tangible manner, just left people to find out about it later and feel guilty.
(It was his eagerness to work, Elias informed him when he was promoted, smirking. The way he was up for any task, no matter how grueling or discomforting.)
His whole life had been full of people leaving him. Just once, he wanted some semblance of control over a relationship, anything even remotely akin to having a say in things.
So, he cut her off. She never tried to reach out anyways, he told himself, thumb hovering over the button to delete her contact. She wanted clear communication or it wouldn't work, and Jon had always struggled with words. He should delete it.
(He couldn't manage to, in the end, just stopped reading over their old conversations so that her number fell to the bottom of his meagre list.)
She sheltered him, when he was on the run, and a little bit of the friendship they'd once had was rekindled - it died out soon enough, though, when she realised how in over his head he was, and, in a show of the strength she had that he'd always lacked, drew the line in the sand.
Technically, he was still allowed to visit, since he had permission to see The Admiral whenever things got difficult (Georgie had gotten the cat and he'd gotten their couch, when they split. He tried not to feel like the deal was horribly unbalanced.), but he'd stuck to just her posts on various social medias as her podcast account where some photos of the tortoiseshell occasionally snuck in.
If just living in the same flat as her had felt like intruding, whenever he locked the bathroom door to change, or made his own dinner because something was off about the one they were going to share, or carefully edged himself away from a sleeping Georgie who clung to anything near her when she wasn't aware of her surroundings, then surely popping in unannounced just to see his cat - their cat - would feel like breaking and entering.
Not that he hadn't done his fair share of that.
Georgie teased him about being too similar to Melanie, but clearly, she must have been his superior somehow, because she managed to stay. For all their shared faults, that was where she shined and he fell short; she knew what she wanted, she knew how to get it, and she knew how to make other people acknowledge that. It was always the third one that Jon struggled with.
Melanie, though, she was brave in a way no one else in the archives had been - she was afraid, and she didn't have anger as a driving force, not at first, but she still… She still did things. She held her fear, and used it to fan the flames of her determination, and only paid half a mind to the people who got burned in the process.
(She was the kind of person Tim would have listened to, his mind told him on some of his darker days. If only anyone else had been in his place, if only, if only, if only if only if only-)
So truly, it was no wonder she had been worthy of what he had not.
Unbidden, the memory of the tape where Melanie was talking to Basira flitted through his mind, and he pushed it aside. He wore his ring everywhere, being upset over being outed was ridiculous.
He and Georgie never had the chance to talk about it, though.
First, there was never time, and then there were far more important things to do, like saving the world.
He couldn't communicate when he was uncomfortable, he'd heard Georgie whisper to Melanie one night, when they were all in the tunnels. He kept this odd hope they'd parse it out on their own, and got this guilty resignation when they didn't. She just couldn't deal with it long term, couldn't deal with him.
(And if that wasn't just the story of his life.)
Melanie cracked some ill-timed joke about how of course Georgie couldn't deal with him, he's Jon, and Georgie just giggled and shushed her, planting a kiss on her cheek before the two walked off, hand in hand.
Once, when he and Martin managed to steal a moment alone in the tunnels to just exist, together, Martin asked him why Georgie seemed to side with Melanie when it came to getting him out as soon as possible, despite how she'd seemed so protective before and in his stories of uni and his multiple arrests.
He'd said something about how she was protective of Melanie and the cult, how when she found her people she never seemed to let go. It was a bitter, ugly, despairing tone, and Martin let out a soft hum as he offered and then subsequently guided Jon into a hug before the tears even fell.
(And later, Somewhere Else, Jon clutched Martin's hand, a desperate sort of plea escaping his lips as he begged to Know why Georgie had found him unworthy, in the end. There was no answer to be found except the answering drops hitting the back of his neck. His husband had always been a sympathetic crier.)
+1
Jon had not always been in love with Martin.
He hadn't even liked him, for a good while, too intent on projecting his insecurities and discomforts, always more comfortable when someone else's faults were more visible to hide his own.
And, in all honesty, he wouldn't have been surprised if Martin hated him, after that.
But, no, he'd always been the forgiving type, when it came to Jon, gentle hands warm like the sun that broke the fog as he put his palm up in a silent offer of peace, their fingers linking as Jon realised it was the first time he'd been allowed to make a choice when it came to contact in a very, very long time.
Martin, too, had not always been in love with Jon, he told him one day, Somewhere Else. It was a gradual thing, starting out as simple affection and growing into more as the years passed.
Though happening at separate times, in separate people, their love had intertwined, and grew inseparable from themselves and one another, Martin had pondered, tapping his pencil against his chin, bouncing poetry ideas off of Jon, two mugs of tea resting on the table. One was vanilla lavender, with two spoons of honey, and the other was a blend of chamomile and citrus, with a hint of marigold and three generous spoonfuls of sugar.
Although, when Jon and his archival assistants were first settling into the job, his and Martin's relations had been… Strained.
But there had been a small, blissful break between when Prentiss trapped Martin and when Jon's paranoia really kicked in, where they had been something close to friends.
If he had to pick a moment, Jon would say he really fell for Martin when he pulled out the corkscrew, but he didn't realise it until they were alone together and the combination of the shock and CO2 disoriented him enough to ask if Martin was a ghost.
Martin had said that, honestly, he'd gotten his crush when they first met, and had really, truly fallen when Jon not only believed him immediately despite the skeptic act, but also offered him a place to stay in the archives - Jon's place to stay in the archives - without missing a beat.
Funny, wasn't it, how they both pined for so long, telling themselves it could never be requited, until it seemed to be too late; Jon pushed everyone away in his paranoia, then the Unknowing, then the Buried, and by then, Martin had shrouded himself in the Lonely, and it was an all around awful time for every person in the archives.
Once, he'd asked Martin, half mumbled and very unsure of himself, if the good of them was worth the ordeal of the Lonely, or if he wished he'd just never needed to meet Lukas, regardless of what that would mean.
It had earned him a resolute denial and, after asking if it was alright, a kiss on the forehead. Quietly, in response, Jon had admitted he wasn't sure if he'd be able to live through it all a second time, but that for Martin, he'd try a hundred times.
His voice broke as he spoke, but it was raw with honesty.
He wasn't sure where they'd be, in a year, in two, in twenty, he wasn't sure if his connection to the Eye had really been cut or if it had just been severely weakened, he wasn't sure if the fears followed them or if they were safe, he wasn't sure if they could finally, finally relax.
But right now, he found he wasn't all too worried about that.
Jon was on his back, large hands, calloused yet gentle, braiding his hair loosely, careful not to brush against his shoulders. For a heartbeat, he contemplated sharing his musings with Martin, spilling all of the fondness time had put into his memories and the way it worked rhyme into the unreasonable, before deciding against it.
No reason to drudge up the past when he had everything he needed, now, in the present; Somewhere Else was somewhere better.