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There was a blonde bounding around the Archives, beaming to be allowed to do menial tasks for the Archivist, that reminded it terribly of Martin Blackwood. Michael Shelley wouldn't fit quite as well, but he would have followed Martin's footsteps in his place regardless. He practically begged for the Archivist to use him up and abandon him.
It couldn't quite bring itself to hate the Archivist the way it hated his predecessor. It wove away one part of Martin Blackwood and coaxed out another to watch the Archivist run about and rake fingers through his hair. It felt as protective of the Assistants as ever, but the rage...
Another thing to endear him to the new Archivist. Such passionate and determined a fate as it had wanted for Gertrude bunched up wrinkles in parts of itself that should flow free. It didn't feel any pang at all that its aid would protect the Archivist as well as the Assistants from the Flesh Hive. It couldn't blush, but telling the Assistant Sasha James to call it Martin and knowing it would be carried back to the Archivist Jonathan Sims felt the same, but without the physiological response.
Sasha, too, it liked. It remembered Emma Harvey before she was one of Mother's Children, and Sasha reminded it of her. The last Assistant had no such comparison and held a purpose at the center of his being that refused to be distorted, but it cared for him as well. All of them, all of its scattered reflections in a present that was not the past, it cared for. No one else would watch over Assistant Archivists at the Magnus Institute with a gaze that was not entirely malicious.
It was against its nature to clarify, so it didn't. It poured a Statement about Martin Blackwood into a tape recorder to explain itself as much as it could bear, and then it did what it did best. That twisting plans that would threaten Assistants until they were nonfunctional meant clarification came to others was an inconsequential side effect. Gertrude didn't believe Martin Blackwood when he insisted that the Head and Heart was as great a danger as any Ritual and ought to be vastly prioritized from his present ranking on her list. It didn't know if she regretted that, the day she faced Elias Bouchard and watched her death be fired toward her.
It didn't have the same restrictions Martin Blackwood had had to adhere to.
There was some working to be centered on the new Archivist, and it delighted in paying the Watcher back in kind for Martin Blackwood straightening the Great Twisting into manageable lines until it collapsed under its own weight and he twisted into it instead.
The Archivist was far too underdeveloped to notice the door to his office changing. He whirled the moment he was over its threshold, but the entrance had already slammed shut. Another door rose in his memory, and it curled a snarl at its success being tainted by Mother. The Archivist shouted a bit before he started walking and stabbed at his mobile futilely.
It waited for the Archivist to tire enough to begin to despair. Everything overtly odd about it snaked beneath a facade, and he tripped around a corner and nearly collided with the Archivist.
"Oh! Sorry! ...wait, are you real?" Martin's old mannerisms came back easily.
"Am I- of course I'm real!" the Archivist spluttered. "Who are you? What is this place?"
It didn't even sting. He wasn't sure the question would have tangible effect on even an ordinary human in the heart of the Archives at this point. An old friend's name came to him easily. "I'm Eric, I don't know where it is! I've been walking for hours!"
The Archivist backed up a step at that, looking around them wildly like he expected something to jump out at them. "That's impossible, it can't be that large. I've been keeping track."
"Well I'm still here!" Martin snapped.
The Archivist looked at him warily. "Sorry. I'm Jon. Walk together?"
"I'm Tim. You're the first person I've seen.
Jon's forehead wrinkled. "I thought you said your name was Eric."
Martin gave him a confused look. "You didn't ask my name before. You wanted to know how long I've been here first."
Jon shook his head. "No, I- are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure," Martin said, putting on airs of offense.
"Right, right, remind me how long that is?" The Archivist took off his glasses to rub his face. Before he put them back on, Martin could see that they left a very adorable indent on his nose.
"I walked in on the twelfth."
"Really?"
"You're the first person I've seen!" Martin grinned, and held it in the register of human relief.
Jon bit his lip. "Well, we can at least keep each other company while we look for a way out, I suppose."
-
Soon after they began walking together, the halls split and shattered, threatening to separate them. Jon hopped next to Martin just in time, and took his suggestion that they hold hands so they were harder to split up with shaky gratitude.
"Tim," Jon said some time later, "did you say that you wound up here starting on the twelfth?"
"Hm?" Martin said. "You flipped it. It was the twenty-first. July twenty-first."
Jon came to an abrupt halt. "But it's April!"
Martin shook his head, alarmed. "Just twenty-first, I swear! I can't have been here long enough for it to be 2011 already, I haven't had a thing to eat or drink!"
Jon's fear bloomed beautifully in response to Martin's mounting panic and impossible dates. "Let's, let's just focus on finding a way out. We can worry about the date later."
Their joined hands swung between them. It was a lovely off-beat rhythm. Eventually, Jon said, "Tim?"
Martin stopped walking and craned his neck in the general direction Jon was facing. "Wait, do you see someone?"
"No?"
"I thought you said something. A name."
Jon was less willing to accept that he might be wrong a second time, face screwing up with irritated stubbornness. "You're Tim."
"Are you feeling alright?" Martin pressed the back of the hand that wasn't entwined with Jon's to Jon's forehead. "My name's Eric, I told you when we ran into each other."
The reversion to a previous story threw Jon more than a new lie would have. "I... No, you said..."
"Let's just focus on finding a way out," Martin said with a reassuring smile. "We can worry about names later."
He waited until they'd been underway once more for a bit to add, "I don't know why you'd say something so dreadful."
"What?" Jon asked, distracted by trying to gauge the distance between them and the next intersection.
"You said you'd never leave." Jon stopped walking, but he didn't speak fast enough to cut Martin off before he added. "We're going to get out of here, Jon."
"Are you hearing things?" The specter of delusion twirled beautifully in his breast. "Eric, I never-"
"I keep telling you," Martin cut in angrily, "I don't know who 'Eric' is! My name's Jon!"
Jon tried to drop Marin's hand and stomp back a step, but Martin didn't let go, stretching after him when the space widened. It was too subtle for Jon to notice yet with other things on his mind, just the wrong side of canny to sit easy when he did notice.
"I don't know what you're playing at! Let go, Eric! Find your own way out!" It didn't occur to Jon at all that Martin, the friendly face amid so much strangeness, the reassuring solidity of humanity existing outside himself, might be anything but what he seemed, just as lost as Jon and a pathological liar.
"I'm not Eric!" Gertrude would've eaten him alive.
"Well you certainly aren't Jon!" Jon spat.
All the anger cleared off Martin's face like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. "Oh, that's right. You're Jon, and I'm Martin."
Jon made another attempt to tear his hand away. He froze mid-motion when he processed the words and spaghetti-swing of an overlong arm. He looked up, face pale. "Did you say Martin?"
It stepped back and laughed. No matter how far it let Jon stumble back, he couldn't free himself from its cutting, coiling fingers. "You said you'd never leave, Jon! Or did I say that? Are you remembering correctly?" It had so much in store for him. It did love to draw things out.
Jon's breath was quick and he flailed against the concertina wire cage of its hand. His movements cut himself, just belong the eye-- the eye!-- and a fingertip went gentle and sweet to wipe the blood away. He tried to speak, but fear kept choking the words before they formed.
"I think you and I are going to be great friends, Jon," it said. "Gertrude and Martin were very close, before she gave him to me."
"Gertrude?" Jon flailed, whipping his head back and forth as it swirled closer and farther, back and forth, threatening collision with a kiss.
"You're much prettier than Gertrude ever was, though." Martin bent in and kissed him on the temple. "I'll leave you to get settled in."
"Wait!" Jon yelled, but by the time the word left his lips he was already alone in its hallways. It paid close attention as Jon cursed and raged inside it until eventually he gave up and accepted that all he could do was start walking.
As long as it had Jon, as much Archivist as there could be at the Magnus Institute lived within him, and there was nothing anyone could do about that. As long as it hadn't killed him yet.
But it wanted to have Jon alive inside it for a long time. Watching the way his frightened, teary face wavered between the elegant sweetness of fear and the rugged charm of his anger could drive a soul to madness.