Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Are you sure about this?”

“No, but I love you.”

“I love you too.”

His mouth tasted like blood, and it took far too long for him to realize what that meant. The world was dark and felt like everything and nothing. He couldn't tell if he was falling or rising, moving or staying still. Something was wrong, very wrong. His mind swirled as he tried to make sense of it all. He could no longer feel the knife gripped in his hand, had he dropped it? Did he even have hands anymore? Where was he? Where was he going?

“Martin? Martin, hey, wake up. We have work to do.”

A voice, one he couldn't quite place. Still, he might as well listen to it.

Slowly, he opened his eyes.

As the world came into focus he immediately registered where he was. The scratched wooden desk he had been laying his head on was one he knew well. He knew these overflowing filing cabinets. The smell of old paper and coffee and tea. He was back in the archives, but that didn't make sense.

He should know the woman shaking him awake. Her doe-like eyes shining curiously behind a pair of gold wire glasses, her bouncy brown curls pulled away from her face with a cream colored bandana that matched her cardigan. He could swear he'd never seen her before, but she knew his name. Suddenly, he realized he knew her too, memories overwritten with a monster's face.

“Sasha?” He stammered. “What-”

He was dead wasn't he? He had to be dead. Yes, he was dead and this was hell, or some other twisted form of afterlife.

“Sorry I woke you.” She said, “But you are on the clock, and I'd hate for the boss to realize you've been taking a nap. I did let you sleep for a good hour though.”

Martin looked down at his hands, they were clean, they weren't stained with blood or grimy with dust. He looked at his reflection in the shining base of the desk lamp, his hair was the same, uniform, reddish blond it normally was, no stark streaks of white in sight. Stranger still, he looked…younger somehow.

Finally, he looked at the calendar hanging on the wall.

“January 23rd, 2016.” It read. An entirely normal day, one he couldn't even recall the specifics of. It would be entirely insignificant, had it not been three years ago.

And that's about when the pieces started fitting together.

“Martin? What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost.” He didn't like the way Sasha was looking at him, a polite air of sympathy. Talk to me, I'm here for you. What the hell could he even say to her?

He shook his head. “I uh- I had a strange dream, that's all.” God, he hoped it was a dream. Please could it have just been a dream. He stood up. “I'm going to clear my head.”

“Alright, but I've got a file waiting for you when you come back!”

He didn't bother to respond, his heart was pounding loud in his ears. He wasn't heading outside, or to the atrium, or anywhere Sasha might be expecting him to, but that was fine, she wasn't following him. 

He needed assurance, assurance that everything he went through was just a very long, very bad dream. That his subconscious had simply decided to phycologically torture him for daring to fall asleep at work. He needed to know he made everything up.

He pushed a filing cabinet out of the way and crouched down to examine the specific spot of flooring under it. He ran his fingers along the wooden boards. Yes, there were gaps between them that were larger than normal. In a neat square, three feet on each side, and right in the center. A keyhole. The trapdoor to the tunnels, something he wouldn't have known about, couldn't have dreamed up. Which meant that somehow, someway, he had ended up years in the past. Before Jane, before the Not-Them, before anything that denied the idea that this was anything more than a normal job in academia. 

Somehow this made less sense than anything he'd been through before, he wouldn't have even believed it if he didn't still taste blood in his mouth. Jon's blood. Jon. He needed to find Jon.

Maybe he had gotten sent back too, maybe they could fix this, fix everything. They could do it together, save themselves, save Sasha, save-

In his rush to get to Jon’s office he nearly ran into Tim. He yelped and scrambled to catch the documents he was carrying.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Martin said, stopping in his tracks. He was just glad to see Tim alive, alive and happy.

“Woah, watch where you're going!” Tim's smile faded when he saw his face. “Uh-”

“Is Jon here?”

“I mean- Yes? Are you oka-”

“I need to see him.” Martin said firmly.

“Jeez, alright, alright, he's in his office. Is something wrong?” He sounded so genuinely concerned, did he really look that awful?

“Nothing's wrong, just- thank you, Tim.” 

He gave him a puzzled look before stepping aside. “Right…well hope you're having a good day! I'll see you around.”

He was having a rather awful day, really. He had a feeling both of them knew that.

When Tim had left the hallway, Martin let himself linger outside the door to Jon’s office for a moment, imagining what might happen once he opened it. Would Jon's eyes light up when he saw him? Would he rush to embrace him? Jon would know what was really going on, he'd know what they needed to do. They could stop Elias, they could save the world, they could do anything.

The door creaked open, the hinges were always rusted, no one had ever thought to fix it. 

“Jon?”

He was sitting at his desk, pouring over a file with a bored expression. He looked so much different then the last time Martin had seen him. His scars were gone, his hair shorter, his eyes still brown instead of vibrantly green and always staring. When he noticed him walk in, his face did not light up. He didn't even smile. His expression barely changed at all. There was nothing loving in those familiar eyes, none of the adoration he had grown so used to. Just a disinterest and resentment he thought had been left behind.

“What is it, Martin?” Jon said with a sigh, tossing the file onto his desk. 

He took a step back. “Jon…Jon it's me.” A certain dread began to crawl up Martin's throat as he spoke.

“Of course it's you, what do you want? I’m in the middle of something, and I'm not interested in wasting my time.”

This- this wasn't his Jon. No, this was Jon before he was his. This was Jon in 2016. Newly appointed head archivist, as ignorant to what he was getting himself into as the rest of them were. Finally, Martin processed what had happened, what was happening.

The Jon he knew was dead. Reset, replaced by someone with no memory of what they both went through because to him, it never happened.

“Martin?” Jon asked, noticing something was up, like everyone else had. He needed to get away from here, he needed to fix this, somehow.

“I- I’m not feeling well.” Martin said at last. “I’ll be clocking out for today, is that alright?”

Jon sighed again, in relief? Disappointment? “That’s fine, thank you for telling me. Hope you’re feeling better soon.”

An empty courtesy, he knew that, it still made him hope maybe a little too much. The Jon that loved him is in there somewhere, if surrounded by layers of thorns. A sudden thought struck Martin, did he want to peel them back? Did he want Jon to fall for him again, if that was even possible? A tight knot formed in his chest. After all, if Jon never loved him, then Martin couldn’t be the one to kill him.

Oh right, he had killed him.

Martin left the room without so much as a nod. Mind swimming, tears gathering in his eyes. He prayed no one saw him as he retreated into the supply closet and leaned back against the door, sliding downwards and hugging his knees close to his chest as he started to sob. 

Christ, what had he done? Saved the world, he guessed.

What about his world? He’d driven a knife into his chest as he whispered empty promises about how it was all going to be alright, but it wasn’t alright, now was it? Because now Martin was here, and maybe everyone he loved was alive but they wouldn’t understand, and he was alone.

Martin Blackwood was alone. He could have laughed, a tale as old as time, wasn’t it? A tale he thought ended, but here he was, back at its start. 

What was he even supposed to do?

Save Jon, obviously. Save the world.

How?

He didn’t know. So what was there to do but choke out his misery in this dark closet, soaking his sweater with tears instead of blood? He took off his glasses and buried his face in his sleeves. He had been keeping a lot of pain at bay for Jon’s sake, Jon who looked so broken after facing what he had done, what he had been made to do. Martin had been there to embrace him, tell him that he was there, that he would always be. Now it was Martin’s turn to break, and there was nobody to hold him together anymore.

He cried until his eyes were sore and his throat was raw. Until he had shed every tear he had in him, and he still felt he needed more. Could someone hear him? He had been trying to be quiet. The others still had to work. They didn’t deserve to have to deal with him. The boxes of paper and hoardes of paperclips were better listeners then his coworkers. They couldn’t pity him, they had no desire to help, they would never ask him what was wrong and he would never answer. Where would he start? So many things were wrong and nobody knew about any of them. He carried the weight alone, maybe it was better that way.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, he was still getting used to the idea that a minute even meant anything after so long spent in a ruined world that laughed at the idea of linear time. After a while the tightness in his chest dissipated and he was just left feeling tired. So tired…

“How long has he been in there?” Asked a voice from out in the hall, Tim’s voice.

“Not sure.” Sasha replied. “Over a half an hour, at least.”

“Did he seem… off to you earlier?”

“A little. This is going to sound really weird but I swear to God, he didn’t recognize who I was when he woke up.”

“Do you think something happened? Maybe he got some bad news.”

“Don’t know, guess we’ll find out.”

There were three brisk knocks, then Sasha spoke again, louder this time.

“Martin? Are you alright in there?

Martin said nothing.

“You can talk to us Martin, I promise. Just tell us what’s wrong. Was it something Jon said?” Her voice dropped to a mutter. “I swear I’m going to kill him one of these days.”

Tim snickered. “Count on me to be your alibi.”

There was a pause.

“Really, we’re here for you.” Sasha said.

A longer pause.

“We’re worried about you.”

Martin leaned his head back against the door. He had missed them, almost didn’t realize how much he had missed them until now. He had always regretted not getting to know them better, assuming he’d have all the time in the world with them.

Well, now could be a start.

He turned the knob and the door swung inwards, revealing Tim and Sasha standing behind it, looking at him with concern. 

“Do you really want to know what happened?” Martin asked hoarsely.

“If you’ll tell us.” Sasha said. 

“Alright but it’s uh- a long story, and it’s a lot, and you might want to come in here, if anyone else heard…”

Sasha shrugged and joined him in the closet, and while Tim looked suspicious, he followed, shutting the door behind him.

“Alright, so tell us what all this is about.” He said, crossing his arms.

Martin winced. “It’s probably going to be hard to believe.”

Sasha laughed. “We work in the Magnus Institute, Martin. We get paid to see things that are hard to believe.”

“Right, right, okay then.” He took a deep breath. “I’m from the future.”

They both looked at him with wide eyes.

“Wh- You’re what?” Tim stammered. “Like- are we talking robots and spaceships kind of future or-”

“No! No, three years, three years in the future. I only just got sent back, that’s why I was… weird.”

“How did you get sent back?” Sasha asked.

“I’m not exactly sure, dimensional travel maybe? I told you it’s a long story- look you know those tapes?”

“The tapes Jon uses to record the statements?”

“Yes! They uh- pulled me back in time I think. Y’know, wrapped around me and-” He made a tugging motion.

“Uh huh.” Sasha said, “Well that doesn’t make a lot of sense but I can accept it.”

“What, so we’re just going to believe him?” Tim protested, “What he just told us is insane, he’s probably making it all up! Or he’s legitimately delusional. I’m sorry but I’m going to need, I don’t know, proof?”

Martin huffed. “I know why you joined the Institute, Tim.”

Something in his gaze hardened. “And why is that?”

“You want to avenge your brother, Danny. He was taken by supernatural forces, you feel guilty, you think that by working here you can get close enough to the things that killed him to destroy them entirely.”

Tim’s expression shifted to one of shock. “How- how do you know that?”

“You gave a statement on it, years from now.”

“God, alright.” Tim backed up and sat on a stack of boxes. “Good enough for me. My coworker is a time traveler, great.”

“Sorry if that was too personal…”

“No, no. I asked for it.”

Sasha placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Martin…what did you see? What’s going to happen to us?”

Martin sighed. “Do you want me to start at the beginning?”

Sasha nodded.

“A few months from now, Jane Prentiss is going to infiltrate the institute, by the end of the year, she attacks. Jon and Tim get injured, and you… you get cornered in Artefact Storage. Where a creature called the Not-Them finds you, kills you, and replaces you.”

Sasha grew a little pale. Tim stared at the floor.

“And that’s just the start of it really, it only gets worse from-” Martin choked up a bit, “I mean, Jon gets framed for murder, Tim- you die in an explosion trying to avenge your brother, I almost get lost to an ancient entity that feeds off of loneliness and then-” He let out a shaky breath and looked over to his coworkers, who looked increasingly uneasy, “Then the world ends.”

“Ends…how?” Tim says slowly.

“It was Elias’ plan.” Martin explains, “Elias who isn’t really Elias, who got possessed by Jonah Magnus when he became head of the institute. As for the catalyst…that was Jon.”

“Our boss ends the world?” Sasha yelped.

“He didn’t want to! He was tricked! I should have been there but I wasn’t and- It wasn’t his fault! Elias made him read an incantation that when spoken by him would bring the things that have caused every terrible thing in this goddamn archive into our world, and that guilt ruined him. So we tried to find a way to fix it.”

“And?” Tim raised an eyebrow.

“We did, we found two solutions, either Jon becomes the Pupil of the Eye and finds a way to kill everyone faster and just get it over with, or we sever the connection the Entities have to our world and send them… somewhere else. To some other dimension, where they can cause havoc, just not to us.”

Sasha spoke softly. “And which one did you go with?”

“The second one…” Pain wrapped itself around Martin’s chest once again, “Only, Jon went behind everyone’s backs and tried to go with plan A.” He clenched his fists, trying to keep his breathing under control, “He told me to kill him, in the end, to set everyone free, so I did, and now I’m here.”

Tim exhaled. “Yeah, that is a lot.”

“God, Martin, I’m so sorry. No wonder.” Sasha whispered.

“So you and Jon were you…” Tim started, cutting himself off when Sasha shot him a Look.

“He loved me if that’s what you’re asking.” Martin murmured, “I loved him, still do.” 

“You and Jon? Really? That guy ha-”

“Quiet, Tim.” Sasha snapped, “This isn’t the time.” She walked over to a shelf and took down a notepad and a pen, “So Martin, what are we going to do about it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“How are we going to help you save the world?”

“Well uh-” They both looked at him expectantly, “We need to prevent Jon from getting marked by all fourteen fears, it’s too late for the Web and the Eye, but the others, if we strategize we can stop him from getting marked by them. If we succeed with even one, he can’t complete the ritual.”

Sasha scribbled something down in the notepad and turned it over. It read “Operation: Save Jon (and by extention the world)” in big, tall letters.

“Not the catchiest name.” Tim remarked.

Sasha shrugged. “We can workshop it. So, what’s our first move?”

Martin thought for a moment. “We need more time to strategize, but first order of business is making sure Jane never attacks the Institute. Look, are you two sure you’re up for this? It will be dangerous.”

Tim smiled. “You just told us that you watched us die horrible deaths in your timeline, how much worse can it get?”

“Come on, Martin.” Sasha said, “What are we waiting for? Let’s rescue our boss.”

Chapter Text

It was easier than you would think for Martin to settle back into his old life. Refreshing even. He could pretend everything was simpler for a while. Work was the same it had always been. Sasha and Tim, while they had liked him well enough before, now started to see him as a real friend. He even miraculously managed to entirely avoid Elias for a few weeks.

Nights were difficult, lonely and often sleepless, and he wasn’t bringing Jon tea anymore.

He almost had, on many occasions. He’d bring two mugs down from the cabinet instead of one, make it exactly as Jon liked his, as he’d perfected through trial and error and years of knowing him. Then he’d stop. Maybe he would worry that Jon would get suspicious about how perfect it was, maybe he would add a little bit extra sugar this time, or use Earl Grey instead of English Breakfast. Or sometimes he would just freeze, not knowing how he could take the gamble of if Jon would thank him or not, or even look at him at all, not knowing if he could handle seeing his face, not knowing if repeating this daily ritual that had become such a symbol of his love would make him break down again. In the end, he just poured the other mug down the sink and sipped his own (usually cold by then) tea alone.

He didn’t know if Jon even noticed, honestly, or if he was too buried in his work. Some selfish part of Martin hoped that he missed it. 

Sasha and Tim were being friendly at least. They started meeting outside of work more often now, partly out of necessity and partly because they just enjoyed each others’ company. He had already sat down with them at his house and explained everything he couldn’t in a supply closet. The Entities, how they worked, the tunnels, Gertrude, Elias, all of it. Now that they knew, that they understood, he felt himself feeling less tense around them. They would go out for lunch or for drinks and just talk now, whether it was about the plan or about something more mundane. 

Right now, their day off was being spent in a cafe, talking over cups of coffee, tea and a shared assortment of pastries. It started off with general conversation, like Sasha rescuing a new lizard she named Olive, before they inevitably moved to strategy. Their chatting became hushed whispers and coded language, the tired looking college students and smiling couples around them probably weren’t listening, but you could never be too sure.

“So…” Sasha said, swirling the lukewarm dredges of her latte, “Are we going to ever tell Jon about this? Operation One Step Ahead, I mean.”

Tim wrinkled his nose. “Is that what we’re going with? It sounds like a gifted kid program.”

“I said we’d workshop it, and I’d like to see you come up with something better. Anyway…”

“There’s no reason to not involve him.” Tim pointed out, “I mean, he’s basically the center of it all. Not fair to keep him in the dark, is it?”

Martin’s grip tightened around his mug. “No, we can’t tell him, at least not yet. We can’t just tell him about all this, how would he even react?”

“Well, probably not well but-”

“He’d react worse than bad. He’d hurtle on a downward spiral if he knew what he did, and that’s if he even believes us.” Martin shook his head, “We’re keeping him out of this. Best case scenario, this all works out and he never has to talk to me ever again. He can just live a normal life, we all can.”

“Wouldn’t you want to spend that life with him though?”

He winced. “Well, yes, but he’s not falling for me again. Besides, maybe it’s safer if he doesn’t, I mean- without me he never would have been marked by the Lonely and I’m the one who-” He sighed, cutting himself off, “I just need him to be safe, that’s all that matters. what I want means nothing.”

“God, Martin, you’re a bummer.” Tim muttered, stabbing a fork into a danish.

“Well I think I rather have a right to be-”

“You two, calm down.” Sasha interrupted, “I’m inclined to listen to Martin on this one. We’re not telling Jon, not now. Jon’s unpredictable, it’s risky, and Elias is watching him basically all the time so he could find out our whole plan through him.”

Tim huffed and sat back in the booth. “Yeah, fine, we won’t tell him, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re completely avoiding him, Martin. He’s going to notice.”

“Will he though?” Martin said, a slight bitterness to his words that complimented the scent of coffee in the air.

“If you go from doting on him constantly to barely even talking to him then yeah, anyone would notice that.”

‘It’s true, Martin, he keeps asking about you.” Sasha added, “He knows something’s wrong. He’s prickly, and doesn’t like you, sure, but he’s not heartless. He’s worried as much as anyone else.”

“Well- I- It’s hard to look at him, okay? With you two, you’ve been gone for so long that it’s so much easier to get to know you again but him? I just lost him, and now he’s back and he doesn’t know about anything that happened. Do you know how hard that is? Do you know how difficult it is to know that all those memories we made together are just held by me now? And I would be fine if I could just grieve normally but I have to see him every day and he hates me. Being head over heels for someone who hates me was easier when I didn’t know he had the potential to love me back.” Martin blinked tears from his eyes and drank the last half inch of tea from the bottom of his mug, letting his tongue roll over the gritty specks of leaves that had sunk to the bottom.

The table sat silent for a long moment.

“I’m sorry.” Sasha said softly, “I couldn’t imagine what you’re going through” Another pause. “What was he like? Or, what will he be like? Confusing.”

Martin traced his finger along the grain of the wooden table, the scratches and scuffs left by previous patrons. “Kinder, he was so much kinder. He wasn’t perfect, worse in some ways, but he was mine. I don’t know what I could have done differently, how I could have saved him, or maybe he was just doomed from the start. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure he never has to go through it all again.”

“And what about you?” Asked Tim.

“What about me?”

Martin had to be the ideal archival assistant. He was doing his job at a precision and speed he was sure most were jealous of. This was of course, partially because he had already been doing it for years, and partially because he didn’t particularly want Jon or Elias to confront him about slacking off. No matter how much digging around for follow up on a statement could be a slog. No matter how boring sorting thousands of statements by date and entering them into a database was. No matter how much he really wanted to tell Jon that yes, that statement was real, and no, that person was not on drugs or hallucinating or anything like that. It definitely happened, they literally encountered the exact thing they were talking about. 

But it’s fine, everything was fine. 

And so, Martin was prepared for another average day of sorting through boxes of statements from 40 years ago with Sasha when Tim burst into the room holding a styrofoam takeout container.

“Tim, at least eat your lunch in the break room.” Sasha said absentmindedly, carefully removing a staple from the statement of Mallory Chilcox. 

“It’s not my lunch. This is the only thing I could think to put it in.” It was now that Martin noticed he looked a little nervous, “Look, I found this crawling out of a crack in the wall near Jon’s office.” He opened the container and sure enough, inside was a writhing, silver worm, vying for purchase on the smooth styrofoam.

Martin cursed under his breath. “Of course she’d find this place without me leading her here, of course she would.”

“So… guessing this isn’t a normal worm then?”

“No Tim! Of course not! Now destroy it before it gets out.”

He didn’t have to tell him twice. Tim unceremoniously dumped the thing onto the ground and smashed it to a pulp with his heel. 

Sasha wrinkled her nose. “What now?”

“Well there’s going to be more where that came from, that’s the problem.”

“So we hit em with a fire extinguisher and be done with it, problem solved.” Tim added, tossing a worm-gut-soaked tissue in the trash.

Martin shook his head. “It won’t be that simple, we have no idea how many of them there are or if Prentiss is down there, if we just go in there guns blazing we could get overwhelmed, and then it’s all over.”

“What if we scoped it out?” Sasha wondered aloud. “Send someone into the tunnels to see the situation and figure out how to deal with it.”

“Wouldn’t that be really risky?” Tim said.

“It only has to be one of us going in there, the other two stay in the archives and act as backup. It’ll be risky, yes, but hopefully the worst we walk away with is a couple stray worms we can extract as quickly as possible. It’s not foolproof, but it might be our best shot.”

“That’s…not a bad idea.” Martin mused, “We stay late tonight, once everyone is gone I’ll go in and assess the situation. We plan from there.”

“Well shit, Martin, I really would but my cousin’s birthday party is tonight…She’s turning eight, I kind of have to be there.” Tim said apologetically.

“You can’t seriously be trying to get out of this?” Sasha protested.

“I’m not! I swear I’m not, look I’ll bring cake tomorrow as proof if you two don’t get eaten by worms.”

Martin sighed. “That’s fine, Tim. I think we’ll be fine, go have fun.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “What kind of cake?”

“Funfetti.” He said, “It has a unicorn on it.”

“Consider yourself forgiven, Tim.”

That night, Martin and Sasha stood in front of the trapdoor into the tunnels, torches in hand and every worst case scenario playing in their heads. It wasn’t open yet, but even closed it felt threatening, it felt like it wanted to swallow them whole.

“Do you have the key?” Martin asked.

Sasha nodded. “Swiped it out of Elias’ desk when he wasn’t looking.” She passed it to him. It was a heavy, rusted, iron thing. One of those skeleton things, old, a key the a lock that hadn’t gotten replaced in the past 200 years.

He knelt down and turned the key in the lock, the mechanism slid into place with a satisfying click.

It swung open, the space beneath it dark and yawning. He knew the iron ladder could hold his weight, but that didn’t stop it from looking rickety. He shined his torch into the darkness, illuminating the stone brick. No worms from what he could see, but he knew that wasn’t a good enough answer. 

Martin took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.”

“Don’t die down there.” Sasha said softly, “It would be pretty inconvenient if you did.”

He smiled. “I’ve survived worse.” He climbed down the short ladder and touched down on solid ground. He looked back up as Sasha, and she tossed him a fire extinguisher. 

“Seriously, Martin! We can’t do this without you!” 

He nodded and gave her a small wave, before turning his torch to the tunnels in front of him and started to walk. 

He found a whole lot of nothing for about 20 feet, just a few stray worms he made sure to kill. Then he turned the corner.

He had his torch’s beam trained on the floor. Just enough to show the beginnings of a writhing mass of worms, slimy and wriggling around each other. He knew what he would see when he looked up, but of course he did anyway.

What used to be Jane Prentiss was standing with her back to him. Long, tangled black hair that fell to her waist and that glistening red cocktail dress covered most of the gaping holes in her pale, dead skin. Worms burrowing in them, feeding on what remained of her flesh. Then she turned around. Her movement was nowhere close to human. She twisted and writhed like whatever was puppeting her didn’t know how bones were supposed to work. Her mouth moved, but instead of words what came out was a waterfall of filth and worms. She was speaking, but she had no vocal chords to form words with. The hive spoke for her, thousands, millions of  tiny voices coming together to form a rotten, fetid choir.

“Martin, is it?” She said, “Kind of you to join me.”

Every inch of Martin’s body was screaming at him to run, but his feet stayed planted to the stained ground.

“I wasn’t expecting someone so soon but- the hive hungers…you won’t be too bad of a host, I think.”

A strangled sound escaped his throat and he sprinted off in the direction of the trapdoor. Jane laughed and shot after him, taunting him as she went.

“I bet you think you’re so smart, think you know things we don’t. You think you can actually save people do you?”

“Shut up!” Martin yelled, he felt something soft and wet drop onto his arm. Dozens of worms, eager for fresh blood. He yelped and tried to shake them off, but he felt some linger behind. No matter, if he had to choose between the couple of worms trying to crawl their way under the sleeve of his sweater and the horde chasing him, well, he had to keep running.

Thankfully, he hadn’t wandered too far, and thankfully, he hadn’t gotten lost. He found his way to the ladder and scrambled up it. Sasha must have been shouting his name but his blood was roaring too loud in his ears to hear her. Safely back in the archives, he rushed to close the trapdoor and lock it before Jane could follow him.

SLAM!

She rammed into the wood. 

SLAM!

He hoped it would hold, it had to hold.

SLAM! SLAM! SLAM!

Her attempts grew faster and more violent, until finally, silence. Martin let himself breathe.

“W-what the hell was that?” Sasha asked, shaking.

“Who do you thin- Ah!” A sudden, sharp pain jolted up his arm, oh yeah, that. He rolled up his sleeve to reveal six worms each in various stages of burrowing below his skin. “Shit. Shit shit shit- Sasha!”

“I got it! I got it!” She picked up the pair of pliers she used to remove all those staples and clamped down on the worms that were the closest to disappearing into his forearm, tugging it out with one swift motion as blood began to well up from the wound. Martin gritted his teeth. He should have given Jon and Tim more credit, this hurt, a lot. Soon enough though, all six worms were writhing in a bloody pile on the desk, and Martin was no longer in active danger. Sasha killed the things with the extinguisher before opening the first aid kit.

“So what’s the game plan now?” She asked, uncapping a bottle of saline solution and beginning to flush the wounds.

He winced. “We strike tomorrow night. Open the trapdoor, run, break into the utility room, set off the fire suppression system. Worms are dead, everyone’s happy. Well, Elias probably isn’t.”

“You think he’s going to be suspicious?”

“Probably.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “If we play dumb we might be able to avoid him finding out.’

She scoffed. “That’s a big might right there.” She tossed another wad of gauze onto the growing pile of bloodstained fabric and selected a roll of bandages.

“I know.” He said quietly.

“Do you have a plan for when he does find out? Because he will.”

“I don’t know, Sasha.” He said with increasing irritation, “I don’t know if any of this is even going to work in the first place! It’s all just a gamble and maybe things end up just like before or- or worse but-” He cut himself off.

“But we have to try, don’t we?” Sasha said slowly, pinning the bandage into place.

Martin flexed his fingers and sighed. “Yeah…Yeah we do.”

His phone buzzed, A text from Tim from a few hours ago. “Cake secured!” It read, sent along with a picture of him and a little girl, they were smiling and wearing glittery party hats. Another text, sent just now: “You two okay?”

Martin smiled and typed up a response. “We’re alive. Debrief at cafe tomorrow morning?”

A moment to respond, then just a thumbs up emoji. Martin pocketed his phone again. 

“We should probably clean this up, huh?” He said.

“Yeah… how about you do that?” She stood up and patted him on the shoulder, “You keep that bandage clean, I’m guessing if you get a wound infected by the Corruption it’s way worse then getting it normally infected, and that’s already bad.”

“Yeah, I’m not an idiot, Sasha, I’ll be careful.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Wh- Hey!” He stifled a laugh.

“You didn’t tell me I’m wrong.” She teased, flashing a mischievous smile. “No offense but you don’t seem like the careful type.”

He rolled his eyes. “If you want to call someone reckless Jon is right there.”

“Hey, it’s a new timeline, maybe he’ll prove us wrong.”

Martin went quiet for a moment, eyes shining in thought. “Yeah, for some reason I doubt that.”

Sasha sighed. “You can’t expect him to keep out of danger if he doesn’t know he’s in any, you know.”

“We talked about this, I can’t-”

“Yeah, we did, but I can’t help but feel like you aren’t telling because you just don’t want to, instead of it actually being to keep him safe. He’s a grown man, I think he can handle the news that our boss is trying to get him to end the world.”

Martin didn’t say anything, he just looked at her.

She looked away. “I just- I don’t think that sheltering him from all this is going to do as much good as you want it to, and I’d really hate for anything to go wrong or anyone to get hurt. I won’t tell him myself, I don’t think Tim will either. When it comes down to it, it’s your decision. I want you to think about it though, I mean, really weigh your options here. We have everything at stake, you, me, Tim, the world, your future boyfriend. I know you probably can’t help your emotions getting in the way of things, and believe me, I understand, but you have to be logical. You’re calling the shots, that means you need to try to make the right decisions, and I’m not sure this is it.”

Her words hung in the air for an agonizingly long moment.

“Goodnight, Sasha.” Martin said at last.

“Oh for Christ’s sake! Can you at least try to listen to me?”

“I’ll think about it, okay? I- you have a point. I just need to be alone right now, I think.”

Sasha looked at him sympathetically. “Right…” She dug around in her bag and produced a packet of painkillers, which she handed to him, “Here, take these. They aren’t much but it should take the edge off.”

He turned them over in his hands. “Thanks.”

She smiled at this. “No problem, stay safe, tomorrow Operation: Lock the Door enters phase one!”

Martin chuckled. “I think you’re getting somewhere with that one.”

“Thanks, I thought of it when you were running for your life.” She pulled on her coat and started to walk out the door, “Goodnight!”

“I’ll see you!” He called after her.

Once she was gone, Martin collapsed into a chair, exhausted, with far too many thoughts to chew on. 

He didn’t think he was sleeping tonight.

Chapter Text

It was about 1:15 in the morning, and Martin had spent the last eight hours hiding in document storage. Of course he wasn’t alone, Tim and Sasha were there too. They had played a lot of card games, taken some naps, and eaten some leftover cake all while waiting for Jon to actually pack up and go home. There was a while there where he worried that he was just going to fall asleep at his desk and they’d have to reschedule, but sure enough, after what felt like an eternity, the lights switched off and Martin saw a dark shadow pass the small window in the door and head towards the exit. He saw Tim and Sasha visibly melt in relief. 

“Thank God.” Tim muttered, tossing his cards to the ground, “I could not have played another round of Uno.”

“You’re just pissed because I keep beating you.” Sasha pointed out.

“Not true! I’m pissed because we’ve been in here for ages since Jon’s such a workaholic that a normal 9 to 5 is an entirely foreign concept.”

“We’ve all been staying later, Tim.” Sasha said, packing the cards back into the box . “It’s the Archives, it’s the Eye. It’s got all of us caught up in it.”

He sighed. “I know, I know. Still, how much sleep does he even get?”

“Not a lot.” Martin said flatly, “But I don’t think that’s ever been a new thing.”

“Yeah, sounds about right. We sure he’s gone?”

Sasha opened the door and switched on a torch, looking up and down the hall. “Looks like it, I think we’re good to go.”

One by one, they walked out into the hallway. Anxiety gnawed at Martin, this was it, their first real chance to make a difference. If they pulled this off, it would have real impacts. All they needed to do was not die, which he would admit, easier said then done. 

“Tim, do you want to do the honors of opening the trapdoor?” Martin asked, holding out the key.

He shuddered. “Only if you two come with me, I’m not dying alone, not like that.”

“You wouldn’t die alone, silly.” Sasha teased, “You’d have thousands of friends with you.”

Tim stared at her.

“Right, right. Okay, we’ll come with, right Martin?”

He nodded, and so they advanced.

The trapdoor looked just the same as it did yesterday, plain and unassuming. With shaking hands, Tim slides the key into the lock and opens it as slowly and quietly as possible. Of course, all his caution couldn’t stop the faint light from their torches from spilling into the tunnels and illuminating the unquiet, squirming shape of Jane Prentiss waiting below.

A laugh, a horrible chorus of a laugh that brought with it a rotting, sickly smell. “Back for more, are we?” What used to be Jane shifted to look up at them with her lack of eyes, or rather, hundreds of dozens of tiny ones.

Tim didn’t hesitate, he just started bolting, and it didn’t take a lot of convincing for the others to follow him. Martin looked back just in time to see a pale, spindly hand reach up out of the tunnels. They heard Jane crash through the archives behind them as they scrambled up the stairs and Martin slammed the door closed. 

They all just lingered for a moment, catching their breath, or maybe waiting for something.

SLAM!

Sasha screamed and pushed her weight against the door, Tim grabbed a chair to serve as a barricade.

“This door won’t hold forever, little archivists!” Jane chided. “We’ll worm our way under it! We’ll chew through it! You’ll hear them one day, I’ll make sure of it! You will hear them sing!”

“Oh fuck.” Tim breathed, both hands currently tangled in his hair. “Oh christ, oh we’re so dead, we are so dead.”

“Calm down.” Martin snapped, “We just need to keep moving. The utility room with the switch isn’t that far.”

That seemed to shut him up. After a few minutes of walking Sasha broke the silence.

“Are you sure we won’t run into security? We’re not being the sneakiest.” She stared nervously up at a camera in the corner.

“I thought Elias didn’t hire any security?” Said Tim.

As if on cue, the sound of heels clicking on linoleum began to ring through the hallways, getting louder, closer. 

Martin swore under his breath. “That’s because he is the security, and it looks like he’s noticed us.” He took a step back. “Sasha! Make a run for it, the switch for the archives should be labeled as such, just hit it, go!”

She hesitated for half a second before nodding and taking off down the hallway. Leaving Tim and Martin alone to face the devil that employed them. He looked over to his friend, who stood, gaze steeled and jaw clenched, against the slender shape of Elias Bouchard that walked towards them. Martin could tell that Elias wasn’t interested in playing nice, he felt something watching him, wide eyed, oh so interested.

“Tim. Run.” He said through gritted teeth.

“What? I can’t just leave you-”

“He can’t show me anything I haven’t seen before! Run and don’t stop, get out of here!” He turned his gaze back to Elias, who didn’t seem to want to stop him. Martin got the awful feeling that there was only one person here he wanted to talk to. “He probably won’t kill me.” He whispered. That seemed to be all the reassurance Tim needed. Soon enough, he was gone, and Martin was left at the whims of the beating heart of the Institute.

“You’re not going to run too?” Elias said smoothly, he always spoke like he knew everything, like he was always one step ahead, and most of the time, he was. “Such bravery, Martin, I wouldn’t expect that from you.” He walked right up to him, and even though Martin was several inches taller than him, those piercing green eyes seemed to drill right into his skull and intimidate him all the same.

“I’m not afraid of you.” He said through gritted teeth. 

“And why is that? Because you really should be. I’ll be honest, you have been an enigma to me these past few weeks. You’re just acting so unlike yourself, and now I find you here in the Institute long after you told me you went home, conspiring with your coworkers to set off the fire suppression system.”

“I’m not telling you anything.” Martin spat.

At this, Elias laughed. “Oh you don’t have to.”

Martin screwed his eyes shut like it could make any difference as that horrible gaze bore into him. He couldn’t do anything to stop it, or anything at all, as Elias rummaged around in his mind. Those few awful seconds felt like an eternity, and when Martin dared to look again, Elias had an awful, smug expression on his face.

“Oh. Oh that is very interesting.”

Martin couldn’t find any words, there was nothing he could say.

“You must think you’re so noble, don’t you? Trying your very hardest to save the world before it ends, trying to save a man who won’t even give you the time of day, at least not now.”

Martin closed his eyes and waited.

“And what’s more, you think you’ve got it all figured out. You know my plan, you know my secret, you think you can stop me, you think you can be a hero. Well, let me tell you something. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, and more importantly.” He leaned in closer and muttered the final words into Martin’s ear. “Your precious Archivist is far more disposable to be than you would hope. You can try to save your friends, and I will let you, you can even try to save yourself, but you are trying to rewrite a story that was written long before you entered it. I’m afraid the ink has already dried. You will never win, not entirely, you are just one man with a foolish hope, and me? I am a god.”

Then the fire alarm began to blare, and a terrible, ear splitting scream filled the air. Seeing a window of opportunity, Martin punched Elias straight across the face and ran off in the direction Sasha went. Fear was replaced with satisfaction as he heard Elias shout after him.

“You’ll regret that, Martin! You’ll regret all of this!”

Maybe he would, he probably would, but he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the end of the world. No, he will fight, and if he fails he will fail knowing he tried, he could have the peace that came with knowing it was inevitable. There was the chance, the smallest chance that this worked. He could have a happy ending then, or maybe he wouldn’t. Celebrated or unsung. Loved or alone. He would have saved everyone then. That small chance, that everyone could live. That’s why he was here. He was going to make the most of this second chance, and maybe, just maybe, it could work out.

He found Sasha standing just outside the utility room, wringing her hands.

“Did I do it?” She asked, “Is she dead?”

“She’s dead, Sasha, you’re safe.” Saying it out loud made him feel giddy. He did it, he actually did it, he had saved someone. Sasha was here, and she was herself. All he had to do was keep it that way.

“Where’s Tim?”

“I told him to run, he’s probably long gone by now. Let’s just get out of here and let the ECDC handle cleanup.”

“And Elias?”

Martin sighed. “He knows. Everything.”

Sasha retreated into her cardigan. “Shit, that makes things complicated.” She studied the look on his face. “Did he…say something to you? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” He lied, “Just what you’d expect, trying to demoralize us, but it’s not going to happen. I can’t let him get to me, you know. He talks big about how infallible his plan is and how powerless we are to stop him, but at the end of the day he’s just a hubristic old man.”

“He’s a hubristic old man who’s plan worked.” Sasha admitted.

“It won’t this time.”

The ECDC arrived quickly enough. They mostly talked to Elias, who he was sure gave them a thorough cover story. After a round of decontamination Martin and Sasha were free to sit on the curb until morning. After a couple hours Tim even came back, blankets and a thermos of tea in hand. It was there the three of them sat in relative silence, watching government workers in hazmat suits carry out bags of shriveled worm corpses. It was around dawn when they wheeled out what was left of Prentiss, hidden in a body bag. There wasn’t much to say, really. They had done it, but how much was the first step of a lengthy plan worth celebrating? Everyone was okay, at least, that he could be glad about. 

He guessed it was around 7:00, though he hadn’t checked. Sasha had dozed off a while ago, resting her head on his shoulder as she slept. He supposed that meant she trusted him. All those days he spent mourning the fact he didn’t know what she looked like, those missed opportunities, every chance to get to know her better that he didn’t take, and here she was, alive, his friend, even. He couldn’t even remember the last time he could say he had friends instead of just coworkers. He stared down into the thermos of tea in his hands, the awful tea that Tim tried his best to make for him, and smiled.

Tim absentmindedly fiddled with a Rubix cube beside him, considering he had been going at it for almost four hours without luck, he assumed he wasn’t very good. Maybe he was trying not to solve it on purpose. He wasn’t watching the doors of the Institute as the workers filed in and out. He was just waiting until Sasha and Martin got the go-ahead to go home so he could as well. Martin didn’t know why he hadn’t gone home already, he didn’t feel the need to ask.

It was an overcast morning, and around them the world was starting to wake up. Cafes opened, the flow of cars down the road got more frequent. Pedestrians stopped to ogle at the newest unusual thing to happen to the Magnus Institute before getting shooed away. A few tried to speak to the trio of archival assistants huddled on the curb, but they didn’t get a response. That was until a more familiar passerby walked up to them.

“Do you three mind telling me what’s going on?” Jon asked.

Martin opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. God, he really was a wreck. He couldn’t even talk to him normally. Jon was standing there, wearing the same long wool coat he’s had for years and the same scarf he wrapped around Martin’s neck as they trekked through a particularly frozen fear domain. Martin’s heart was fighting for the right to just tell him everything, to tell him that he loved him at least. He couldn’t of course, there’s no way that wouldn’t end in disaster, in yet more heartbreak when he didn’t know if he could stand any more. Oh but there was a chance, a chance Jon would realise he felt the same and he could fall into his arms again. Fall into his arms only to be asked to kill him again. No, Martin’s happiness wasn’t worth it, if he got thrown into the Lonely again, Jon couldn’t care enough to follow him. So he kept quiet.

“We found out Jane Prentiss was planning to attack the institute, so we handled it.” Tim answered for him, one of those half-truths that weren’t technically a lie, but didn’t tell the full story.

“Handled it…how exactly?”

Tim grinned. “Carbon Dioxide kills the worms, so we just set off the fire suppression system. They’re all dead, Prentiss included, those guys are just helping with cleanup.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” Jon groaned, “When did this happen?”

“About 2 am, I forgot my coat, so I went back for it. I found the infestation and called these two for backup.”

Jon glared at Martin, apparently looking for confirmation, he just nodded in response, going along with the story. Tim was pretty good at lying, it seemed.

“So instead of calling Elias, or God forbid- the authorities, to deal with the incredibly dangerous supernatural manifestation you stumbled across, you called your coworkers?”

His smile widened. “Hey, It all worked out, didn’t it? Plus this whole deal nabs us a couple days off so I’m practically a hero.”

“That is idiotic! And reckless! You could have all been killed, or worse!”

“Aww, you care about us.” Sasha said sleepily, stirring awake.

“Christ, Sasha, I thought you were the responsible one here.”

“Maybe in comparison to those too, but in general?” She made a so-so motion. 

Jon muttered something under his breath. “Okay- just promise you’ll think next time something like this happe-”

Shouting from the Institute, a sudden commotion that drew everyone’s attention with a snap. Someone burst out of the front door, spreading the news to everyone outside.

“A body! There’s a body in the tunnels!” They shouted, and everyone in earshot was stunned into silence.

Oh yeah.

He had forgotten about that.

Chapter Text

The waves lapped at Martin’s feet, scattering sand as they pulled in and out. The sky was overcast, but not in the way that foretold the coming storm.Only the mist and pale grey clouds of a dreary, overcast day where nothing much changed at all. The sea was so drowned in fog it was impossible to draw a horizon line. Everything was drowned in fog. In the distance you could only just see the outline of a lighthouse. Unlit, abandoned. You could not hear the gulls or the shorebirds, only the sea. Martin took a deep breath, the air smelled of salt and cold and not much else.

Someone was beside him, clinging onto his arm and leaning their head on his shoulder. He did not have to look to know who it was.

“You know this place, don’t you?” Jon said.

Martin took a shaky breath. “Yes.”

“Don’t worry,” Jon reassured him, “You’re not really back.”

He wasn’t, that much was becoming clear. The air didn’t have the same feeling to it, that numbing quality that snaked into your lungs and replaced everything with a dull, all-consuming nothingness.

“And you’re not really here.” Martin admitted. He looked over to him, green eyes, scarred face, long dark brown hair that drifted in a breeze that wasn’t there, streaked with grey. His Jon. The Jon who died in his arms. The Jon that would never be the same.

He smiled, “You’re right. I’m not. Just a manifestation of your subconscious.”

Martin sighed. “I should have expected that answer.” Just a dream, just another dream. Could he call it a nightmare? Maybe not. It would have been nice if this dream was reality, after all.

Dreams didn’t concern themselves with time, so how long they sat there he couldn’t say, but at one point it felt like it had been long enough to speak again.

“Do you forgive me?” Martin asked, voice wavering.

Jon laughed. “Get over yourself, Martin. You’re not the one that needs to be forgiven.”

Maybe that was true.

“Well, I forgive you, Jon.”

There was something almost like annoyance in his eyes. “You don’t mean that, you’re only saying that because I’m not here. It’s so much easier to acquit the dead.”

Martin couldn’t think of a protest.

“If you let yourself think about it, you’d be furious with me. After all that we meant to each other, and you still didn’t mean enough to me to allow us to be happy.”

“Like we were ever going to.” He muttered.

“Maybe that’s true, but we were so close, and I ruined it.”

Martin hugged his knees to his chest, every word struck him like an arrow. It was true, he was angry. He felt betrayed and hurt and vulnerable and ruined. He couldn’t get closure. He couldn’t voice his frustrations. He was lost. Without Jon he was lost.

“So what are you going to do?” Jon said, “Call me selfish? Call me a fool? Or are you just going to sit here?”

Martin said nothing. Everything was silent.

Jon sighed. “Where will you be at the end of this? When you’ve saved everyone, what will be left for you?”

Martin didn’t know. 

Then he opened his eyes. 

Dawn was just beginning to creep around the edges of the blinds. He looked over to the clock, 6:33 AM. He groaned and retreated back under the covers. This place didn’t feel like home anymore, it might never have. Home was scarred hands cupping his face, a smile that used to be so rare. Home was a cabin he would never return to. Home died at the point of a knife so he could start over, but here he was, clinging to a future that he couldn’t bear to experience again.

He remembered the night after Jon led them out of the Lonely. It was raining by the time they were back on the streets of London, running to the nearest metro station, getting soaking wet. Spending the night together at Martin’s flat, nothing on their minds but the future before them. They whispered their dreams to each other in the dark, like if they said them aloud they would come true. 

“We could get married, if you want. In a few years.” Jon had said.

“I’d like that.” Martin whispered in response. “And we’ll get a house far away from here, and all we’ll have to worry about is what to make for dinner, or trying to convince you that we don’t have the means to adopt another cat.”

“I don’t want that many cats! Just- two maybe, two is a nice number of cats.”

“Oh Jon, I think we both know that if you find a mewling kitten on the side of the road somewhere that you won’t be able to help yourself.”

He laughed brightly at that, Martin didn’t know if he’d ever heard him laugh before that moment. “Like you would either.”

The memory didn’t make him feel less cold, it didn’t make the bed less empty.

He couldn’t stay like this all day.

He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Putting on his glasses, he noticed the carpet of fog swirling on the floor of his bedroom. The window wasn’t open. The weather outside was clear and bright.

A strangled sob escaped from his throat.

He couldn’t stay here.

To his surprise, Sasha jumped at his roommate proposal. Apparently she was looking for one anyway after the landlord raised the rent, better to be someone she knew than someone she didn’t. So here Martin was, officially moved into his coworker’s flat. It was nice here, pleasant, lived in the way he never felt his old place was, despite it being his home for pretty much his whole life.  

The radio player in the corner was tuned to some oldies station, the pleasant and inoffensive kind you just put on in the background. Sasha was busy washing dishes. Martin’s mug of tea cooled on the coffee table as he fretfully flipped through a book. It had been hard to focus on much of anything. The romance novels he used to spend his free time reading just made him feel miserable, so he borrowed one of Sasha’s many crime thrillers. He wouldn’t say it was boring, but he didn’t think anything could really thrill him much anymore. His life had been put in enough danger by enough barely describable horrors that the threat of a vicious killer felt almost pedestrian. Yeah right, the victims were all stabbed to death by a normal guy with a normal knife, all the mysterious deaths he knew about were caused by things made of wax and plastic and spiders. Martin tried his best to dramatically snap it shut (a difficult task for a mass market paperback) and tossed it on the coffee table with a sigh.

“Not a fan of Murder by the Seine?” Sasha asked, drying her hands of soapy water.

Martin shrugged, “It’s alright? I don’t know, couldn’t get over how the main character was named ‘Hieghlen Seekers’.” He wrinkled his nose.

“Well if that one didn’t strike your fancy there's also Murder in the Highlands, The Murders of Oxford Lake– Oh! There’s always Murder in the Underground, not to be confused with A Killer in the Underground.” She rattled off the titles stacked on her very full bookshelf that also contained its fair share of classics, essay collections, herpetology textbooks, many a ghost story, and far too many editions of Jane Eyre than was really necessary.

“How do you keep track of all of those?” He asked, baffled.

“I don’t really.” She took the book off the coffee table and searched for a free space on the shelf to shove it into, “I pick them up at charity shops and airports and the like whenever I’m bored and need something to read without putting a lot of thought into it. Most of the time they’re really bad and then I get to have a good laugh, but sometimes they’re pretty good, you’d be surprised.”

Martin smiled, “Yeah, I don’t think it’s really my genre.”

Sasha jammed the novel in between a field guide to mushrooms and a tuscan cookbook. The bookshelf was so woefully disorganized Martin often found himself wondering how Sasha, the most diligent archival assistant in the institute could have ever let it happen. Eventually he just reached the conclusion that it must be sorted by some cryptic system that only Sasha James could ever know.

She scanned the battered spines. “Hm, let’s see if I have anything else for you. Ah– How about Anna Karenina?” 

Martin stared at the obnoxiously massive book in Sasha’s hand. “Uh- Maybe not…”

“The Third Realm: Exploring England’s Hidden Herpetofauna - Fourth Edition?”

Martin sighed and shook his head. “I think I’m okay, I’ll find some way to occupy my time. We’re going back to work in a couple days, after all.” He wasn’t exactly looking forward to that but, something to do at least. “When’s Tim showing up?”

Sasha looked over to the clock on the wall (Lizard shaped!). “Hm, around now, I would think…”

As if on cue, there was a brisk knock on the door, Sasha opened it and– sure enough, Tim was standing there, holding a brown paper bag.

“Tim!” Sasha exclaimed, “Did you bring alcohol?”

His expression turned to one of exaggerated offense. “Really Sasha? That is so insulting, I can’t believe that you would just assume something like– Yeah I brought the alcohol.” He pulled a bottle of white wine out of the bag. 

Sasha giggled.

“But I also brought some fancy cheese and I’m going to make a fancy cheese board.”

“Woo! Now it’s a party!” Sasha pointed him towards the kitchen, “Go set up in there, mind the giant bubbling pot of pasta sauce, and the cake.”

Tim set his bag down on the counter and began unpacking olives, crackers and cured meats. “Lot of work you put into this.”

“Well, I made the cake.” Martin admitted, “Can’t really have a celebration without a cake.”

“Is that dark forest?” Tim said in awe, “You are a gift, Martin.”

“Only the best in honor of a successful extermination.” Added Sasha, “I do wish Jon was here though.”

“Last time I checked he wasn’t returning my calls, so.” Tim snipped, slicing a wheel of brie in half.

Sasha frowned. “Me neither, I hope he’s alright.”

“He’s just paranoid, probably.” Martin said, resting his elbows on the counter and ignoring the prickle of anxiety at the back of his mind. “Not like we could invite him anyway, not like he’d want to come.”

“Right, paranoid.” Sasha sighed, “I feel so bad for him, just making him fumble around in the dark when we know all the answers he wants so badly.”

Martin sighed. “It– it’s for the best. When this is all over we can tell him everything.”

The other two seemed satisfied to leave it at that. God, they really trusted him, didn’t they. It made him feel a little sick.

“Well, nevermind that. We did it, didn’t we?” Tim said, “We really showed those worms who’s boss, Sasha isn’t dead, no one really got hurt. We’re one step closer to saving the world! All thanks to the strategy of you two and my unwavering bravery in the face of danger. So let’s raise a toast, to us! And to the hope that whatever we do next won’t kill us!”

Sasha rolled her eyes as she poured a glass of wine for each of them. They clinked them together.

“Cheers!” She said, “For our teamwork, and our friendship.”

“Cheers,” Martin joined in, “For the strength to save the world.”

“Cheers to getting you to smile more often.” Tim teased, elbowing him in the shoulder.

He laughed. “Alright, alright, I promise I’ll try to be more cheery from now on.”

“That’s the spirit!” Tim threw an arm around him, “Now how’s the new living situation? Sasha drive you crazy with her lizard facts yet?”

Sasha lobbed a cashew at him, which he only barely saved from clattering to the ground and popped in his mouth, eyes twinkling mischievously.

“You love my lizard facts!” She protested, “And so does he! Isn’t that right, Martin?”

“Big lizard fact fan,” He agreed, “Though I’m a fan of snake facts too.”

“I’m looking into getting a snake…” Sasha mused, “Surely you wouldn’t mind if I kept dead mice in the freezer.”

“You are a class A weirdo, Sasha James.” Tim mumbled around a cracker.

“It’s part of my charm.”

That night Martin felt happier than he had in what felt like forever. Surrounded by his friends (he could call them his friends, couldn’t he?), drinking, feasting, having a good time. There almost wasn’t any room to worry about the future, no space to fret about the past, there was only the now. The Magnus Institute didn’t exist, there was only the three of them in Sasha’s flat. Celebrating a job well done, hoping for successful work to come, hoping for a brighter future. Though, any future might have been better than the one Martin lived through. Worry still stuck like cobwebs in the corners of his thoughts, but for now, they were alive, for now, they were happy.

Maybe things would work out after all.

Things were mostly back to normal in the institute, as normal as they can be with an active murder investigation going on. He had passed Basira and Daisy in the halls a few times, hadn’t spoken to them, though he was sure he would soon enough. He didn’t know how he was going to navigate that conversation.

The brief glances he’d gotten of Jon proved his suspicions that he was spiraling into that familiar paranoia. He’d cast him such a glare in the breakroom it turned Martin’s blood to ice– even Tim left the room after that one. As much as he wanted Jon to trust him, he didn’t know how to communicate that to him. It was for the best, Martin couldn’t have him getting any closer. It was fine, he was used to pining from a distance, he could handle this.

Not well, but he could handle this.

Martin lingered on the steps of the institute. He should have clocked in ages ago, but what was Elias or Jon going to do about that? Fire him? Besides, he was waiting for something.

And there it was, that grimy, dented delivery van, slowly pulling in and coming to a stop in front of the imposing academic building. The words “Breekon and Hope Deliveries” neatly printed on the side.

Exactly the type of man you would expect stepped out of the van, followed by another, who looked similar, but not the same, but not different in any particular or distinct way from the other one. Martin stood up and walked towards him just as they opened the back doors of their van to unload the cargo addressed to the institute.

The next step begins now.

Chapter Text

It was night now. After Martin had signed off on the table he stashed it in the alleyway and just went to work. No one suspected a thing. Well, Jon was suspecting everything, and Elias probably knew what he was up to and just wanted to watch and wait to see what would happen. But as far as any of the entirely normal employees of the institute were concerned, there weren’t any spooky webby tables containing horrifying coworker stealing monsters anywhere near the institute. Tim and Sasha had wished him luck as they left, Jon just muttered something about not staying too late. So here he was, alone, and not exactly looking forward to dragging a coffee table down into the tunnels. 

He did it anyway, not without a lot of swearing and some bruises. Once he was solidly on the ground he kicked the table lightly in the leg, careful as not to damage it. 

“I see why Jon was so keen to destroy you.” He hissed. The Not-Them had caused him and everyone else far too much grief, he wouldn’t be sad to see it trapped forever in stone, far away from anyone it could take. 

He wasn’t here to talk to tables, though. He took a deep breath and raised his voice.

“Jurgen!” He shouted, the name bouncing off the musty brick walls, “I know you’re here, show yourself.”

“Why should I?” A response rumbled back in a voice he never actually got a chance to hear before now.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Martin assured him, “I just need your help, it’s really important.” He glanced down at the table, it’s intricate carved pattern, that gaping square hole in the center. If he didn’t do anything, who would it take then? Sasha again? Tim? Someone from Artifact Storage? Himself? He couldn’t allow that to happen.

“Saving the world important.”

He watched stone shift in the blink of an eye, passages shuffle around like they were made of something far more impermanent than granite. Out of the shadows stepped a stick thin old man, someone who Martin had seen before, though there he was slumped over a desk, face unrecognizable in a mess of gore and grey matter. Jurgen Leitner was alive here, peering at Martin curiously over a pair of eyeglasses.

“And who might you be?” He asked, carefully closing the thin book in his hands.

“Martin.” He replied, “Martin Blackwood, I’m one of the archival assistants in the institute.”

Jurgen cracked a smile. “I thought as such. How did you know I was here?”

Martin nervously rubbed the back of his neck. “Would you believe me if I said I was from the future?”

“I’ve been around long enough to learn to believe a lot of things, Mr. Blackwood.” He said smoothly, his face hardly changing. “Can’t say I’m too happy about the fact I’ve been discovered though.”

“You need to leave here.” Martin said quickly, “If you don’t– Elias might beat you to death with a pipe, and I don’t think anyone wants that.”

“Ah- “ Jurgen even looked unphased at the mention of his own death, “I really wish I could say I was surprised, but…”

“I’m not exactly from a good future, if you hadn’t noticed.” He snipped.

“Right- I’ll consider it. Is that all you called me here for or do you need my help with…that.” He gestured towards the table.

“Yeah… could you use that book you have to- seal it away forever where no one will ever find it? As deep as you can, as contained as you can.”

“Right.” He said, “Sure, did that thing give you a lot of trouble?”

Martin laughed uncomfortably. “You could say that.”

“Very well then.” He opened his book to the first page, eyes scanning the words, and in no time at all the table sunk down, down, down, out of sight, taking the Not-Them with it. That was that. It seemed so…easy.

“It won’t be getting out anytime soon, I assure you.” Jurgen said, closing the book again. “So is the world rescued now?”

Martin stared at the bare patch of stone where the table used to be. “Not quite, but it’s a step in the right direction. Thank you, for your help. I doubt the rest of this plan is going to be this…simple.”

“Well, I’d be happy to help you if you need it.” Jurgen gave him a terse nod. “I wish you luck.”

“You too.” Martin said, almost too quietly, and with that, the librarian was gone. 

Martin sighed deeply and ran his fingers through his hair. It was fine, problem solved. The Not-Them didn’t even come close to taking anyone, and not it wouldn’t ever again. Sasha was safe. Jon was safe. Everyone was safe. 

For now at least. 

Martin started the trek back to the trapdoor. He was tired. The only thing on his mind was a nice, cozy night of sleep. His mind could be at ease, it would be a good long while before there was another major threat to prevent. He could try to live out his life in relative normalcy after this.

He was just thinking about how nice it would be to stop worrying for even just a moment when a beam of torch light shone over his face, beating back the drowsiness.

Oh for Christ's sake, what now?

He winced and squinted through the light, trying to make out who had run into him.

Jon’s scowling face glared back at him. He looked like he hadn’t slept in quite a long time, he also looked pissed.

“What the hell are you doing here?” He snarled.

Martin snapped out of his brief paralysis and tried his best to look unphased. Jon’s question had far more weight to it than if it had come out of someone else’s mouth, those Archivist powers were starting to manifest, then. Still, they weren’t powerful enough to be unable to avoid. “Exploring, same as you, I presume.”

“Why?”

“There’s a maze of tunnels under our workplace, obviously I want to see what’s in them. They’re mostly empty, by the way. So have fun looking at nothing, I’m going home.” Martin tried to walk past him and end this entire interaction as quickly as possible, but before he could leave he felt a hand grab onto his wrist.

God, he really didn’t want to do this right now, or ever for that matter.

Jon’s eyes drilled into his, accusatory, sharp as a knife. “No, we’re going to talk. You’ve been acting weird for months now, and you’re going to tell me why.”

His own gaze steeled. “I don’t have to tell you anything.” He tried to wrench his arm away but Jon’s grip held firm.

“You’ve been avoiding talking to me entirely.” Jon began, “You’ve been staring at me, your personality has completely changed, and it’s all happened at the drop of a hat. What happened, Martin? Maybe I haven’t known you for that long but I know you enough to tell when something’s changed and things have changed drastically. So why? what’s going on with you?” There could have been concern somewhere in that string of questions, maybe deep down Jon was worried about him. All that came across, though, was icy suspicion.

“It’s none of your business, frankly.” Martin snapped, “Maybe I just don’t feel like dealing with you. You haven’t exactly been the kindest person, to me especially.”

“Oh you would not have put up with me for as long as you did if that was the case. Hate me all you want but that isn’t all that’s happening here. No one goes from doting on someone to refusing to talk to them overnight without something significant happening. So what is it? What did you find out?”

“Nothing!” Martin almost shouted. He hated this, all of this. He hated having to pretend. He hated having to lie. He just wanted to leave, but of course Jon wasn’t going to let him go until he had answers. Jon didn’t let go of anything until he had answers, and answers were exactly what Martin couldn’t let him have. “It’s nothing! Nothing you need to know, at least. I just don’t want to talk to you, is that so hard to grasp?”

“Don’t you think I don’t know you’re lying to me.” Jon hissed, “Don’t you think I don’t know you’re planning something! I’ve seen you and the others conspiring, you all stop talking once I enter the room. Then I show up one day and the institute is in chaos because apparently the three of you stopped a supernatural worm invasion and uncovered a goddamn murder scene!”

“We’re not planning anything!” He protested.

“I know you’re lying.” Jon said slowly.

“I’m not going to kill you, Jon, if that’s what you’re so worried about. I didn’t kill Gertrude, I’m not going to kill you. No one here wants to kill you.” Martin made sure to meet his gaze, made sure that he knew that this, at least, wasn’t a lie. “So get yourself together before you get hurt.”

“Was that a threat?” He asked, composure faltering.

“It’s a warning. Now leave me the fuck alone.” Martin wrenched his arm away and turned to leave. He almost wanted to look back, just for a second, just to see the look on Jon’s face. He didn’t like this, acting so harsh, pushing away the person he wanted to be close to more than anything. It hurt, but it was better this way, it had to be. It was better if he still hated him.

He didn’t look back, but he could sense the wave of weariness that washed over Jon as he started to walk away. Exhausted, scared, aimless, with no one to turn to, no one to trust. 

“What were you really doing down here, Martin?” He asked softly, there wasn’t a speck of power to it, replaced by overwhelming defeat. It was a question asked without expecting an answer. Fine, he could give him one, just this once.

“Saving you.” He said simply, and with that, he left.

Sasha was curled up on the couch reading another crime novel when he returned to her flat (well, he supposed it was their flat now). She looked up from her copy of Terminal (an airport crime thriller actually set in an airport! Riveting!), smile quickly dropping and replaced by an expression of concern.

“Did you uh- is it done?” She asked. 

Martin sighed and hung his coat on its hook. “Yeah. It’s not- It can’t hurt you now, or anyone else for that matter.”

She tilted her head. “You look upset.” She observed, “Did something happen?”

“It’s nothing, I just ran into Jon in the tunnels, that's all.”

She crossed her arms and stared at him knowingly.

“Okay, so maybe he decided to interrogate me about why I was being so weird, and maybe I was reasonably being cagey about it, and maybe the conversation got a little bit shouty. I’m just– It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

She frowned. “Well, I’m your friend. So I think I probably should concern myself with it.” She pat the cushion next to her. “We can talk about it, if you want.”

He, unfortunately, did want to talk about it. Reluctantly, he took a seat, anxiously chewing at the inside of his cheek. He looked to Sasha, not really knowing what to say.

“So, what did he say?” She asked, discarding her novel.

“He uh, he’s suspicious of me. He thinks I’m acting strange, and I am. He thinks I’m planning something… and I am. He probably thinks I hate him now and that’s… fair enough I suppose. He’s not really wrong about anything but… I don’t know Sasha. I hate seeing him like this. He needs someone to lean on right now and-” He fought back tears, “And I hate that it can’t be me.”

Sasha thought for a moment. “You know, Martin, I don’t think this assumption that he’s going to be better off without you is true. Maybe he needs you to keep him from doing something stupid all over again. Maybe he just needs your company. I know that you can only think about the bad things that resulted from him caring about you, but there was a lot of good too, wasn’t there? There must have.”

“It’s not that simple, Sasha. I– It’s not even just trying to protect him anymore. I can barely look at him, it hurts too much. I have been hurting ever since I got back here and it’s– I don’t want to blame him but who else can I blame? I look at Jon and all I can see is the man I loved, the man who betrayed me, the man I killed. How do you deal with something like that? How can I try to go back?” He took a deep, shaky breath. “God, why do I have to be like this… He’s the love of my life, my everything. All of this is for him and I can’t even face him. I just don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know what’s right. I don’t know what I’m going to do when this is over. I don’t know if there will even be an after for me.”

A long silence hung in the air, full of words that would never be said aloud.

“I don’t know if I want one.” He said finally, so quiet it was almost inaudible. 

“Oh Martin.” Sasha said softly. “I wish I knew how to help, I wish I knew what I could say to make it hurt less but I-” She shook her head, her dark curls bouncing slightly. “Do you…want a hug?”

He sniffed and wiped his tears with his sleeve. “Yes, actually. I’d- I’d like that.”

He barely had time to finish his sentence before Sasha pulled him into a tight embrace. It had been so long since he had been hugged. At least it felt like it. He melted into her arms, unable to stop himself from crying anymore. It just- felt so nice to be held. He was loved. He was here and he was loved. There had been a point in time when he thought Jon was the only person who could love him but that wasn’t true, it never was. Other people cared about him, here was the proof. 

“You deserve to be happy too, Martin.” Sasha said, “You’re a good person, you deserve good things. I hope you can see that. I hope one day you can realize you can move past all of this, that this doesn’t have to be what defines you. You don’t have to be the former Antichrist’s plus one, or even the person who saved the world from certain destruction, you can just be you.” Slowly, she broke away and smiled at him. Martin couldn’t shake the notion that Sasha really, truly believed in him, his plan, any decision he might make. He didn’t know how to react to that.

“I really hope you’re right.” He said, “I’m really glad you’re here, Sasha. Truly.”

She beamed. “It’s really no sweat, now sorry to ruin the moment but it is around midnight and we have work tomorrow.”

“Oh right! Of course, sorry to keep you awake.”

Sasha shook her head. “It’s alright, I usually stay up this late anyway.” She stood up, and lingered for a moment as if she wasn’t sure what to do. Then she playfully ruffled his hair and started towards her bedroom door. “Goodnight, Martin.” She said, “Take care, I’ll see you in the morning.” She paused. “I’ll try to keep an eye on Jon for you, alright? Make sure he’s okay, has someone to call a friend.”

“That would mean a lot, thank you.”

She nodded and disappeared into her room, leaving Martin on his own. He stood up and walked over to the kitchen. Filling the kettle. A cup of chamomile before bed never hurt anybody after all. He watched his reflection in the shining metal as the water slowly boiled. Who really was he? No- that was the wrong question. He knew who he was, even if he didn’t particularly like it. No, who did he want to be?

That was something he wasn’t so sure of. He wanted to be happy…probably. He didn’t really know what that meant. Or how to get there.

It was exhausting, living like this. Half of himself still left in the future, it seemed. The steam hit his face as he poured water into his mug, warm in the way fog and mist could never be. It made him feel a little bit more alive.

Was he just supposed to settle into a normal life once this was over? Was that even possible? If it was, he would want Sasha to be there, and Tim.

Jon too, though that seemed like a far off dream, slipping through his fingers. He’s probably already ruined all chances of that happening. He’d made it clear to Jon he never wanted to speak to him again, even though the more accurate explanation was that he felt like he couldn’t. 

He did want Jon. He wanted him around. He wanted his company. His smile. He wanted Jon to feel safe enough around him to laugh. But he couldn’t always have what he wanted, what he wanted wasn’t always a good idea.

He also wanted to drive a knife through Elias’ withered heart, and that would probably just get them all killed.

Martin stared down at his tea as it slowly steeped into a shade of golden yellow.

He would wait.

He would wait until he’s saved everyone. Then Jon could know everything, then he might understand.

After that, who’s to say?

He decided to let himself hope.

He would let himself cling to a dream, maybe it’s what would keep him going.

Chapter Text

“Look, Jon, this isn’t healthy. You need to calm down and stop acting like everyone’s out to get you all the time.”

“It’s weird, Tim! You can’t tell me it’s not. This entire situation feels out of my grasp. I don’t know who to trust anymore.”

“Trust us.”

“How? How can I trust you? How can you prove to me you have my best interests in mind?”

“I don’t know! This situation is complicated, Jon, more complicated than you think.”

“So you’re in on it too then?”

“And what exactly do you think ‘it’ is?”

“I- some sort of plan! You won’t tell me, no one will tell me! How am I supposed to assume it’s something good, I feel like I barely know any of you!”

“You don’t know for a reason.”

“And that is?”

“Because if you knew everything could fall apart! Plus- Martin told me not to.”

“Oh, so Martin is the mastermind behind this scheme, then?”

“Okay, maybe don’t phrase it like that but-” *sigh* “Yes.”

“What the hell is up with him?”

“A whole lot, so maybe get off his case.”

“Fine! Fine, since everyone is so goddamn insistent. It’s just- God, Tim, I’m worried about him.”

“You’re worried about him?”

“Don’t make that face! Can you blame me? You said yourself he’s got a lot going on right now, which I’m sure you’ll refuse to elaborate on. He’s just- he’s never yelled at me like that before…”

“I thought you hated him.”

“Hate’s a strong word–”

“I thought you believed we were all conspiring to stab you in the back.”

“I don’t know what I believe. I don’t want to think that anyone’s after my life, but you are being suspicious, I hope you know that.”

“Of course I know that, we’re being very sketchy right now! Trust me, we all wish we could tell you everything.”

“But that would endanger your precious plan.”

“It would endanger everything, Jon.”

“What’s so special about me that I’m the only one who can’t know?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Of course, what did I expect?”

“Jon…”

“Fine! Keep your damn secrets. I don’t get to know about what my employees are talking about behind my back, I don’t even get to know about myself apparently–”

“We’re trying to help you.”

“Ah! Of course! Why didn’t I see that before? You’re just trying to help me, so obviously that makes everything okay. All the secrecy, all the mistrust, all the lies.”

“I haven’t lied to you once.”

“Right, you’re just keeping things from me, extremely important things that involve me directly, and I don’t get to know about.”

“For fuck’s sake! Jon, you’re acting childish. You don’t get to know everything, you’re better off not knowing most things, actually. I promise we’re going to tell you once it’s all over but it is far from over, so just let us do this for you and stop trying to meddle.”

“I am not meddling.”

“You’re meddling, you asked to go with us for drinks the other day, when have you ever socialized willingly? You want in, and I’m telling you it’s not going to happen.”

“It just- It feels like something big is going on, and I’m just fumbling around in the dark, and you all know your way, or at least have a torch.”

“Something big is going on, and you need to stay as far away from it as possible.”

“Is this really all for me?”

“Like I said, it’s complicated.”

“Right, right. I- I’m sorry Tim. I’m just scared, that’s all.”

“I know you are. It’ll be okay, it has to be.”

…

“Tim, is Martin alright?”

“What?”

“Is he okay? Emotionally, I mean. Mentally.”

“What the hell do you think?- okay, that’s rude. Look, answering honestly? No, not in the slightest, and you’d just make it a whole lot worse. Give him some space, he just needs time, I think- I hope.”

“I just don’t know what I did…”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Right.”

“Me and Sasha are here for you, alright? I’m sorry about all the secrets, I really am, but it’s better for everyone in the long run. Once we figure this out, we can be as open as we want.”

“Right… Thank you, Tim, just– You can go.”

“You got it, boss. Really though, thanks for listening,I’ll be seeing you around.” — “Hey, did you leave the tape recorder on?”

“What? Oh–”

Martin stared through warped glass at the figure standing on the street below. It stared back up at him through locks of curly blond hair. He could tell it was smiling even with the distance and the haze of the dirty window and the summer morning. He knew it wanted to talk to him. It tilted it’s head and smiled wider, dripping with curiosity.

“What on earth are you looking at, Martin?” Sasha asked, craning her head around his shoulder. Suddenly, she yelped and stepped back, as if she just caught a glance of something unpleasant. “Fucking hell…Is that him?”

The spell broke as Martin tore his gaze away. “The Distortion, you mean? Yep, that’s him.” He pushed past her and headed towards the stairs. “Come on, he’s expecting us.”

Sasha just stood there, bewildered. “We’re going to talk to him? Surely that’s really dangerous? I mean, look at him! He’s got knives for hands! Knives!”

Martin shrugged. “Just don’t go through any suspicious yellow doors. I don’t think he wants to hurt us, anyway. At least not right now.”

“And you’re so sure of this because?”

“Look, if things turn south then we run, but we’ve got an opportunity here. We can talk to him and maybe, he will listen.”

She wrapped her cardigan–a nice shade of sage green today–tighter around herself. “I can’t believe you’re going to try to negotiate with something that lives for the illogical.” She muttered, “But fine, if you think there’s any chance it’ll help. Let’s just go. Maybe if we’re quick we won’t be too late for work.”

“Being late doesn’t matter anymore, Sasha.” He pointed out.

“I know that!” She protested, “Just because I won’t get fired over it doesn’t mean I don’t value being punctual.”

The two of them stepped out into the balmy London air. Sure enough, Micheal was still there, standing in front of the florist holding a bouquet where everything looked just a little bit wrong. Lilies with petals just a touch longer than normal, bluebells a shade too bright, roses with the thorns still attached. Sasha trembled slightly beside him as they approached, her quivering lip breaking the illusion of her otherwise determined expression.

“You can just leave, you know.” Martin said quietly.

“Not happening.” She hissed through her teeth, “No way I’m leaving you alone with that…thing.”

“I can take care of myself.”

She glared at him over the golden rims of her glasses. “I’m not leaving you alone.” She repeated.

Sasha was far too stubborn to argue with, so he let it be. Micheal had noticed them drawing near by now. He looked more normal trying to blend in with the crowd than Martin had ever seen him before. He was still wearing an obnoxious brightly patterned scarf, of course, but it just made him look like a fairly eccentric individual you might find browsing a local bookshop. 

“Ah! Why, hello!” Micheal flashed a wide grin full of too white teeth that for a brief, easily dismissable second, appeared pointed and more numerous than what could be deemed normal. “Fine day isn’t it? The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming…” He held out the twisted bouquet in invitation. 

“We don’t have time for this, Micheal. What do you want?” Martin said sharply, meeting The Distortion’s unnaturally blue gaze in an attempt to ignore the purple irises near the edge of the bundle that seemed to be…looking at him.

He looked surprised for a moment, and then Micheal laughed, that awful, dizzying laugh that was so unfortunately familiar. “Oh, Martin, isn’t it? Bold of you to assume that I really want anything.” 

“Then why are you here?” He demanded. 

Micheal just kept smiling in response.

“Look, Martin, we’re not going to make any progress out here on the sidewalk.” Sasha said, her eyes darting to look at the smattering of people around them. “Why don’t we…get a coffee? Like civilized people.”

Micheal tilted his head in a distinctly birdlike manner. It would have been a charming gesture on nearly anyone else, but Micheal could make anything unsettling. “Yes…yes! That would be lovely, there’s a place just down the road. Come, follow me.”

And so, they followed, weaving through weary pedestrians. Micheal waved at every shop owner they passed, they waved back sometimes, hesitantly. Once a few minutes of tense silence had passed the trio found themselves in a coffee shop. It didn’t appear to be a particularly good one. The air smelled stale, and the teenager behind the counter looked disinterested and exhausted. Martin just sat down. He wasn’t in the mood to order a day old pastry. After a glance at the menu Sasha joined him, wringing her hands. In the small window of time the Distortion took to order, they took the opportunity to exchange whispers.

“What exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?” Sasha asked. 

Martin cleaned the lenses of his glasses with his sweater, his eyes didn’t leave the blond man who’s incessant chattering was getting tuned out by the tired barista. Though the fuzzy blur of his unaltered vision Micheal looked taller, his hair longer and wilder, a malevolent aura surrounding him that made your head ache just trying to make sense of that vague form. He grit his teeth and perched the frames back onto his nose, clearing his vision and his mind and reducing Micheal back to a form that appeared generally human.

“I’m not sure.” He admitted, “Maybe I can reason with him, convince him to stay away from Helen Richardson and the institute. If I tell him that targeting her will get him killed, then maybe he’ll listen.”

“You’re trying to reason with something antithetical to the entire concept.” She retorted, “Logic isn’t going to work here.”

“We have to try, Sasha, what’s the worst that could happen.”

The look she gave him said a thousand words.

“God, I know, I know.” He muttered, “Hopefully we don’t get eaten by a door, or at least don’t get trapped in there for very long. Look, if I know anything about Micheal it’s that he likes to toy with people. He’ll at least hear us out, if only for his own amusement.”

She sighed and buried her hands in the coils of her hair. “Alright, alright. I trust you, and hey, if this works that’s one less thing to worry about, isn’t it?”

It was now that Micheal walked over to their table and set down his drink, a plain drip coffee. He slid into the booth and laced his long fingers together, looking at them expectantly.

“Well, go on.” He said, ever smiling. “Ask your questions, I know you love them, you work in the Archives, after all.”

“I don’t have questions.” Martin said slowly, “I have a warning.”

“Oh yes! You’re the one who claims he’s from the future, I know about you. The Mother of Puppets has been taking great interest in your…activities.”

So the Web was watching him, he should have expected that. Another obstacle, another enemy. He was hoping he could have just ignored them, but of course they would be meddling, they were always meddling.

“A future where you die, twice, in two different forms.” Martin continued, “I know how to stop that from happening, if you will listen.”

At this, Micheal seemed surprised, even scared. He cleared his throat and started to rhythmically drum his fingers on the surface of the table. “Keep talking.” He said, all the friendliness in his voice replaced with something cold.

“There’s a real estate agent you will take as one of your victims. Her name is Helen Richardson, and she will kill you, or rather, she will remake you. All you have to do to prevent your destruction is leave her alone, and stay away from the institute while you’re at it.” 

Micheal laughed again, he laughed until every speck of coffee scented air in that place was full of it. He noticed Sasha recoil, he didn’t blame her. 

“Do you really think you have the authority to tell me what to do? I could unravel your mind, Martin. One wrong door and you will be at my mercy. I could make you question everything you thought you knew about your world and yourself.” The Distortion rose to its feet, Micheal’s form stretching and warping into something impossible and angular. He loomed over Martin, grinning hungrily. The edges of his vision filled with static and something in his ears buzzed. Still he didn’t look away. For some reason Sasha hadn’t started running yet, though she looked like she might.

“I could trap you in my halls and have you wander for immeasurable swaths of time as you forget the pitifully few things you live for.” Micheal continued, Martin couldn’t help but notice the barista wasn’t behind the counter anymore. Has the door to the break room always been painted yellow? Micheal reached out and tapped a grotesque, twisted finger against his jugular. “Or, I could just kill you right now, but that’s no fun, now is it?”

“I’m not scared of you.” Martin managed to say above the din of his frantically beating heart, though his voice wavered.

“Oh but you are.” Micheal said in apparent delight, “You’re terrified, you’re scared of so many things. I’m surprised you haven’t been torn to bits already. I will say though you aren’t a coward, A coward would have bolted like a rabbit by now, and people do very stupid things when they run.”

“Threaten me all you want, I’m telling the truth.” 

“Hm, I don’t doubt that. I do wonder why you want me to stay away from the institute, though. I can’t imagine you’re very fond of the place. Let me guess? You’re trying to protect someone?”

Martin froze, but just before Micheal’s lips could part to let out another horrible laugh, a hand reached from behind him, a blade gleaming from within a trembling grip. Sasha drove the pocketknife deep into the Distortion’s collarbone and it screamed unlike anything Martin had heard before. It was the kind of scream that could drive someone mad if they were unfortunate enough to hear it. Sasha wrenched the knife out of the wound, breathing hard and staring at Martin with wild eyes. Micheal kept wailing in pain, clutching the gash in his neck as it spurted something that wasn’t…quite blood.

“That’s not going to kill him.” Martin managed to stammer out.

“I know.” Sasha said, already tugging him out the door, “So then we run.”

He didn’t have to be told twice. The passerby on the sidewalk quickly shuffled out of the way as they rushed past, sometimes shouting something angry, sometimes asking what was the matter. Neither of them answered, they were booking it to the underground as fast as possible. The quicker they could get to the institute the better. It was the only protection they had.

It probably wouldn’t be enough, but they could dream.

Of course, they probably could have made it if that door that wasn’t there didn’t yawn open in front of them. Martin skidded to a stop immediately and grabbed onto Sasha’s arm to make sure she didn’t stumble into those waiting wooden jaws. The Distortion unfolded itself from the doorway, limbs moving with an unnatural, snapping quality.

He chuckled, his smile dripping with malice and his wound still oozing with not-blood. “I have to admit that was quite the daring little move! You have gumption, uh- whatever your name is.”

Sasha bristled and unfolded the pocketknife. “And I’ll do it again.” Spite glittered in her eyes just as much as fear. “Just watch me, maybe I’ll aim for the heart this time! If you even have one, that is.”

“Please! Please! There’s no need for violence!” Micheal said, a hint of desperation in his words. He was scared, Sasha had really hurt him. Martin didn’t even know that such a thing was possible, at least not with something so…normal. “I’m here because I wanted to say that I’ve agreed to your terms.”

What?

“What?” Echoed Sasha.

“This uh- Helen Richardson character is safe from me. So is the institute, I suppose.” 

“You can’t be serious.” She said, baffled. “I stab you and suddenly you decide it’s worth it to listen to us?”

His smile was wide as always. “Of course! I am convinced in mysterious ways, turns out that violence is one of them. Now really, I have a brand new meal to terrorize, so I must be going. Wish you the best, little archivists.”

“Wait!” Martin called out before the door could shut.

“Yes?” Said the thing made of lies.

“What about Jon, you’ll leave him alone too?”

Micheal seemed to consider this for a moment. “Hm- who?” 

Then with a creak, the yellow door closed, and then it was gone.

Sasha furrowed her brow and glared at the empty space like she could make the Distortion reappear through sheer force of will.

“Goddamnit.” She said after a few silent, decade-long moments.

Martin let out a weary sigh. Well, at least that was over. 

“Come on,” He said, “We should tell Tim that the Distortion shouldn’t be a problem anymore.”

At least, he hoped it wouldn’t.

Chapter Text

Sasha and Martin didn’t speak until they were already halfway through the train ride to the institute. They simply sat there, floating in the aftermath of their encounter with the Distortion. Sasha’s usually perfect hair was frazzled and falling out of the bandanna she tied it back with, and some of that shimmering substance that wasn’t exactly blood was still smeared across her cheek. She stared ahead, brow furrowed, lips pressed together. Martin would have said something, asked if she was okay, if she needed anything, if she wanted someone to clean the evidence of her violent act from her face. But he didn’t know which to say first, or if it was the time to say them at all. She was the one to speak first, in the end.

She hugged her purse to her chest, suddenly looking very scared. “You know, I really wasn’t expecting that to work.” She said.

“Me neither.” Martin admitted, “I don’t think he was either, judging by how much you seemed to catch him off guard.”

“It’s not even a particularly special knife, I just found it in a drawer somewhere. I think my father must have given it to me. I only started carrying it after Prentiss when I realized that I might need it.”

Silence hung in the air between them, the rumbling of the moving train and soft chatter of commuters around them filled the empty space where words should have been. A wave of guilt washed over Martin. What was he doing? Sending Tim and Sasha into so much danger, up against monsters and fear itself. He shouldn’t have ever asked this of them, he really shouldn’t have told them in the first place.

Or was that just the Lonely talking? Could he really have gotten this far by himself? Would he want Tim and Sasha to be left in the dark? They were helping him. They were helping him because they wanted to, weren’t they?

“I’m sorry you have to deal with all of this.” He said at last.

“It isn’t your fault, Martin.” Sasha said gently, “It’s just circumstance.”

“You didn’t have to know about any of this, though, you didn’t have to march headfirst into danger.”

She let out a bitter laugh. “What? So I can wander into danger instead? No, I’m glad you told me all of this, not only because the three of us are so much closer now, but because now I have control of my own life. Before, I was just a sacrifice, I guess all of us were. At least Tim got a choice, I didn’t have one. I stumbled into the claws of forces I didn’t understand and it got me killed. But I understand now, Martin. Now I hold the cards, or- at least some of them. I can fight back now. Look, you’ve saved me once already, and I’m grateful for that, of course I am. But soon enough, we’re going to have to face things we aren’t prepared for. When that happens, It’s going to have to be my job to save myself. You focus on your goals, I’ll keep myself busy trying to stay alive and making sure you don’t die doing something stupid either.”

He didn’t look her in the eye, he couldn’t. Martin just stared ahead, his mouth feeling dry as he spoke. “I just don’t know why you’re doing this, why you’re helping me.”

“Well, I don’t want the world to end.” Sasha said like it was the most obvious thing in the universe, “I don’t want to die either, I especially don’t want to become a footnote in someone else’s story. Besides, I think we both know you wouldn’t be able to do this alone. No one can prevent an intricately planned apocalypse by themselves. You need us to watch your back while you try to fight back against living flesh hives and evil tables. Or else they could get you, and then it’s all over, plus everyone at work would miss your tea.”

He smiled, “You’re right, if I’m going to do this I’m going to need you guys around. Even though we have some serious danger ahead of us, I mean, I don’t even know what we’re going to do about the Unknowing. We don’t have to do anything, not really, but Elias is going to tell Jon about it so we’d have to find some way to stop him from trying to get involved and–”

“We’re going to figure it out.” Sasha said, “We have to. I mean, worst comes to worse we can always lock Jon in document storage until the Unknowing attempt fails.” 

Martin stared at her. 

“Kidding! Kidding! Taking him prisoner would probably not do wonders for that relationship of yours.” She elbowed him playfully and he pushed her away, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, it really wouldn’t. Though, the worst thing is that it would probably work.” 

“Well locking someone in a room is a surefire method to keep anyone safe.” Sasha said thoughtfully, “Not that we should, of course. It’s bad enough that we have to keep him in the dark like this.”

“Yeah.” Martin cast his gaze down to the floor, “I hate how things are just so…complicated. I don’t want to hurt him but it feels like I will no matter what I do. If I tell him, it could break him and if I don’t–” He sighed, cutting off his own words. He was a tangled mess of emotions, which didn’t bode well for the plan. He needed to be smart, logical, he needed to outwit the powers that be. Easier said than done, of course, when he still hadn’t unpacked or processed well…anything, and when he still couldn’t hold kitchen knives without his hands shaking and panic constricting his heart. But there was no time for healing trauma, not when there was a world to save, not when everyone he loved was still in danger.

“We hurt people sometimes, Martin.” Sasha said softly, “I think he’ll find he can forgive you, eventually, and if he doesn’t, you’re the one who said you wouldn’t care if he hated you.”

“I say that a lot, but it isn’t exactly true, is it? I do care. I care a lot. I say that I’ll be fine as long as he’s okay but– some selfish part of me just wants him to love me again.” He looked out the window, though there wasn’t much to see, just the brick wall of the tunnel rushing past.

“I don’t think it’s selfish.” She said.

“Of course it’s selfish. For all I know the closer he is to me the more danger he’s in. Without me he wouldn’t have been marked by the Lonely! Without me he wouldn’t have died!” 

She turned away from him. “I really wish you wouldn’t keep saying that. Nothing that happened was your fault, it was just a series of awful circumstances and impossible choices and events out of your control.”

He scoffed, “That’s easy for you to say. You weren’t there. You didn’t live through it. You have no idea what it’s like!” There was desperation in his voice now. God, how he just wished for someone else who could understand. Here he was, three years older, give or take a stretch of immeasurable apocalypse time, back where it all started. Tim could sympathize and Sasha could offer all the support she wanted but they didn’t know. They hadn’t seen everything he had, and he hoped they never did. That didn’t stop the fact that he felt so alone in his pain. He could confide in anyone he liked and all they could give him was condolences and kind words. None of it changed the fact he was displaced in time, fundamentally disconnected from people he used to have so much in common with. None of it changed the fact that he had seen so many people die, that blood stained his own hands. And that hurt, oh how it hurt.

“You’re right, I didn’t, and I don’t.The point is that you do have control now. You can see the strings being pulled, you know what to do about it. It’s no longer a question of what you could have done had you known. You know now, what can you do? You are no longer a pawn, you are not a sacrifice lined up for the altar. Don’t you see, Martin? You have power, you have knowledge. You know things that even the Eye can’t find out without rifling through your memories. And you know exactly what you can do about it, you can save us, you can save yourself. So do it.” There was a glimmer in her eyes that could make the most jaded person in the world decide it was worth it to hope. “You know how to save the world. You know how to prevent every awful thing that haunts you. So stop wallowing and start being a goddamn hero. We’ll be here the whole way.”

Martin takes a deep breath and manages a smile. “Thanks Sasha, you have a talent for knowing what to say.”

“Ah, it’s in my nature. Sasha “Pep Talk” James, that was my nickname in uni.” She started to busy herself with fixing her hair.

“No it wasn’t.” He said plainly.

“You’re right, I admit it, my nickname in uni was actually ‘Sashie.’”

He stifled a laugh, “You’re kidding.”

“Dead serious! I don’t know why it was even necessary, Sasha’s already two syllables.

 You’re putting in the same amount of work either way.”

The train slowed to a stop, doors sliding open. Martin stood up and offered a hand to Sasha, who took it without a word.

“You know I might bring that one back.” Martin said mischievously, “You deserve a nickname, I think.”

Sasha’s expression quickly morphed into one of horror. “Don’t you dare! Pick a different one if you really must but I swear…”

“Ah, too late.” Martin mused, “I think it’s growing on me…Sashie.”

If she pushed him onto the tracks at that very moment he probably wouldn’t have blamed her, but thankfully she didn’t. 

The walk from the station to the institute was still stained with a vague sense of danger. Martin wasn’t keen to find out that Micheal had changed his mind and was stalking them from afar, and from the way Sasha’s shoulders were tensed, he could tell she wasn’t either. But they did end up safely in the Archives, in the end. It was a twisted sense of safety, the type gained from someone watching your every move to make sure you didn’t get into any trouble, but it was safety nonetheless. Sasha collapsed into a chair with a huge sigh.

“God, what a morning.” She lamented, looking rather like a Victorian woman who had fainted dramatically into the nearest seat, or perhaps a mortifyingly overworked detective coming home after a long day. “I’m almost looking forward to calling distant relatives of statement givers from a decade ago, aren’t you?”

Martin shrugged, “Better than whatever that was. Would you like some tea, Sasha?”

“Absolutely.” She replied, but before Martin could leave for the breakroom Tim emerged from Jon’s office, running his hand through his dark hair and looking exhausted. When he noticed them, his face cycled through several emotions ranging from relief to annoyance.

“Alright, you two.” He said, “Where the hell have you been? And the answer to that question better be something like: ‘we overslept’ or ‘we went out for coffee and lost track of time’.”

Sasha and Martin exchanged a guilty look.

“Sasha.” He said slowly, “What’s on your face? It looks like you violently murdered a tube of lip gloss.”

Sasha screwed up her face and wiped her cheek clean of the iridescent gore before reaching into her purse and placing the pocketknife on the desk, it was still splattered with the stuff.

“Me and Martin ran into the Distortion, and the conversation may have escalated, and I possibly may have…stabbed it. I didn’t kill it but I certainly hurt it enough that it was scared into not bothering us anymore so…all’s well that ends well?”

Tim seemed to take a moment to process this before sitting down and beginning to massage the bridge of his nose. “So, If I’m hearing this right. You decided to talk to an evil door.”

“Well he’s not really an evil door, more like a monster partially made out of an evil door, we talked to the part of him that was a person, or at least mostly like a pers-” Martin began.

“Yeah, don’t care. You decided to talk to the Distortion, why?”

“We thought that maybe we could negotiate with him.” Sasha added, “We could…convince him to not go after Helen, or Jon for that matter.”

“And this…worked?”

They both nodded.

“But only after I stabbed him.” Said Sasha.

“Right! Well, shit. I guess that works. Absolutely shocked you’re both alive right now.” Tim leaned back in his chair. “I always overestimate your caution, Sasha.”

She finished cleaning her knife and snapped it closed, her grip tightening. “I’d rather think quickly and deal with the consequences later than worry myself into a hole.” She said matter of factly. “And it worked out. Besides, talking to him wasn’t even my idea.”

Tim’s gaze shifted to Martin. His eyes weren’t judgemental, just understanding. “Ah, speaking of, Jon told me to give this to you, said he found it on your desk this morning.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small white envelope, he held it out in Martin’s direction.

“How was he?” He said almost without thinking, taking the envelope and examining it. It looked normal enough, still sealed, hand delivered somehow considering the lack of stamps or return addresses. His name was printed in neat letters on the front but it was otherwise plain and unadorned.

Tim went quiet and pondered the question. “Well, he’s not happy.” He said after a drawn out moment. After another, even longer moment he added, “He’s worried about you.”

Martin didn’t know how to respond to this, and tried hard to ignore the painful pangs of his heart. Jon was thinking of him, Jon was worried about him. In the grand scheme of things this was a terrible sign, but he couldn’t help but feel a little elated. The excitable, lovestruck part of him that got butterflies whenever Jon even acknowledged he existed couldn’t care about something as far off and long term as saving the world, it only cared that Jon was looking his way. 

“This was on my desk, you said?” Martin asked, beginning to gingerly tear off the top of the envelope, carefully as to not damage what was inside. 

“Yep, no idea how it got there. We’re the only ones who have keys to this place, well, and Elias.” Tim was fiddling with a pen now. “And I don’t know why Elias would send you a letter. Hey, maybe it’s from your not-so-secret-admirer that decided to lie about finding a letter from your secret admirer.” He said with a cheeky grin.

Martin glared at him. “It’s not his handwriting anyway.” He muttered, pulling the letter from the envelope and unfolding it, his eyes scanning the words.

Well, this is a surprise isn’t it?

So, a man displaced in time. Someone who lived through something terrible and found himself back to before any of it happened. Who would do anything to stop it from happening again. How do I know your secret? You may ask. Well you haven’t been doing a very good job of keeping it, for one. Besides, I know that you know I’ve been watching you closely enough to be able to figure it out. Honestly it’s a miracle that Jon hasn’t either. So, let's say you’re right, let’s say you really did get sent back in time. Well then you know things that I don’t, and that’s very exciting. So why don’t we talk? I’m sure there’s much to talk about, some catching up to do, you could say. Am I an old friend to you? I hope so. 

I know you’re likely cautious. Even if you haven’t met me face to face you’ve surely heard my name. That elusive avatar of the web always popping up in other people’s stories. Reasonable response, really, but I assure you I don’t want to hurt you. Only to help. Of course, you wouldn’t know if I was telling the truth or not unless you follow up on my offer. You could just tear this letter to shreds and ignore me completely. I wouldn’t hold it against you, and you would be safe. Are you willing to take that chance though? Are you willing to let what could have been eat at you? That ambiguity, that question of what I would have said, where you would be if you just let me help. I know that sort of thing would haunt you, you do work in the archives, after all. You’re just as curious as the rest of them. 

So, Martin. Meet me at the enclosed address as your earliest convenience. Bring your friends, if you would like. I will be waiting.

Best regards, Annabelle Cane.

Martin set the creased sheet of paper that was even plainer than the envelope on the scratched wooden desk. His hands shaking just slightly as he did so. Sasha craned over his shoulder, squinting to read it.

“Ah-” She said in a small voice. “So that’s what Micheal meant when he said ‘The Mother of Puppets was taking interest’.”

“Seems like it.” Martin muttered, wiping his glasses and weighing his options. Across from him, Tim read the letter himself, his smile thinning into a suspicious expression.

“So what are you going to do?” Sasha asked, “Ah, sorry, what are we going to do?”

“I should go, I have to. Annabelle’s right, she might be able to help us, even if it’s for her own, probably twisted agenda. I can’t just pass that up.” Martin perched his glasses back on his nose and tore the address from the bottom of the letter before putting the rest through the paper shredder. The address didn’t lead to anywhere he recognized, and it certainly wasn’t Hilltop Road. Though it was still rather far.

“And if it’s a trap?” Added Tim.

“One of you can come with, if you’ll risk it.” He said, “The other should stay here, keep an eye on things. Er, so to speak.”

Sasha and Tim looked at each other, a silent agreement passing between them.

“I’ll go.” Tim said, “Sasha’s had to fight enough monsters already, I want a turn.”

Martin nodded, stuffing the scrap of paper with the address scrawled on it into his pocket. “It’s settled, then. We leave tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

"Good morning, Sasha."

"Morning, boss! Any reason you have the same outfit on as yesterday? Laundry day? Worked all night? Owns twelve copies of the same sweater vest like a cartoon character?"

"I don't feel the need to answer that. Is Martin with you? You usually arrive together these days."

"Nope, Tim won't be here either, they're out of town today."

"This doesn't have anything to do with this… plan of yours, does it?"

…

"They're following up on that letter you found yesterday."

"Hm, frustratingly vague."

"I'm sorry."

"I- It's alright. Are they safe, at least?"

…

"I don't think so."

"Christ…"

"They're not going to die, they're not complete idiots. At least I hope not."

"It doesn't matter if they're smart about it or not, if something's out to get them, then they still might not be able to escape it. Plenty of these statements were written by competent and reasonable people who still fell prey to these…things."

"So you're over the facade of skepticism now, then?"

"Yes."

"Look, Jon. You need rest. Go home, at least lie down somewhere. You look exhausted."

"So do you."

"That doesn't matter right now."

"I can't just stop working. I think I'm getting somewhere, I think soon I'll be able to find out at least some of what's going on–"

"Jon, stop it. You don't need to know, and I know you want to, but you'll regret it, I promise you."

"Do you?"

"What?"

"Regret knowing."

…

"No."

…

"Look, Jon, I can't tell you everything, but- you should know some things. Alright, I'll tell you, but you need a nap first."

"These statements need recording."

"I'll record them, go."

"Fine."

…

"Thank you, Sasha."

"Don't mention it. Seriously, don't. If Martin finds out he might kill me."

"Okay, okay. I'll see you in a couple of hours then?"

"You bet."

…

…

"Ah, here goes nothing. The recorder's already running too, of course it is. Hey there Annabelle, how are the boys doing? I swear to God that if you hurt them you'll regret it, but I'm getting away from myself aren't I?"

…

"Sasha James recording the statement of Elise Witterby– Oh what am I doing? I can't record these things. Didn't Martin say something about keeping our connection to the Eye as weak as possible? Can burn it though that'll just attract attention, and might end up torching the whole place which…probably wouldn't be good. Just put it back in the box. Ignore it."

…

"I used to be so diligent. I was so good at my job. I really did want to be the head archivist. Of course, that wasn't going to happen in the first place, and even if it was I know for sure I don't want the job now."

…

"Still, neglecting my duties, refusing to do what I said I would. Not like me. You know, it's strange how much I've changed, even though I don't feel very different."

…

"I'm still me. If anything, my job is trying to make sure the world doesn't end. I'm doing a pretty good job of that."

…

"I think, I hope."

…

"I probably shouldn't be saying all of this, should I? I mean, who knows if you're actually listening. Probably. I don't think you care. You're probably busy with the other two, talking, or wrapping them in web, maybe both."

…

"I'm being pessimistic again, they're fine. Maybe you really do just want to talk. Maybe they'll come back with a powerful ally on our side."

…

"Maybe not."

…

"They won't die, they can't. I can't do this on my own. I'm not as practical as Tim, I don't know as much as Martin does. I'll still try, of course, I'd have to."

…

"It's not my battle to fight, but I'm going to fight it, until my dying breath. I'd just like help, and friends. I want everyone to be safe. I don't think Martin could handle any more loss and– I don't want to end up like him."

…

"I've really been rambling haven't I? Jon shouldn't hear this– I'll hide the tape, or I'll destroy it. I should make myself some tea, get some for Jon too if he's not already asleep, God knows he isn't hydrated."

…

"Goodbye Annabelle, perhaps I'll meet you someday. I don't know what I'd do if that happens, but it might be fun to find out."

The address, it turned out, led to a run-down old church on the outskirts of a town in the middle of nowhere. Martin and Tim stood outside of the St. Vitalis Church, staring in suspicion at the grimy stained glass windows and crumbling bricks. Didn't look like anyone had held a service here in decades. The knot of unease in Martin's stomach grew tighter. The looks the locals had given them when they asked for directions were somewhere between pity and a deep, deep fear.

It probably wasn't a good idea to go inside.

Martin sighed, switched on his torch, and pushed the swollen, rotted door open.

It was far darker inside than it should have been with all the windows, but the colorful designs were crusted over with decades of dust, candle smoke, and mold. The place was water-damaged to all hell, and the wooden floorboards looked precarious at best, mildewed and damp and ever so slightly squishy in a way that made him queasy. The pews bowed under the weight of themselves. He reached out to touch the stone brick wall and immediately pulled his hand back, something wet and slimy coated that wall, blackish goo glistened on his fingertips. Tim made a disgusted noise behind him.

"Hm, Don't think any prayers coming from this place are being answered, at least not anymore," Tim said, his torch beam fell on an old painting that surely once depicted Mother Mary. Now it moldered and fell apart in front of the petrified stumps of candles that stood worshiping at its base.

"No," Martin said simply, carefully navigating across the rotted floorboards to the podium at the back. Only pulpy mush remained of whatever holy text had once sat there, "This place isn't home to anything you could call holy anymore."

"There's nothing here, Martin," Tim grumbled, narrowly avoiding a hole in the floor. "Nothing but black mold, at least. Face it, we've been had, we should cut our losses, head back."

He shushed him, turning his attention to a decaying curtain behind the podium, it drifted slightly in a breeze. The round, shining black shape of a spider crawled across its edge before disappearing behind it. "In there, she's behind there."

Tim's expression hardened. "Well then," he whispered, "Lead the way."

Martin pushed the curtain to the side, it was heavy with damp and seemed ready to fall apart under his touch. Behind it was a staircase, descending into the darkness. Sconces that hadn't held light in decades were spaced along the walls, and a rotting carpet covered the stone steps. If the main church was wet and moldy, this place was wetter and moldier. Every inch of this place was saturated with the miasma that formed in places left alone for far too long. The neglect that turned walls leprous.

Tim took a deep, shaky breath, and started walking down the steps.

"Wait!" Martin reached out, trying to pull him back. The staircase looked too much like a throat. The slime coating the walls, the mold-spotted red carpet, the breeze from within that could convince you it was breathing. This place was not somewhere the Web would favor. It was too sickly, too choking. Annabelle wasn't here, they had been tricked.

His fingers closed around empty air. Tim didn't seem to hear him. The darkness swallowed his form.

Martin stood there in disbelief for a long time. Tim wasn't reckless, how the hell did he just walk into obvious danger like that? His eyes locked onto the spider from before, now dutifully spinning a web in the doorframe. Of course. Annabelle hadn't just sent them on a wild goose chase, she led them into a yawning bear trap, she was trying to get them out of the way.

He stared at the open maw of the staircase where Tim had gone. It dawned on him that there was a reason there wasn't an invisible string pulling him forward, he didn't need one. He couldn't bring himself to turn around. He couldn't live with himself if he just left Tim here to die, or worse. If he went down there he was going to give Annabelle exactly what she wanted. What if he couldn't even help? He'd probably just end up suffering the same terrible fate as everyone else who had wandered down that staircase.

Tim was definitely going to suffer that fate if he didn't do something.

He couldn't explain that to Sasha, he couldn't attend his funeral a second time.

Martin took a deep, shaky breath, failed to steel his nerves, and let the earth swallow him.

"Ah, look who's back. Wanted to be serenaded by my voice again? No? Hm, that's right, you probably want to hear one of these statements. Well, it's not going to happen. You know, I've just been skimming them, they're all about Jude Perry. Looks like a certain archivist decided to do some independent investigating. I'm not going to let it happen. I'm filing these away in some obscure corner where no one is going to be able to find them. Keep things in chaos." *chuckles* "Do you think Gertrude would be proud?"

…

"Speaking of, those police officers that were investigating her murder–Martin called them Daisy and Basira but I'm not sure I can call them by their first names–they left really suddenly this morning. Wonder what they're chasing."

…

"Jon's still asleep, glad he's getting some rest at least. He'd probably be way less grumpy if he slept more, and stopped telling himself he doesn't need help from anyone. I'm sure he's a nice guy deep down he just– has a tough exterior. Like those sweets that are really sour on the outside, but once you get past that it's a normal sweet? He's like that."

…

"I think he just needs some friends, some real friends, people to lean on, to trust. Unfortunately, I don't think he can trust any of us anymore. It's understandable, we're keeping such a monstrously big secret from him. I think he knows by now we don't mean him any harm but, still, it's hard to trust someone like that."

…

"I need to keep an eye on him. Not just because at any moment he could run off and bring us one step closer to the apocalypse, but because I don't want him to get hurt, and I don't want him to fear for his life either. He doesn't deserve that, none of us deserve this! It was just the wrong place at the wrong time, all the awful dominoes that fell into place."

…

…

"Oh, I– I think he's waking up now. I suppose that means it's time for a lesson in the supernatural, and time for you to go."

Martin found Tim at the bottom of the staircase, simply standing in the center of the square room it led to. He faced away from him, whether it was because he was staring at something near the opposite wall or not he couldn't tell. Martin called his name, no response. He took a step forward and his foot plunged into several inches of murky water. It was freezing cold and soaked into his shoe immediately. He winced. Wet socks, just what he needed. He trudged forward anyway.

"Tim!" He called again, it fell on deaf ears. Martin grabbed his friend by the shoulders and shook him back to reality. "Snap out of it, Tim! We have to leave here!"

Tim blinked blearily. "Martin?" He said slowly, "What?" He turned his head towards the dark, open maw of the staircase. "Oh, fuck. Oh, God."

"You're okay, Tim," Martin said, somewhat relieved. "You're fine, we just have to get out of here."

"Yeah, about that." He snipped, panic rising in his voice, in tandem with sarcasm as always.

"What do you mean?" Martin almost said, following Tim's gaze. He was met with an empty wall. Slime-coated bricks where a yawning doorway was. The staircase was gone. He took a step back, scanning the walls with his torch just to make sure he didn't get turned around or something. Nothing, they were boxed in. Sealed away. What was that story again? The one about the man whose own friend sealed him away in the catacombs beneath Italy.

Only he couldn't exactly call the acolyte of a spider a friend, could he?

He suddenly noticed the sound of trickling water and the fact that the pool beneath their feet was getting noticeably deeper. A bitter laugh rose in his throat. The kind of laugh that comes with an awful situation you couldn't possibly change. They were going to die here. Stand here, watching the water rise, until it closes over their heads and it all ends. Would Martin wake up in the past again? Did he get himself stuck in a loop? He hoped so. The alternative, of everything ending here, of leaving Sasha and Jon alone to try and change fate. It was too much to bear, and nothing he could think about if he wanted to keep himself together long enough to– long enough for what? He didn't quite know.

Tim's eyes went wide, and after swearing colorfully under his breath he took a pen from his pocket and turned to the wall, scraping it against the wet stone.

"What on earth are you doing?" He asked, the water was already halfway up their calves by now, they had an hour, if that, before the entire room was submerged.

"What does it look like?" Tim snapped, "I'm trying to Shawshank us out of here!"

"That's not going to work, you know."

"Of course I know!" His breathing was ragged and desperate, he seemed on the edge of tears, or screaming, or both. "Do you have any better ideas? Did you happen to bring a couple sticks of dynamite and a matchbook?"

Martin stared down at the ever-approaching surface of the water. "No." He said bitterly. It was so miserably cold. He could feel his toes growing numb. He'd seen the occasional headline about someone being revived hours after drowning in cold water like this, could they be among them? Would anyone find them in time?

"Yeah, I didn't think so. So shut up and let me do this." The pen was made of metal, the sound it made as it scraped against the stone was maddening, but at least it made some sort of mark. At least whoever found their bones would know they tried.

Tim continued ranting over the din of his futile escape plan. "I can't die here, you can't die here either." He said. "We have unfinished business, you and I. We'd just end up making this place even more haunted than it already is. So we. Can't. Die."

The water was past their waists before Martin could find any words. "I'm so sorry I brought you here."

"Do not apologize." Tim hissed through gritted teeth, "This is not the time to apologize. I came here because I wanted to help you. I walked down those stairs. You do not get to feel guilty about this too. No one deserves to have their last moments spent hating themselves because of all the would've, should've, could'ves hanging over their heads. This isn't your fucking fault. It's not my fault either. It's just a shitty situation. That's all any of this has been, shitty situations and awful coincidences and bad luck…" All the fervor slowly fell out of his voice, and his hand shook until the pen fell out of his grip and sank into the dark water with a pitiful splash. "And it's going to kill us."

Tim smiled. "How did you say I went out the first time? Some grand self-sacrifice, avenging Danny and ending the Unknowing with one push of a button? Didn't you say that it was that same explosion that caused Jon to get marked by the End? I thought I saved the world but really I just contributed to ending it, didn't I?"

Martin said nothing.

"Honestly? I'd prefer exploding to this. At least then we thought we accomplished something. I don't like this, dying horribly shouldn't be this… quiet." He wrapped his arms around himself, of course, that couldn't push back the cold that was seeping into their bones. "Poor Sasha, she's going to have to go on without us. Oh God, you don't think she'd go after us? You don't think she'd end up like us."

"She's not an idiot, Tim." Martin said softly, "She'd realize we're dead the moment she sees those stairs."

"Do you think she could do it?" Tim asked, "Save the world by herself?"

He reached out through the water that had reached their chests by now and grasped Tim's hand. His fingers were so numb he could barely feel it, but it felt like enough. "Yeah," He said, "I hope so."

"The tunnels? Really? Why?"

"Relax, Jon. It's just so nobody bashes my head in with a pipe."

"What?"

"It's a long story…"

"Is it one you can tell me?"

"Depends on how much time we have, the tunnels don't offer us that much protection from him, I don't really want to stay longer than necessary."

"Protection from who?"

"Our evil boss."

"Elias is– Okay no, I can see it. Evil how?"

"All you need to know is that you shouldn't trust him, or listen to a word he says, and you definitely shouldn't let him dig around in your mind if you can help it. And before you say anything, yes he can do that."

"Why can't you tell me everything?"

"Because I promised I wouldn't."

"Promised who?"

"Who do you think?"

…

"Why doesn't Martin want me to know?"

"He just wants to protect you, Jon."

"Why?"

…

"Fine. What are you going to tell me then?"

"Well, they go by many names. But we can start simple. Jon, have you ever heard of Smirke's 14?"

It was hard to keep track of time, only the slow rise of the water, and once it got high enough that he had to start treading to keep his head above the surface, even that became impossible. Tim didn't say much, neither did he. There was not much to say. Martin did not let go of his hand, he didn't want him to drift away.

It was cold, so cold. Now that he thought of it, the water probably wasn't much colder than 10 degrees. They would surely be dead by now if that wasn't the case. Still, the chill soaked into you, became you. It was hard to think of anything besides how cold you were. It was hard to think. Martin could tell Tim was faring worse than he was, slipping in and out of consciousness. Martin couldn't see him, of course, their torches had long since fallen out of their grasp and down to the bottom of the pool of murky water. He heard him though, his labored breathing, his panic when his head dipped below the surface, the fearful sounds he made when he realized how close the ceiling was.

Martin was silent. He was too busy trying to think. Think through the deep chill in his bones. Think of how the world would fare without him. An ugly sneering part of him whispered that it would be better off but of course, he knew that wasn't true. With him gone…Sasha maybe knew enough to get by, she was resourceful and quick-thinking and all, but that was a big maybe. Would she even have the strength to keep going without the two of them? To complete this task they all agreed was impossible to do alone?

Would it all happen again? Would Jon still end the world? Would he still decide to save it? Would Sasha be the one to hold the knife? Would she wake up on an average morning years ago?

Was all of this for nothing? Would Jon even know he had died trying to save him? Would he know he failed? Would he forgive him?

Was forgiveness even something he cared about anymore?

Fitting, He thought, that he would die for Jon. Jon had died for him. Jon had died for him and in turn, shattered him, turned him into nothing but a shell of a person set only on the goal of making sure it couldn't happen again. He didn't think his death would shatter him, he probably wouldn't even crack. He didn't care, that was a good thing.

Somewhere, muffled by water, there was a sound like metal hitting stone.

Jon didn't care about him, right? He couldn't, Martin had done his best to make sure he hated him even more than before, and it worked. It worked, right?

That noise again, louder now. Something broke, crumbled.

He's worried about you… That's what Tim and Sasha had said–Tim felt on the edge of drifting away, he was getting weaker, he couldn't last much longer, and the water was still rising. Well, anyone would be worried about him, he was pretty sure everyone at the institute who so much as knew his name was worried about him. Rosie slid him a slip of paper with her therapist's number on it last week for Christ's sake. If he was worried it didn't mean anything.

Again, rippling through the water.

He didn't want Jon to care. He couldn't care. He didn't want Jon to mourn him. He could say he didn't care either way but that would be a lie, he cared very deeply about how Jon shouldn't care about him.

Again. Something cracked, something was starting to give way.

If this was the end, he hoped Jon didn't feel anything, and if it wasn't, and he lived and wrote these very thoughts in verse and published them one day, anyone who read them would think he was insane. Maybe they would be right, the man he loves more than anything and he doesn't want him to mourn him? Who in history has been sickened by the very thought of the person their heart forever belongs to crying over their grave? But that was the thing.

Something was breaking open the wall.

The last thing Martin wanted was for Jon to lose someone else.

No, not something. Someone.

Might as well not be someone to lose.

There was a great rumble as the wall broke apart, and a rush of water suddenly set free. Tim weakly cried out as he was torn from his grasp, and then someone else grabbed his hand. The world was a blur as he was wrenched from the water he had become one with, he choked and gasped and took in great gulps of musty air as someone dragged him up a staircase. Before he knew it his blurry vision was trained on the bowed rafters of a cathedral, lying on his back upon a rotted wooden floor.

"Well, they're alive at least." Said one of his rescuers, their voice sounded far off. Maybe his ears were ringing, he couldn't quite tell.

"Barely," Said the other, "We need to get them to a hospital right now, hypothermia is no joke and we can't exactly interrogate a corpse."

"Fine, let's see if they can walk and then get them in the car. I have some coffee in a thermos, maybe that will warm them up."

One of the rescuers–the one who had just spoken, he guessed–walked closer and loomed over him. Their– her form came into focus. She was wearing a police uniform and a scowl, her dirty blond hair hastily pulled into a messy braid. She looked wound up, ready to burst off running at the slightest opportunity, but not in the way a rabbit was. No, she had the energy of an endurance predator, and it was that, not her appearance, that sparked recognition.

"D-Daisy?" He wheezed.

Her hands twitched above the holster for her baton, but she did not draw it.

"That's Detective Daisy, to you." She spat, "Now get up."

Chapter Text

Martin’s vision slowly came back into focus. Blobs of green and brown sharpened into a forest floor as he regained consciousness. He groaned and took in both his surroundings and the state of his own body. First of all, he seemed to be in the middle of the woods. Second of all, he was still soaking wet, though he luckily didn’t feel like he was dying anymore. Lastly, he was handcuffed to a tree, and to Tim, who was also handcuffed to a tree.

He bit the inside of his cheek as he waited for Tim to wake up. He had a feeling about what was going on, and he wasn’t looking forward to it.

After a few minutes, Tim’s eyes fluttered open, and he slowly raised his head.

“Martin?” He said, “What happene-” He tried to raise his right arm only to be stopped by the fact that it was still handcuffed to a tree. Tim looked at the shiny steel in disbelief. “Martin…what’s going on?”

Two figures stepped into view. Daisy and Basira, of course. Daisy split off from her partner and began circling around the two of them like a dog looking to pick a fight.

“This is a police interrogation.” She said sharply, “You two are suspects in the murder of Gertrude Robinson. Is that enough explanation for you?”

“Not really.” Tim replied, “Why are we in the woods?”

“I’m not telling you.” Daisy said at the exact same time Basira said. “This isn’t…an official interrogation, per say.”

The policewomen exchanged a glare and Basira continued. “You’re not even arrested, really. None of this is going on the record. We just want to ask you some questions.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “I have one arm handcuffed to my co-worker and the other arm handcuffed to a tree and we’re not being arrested?”

“It’s not on the record.” Daisy growled.

“It kind of sounds like you just kidnapped us.”

Daisy’s fist collided with the tree above Tim’s head. Splinters of bark rained down on his wet hair, and he let out a small squeak.

“Shut. Up.” Daisy spat, “Did you kill Gertrude or not.”

Tim was stuck stammering, so Martin spoke up instead. 

“No,” Martin said simply, “But we know who did.”

Basira’s eyes widened at the same time Daisy’s narrowed into slits.

“And who would that be?” Basira asked.

Tim looked at him dumbfounded, and made a decent attempt at a ‘don’t you dare tell them’ gesture for not having the use of his hands. Martin ignored him.

“It was Elias.”

“And what’s your evidence for that?” Daisy tore a leaf in half. Her eyes searched him for transgressions, any excuse she could find to do the same to him.

“I saw him- Well, heard him. I was trying to drop off statements from Research when I heard what happened.” It was a lie, one that came easily considering it was based on truth. He had heard the murder take place, even if it was just a recording.

“A witness?” Basira said.

“He’s lying.” Daisy tore up another innocent leaf. “If he really did witness it, why didn’t he say something sooner?”

“He didn’t want to get fired?” Tim protested, “You can’t just accuse your boss of murder, especially without evidence.”

Martin nodded, “I really need this job.” He emphasized. He was surprised at how good Tim was at covering his back. It had gotten them out of sticky situations before, maybe it would here too.

“And you’re sure you heard what you thought you did?” Basira said.

“I heard the gunshot.” Martin said, “And bits and pieces of their conversation. It couldn’t have been anything else.”

Basira turned to her partner, “Well, do you believe them?”

“Do you?” She replied

She nodded. “Look at them, Daisy, they are not murderers.”

Martin flinched, but he didn’t think either of them noticed.

Daisy glared at them for a long, long time, before she finally relaxed. “You’re right. They're not intimidating. They’re not killers.” She pointed to Tim, “That one’s just loud.”

“I have a name.” Muttered Tim.

“But one testimony is not enough to convict someone, we’d need more evidence, and I still wouldn’t rule them out completely.” Daisy undid her braid and shook small shards of brick out of it. “They’re still suspicious, almost the entire institute has said as such.”

Martin wondered for just a moment if Jon was among them.

“Wait,” Tim began, “Is that why you followed us? You thought we were up to something? On our way to hide a murder weapon.”

Basira looked at him curiously. “Well- yeah, pretty much.”

“Calm down, Tim.” Martin murmured, “They saved our lives.”

The tension in Tim’s shoulders relaxed, and he sighed deeply. “Yeah, yeah. I guess they did.” He turned his attention to the officers. “How did you find us, anyway?”

“Well,” Basira began, “We watched you walk into the church, and when you didn’t come back out we decided to investigate. You weren’t there, and the only other exit was that corridor. When we found a blank wall at the end of it, Daisy got a weird feeling and we borrowed a pickaxe from a local.”

“I still don’t know what the hell that was.” Daisy said, her voice shaking slightly.

“The Buried, at least, that's what I think.” Martin answered.

Daisy’s voice regained its menace. “The what?”

“The Buried.” He said casually, “Do you remember that coffin you found? It’s the same thing, just a different manifestation.”

Daisy froze, and Tim elbowed him hard in the side, shooting him another “don’t you dare” look.

“How do you know about that?” She said slowly.

“You gave a statement on it.”

“No I haven’t.” She shook her head in a way that suggested she was trying to clear her head more then deny the claim, “Not yet at least- I- who are you?”

“He’s from the fucking future.” Tim snapped, “Now can we get this over with? I am so done with these theatrics, Martin. Can you not reveal your biggest secret while we’re tied up?”

“The whole plan will go smoother if they’re on our side, just trust me on this.”

Daisy radiated anger. “Do not conspire in front of us. What. Plan.”

Basira rubbed the bridge of her nose. “This- okay. How far in the future?”

Martin faced them, his expression neutral. When they both met his eyes, he saw a flicker of something he immediately recognized. It was fear. They were scared of him. This stirred up a confusing cocktail of emotions. Some nauseating mix of shame, pride, and the cold knowledge that he could use this to his advantage.

“Three years from now, the world is going to end, and I’m trying to stop that from happening.”

Daisy and Basira shared a look that was understood only by the two of them. They met his eyes again, and Martin realized just how much they believed him. Daisy swore under her breath.

“End how?” She said, seeming so much smaller than usual.

“Stop it how?” Basira asked.

Martin was, admittedly, a bit tired of explaining the worst three years of his life over and over again, and he might have left a few things out. He did, however, put extra emphasis on the fact that Jon cannot die under any circumstances, though he didn’t tell them why, not the main reason at least.

“I don’t get it.” Daisy said, wearing a path into the forest floor with all the pacing she had been doing. “If we kill him, he can’t end the world.”

Martin bit into the side of his cheek, trying to keep his cool. “Maybe he can’t.” He said, his mouth filling with the taste of iron, a taste that was so, awfully familiar. “But Elias isn’t going to give up. He’ll just pick someone else.”

Martin looked back on the past couple of months, the Eye already had him, the Corruption and the Buried had marked him by now as well, and there was no doubt that the Lonely was still digging its freezing fingers into him. That was four, four out of fourteen. The math wasn’t adding up in his favor.

“And that someone…” He took a deep breath. “Will probably be me.”

“If he’s just going to keep going, why don’t we just kill him?” Basira asked.

“That risks all of us.”

“All of you, you mean.” She corrected, “But, I wouldn’t do that. Dunno if I could sacrifice you four, that feels…wrong, even if it does mean not ending the world.”

Daisy was biting her nails down to the quick. “Fine, we’ll help.” She said, “Whatever you need us for.”

Basira nodded, “What will you need us for?”

Martin shrugged, ignoring the gnawing pit in his stomach. “It’s always good to have extra allies, especially when they know their way around a fight.”

This seemed to satisfy them, and Basira approached to unlock their handcuffs.

“Are you sure this will work?” She said as she freed his left hand.

“No.” Martin said bitterly, “But it’s something, I can’t just lie down and wait for another apocalypse.”

Basira nodded, and hooked the three pairs of cuffs onto her belt. “I’m sure you’re going to want a ride home, then.”

Tim stared at the ground as he rubbed at his wrists. “Yeah, A ride would be nice.”

The police car was parked on a road not too far away, it couldn’t be too much of a walk after all, someone had to drag them to the trees. 

Tim and Martin settled into their seats, which weren’t very comfortable, and as Daisy turned the key in the ignition, Tim turned to him, an indescribable expression on his face.

“Hey, Martin.” He said, “Are you alright?”

“Am I ever?” He muttered.

Tim frowned, “I mean- I hope so? Gah, just- are you less alright than normal, you seemed really unsure back there.”

Martin said nothing, only looked out the window as the trees began to slowly roll by.

Twilight had long set in by the time Martin knocked on Sasha’s door. Tim lingered by his side, he could have just gone home, but he insisted on being there when they told Sasha what happened.

It creaked open, behind it stood Sasha, as expected. Wearing a comfortable looking pair of shorts and an honestly ridiculous graphic T-shirt. Relief washed over her as she saw them. Martin hoped they didn’t worry her too much.

Their clothes had dried by now, but it was hard to ignore how disheveled they still looked. Sasha ushered them inside and locked the door behind them, wringing her hands.

“So, what did she tell you?”

Tim groaned and practically fell into the sofa. “She wasn’t there.” He huffed, “It was a trap, I almost drowned in a musty, cold, hole in the ground, Sasha. It was not pleasant, or how most normal people expect to spend their Friday afternoon.”

“You almost– You what?” Sasha started pacing around the room. “What happened?”

“The address led to a church, the church had a basement, the basement sealed us in and we would have drowned if Daisy and Basira hadn’t followed us there to interrogate us about Gertrude’s murder.” Martin said all too calmly, “Does that about catch you up?”

“And Basira and Daisy are in on the plan.” Tim said, muffled by a throw pillow.

Sasha stopped abruptly, her mouth hanging open. “Wait, wait wait wait. So Annabelle tried to kill you?”

Martin shrugged. “Pretty much, I think we’re interfering with her plans.”

There was a small, barely noticeable flicker of emotion on Sasha’s face. A cold, ruthless anger that Martin had never seen on her before. It startled him.

After a long, tense moment, she relaxed. “I– I’m glad you’re both okay. You are okay, right?”

“Fine.” Tim mumbled, “Just really tired. You don’t mind if I sleep here tonight, do you? I have a really long commute.”

Sasha sighed. “Yes Tim, that’s fine.” Her brown eyes settled back on Martin. “So those detectives, they know everything then?”

He nodded. “We can count on them to help if we need it, we can trust them. I think so at least.”

“You think so?”

“I don’t know. Daisy’s with the Hunt, but she probably won’t hurt us. Especially now that I’ve talked her down from thinking any of us are murderers. Basira is to be trusted, at least.”

“If you say so…” Sasha looked out the window into the darkening sky. “I told Jon about the fears.” She admitted.

Martin’s eyes went wide, he wasn’t really sure what to think. “You what?’

“Not about anything else! I left you and the plan completely out of the conversation. I just…I thought he should know. I thought it would help keep him safe. You can’t just assume he’ll keep himself out of danger when he has no idea what’s going on!”

He stammered, “Well- fine, that makes sense, but what about you? What happens if Elias finds out?”

“He probably already knows.” She pointed out, “It’s too late now, he has no reason to kill me if I've already told Jon everything. I went into the tunnels, I made sure we were safe.”

“What did he say?”

“Not much of anything.” Sasha tugged on a strand of her hair, “A lot of questions, I answered the ones I could. I think…I think I convinced him not to go after Jude, and I think he trusts me a little more.”

“Okay, okay. Thank you, that was…a good idea. I don’t think I would have thought about it myself, either.” He smiled, a little more at ease now.

“See? You need me, I have the ideas and the charm.”

Tim sat up, looking on the verge of falling asleep. “I thought I was the charm.” He grumbled, “But- Yeah, good work, Sasha. I’m glad you managed to make progress while we fumbled around and almost died for nothing.”

“Don’t say that.” She said, “You were tricked. Annabelle actively tried to lead you to your doom, that’s not a flaw on your part.”

“We shouldn't have trusted her anyway.” Martin lamented, “I don’t know what we were even doing, thinking it wasn’t a trap. She’s of the Web, traps are what they do.” 

“What are we going to do about her?” Sasha murmured after a stretch of silence, “We can’t just ignore her. If she really wants us out of the way she’s going to keep trying, and who knows, next time she might choose a more direct approach, next time we won’t be so lucky.”

Tim rubbed his eyes. “Sasha, wait, you are not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”

“We need to go to her, we need to convince her otherwise, we need to do something.” Sasha had a determined air to her that was incredibly hard to ignore, and Martin couldn’t tell if she was suggesting this out of sheer practicality, of if that anger he saw on her earlier was contributing to it. “With the Web gone, we have that much more freedom, we have one less fear hoping for an apocalypse breathing down our necks.”

“You want us to kill Annabelle.” Martin said, awestruck.

“I want Annabelle to no longer be a threat to us, it doesn’t matter how we get there.” There was an odd gleam in Sasha’s eyes, one that almost felt dangerous. 

“You’re serious about this?” Tim said, looking much more awake. “You want us to waltz on down to Hilltop Road and try and talk Annabelle over to our side, and if that doesn’t work you want us to, what? Kill her? She’s full of cobwebs! I don’t even know if she has internal organs!”

Sasha smiled. “I think it could work, I have a plan.”

Tim looked to him, eyes wide.

Martin mulled it over. It was true that Annabelle was a threat, a very large one. Getting rid of her would no doubt end up helping them, but that would mean they would have to survive facing her in the first place. Sasha looked at him expectantly, as dangerous as this idea was, Martin had no doubt that if they refused to tag along, she would go through with it anyway. She was going to do this, with backup or not, and he could not let her go in there alone.

He had made his decision.

“You better know what you’re doing, Sasha.” He said.

She stood up and started typing something into her phone. “I do.” She looked up at him, her gaze calculating, and almost eager. “You two should get some rest, the train to Oxford leaves at ten in the morning.”

Chapter Text

“Jon! I was told I’d find you here.”

…

“Hello.”

“You seem glum, is something wrong?”

“A lot to think about, that’s all.”

“Ah, yes, Elias told me about your…discovery.”

“It wasn’t exactly a discovery.”

“You're right, it really wasn’t. You didn’t discover anything, you were just told. You accepted it rather quickly as well! Hardly doubted her. She could just be lying to you, you know.”

“Sasha wouldn’t do that.”

“She wouldn’t? She’s already been lying to you for months, they all have.”

“They’ve been hiding things, not lying. It’s not the same thing.”

“Hm, well if you say so.”

“But she wasn’t lying, was she? You wouldn’t care so much if she was.”

“Ah, you’ve got me. Yes, everything was true.”

“...Great.”

“I assume you’ve figured out what I am by now, too.”

“It wasn’t hard, you aren’t subtle.”

“And do you have anything to say about that?”

“Not particularly, though I think I know what you want from me by now.”

“And what would that be?”

“If you’re trying to get me to join you, Lukas, it’s going to take a lot more than attempts at pleasant conversation.”

“Oh, I know, but I don’t need to do anything to get you under the influence of the Lonely. Do I? It’s got you already.”

…

“Don’t say that.”

‘Oh but it does. Tell me, where are your friends now, Jon?”

“I…wouldn’t say I have any.”

“Really? Not Tim? Not Sasha?”

“...No, I don’t think so.”

“Still, you do enjoy their company, don’t you? Where are they?”

“I…I don’t know, they all called in for separate reasons.”

“Your assistants are off again on their mysterious adventures, plotting mysterious things. All without you. They’re getting themselves into danger–at least you think they are–and drifting further and further away. They’re leaving you alone in this place as you try your hardest to figure out what terrible secret they’re keeping from you.”

“Do you know? What it is? What they’re trying to do?” 

“Oh, no, not a clue, probably even less than you do. But even if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Do you know if they’re safe?”

“Why do you care?”

“I–I don’t know, but…I do.”

“Disappointing.”

“Are. They. Safe.”

…

…

“No.”

…

“Peter, wait– ugh, he’s gone.”

…

“I just want to know what I’m supposed to do.”

The three of them lingered on the front steps of the house at Hilltop Road. It loomed, imposing and wrong, above them. Martin hadn’t been inside since Annabelle had trapped him in webs and threatened to drop him into that rift in reality. That rift in time itself.

Sasha’s breath was steady as she fiddled with something in her hands, a brass lighter, engraved with a pattern of webs.

“Jon’s lighter.” Martin murmured, “Why do you have that?”

She looked up at him guiltily. “I uh, I swiped it from his desk yesterday. I thought he’d be better off without it. I brought it for…assurance, I suppose.”

The house creaked and settled.

“Maybe we’ll want to burn the whole place down again.” She whispered.

Tim raised an eyebrow at her. “What if he notices?”

Sasha shrugged. “Maybe I’ll give it back.”

“If we live.” Tim said grimly.

“We’re going to live.” She said, shutting him down. “God, just open the door, Martin. I’m getting antsy.”

He placed his hand on the doorknob, cold under his touch. He hesitated. “Sasha, what if this is what she wants?” He said. “This could be just another trap.”

“What else are we supposed to do? Just go on as normal and hope she doesn’t pull the right strings that get us killed?”

Martin flinched.

“I don’t want to take that chance.” She continued, fist clenched around the lighter. “Because if we die, then there’s no hope for anyone. There’s no one to stop the world from ending and there’s no one to stop Jon from killing it for good.”

He tried to imagine Jon, alone in the ruined world he created. Wandering alone. Suffering alone. Alone. Alone. Alone. Martin’s breath hitched and he squeezed his eyes shut. “And if we all die here?” He asked.

“We won’t.” Sasha said with a bitter determination, “I told you, I have a plan. Trust me with this, I can get us out of here.”

Martin looked to Tim, who was wearing a sullen expression. He nodded. Slowly, carefully, Martin turned the knob. The door was unlocked, of course. It swung inward, letting out a dry creak that echoed throughout the old house beyond. The sound seemed deafening in the eerie quiet.

He stepped inside.

There was a layer of dust on the floor. This wasn’t a place that looked lived in. Had it ever really? In all the times it was rebuilt, had anyone truly, wholeheartedly called it home? If they did, they must have been ignoring the fact that something else had lived here first. Something dark, and old. That little thin spot in the logic of the world. That small, almost unnoticeable tear in the fabric that was everything.

He could feel it now. The hazy quality of the air. The way the sound of his steps seemed muffled, the sounds deadened. The way something deep in his bones told him that something was very, very wrong here.

“Is she even here?” Sasha asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“She better be.” Tim hissed, “I’m sick of train rides. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I would rather be mindlessly reorganizing a file cabinet right now.”

“You don’t mean that.” She muttered.

Martin shushed them. Behind the door that led out of the parlor, he heard footsteps, so faint and so light they were easily ignorable. Slowly, the door opened, and from behind it stepped Annabelle Cane.

“Oh,” She said, her fangs gleaming against her plum colored lipstick, “It’s you.”

Sasha bristled.

She sighed and leaned against the doorframe that she was very nearly too tall for. “Alright, I’ll bite. What do you want?”

“Uh, you tried to kill us?” Tim said, “Really we should be asking you that question.”

“You know what I want.” She said, looking rather bored, “And you were getting in the way of that, weren’t you?” Her eyes landed on Martin, so dark they could have been black.

“Your plan didn’t work, Annabelle.” He said, “That rift didn’t send the fears somewhere else, it just sent me back here. It’s pointless.”

She smiled, “And what makes you so sure it didn’t work? Maybe you were the exception, a special case.”

“The fears are still here, aren’t they?” Martin asked, “They didn’t get pulled away. Time got reset, unwound. All that rift did was send everything back to before the tapes were recorded.”

“It didn’t work once ,” Annabelle said, “Experiments are meant to be repeated, unfortunately, you and your sidekicks are doing everything in your power to stop it and well– I can’t just have that.”

“So what are you going to do?” Tim asked, “Finish the job? Right here? Right now?”

“I could, but it’s really of much greater benefit to me if you would join me.” She stepped closer, towering over Martin, “Besides, it’s really in your best interest.”

“How?” Martin snapped, “How is letting you get what you want going to help us?”

“Because,” She said, leaning down to not quite meet his eyes, “You could get what you want. All you need is for Jon to get his act together and not mess up the ending, that way, I get my new dimension, this world gets to be free from fears, and you will get the safety of the person you are doing all of this for.”

He froze. He didn’t want to let her get to him, he couldn’t let her. She was manipulating him, she always was but– did that mean she was wrong?

“I know you aren’t doing this to save the world, Martin.” She continued, “Maybe that’s why your friends are here but not you. You never cared about the world, not really. Yes, saving it would be nice, you never liked to see all those people suffering but– I think we both know you would end it all over again if only it meant he got to live.”

He felt Tim’s gaze burn on the back of his neck, he watched Sasha cast a sympathetic look at him before turning away. He felt their trust melting away, he felt their respect start to crumble.

“You’re wrong.” He lied.

“No, I’m not.” She rose up to her full height once again.

“How do you even know all this? Have you just been listening this whole time?”

She pondered this, “Not quite… let's just say, you’re not actually a special case.”

Of course, of course she was from the future too. The one other person out there who experienced the apocalypse and remembered it all was Annabelle Fucking Cane.

“So, what do you say? Do you think it’s better to continue along this fool’s errand of yours that you hope by some miracle will end with everything being alright, or will you join me, and get everything you want at a fraction of the risk?”

Martin desperately looked to his friends, seeing if maybe they had an answer, a plan, something. Sasha was gone, she must have left, decided this wasn’t worth it. Tim met his eyes, his expression conflicted, and confused. He shook his head.

“Don’t.” He said, “You shouldn’t do this.”

He knew he shouldn’t. It wouldn’t be right. Annabelle was an evil person who wanted to do evil things. She was getting inside his head, using his weaknesses like strings to pull him along. He knew that.

But there was something, something about how she went through the same end of the world he did. How she could understand in a way the others couldn’t. It made him hesitate, it made him wonder, once again, if he was wrong about her. Suddenly he was reminded of the day–if it could be called that–when he felt he was about to lose everything, and when she came to him with what she told him would be a solution.

Another way. A way to save him. A way to be happy.

He believed her back then, even now, after everything, maybe he still did.

Still. He didn’t know if he could go through it all again. He didn’t know if he could see that huge eye part the clouds again. He didn’t know if he could witness Jon’s despair. Or worse, let him go through it all alone.

He didn’t want Tim and Sasha to either, Or Basira, or Daisy, or Melanie or Georgie or anyone. If he let the world end again, he would still have to watch as countless people suffered. Worse, if he joined Annabelle, he would be responsible.

He looked up at her.

“No.” He said.

Her eyes widened slightly, “No? Martin, please, won’t you reconsider?”

“No!” He repeated firmly, “I’m not doing it, I’m not joining you.”

“You can’t be serious. No? You have nothing to lose except the fears that made your life a living hell. I’m offering you normalcy, I’m offering you a happy ending.” She was angry now, was she…getting taller?

“I’d rather make my own, thank you.”

“Are you stupid? This isn’t going to work. Jon is doomed. He’s been doomed. His fate has been written since long before you even met him and if you think you can change that you are far more naive than I thought you were.” Her fangs shone in the dim light as she backed him into a corner.

Martin pressed himself against the wall. He wasn’t expecting her to get this well…furious. Suddenly he was very glad he had backup, well, he at least had Tim.

Oh god, it was just Tim. He wasn’t even armed or anything.

He was going to die, or be spiders, or something else terrible. He certainly wasn’t going to make his own happy ending, he had absolutely no idea why he said that.

“You cannot change things, Martin. Either you join me, or you fail. I call the shots, I am the one in charge, I own this narrative.”

Just as Martin squeezed his eyes shut to prepare for his inevitable demise, he heard a voice, whoever it came from was hidden behind Annabelle’s towering form, but still, he knew it well.

“No you don’t.” Sasha said, her voice cold and sharp as a knife. “Not anymore.”

Annabelle didn’t even have time to turn around before the hem of her skirt caught fire. It spread, it spread horrifically quickly. She tried to put it out, but it only spread to her hand, climbed up her arm.

Annabelle Cane screamed.

It wasn’t natural, how quickly she burned. Human beings usually took a very, very long time to burn, but Annabelle was very much not human anymore.

Martin winced, the flames close enough to singe his hair, but in the end, Annabelle was nothing more than a small, drifting pile of ash, and a smell like burning dust.

He pulled his eyes away from what was left of her, instead looking to Sasha. She held the lighter, still open, still lit, in her hand. Staring down at the destruction she just caused, the remains of the person she just killed.

Tim was pressed up against a wall, eyes widened. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but quickly shut it again.

“I-Is she dead?” Sasha said shakily.

Tim swore under his breath, “Fuck, she has to be, right?”

Martin met her eyes. “How–?” He said, wanting to continue but not finding the words.

Sasha shut the lighter. “Cobwebs catch easily.” Was all she said.

Behind her, from the window, was the thud of something hitting the floor, and a rustle of movement. Martin looked up, hiding behind a lacy curtain was a woman. Her denim jacket was dusty and torn in places, and her dyed hair had grown out roots. She was holding a video camera, a camera that was still recording.

That would be bad enough if Martin didn’t know her.

Melanie King held back a scream.

Chapter Text

There was a very long, very tense second as the three of them watched Melanie slowly pick up her camera and stop the recording.

How much had she seen? How much was on that camera? Sasha made a small, fearful noise.

They needed to get that camera.

Four people remained frozen in place, terrified of what could happen next, of what the next few seconds might mean for all of them. A stalemate as tense as a harp string about to snap.

Tim was the first person to break the silence between them. “It uh- it’s not what it looks like?”

Melanie didn’t waste a second, she was already breaking into a run before Tim finished his sentence. Sasha bolted after her, and Martin had no choice but to follow.

He tried not to think about how bad he felt about this. Melanie was his friend, once, and he really didn’t blame her for running from them. Anyone would have done the same.

Still, they couldn’t let her keep that footage. Not when it showed Annabelle’s death so plainly. They couldn’t let her release it. He didn’t know what that would mean for them, for Sasha, but it couldn’t be anything good. 

“Stop!” Sasha shouted as they rounded a corner, “Please! We can talk about this!”

“Are you crazy?” Melanie shot back, “You just set someone on fire!”

“I know but- It’s complicated!”

Melanie opened her mouth as if to respond but instead tripped on a curb. She landed in a heap on the sidewalk, panting and out of breath.

Tim caught up to her quickly and offered her a hand. “Are you alright?” He asked.

Melanie looked at him like he had grown a third ear. “What- what the hell are you playing at?” She sputtered.

“We don’t want to hurt you.” Sasha said, equally out of breath, “We just- let us explain. We can walk you back to the station and everything. Please just hear us out.”

“I’m not going to-” Her eyes darted around, and seeing that she was surrounded, her eyes welled with tears. “What- what was that? You- you’re all from the Magnus Institute, aren’t you?” She pointed at Sasha. “I remember, you’re the one who told me to leave before I talked to anyone. What was that about? Why…why…” She trailed off, her breaths reduced to painful-sounding gasps.

Martin kneeled down beside her. “Hey,” He said in a gentle voice, “You’re okay, I promise we don’t want to hurt you.”

“You wanted to hurt that woman.” She said shakily, “You killed her, and she-” she looked up at Sasha with contempt, “She doesn’t regret it at all.”

“That woman-” Martin took a deep breath. “Her name was Annabelle Cane. She wasn’t human. She was- she was a monster.”

“And you’re not?” She said bitterly.

Martin froze.

“No, we aren’t.” Sasha answered for him, “We didn’t have a choice, she was going to kill us if I didn’t do anything.”

“And why was she so angry at you? Why were you talking to her in the first place?”

Tim helped her up. “We can talk about it on the way to the station.” He said, “I think we’re all itching to get out of here.”

Melanie snatched her camera off the ground and inspected it for damage. “Fine.” She said through gritted teeth, “But if you can’t give me a good enough explanation you are not getting that memory card.”

The three assistants exchanged glances, the question hovering between them was clear. How much do they tell her?

Martin could tell her everything, but he was getting exceptionally tired of doing that. Maybe she didn’t need to know about the time travel, or the end of the world, or him and Jon.

Martin took a deep breath. “There are monsters in this world. Some want to hurt people, some don’t have a choice. We were trying to stop that monster—Annabelle—from hurting us. We didn’t come here with the intention to kill her, it just—was something we couldn’t help.”

Sasha nodded. “What we do, it's dangerous. We tried not to wrap you up in it but—it happened anyway. I’m so sorry.”

Melanie clutched her camera like a lifeline. “What makes me so important that you had to go out of your way not to involve me?”

It was an echo of a sentiment Martin had heard over and over from Jon. He had shoved both Jon and Melanie aside for their own safety, and here Melanie was, stumbling into danger anyway.

“Lets…just say one of us had a bit of a premonition.” Tim said, casting an unsubtle glance towards Martin.

It was clear that Melanie had more questions, but she seemed unwilling to ask them.

“I just want to go home.” She whispered.

Sasha sighed. “I think we all do.”

°°°

The station was bustling with activity when they arrived. The four of them huddled in a close group to stay together in the herd of people.

Melanie, however, kept as much distance as she could manage. She didn’t trust them, he didn’t blame her. The memory card for the camera was still firmly in her possession. She said she would give it up once they got to London, but for now, it was clutched in her tight fist. She was quiet, her eyes darting nervously around. Martin doubted she would want to talk to them after this was over, that was probably a good thing. 

At least she wasn’t asking too many questions, she seemed content to be left in the dark. Or at least she didn’t feel like shaking any answers out of the archival assistants.

Martin’s stomach twisted with guilt, he hoped Melanie could move on with her life, forget this ever happened, forget that the monsters are real, forget that he even existed.

It was unlikely, he knew that. He knew how determined Melanie could be when there was a mystery that needed solving. It was all too possible that she would get back to london only to walk right back into danger again, camera in hand.

Sasha pressed into his side, clinging onto his arm as she listened intently for their train to be called. She was stone-faced, but the iron grip on the fabric of his sweater and the tight line of her mouth told Martin that she was holding back an ocean of panic. 

Sasha stared at Melanie. Fear glittering in her darkened eyes.

“You were planning to kill Annabelle from the start, weren’t you?” Martin said in a low voice. “That’s why you brought the lighter.”

Sasha stiffened, her eyes glued to the linoleum floor. “I didn’t…I would have kept her alive if she had just cooperated but—“

“You knew she wouldn’t have.”

She held him tighter.

“You wanted revenge.” 

There was nothing accusatory in Martin’s voice, he understood entirely. If anything, he was proud.

She took a shaky breath. “I couldn’t just let her get away with trying to kill you. I couldn’t give her the chance to try again.”

“I know.” Martin said softly.

“It’s so strange, I really didn’t think I had the courage for all of this.” She looked up at him, her eyes shining. “I guess I just needed a reason, people to protect. I think I’m good at that.”

Martin smiled, “You’ve kept us alive so far.”

She nodded, “Let’s just hope I can get you the rest of the way.”

Suddenly, Tim made a strange, strangled noise. Melanie’s head shot up with a jolt.

Both their gazes led to the pillar beside them, on it, a scorched handprint marred the utilitarian surface, and leading from it, long drips of flesh-colored wax. It was a calling card, it was a warning.

“What-“ Melanie said in a high, nervous tone.

Tim prodded the mark, his hands shaking. “Uh, Martin? The wax is still warm.”

“The Lightless Flame.” Sasha breathed, “Are they here?”

“The what?” Melanie squeaked.

Martin scanned the crowd. He searched for anyone who seemed surrounded by an odd circle of space. He looked for more drips of wax. He looked for smoke.

There was a woman looking right at them. Across the room. She leaned against another pillar, wisps of smoke curling away from its surface. She looked familiar.

“Jude Perry is here.” Martin said, trying to keep his cool in the face of the very real danger staring at them from across the room. “And I think she’s noticed us.”

Tim groaned. “We just can’t catch a fucking break, can we?” He pulled his jacket around himself, like the leather could do anything against the heat. “Well, boss? What do we do?”

It felt wrong, to be called ‘boss’ but he supposed it was fitting.

“We run.” He said, “We hide. ”

Jude was walking towards them, slowly. The crowd parted around her as she advanced, shying away from

her inexplicable heat. He wondered why nobody was running already.

“Together, or?” Tim asked.

“No! We’ll find each other once she’s given up, just go!”

With that, Tim took off into the crowd. Sasha grabbed Melanie by the wrist and dragged her away. Martin lost sight of them quickly, good.

Jude’s eyes were locked on him, she advanced slowly, methodically. 

He really hated getting burned. 

Martin pushed through the crowd, a waterfall of apologies flowing from his mouth as he shoved people aside. He searched desperately for anywhere to hide. He didn’t know if he could lose himself in the crowd. He worried that if he tried, he might just get people hurt.

He looked over his shoulder at Jude, she hadn’t seemed to have found him yet, but she would, one way or another.

He reached the far wall of the station and found the door to a supply closet. He thought it would be locked, but he attempted to open it anyway. Through some stroke of luck or some janitor’s negligence, it swung open. When Martin stepped inside and breathed a sigh of relief as he was swallowed by darkness.

He felt for the handle to try and lock it and was met with empty air. Weird but—maybe his spacial awareness was just off. Light would help. He fumbled for his phone and switched the torch function on. Cold, bright light burst to life and lit up his surroundings.

His lack of surroundings.

The door was gone, replaced by something smooth and black that absorbed so much light that it looked like the dark had simply solidified. He touched it, hoping to feel the crack of some sort of opening, and was met with nothing, just cold. The painful, burning cold of a metal pole on a frigid winter morning.

Martin could see nothing but himself and his breath in the air. He tried to illuminate the rest of the room, and was met not with a small room, but the beginning of a corridor.

He was already sick of darkness, and being trapped, and mazes, and he was especially sick of the cold, but he was too tired to feel anything besides a deep annoyance. 

It was better than Jude Perry, at least.

Martin stood in place for a long time. Trying to figure out what to do. He could just give up. Sit down. Become as much a part of this place as the walls. That seemed a little drastic, so he didn’t give up, he just listened. Maybe the others ended up in this place hidden in the forgotten places and corners of the station. Maybe he could find them. Or maybe he was alone. Either way, he needed to at least try to find reality again.

After all, there was always a way out.

The sound of the train station, the bustling crowd, the announcements over the intercom. If he tried he could still hear them. They sounded very far away, but in this silent place it was the only thing to ground himself to. If he followed it, maybe he could escape.

He took a deep breath, the air smelled unnaturally cold, like the inside of an industrial freezer, an air conditioner turned up far too high.

Resigned to his fate of walking through this maze for God knows how long, he pulled the sleeve of his sweater over his hand to protect it from the cold and traced the wall as he advanced. He used his phone to light the way, but he acknowledged that it wasn’t much help against the oppressive darkness, and that sooner than later the battery would run out and he would have only the wall and the distant sound of a crowd to guide him.

He pressed on. Because the world still needed saving. Because Jon was still alone in the archives, his fate growing ever closer. Because no matter how many times Martin almost died in the clutches of fear, nothing could ever be worse than watching the life leave Jon’s eyes.

He worried about the others. He hoped Jude never caught up to any of them. He hoped that they hadn’t ended up here, wherever this place was. If they had, he hoped they were managing to keep it together.

He’d find them, one way or another. They’d figure out what to do next, wouldn’t they? 

A noise echoed through the dark halls. A distorted and rumbling roar. He didn’t know what it was, he didn’t want to dwell on it. Through the vast space, he couldn’t even tell if the sound was mechanical or organic in origin. It could have been something as simple as the sound of metal hitting metal. Warped and broken by the endless corridors until it was unrecognizable. Mundane, or monster, it was impossible to tell. Still, primal, sickening fear rose to the surface of Martin’s mind, a flood of adrenaline that told him to run. 

He didn’t, he just kept walking towards the hum of the crowd.

Chapter Text

“Testing, testing. Ah, good, it works.”

…

“This is a new tape recorder. All the others spontaneously caught fire while I was on my lunch break yesterday. The archives still smell of burning plastic. I’m not going to tell myself that was a normal occurrence. That the dozens of tape recorders I don’t remember having all just simultaneously malfunctioned in a very specific way which caused them to burst into flames. Something unnatural is behind this, I’m not an idiot, but I also don’t know what it is, and there isn’t much I can do about it anyway.”

…

“It’s so quiet here. The others are still gone. I’ve tried to reach out to Sasha but…nothing. I’m worried. I should probably be more worried. They’re out doing God-knows-what, messing with these…things. They could be dead already, or worse.”

…

“I could try and help them. They probably don’t want my help. No, they definitely don’t want it. They have made it clear they don’t want me involved. Whatever it is they’re doing.”

…

“Sasha says it’s all for my own good. Do I believe her? I think I do. Doesn’t make me feel much better, it sort of makes it worse.”

…

“I know they’re in danger. Lots of it. What if they get killed? And for what? To protect me?”

…

“I should go after them.”

…

“I can’t. Not yet.”

…

“It’s so quiet down here, and so cold. I miss them. Why do I miss them? It isn’t like we’re close, it isn’t like I usually enjoy company in general.”

…

“Maybe Peter’s right. Maybe I should just stop caring. It would make sense, it would hurt less.”

…

“Maybe they’re lying, maybe they’re not trying to protect me. They could be plotting against me—or maybe they just don’t care. Maybe I mean nothing to them.”

…

…

“Who am I kidding? Of course they’re doing this for me. I wish I knew why.”

…

“Why am I so important?”

…

“Why don’t I feel like I am?”

°°°

It was dark, and it was cold, and Martin felt like he had been walking for a very long time.

The noise of the crowd still sounded very far away, was he any closer? He couldn’t tell. There was a very real possibility that he hadn’t made any progress at all, progress could be impossible.

Still, he needed to keep moving.

Somehow, he kept moving.

Walking alone in the endless black, Martin was given an unpleasant amount of time to think. There was a lot he had to think about and he didn’t particularly want to think about any of it, and every time he felt his mind wander anywhere past the mundane frivolities he tried to focus on he felt a deep, deep pit open up in his stomach. He teetered on the edge of that pit and he stared into it and his heart quickened and his breaths grew shallow and he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think about things that didn’t matter again.

It was always there though, a helpless, panicked feeling.

Martin sat down with his back against the cold, featureless wall. He was so tired, even if it wasn’t in the physical sense.

He should feel more urgency, he should be running to try and find a way out of here, he should be shouting for help, he should be doing something.

He wasn’t, he was just too exhausted. He probably could have blamed it on the nature of this place, but he knew that wouldn’t be fair. This maze had no part in this. 

Martin had been doing too much for too long. He had almost died a concerning amount of times by now and for what? What was he really doing? Was he actually saving anybody?

Was he really saving Jon?

If all of this was for nothing. If it just delayed the inevitable. If it made things worse. What would he do about it? What could he do?

His mind circled back to the possibility that he had gotten himself trapped in a time loop. That maybe, if he did fail, he’d get yet another chance, infinite chances. As much time as he needed, decades, centuries, thousands of years, to replay the same stretch of his life over and over again, all in the hopes of finally getting it right. There was hope to that thought. He could watch the world end countless times and always know that it wouldn’t really mean it was over. He’d wake up to Sasha’s voice in the Archives again, maybe this time, he could find a happy ending somewhere in the millions of tiny decisions he could make.

That was the best case scenario–urgency dissolved, all the time in the world, the freedom to be careful–but none of it was a guarantee, and if it wasn’t true then he couldn’t pretend that it was. Besides, Martin didn’t think he could watch the world end again, watch anyone he cared about die again, lose everything again. 

So he had to fix everything the first time, if he could fix anything at all.

He wasn’t sure if he could.

Maybe they all were doomed from the start, and the universe had engraved on its very being that they would die and they would suffer, and all Martin was doing was carving a different path towards that outcome. Like lighting striking a tower, their different paths all forced to end up at the same place.

At least there was comfort to a reality like that. There wasn’t anything he could have done, there will never be.

The worst possibility was the one he thought was most likely. Yes, he could fix things, he really could save everyone, but this was the only chance he had left. If he failed here, he would fail forever.

Martin grit his teeth and stood up so he could continue to walk through the frigid, inhospitable corridors that lurked in the forgotten spaces of the train station. Failure was beginning to look very, very likely.

Was he getting any closer?

The dark was oppressive, it pressed down on his surroundings, on him. Thick and murky. It seemed to cling to his clothes, to be sucked into his lungs as he breathed. Dark as he was used to it, was not a physical thing, you couldn’t feel it, couldn’t touch it. It wasn’t anything really, just the absence of something. This dark was different, this dark was not an absence. It was a horrible, moldering, all-consuming presence. Darkness is often described as being something that swallows, and Martin had never understood that particular phrase so intimately as he did now. This darkness did not just swallow, it was hungry. 

He had to be getting somewhere? Right?

How long had he been walking?

Hours, surely, maybe days, weeks, even. Time went strange in places like this. He could feel like he spent lifetimes within these walls and escape to find not even a minute had passed outside of them. Or it could be the reverse, which would be far more terrifying.

No. Stay focused. He shouldn’t dwell on hypotheticals, the things he didn’t know. He didn’t know a lot of things.

He paused.

What did he know?

He was in a maze, and it was cold, and it was dark, and he didn’t know where he was going.

What fear had he gotten himself wrapped up in?

Maybe it was the Spiral. The corridors did make him think of the Distortion, but it didn’t fit. The Distortion was nothing like this, it played with perception, it didn’t make you unable to perceive.

Another creaking groan from the depths of the labyrinth. It sounded so far away. The noise of it so altered by the distance it would be impossible to tell what it was until it got closer, and even if it did, the darkness would obscure it even more effectively than the space between them.

It was at that moment that Martin’s phone battery decided to give up on him, the only light he had left abruptly disappeared and the darkness at last clamped its jaws around his senses.

Right.

The Dark.

It was now he started to panic.

He knew, on some level, how to deal with the fears. Carbon dioxide killed ravenous silver worms, the Eye couldn’t touch you if you were blind, you could slip out of the numbing clutches of the Lonely if you simply loved enough. The Dark was never an Entity he needed to outsmart, if there was a trick he didn’t know it. He might be stuck here, forever, and this place would gorge itself on his desperation.

No. Focus. Breathe. Stay calm. Don’t let it get what it wants.

He picked up the sound of the crowd again.

He followed it.

He did not dwell on if it would get him nowhere or not, he just kept going, it was the only thing he knew how to do.

His ears carefully strained to the faint noise, he was so focused on sound that he immediately picked up the sound of someone else's footsteps, however far away. Someone else, and they were getting closer.

A jolt of fear, a spark of hope. Martin called out into the black.

“Is someone there?” It echoed horribly off the smooth walls.

The footsteps stopped.

“Martin?” Said a familiar voice, shaky and cautious.

“Tim!” He cried, relief blooming in his chest. “I’m here, just follow my voice.”

Footsteps rang through the halls again as Tim broke off into a run. 

“How did you get here?” Martin asked, listening as Tim grew closer.

“I tried to hide, found myself in a corner of the station where nobody was. I ducked into a room and…I was here.” Tim was nearer now, neither of them needed to shout. “I assume its the same story with you.”

“Pretty much.”

A body slammed, full force, into Martin, and he stumbled back. At first he thought that Tim had just accidentally ran straight into him, until he realized he was being hugged.

“Found you.” Tim said softly, and Martin could hear him smile through the dark.

Tim let him go after a few moments. Martin thought he could see the dim outline of his face in the gloom, but it might have been a hallucination, his brain filling in the information it knew should be there.

“I thought I’d just be stuck in here forever.” Tim said.

Martin shrugged. “You still might. I have no idea how to get out of here, I’ve just been–”

“Following the crowd? Yeah, me too.”

He looked off into the distance, though he might just be staring directly at a wall. “Do you think the others got out?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe, I hope so.”

“If they did, would they come back for us?”

“Yes.”

“Should they?”

“I don’t know.”

Martin shook his head, freeing sticky threads of uncertainty from his mind. He reached out and his hand brushed against Tim’s. He grabbed it, tight.

“We need to keep going.” He said. 

Tim squeezed his hand in response. 

This wasn’t the first time the two of them had been trapped in the dark together, between this, the cellar, and the two weeks they had spent wandering the Distortion before, it seemed they were just uniquely likely to get in these sorts of situations.

Martin was okay with that, as long as they escaped together as well.

They continued to wander, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. They didn’t talk much, but each other’s warmth and presence was really all that was needed. It was peaceful, almost, the long walk. No matter how many dead ends they hit or how many times that indistinct, unidentifiable groan echoed off the walls. Still, Martin didn’t think they were getting any closer to an exit. They could have been going in circles this entire time.

After what felt like an eternity, they emerged into a room, a room that Martin could tell was far larger than any space they had been in before. He couldn’t see how big it really was, of course, but he could feel its enormity, the vast expanse of empty space that now lay beyond their perceptions.

In that space, that great, inky black, featureless ballroom, he saw two pinpricks of light.

They were barely visibly, tiny, and far away. One was a bright orange, the other a vibrant red. He couldn’t stop staring at them, they stared at him back. Were they getting closer?

Eyes.

The source of those metallic roars.

The beast of the labyrinth had found them.

Chapter Text

“That’s it. I’m done. It’s been a week. A week! I can’t wait anymore!”

“I’m going after them. I’m going to save them.”

“If I’m not already too late.”

“I can’t be too late.”

“Elias told me where they went. Oxford. I’ll start there, see where it leads me. To them hopefully, to my assistants.”

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I’ll find them.”

…

“I’ll try, at least.”

“If they haven’t just ran away from this place.”

“If they’re not already gone.”

“Elias doesn’t think they’re dead, at least not yet. If they really are in danger, I’ll have time, probably.”

“I don’t know what I’d do if they got killed trying to execute this…scheme that's supposed to help me. Killed or worse.”

“I keep getting this terrible feeling that all of this is my fault. I made them this way, somehow.”

“I don’t know what I did.”

“Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”

“None of this feels right, any of this. It’s wrong somehow, in some strange way I can’t place. This isn’t the way things are supposed to be, but it's not like I know what I should be doing. I’m just…”

“Aimless.”

“My only guides are the statements, and Sasha, and she says I should be staying away from the statements.”

“Well, there are also the dreams.”

“I call them dreams, they seem like dreams, they feel more like memories.”

“It’s odd, I never used to have happy dreams. Not until…well not until everyone else started being weird.”

“I have nightmares too, of course, a lot of them. Lately, more often than not, they feel like memories too.”

“Very bad memories.”

“There are so many things I don’t know.”

“I hate it.”

“There are so many things they won’t tell me .”

“I ask the same questions over and over and it’s the same response every time. Nothing they can do, its for my own good, they’ll tell me when it’s all over.”

“Sometimes I feel like finding a way to wring the answers out of them. I could do it.”

“If I did, I don’t think they’d ever forgive me.”

“Especially not Martin.”

“Martin…I’m not sure why he worries me the most.”

“He’s so distant. I barely know him. A faraway star haunting the archives.”

“I shouldn’t care about him, but I do.”

“He cares about me, I think. Why is anyone’s guess.”

“It’s strange, things were ‘normal’ for such a short amount of time but–I miss it.”

“I want things to be normal again.”

“I think that’s impossible.”

“I guess I just…want companionship, I suppose. I want friends.”

“I-I should leave. Every second I linger is one less second spent on the search, and I need to hurry.”

“I can’t be too late.”

“Please don’t let me be too late.”

°°°

Martin was already freezing, but seeing those eyes—those bright holes punched in the darkness—made his blood run even colder.

Hide. Screamed his instincts, but this darkness could hide him better than anything, and it wouldn’t be enough.

Run. Pleaded the adrenaline coursing through his veins, but there was nowhere to run, and the beast was surely faster.

Scream. It would find him.

Fight. He couldn’t win.

All he could do was stand there, muscles tensed. Waiting.

Whatever it was, maybe it hadn’t seen them.

Beside him, Tim held his breath. Did he even know what was before them? Or was he simply responding to Martin’s terror?

The beast’s left eye, the one that glowed orange against black, flickered and danced. The right glowed a steady red.

The walls reverberated with noise. Echoed footsteps, garbled, faraway sounds.

The eyes grew closer.

And closer.

Their procession was slow and deliberate. Martin thought it might walk on many tiny feet, a grotesque millipede the size of a train. 

Martin watched in horror as the eyes continued their horrible crawl. Now, if he really looked, he could see tiny glimpses of fur, a shining gleam of something smooth, like chitin.

Wait, no, not chitin.

A pair of glasses?

“Do you even know where we’re heading?” Said a voice, now intelligible above the distortion of the echoes.

“Out of here, hopefully.”

Martin nearly fell over out of sheer relief.

“Sasha! Melanie!” Tim shouted, “It's us! Over here!”

“Tim?” Came the response, “Tim, oh my God!”

The orange light disappeared, and Sasha came bounding towards them, Melanie surely close behind. When she was close enough, she flicked open the webbed lighter she still held and illuminated the four of them in its dim glow. It was the brightest light Martin had seen since his phone had died.

Melanie stood beside her, holding her camera, its recording light still glowing steadily. Not eyes, then, just lights. Martin felt a little foolish for being so scared, now. He was glad it was too dark for anyone to see his face flushing with embarrassment.

“So you ended up here too?” Sasha asked.

“Obviously they did.” Melanie snapped.

Sasha smiled, but there was a worried crease between her eyebrows. “I’m so glad to see you both safe and sound.”

The walls rumbled around them.

“Are we though?” Tim said, his voice shaking. “Safe here?”

“I have no idea!”

Melanie scoffed.

Martin looked around, though there was nothing to see. “I’m glad to see you too, but we’re still no closer to getting out of here.” His stomach churned thinking about never seeing the light of day again. Leaving Jon alone, alone, so alone. Would he worry about them? He hoped not.

“Actually.” Sasha said, “I think I found a way.”

She held the lighter up high, the flame shivering steadily against the chill of the air. It reflected off an impossibility thin string or wire that seemed suspended in the air above them, pulled taught by an invisible force. Sasha smiled smugly back at them.

Tim reached up and tried to grab the string, only to pass right through it. The string remained where it was, ephemeral and shimmering golden in the light.

“Spider silk.” Martin whispered, “Have you two been following it?”

“Ever since I saw it was there.” Sasha said.

“Are you sure we can trust it? It’s the Web, Sasha, it lies.”

“Got any better ideas?” She countered. “We need to get out of here. Who knows how long we’ve already been stuck in here? I have lizards to feed. Martin!”

“And if it leads us to our deaths?”

“Do you really think that would be much different from wandering around in the dark forever?”

Martin chewed the inside of his cheek. He wasn’t inclined to trust the Web, especially after the encounter with Annabelle, but the noise of the crowd hadn’t gotten him anywhere. They could wander blindly or they could follow the golden thread, and while one of those might kill them, the other had an almost impossible chance to actually end in them escaping, and if they did get out, it would probably be too late a victory.

Martin sighed. “Fine. Lead the way.”

Tim took Sasha’s hand, and Martin took Tim’s, and hesitantly, Melanie took his as well. Together they followed the golden thread, for what felt like hours, days, none of them said a word. They simply guided each other through the darkness.

Martin was getting impatient, or maybe impatient wasn’t the right word. He was exhausted and beaten down and the hope was leaking out of him like a wound that wouldn’t close. He felt the words of defeat forming on his tongue and was about to voice them to the group when in front of him, Sasha whispered something that made him forget all of it.

“It’s a doorknob.” She said softly. 

She looked back at Martin, firelight gleaming off the rims of her glasses. There was one final question in that look, one that asked him if he was sure about this. Martin has had bad experiences with doors and spider silk, but this darkness, this endless labyrinth of nothing, was far worse than the Distortion or whatever spiders they might encounter. Whatever was behind that door, it was better than more of this. 

Martin nodded, and Sasha opened the door.

The burst of light that hit them was blinding and it was beautiful, even though once Martin eyes adjusted he realized it belonged to the fluorescent lights of the train station, mundane, ordinary. Martin had never been so happy to see a train platform in his life. They were free.

The four of them filed out of what happened to be a janitor's closet and stared in awe at their surroundings.

“How long were we in there?” Melanie asked, her voice raspy and tired.

Sasha glanced up at the displays. “Two weeks.” She said, worrying her lower lip. “We were in there for two weeks.”

“How- no. You know what? I don’t even care how.” Melanie fished around in her pocket and pulled out the camera’s memory card. “Take it.” She said, “And I hope I never see any of you again.”

Sasha’s hand closed around the memory card as she watched Melanie disappear into the crowd.

“Yeah.” She said. “I think that’s for the best.”

A few seconds passed before Sasha’s phone–the only one out of the three of theirs that still had any battery left–exploded with a wave of missed notifications. She took the ceaselessly dinging device out of her pocket and stared at it, the furrow in her brow growing deeper.

“What’s the damage?” Tim asked.

“About a million emails, several concerned texts from my friends, two missed calls from my father, and twenty-five missed calls from Jon.”

“Twenty-five?” Martin said incredulously. 

“A bunch of texts too.” She scrolled through the backlog, reading aloud. “‘Where are you?’ ‘Are you safe?’ ‘Why aren’t you picking up?’ ‘Please say something.’ ‘Do you need help?’ Geez…”

“Aw.” Tim said. “He does care.”

“Yeah no kidding. I think…I think he got sick of waiting and decided to come find us himself.”

Martin’s stomach sank. “He what ?”

“I think so.” Sasha bit the inside of her cheek. “You don’t think something happened to him, do you?”

He hoped not.

“We could find out if we called him.” Tim suggested, scanning the crowd nervously.

Sasha nodded and dialed the number, putting it on speaker. They all listened intently as it rang.

Once. Twice. Three times. Then someone picked up, but it definitely wasn’t Jon.

“Ah, you’re one of those meddling assistants aren’t you. Hello!”

“Nikola.” Martin breathed, beside him, Tim tensed. His breath hitched, his fists clenched.

“That’s my name! Why, you’re all there aren’t you.” Her grin could be heard through the phone. “Looking for someone?”

“You have him, don’t you?” Sasha said, her voice just barely wavering.

“As a matter of fact I do ! In fact, he’s right here! Say hello, Jon, it's your friends!”

“They’re okay?” Creaked Jon’s voice, broken and hoarse. He sounded miserable. Martin felt an awful pang of regret.

“Looks like everyone’s safe and sound.” Nikola said, radiating smugness.

“Let him go.” Sasha replied, her voice ice.

“Oh no, I can’t do that. We happen to need him, I’m afraid. You can have him back when we’re done though! Safe travels assistants, do take care!”

The line went dark.

Sasha stared at the ground, anger and defeat swirling in her eyes. 

“What now?” She asked, looking to Martin.

Tim shifted on his feet. They both were waiting for him to respond, waiting for him to be the leader.

He took a deep breath.

“I know where they are.”

“So, a rescue mission then?” Tim asked, any levity he usually carried with him was gone.

Martin nodded. “I think it's time we call in that favor with Daisy and Basira.”.

Chapter Text

Three archival assistants and two police officers sat around Sasha’s cramped dining room table. Over cooling cups of tea they discussed–In hushed tones–a plan on how to save the world.

Well, the assistants knew they weren’t exactly trying to save the world, but Daisy and Basira didn’t need to know that.

“The wax museum is going to be crawling with circus minions.” Martin said in a low voice. “That’s why we need you two, you know how to fight, you can stave them off while the rest of us go in to save Jon.”

Basira tapped a biscuit against her saucer. “Right…And you’re sure this…undoing thing, it’s not going to happen.”

“Unknowing.” He replied, “And not a chance. They’re nowhere close to being ready to pull this off. Trust me, as long as you can fight off some mannequins, you’ll be okay. I hope at least.” He said that last part rather quietly, and watched Daisy’s eyebrow shoot up in response.

“That isn’t saying it won’t be dangerous, however.” Sasha clarified, “You are going up against monsters, lots of them. They can kill you, and they would revel in doing so. That being said, If you’re willing to take the risk, we really need your help.”

Daisy scoffed. “I’ve killed plenty of monsters. Just point me in their direction and I’ll handle the rest.”

Part of Martin felt very, very guilty that he was feeding the ravenous sliver of the Hunt that had burrowed its way into Daisy years ago. Another part of him knew that he had no other choice, that without Daisy and Basira by their side, they’d all be flayed and encased in wax before they even had a chance at saving Jon. 

Necessary evils, he was sick of those. 

“I want to fight too.” Tim said. He had spent most of the meeting, and indeed most of the time since the phone call with Nikola, eerily quiet, his face stony and his jaw tight. It wasn’t surprising. Martin thought. Considering the past he was now so suddenly confronted with. Now there was a glint of inky resolve in his eyes. He stared in defiance at no one in particular, and his lip quivered in…anticipation? Rage? Sheer emotion?

Sasha blinked in disbelief. “What? You? No, no way. You’d get killed.”

“So?” Tim spat.

“What do you mean ‘so’? You could die ! I don’t want you to die! Martin doesn’t want you to die!”

Tim slammed his fist on the table, rattling the teacup. “I’ve died before! I don’t give a shit about what happens to me. I just need her to pay .” 

Martin stared at Tim in defeat. He knew there was probably nothing he could do now to stop Tim from doing something stupid and reckless. He was too on edge, too in pain, at least now explosives were out of the picture.

“I am not going to your funeral again, Tim.” He said plainly, and immediately Tim seemed to regret his words. He slumped back in his chair, miserable.

“We aren’t doing this for revenge.” Sasha said softly, “We’re doing it for Jon.”

“Can’t we do it for revenge too?” 

Sasha sighed deeply. “Tim, if you’re going to fight you need to promise me you aren’t going to get killed.”

“Sasha, you know that's not-”

“Promise!”

Tim slumped back in his chair. “Fine. I solemnly swear to exhibit self preservation and actively try to avoid the likely scenario of death. I will not–under any circumstances–heroically sacrifice myself, dashingly continue to battle while seriously injured, or otherwise do something stupid. Happy?”

“Yes, I am.” Sasha said.

“Don’t worry.” Basira said. “We’ll make sure he keeps that promise. Now, what’s the actual course of action here?”

Martin cleared a spot in the middle of the table and unrolled a map of the wax museum. “That’s what we’re going to figure out.”

°°°

Sasha was the designated getaway driver, she dropped the four of them off about a block from the derelict museum, she would wait for them there, and hope the Circus wasn’t so dedicated as to pursue them further. They chose the darkest hours of the night for their little heist, but the shadows still wavered with early summer heat, flickering sodium streetlights illuminated their path as they slipped through back alleys towards their target.

Daisy led their little group, her sharp eyes on the lookout. Tim followed close behind her, holding the crowbar he had armed himself with so tightly his knuckles were bone-white. Basira trailed behind Martin, one hand on her gun. Martin was armed with nothing. Only his wits and the grim determination that came with knowing that failure meant the end of everything he had been trying so hard to get.

It was quiet as they walked, too quiet.

Martin’s heart skipped a beat at the sound of conversational laughter from around the corner, an odd, grating noise, like river rocks grinding against each other. Two guards blocking the back door they were planning to use to infiltrate. He was about to suggest they turn around and regroup, find a window to enter through or something, but before he could even open his mouth Daisy was upon the guards. Shouts of alarm, the sound of impacts and snapping plastic, two gunshots, and everything was quiet once more. Daisy waved them back over, and Martin stepped over the broken, inhuman bodies that were left. They were laughing just a few moments before, likely over a joke that was only funny to monsters, but still, they were laughing.

But there was no time to feel remorse, they had a job to do.

The halls of the wax museum were dark, which made Martin’s job a hell of a lot harder, he didn’t actually know which room Jon was being held in. He knew it was dark, and that it didn’t have windows, and that was about it. From what he could see, the whole place was dark, and there were very few windows.

Shit.

Well, the good news was that if anyone had heard Daisy dispatching the guards, they hadn’t arrived yet. They had at least a little time to tediously scan every room for a tied up Archivist.

“The room he’s in will probably be guarded.” Martin said in a whisper. Basira nodded.

None of the entryways he could see had guards posted outside, but this place was like a maze. He wondered if Daisy would have an advantage in their search, maybe she could sniff him out like a bloodhound and make his whole operation much easier. He reached over and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Where should we start?” He asked her. 

Daisy lifted her head, like she was listening for something. Everyone was still for a long moment.

“This way.” She said, leading them down a long corridor.

It was so strange, no one was here. Maybe they were all out terrorizing people. Or maybe they were waiting in the shadows. Martin tried not to linger on that thought too much.

In and out of rooms, down stairs, through hallways, across rooms filled with dozens of wax statues that stared at them in desperation, but somehow devoid of threats. Daisy paused at a large metal door.

“There are a lot of–” She paused, “adversaries through there, so is Jon.”

Tim braced. “Right.”

“Get ready everyone.” Daisy muttered. “This is it.”

She pushed on the door, it swung open with a grinding noise. 

Nikola was standing in the middle of the darkly lit room, her porcelain face standing out against the shadows. She turned her head curtly as they entered, so much for stealth.

“I thought I heard pests.” She said in a musical tone. “You couldn’t wait until we gave him back? Shame, patience is a virtue.”

“Shut up.” Tim snapped, “Where is he?”

She smiled. “I can’t for the life of me figure out why you care so much. Especially the hunter and her friend, they don’t even work for him.”

“I’m here because I want to kill you.” Tim said plainly. 

Her smile dropped, and she turned to stare directly at Martin.

“So, you did know he was here. Maybe you really are what the rumours say.”

“You can give him back.” Martin said, “You don’t need him, not really. Just give him back and no one has to get hurt.”

Tim shot him a venomous glare. 

Nikola looked at Martin curiously. “Nice offer, but I don’t think I will. However! I’m feeling merciful today, so how about you call off your dogs, and promise me you will not interfere further, and I will let you go.”

“No.”

Nikola frowned. “So you’re a fool then? Very well.” She pointed to a velvet curtain that acted as the opposite wall. “Your Archivist is behind there. Why don’t we see if you can get there alive?”

The skin-covered mannequins that made of most of the Circus’ workforce emerged from the darkness. There was a moment of anticipation, the charged moments before a battle, the air filled with worries and prayers and wishes and violence. Tim made the first move, of course he did. The idiot ran right up to Nikola and swung his crowbar into her face with a deafening CRACK . Things stood still for a fraction of a second, and then all hell broke loose.

Martin only had one goal now. He couldn’t bring himself to pay attention to what Tim or Basira were up to, he didn’t have time. All he could do was focus on getting Jon out of here and maintain the awareness that Daisy was making sure he didn’t die doing it.

The room was a mess of plastic limbs and gunshots, he watched as Daisy’s arm was seized by one of the mannequins who got too close, and before she could dispatch it, it had clawed long, red lines down her bicep. Luckily, their progress across the room was steady. It was only when they had gotten close enough to the curtain to touch it that suddenly a small army of their opponents swarmed them. Daisy practically shoved Martin behind the curtain. 

“Go!” She shouted, “I’ll be fine, just get out of here!”

Martin nodded and cast one final look out on the battlefield. The bodies of mannequins littered the ground as Daisy and Basira took on their remaining comrades together, in the center of the room, Nikola and Tim were still engaged in the battle of the century, Tim was bleeding, Nikola was missing half of her plastic skull. Even from here, Martin could see the hate on Tim’s face. Martin turned away and disappeared behind the curtain. Hopefully this time, Tim would get his revenge, and live to tell the tale.

“Martin?” The voice rang out, barely above the din of the battle. 

He looked up and saw the familiar form slumped in a chair in the corner. His heart broke just a little bit more.

“Jon.” He said, more of a sob than a name. He rushed over and got to work freeing Jon from the zip ties that bound him.

“You came.” Jon said quietly. “You’re safe.”

“For now.” Martin held out a hand to help him up.

As soon as Jon rose, he collapsed into his arms. Martin’s breath hitched, this was the closest he had been to him since he lost him.

“Are the others okay?” Jon whispered.

“Sasha is waiting in the car, Tim’s out there, fighting.”

“Do you know if he’ll win?”

Martin shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. Basira and Daisy are out there too, it doesn’t matter right now. We need to get out of here, can you walk?”

Jon nodded. “But shouldn’t we help them, are we really just going to leave?”

“Yes.” Martin said bluntly, which shuttered any further protests. He took Jon’s hand and started dragging him to the exit. Jon followed without question as he led him through yet more maze-like halls. Finally, they emerged into the cool night air.

Jon looked solemnly back to where they came from. 

“Should we wait for them?” He said softly.

Martin nodded. “For a while, but if we have to run, we run.”

Jon sighed and leaned against the brick wall, looking ever more exhausted than he usually did. He turned to Martin, his eyes shining with emotion. “Where were you?”

“Does it matter?”

“I went to look for you.” Jon said, “I tried to find you and I didn’t even get to the train station before I was thrown in the back of a truck and taken here. So yes, it matters. It matters because I was worried about you, and I want to know why you disappeared.”

Martin dug his fingernails into the skin of his palm. “We were in Oxford.”

“For three weeks? Without your phones?”

He glared at him. “Maybe Sasha will tell you the full story.”

Jon glared right back, for only a moment before letting out a defeated sigh and turning his attention back to what few stars shone despite the lights of the city. 

“Sometimes I wish I hated you.” He said.

Martin looked at him. Me too. He thought.

Jon shook his head. “But I can’t, I don’t want to. I- I don’t know why. I want to know you, Martin.”

He nearly laughed. “No, you don’t.”

“I do! I want to know why you’d risk your life to save me and then just keep brushing me off once we’re out of danger. I want to know the secrets you keep. I want to know why you’re doing all of this.”

Martin stayed silent. The night stayed silent. Jon looked at him with a deep, long held desperation. 

“Martin,” He said, “How did you know where I was?”

The look on Martin’s face must have said something that didn’t need words because Jon’s desperation turned to fear.

“How? How did you know?”

Chapter Text

“How did you know where I was?”

“How? How did you know?”

Before Martin could answer, or not answer, or decide between the two. The door they were supposed to be watching opened, and out stumbled Daisy and Basira, carrying a dazed Tim between them.

“Tell Sasha that our next stop should be the hospital.” Basira said plainly.

“I’m fine.” Tim muttered, blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth. He looked up at Martin, smirking. His teeth were stained with red.

“She’s dead.” He said, his smile leaking into his voice. “I killed her. I did it. I finally…” He trailed off as his eyes landed on Jon.

“How hurt are you?” Martin asked.

“Not bad, a few cuts, a broken tooth or two,” He grinned widely. “Better off than she is.”

“We need to leave.” Daisy said sharply, “before the rest of them stop picking up the pieces and realize they want revenge.”

Jon inhaled sharply. “You really did a number on them, didn’t you?”

Martin nodded. “We didn’t have a choice. We needed to save you.”

Jon didn’t respond, but there was something painful and raw in the look he gave him. Guilt twisted around Martin’s heart. Jon looked miserable.

He’ll cheer up once he’s recovered. Martin thought, Martin hoped.

The walk back to the car was silent, unsaid words hung in the air so thickly it was hard to breathe. Jon was safe, for now, but Martin took no joy in it. He felt just as empty now as he had for months now. He wondered if there was anything left of the person he was before the Archives. He was a shell of himself, he knew that, even if no one else really did. He didn’t know who he was anymore. Even when he was with Tim and Sasha—his friends, who were now just as dear to him as Jon was—he never felt present in the moment. He was trapped between the past and his uncertain future. No inch of him was untouched by grief, no thought crossed his mind without being tainted by his worry for the people around him. The Fears had won, with him at least, they had consumed him, and now he was nothing, nothing but his goal of undoing everything that made him who he was now. After that, what was left for him? When this was over—if it could ever be over—how would he feel then? If they were victorious, would he feel happy? He didn’t think so, happiness felt so fleeting, so far away. What did he do to even deserve it? Martin was nothing but a singular purpose, and when it was fulfilled, he would either need to find another one, or fade away forever.

Sasha practically leaped out of the car as she noticed them approaching, running up to Jon and embracing him with such ferocity he almost fell over.

“You’re alive!” She cried, on the verge of tears, “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

Jon shook his head. “I’m fine for now. Tired, but fine. Tim’s worse off.”

Sasha turned on her heels to glare at Tim, who shrugged.

“Just got stabbed a few times, no big deal.”

“No big deal?” Sasha said, “You could have died!”

“Lay off him.” Daisy said, “We all could have died, besides, he got his revenge, didn’t he?”

Sasha huffed and turned back to Jon. “And you! Don’t ever do that again! Everyone was so worried!”

Jon stammered. “Do what? Get kidnapped? I didn’t exactly have a choice in that matter.”

“No! Go after us! Don’t ever do that. Don’t ever ever ever do that!”

He looked wounded. “I was trying to help. I was worried about you. What was I supposed to do? Just stand by and wait for you to come back?”

“Yes! Exactly that! I’m serious, Jon, stay out of this.”

“And what if you never came back? What if you died out there? What if you disappeared and left me alone and I had to know that I was the reason you were gone?” He clasped Sasha’s hand between his and looked up at her, pleading. “I just have to let that happen? Sit alone in the Archives, doing nothing that matters while you three are out risking your lives for me and I don’t even know why ? Do you have any idea, any idea how lonely I’ve been? I’m an outsider to my own team. I don’t know what secrets you’re keeping but I know they’re big, I know they involve me, I know all of this is for me . You’re doing this all for me and I don’t get a say in any of it. I don’t want you to do this, I don’t want you to get killed trying to protect me, and if you really have to, at least tell me why, because I can’t just sit around and let this happen.”

“Jon…” Sasha’s voice was quiet, like speaking any louder would cause her to choke on her words.

“What are you hiding? Tell me, please.”

Sasha’s gaze turned to Martin, as it always did in scenarios like these. She wanted to tell him, he knew that, but he couldn’t let it happen, not now. They have come this far and one slip up could ruin everything and he couldn’t let that happen he couldn’t– The gleam of the knife, the taste of blood, one last kiss before the world went dark.

Martin shook his head, and so did Sasha. Jon, knowing that the answers he wanted more than anything else were still out of his reach, looked down at the asphalt beneath their feet.

“Oh Jon.” Sasha whispered, her voice still as soft and fragile as a moth’s wing. “Your hair…”

She reached out and took a lock of Jon’s hair between her fingers. He didn’t know how he didn’t notice it, it was so dark, he’d been avoiding looking at Jon’s face, it hurt too much. The lock of hair was stark white, standing out clearly from his grey hairs.There was no chance it was natural, in fact, Martin had seen it before. He used to see it every time he looked in a mirror.

No.

Jon took a step back. “It’s just hair dye.”

He’s lying.

“Jon…” Martin forced the name from his mouth, barely loud enough for anyone to hear. “Do you know the name Peter Lukas?”

Jon shrank into himself. “I–he–he’s been lurking around the Archives recently.”

“And you’ve been talking to him?”

He looked away. “Sometimes.”

Martin didn’t know what to say, anything he could say would just make it worse. He hadn’t even entertained the thought that something like this could happen, he didn’t want to, but here it was, right here in front of him, a single, unbearable, truth.

He’s turning into me.

“Martin?” Jon whispered. He sounded so scared.

I did this to him. 

He took a step back, then another.

“Sasha, get Tim to the hospital, and the others back home.”

Sasha was knocked out of her horrified stupor. “W-what? What about you?”

“I’m going on a walk, I need to clear my head.”

“But it’s the middle of the night!”

“So.”

“How will you get home?”

“I’ll get a cab.”

Sasha’s eyes welled with tears, she opened her mouth to protest more before Tim placed a bloodied hand on her shoulder.

“Just let him go.” he said, and she wilted. 

She dried her eyes. “Okay, okay. Just, make it home safe.”

Martin nodded. He wanted to say he was sorry, but his throat closed around the words. He turned his back on them instead, walking off into the darkness of the night. Even as he walked away, he still felt Jon’s eyes trained on him, watching him go. As much as Martin wanted to comfort him now, he knew that wasn’t possible, he knew it would just hurt them both more. He would remain someone to watch from a distance. Always running, never staying. Distant and incomprehensible. A mystery that never stuck around long enough to be unraveled. Part of him wanted things to stay that way, it was easier, it hurt less because without Jon around him he could pretend he felt nothing at all. Another part–as always–ached, ached for the person he lost and lay just out of reach. The source of so much of his joy was right there, he could have that again, if he wanted it, and he wanted it. So close, so close to another smile, to another morning waking up with someone beside him, and he couldn’t have it. Not without the risk of losing it all again. 

Still, the feeling of Jon’s arms around him refused to leave his mind. The sound of him calling his name still rang in his ears. Oh god, he loved him, he loved him, he loved him more than anything, more than the world–he was the world.

And Martin had hurt him.

Martin had abandoned and ignored him and turned away when Jon needed it most, and now he could be on the verge of falling into the Lonely’s clutches and it was all his fault. Jon needed a friend and he needed the truth and he didn’t–he refused –to provide him with either, and now the consequences of that selfish decision had become apparent. 

But what now? 

Tell him everything? Now? Jon would believe him, but that was maybe worse. Could he handle being confronted with what he did? If he didn’t hate Martin for it he would hate himself, and then he would probably do something stupid and he would lose him again.

He could just give up. So much of him wanted to give up. Maybe it was pointless, maybe they were always doomed, or worse, he’s already fucked up his one chance. 

Martin’s walk turned into a jog turned into a run. He was running from the people that loved him, from the past that haunted him, most of all he ran from himself. From every mistake he made, from everything that made up the empty shell of who he was. He didn’t know how to fix this, he couldn’t fix this. Even if Jon lived he wouldn’t forgive him, and eventually Tim and Sasha would realize he wouldn’t change, that he couldn’t be fixed, that he was too broken and scattered across time to become anything more than what he was, and they would leave, and maybe that was what he wanted. He didn’t know what he wanted anymore. He wanted release, he wanted this purgatory the universe had placed him in to stop. It didn’t matter if he lost or not, if he actually succeeded or if he had to live through losing everything again. As long as it ended. Whatever it was he wanted, it wasn’t this.

He stopped running and looked around, he didn’t know where he had ended up, how long it had been. The sky was starting to turn grey with the first hint of dawn, London was beginning to wake up.

Martin fell to his knees and sobbed. Sobbed for all he lost and was losing and will lose. It was a long time before he gathered enough strength and composure to stand up again. His heart gouged even hollower. It was midmorning by the time he stumbled back into Sasha’s apartment, feeling raw and worn to shreds. When he opened the door Tim was lying on the couch, apparently bandaged up, tossing a rubber band ball up into the air. He sat up when he noticed Martin, and studied him with an unreadable expression.

“Where’s Sasha?” Martin said, his voice hoarse. 

“Work.” He said, “She’s mostly just trying to make sure that Jon’s okay, I think. She told me to wait here, for you.”

Martin collapsed on the sofa next to him, not remembering the last time he had felt this weary.

“Tim?” He said softly after a few long, quiet moments had passed. “When you killed Nikola, how did it feel? You uprooted your entire life for this one goal and you finally did it. What was that like?”

Tim nodded. “It felt good at first, really good. I had avenged Danny, saved Jon and managed not to kill myself in the process, I couldn’t ask for more.” He paused, “But then, later, at the hospital, all the adrenaline wore off and suddenly I was exhausted and in pain and I started thinking; Nikola was dead, now what? And I realized I didn’t know, you would never be able to tell me, and I didn’t…have much anymore.”

“And then?” Martin whispered, hoping there was an answer.

“Then I realized I had you guys, and that was probably enough. Even if it's not over yet, even if we still have to face who knows what for who knows how long. It’s okay, it’ll be okay. Even if we die trying.”

Martin stared at the floor. Was it going to be okay? Could it ever be okay again.

Tim gently placed his hand over his.

“Martin.” He said in a low voice, “You need to let him go.”

Another sob caught in Martin’s throat as he looked up in disbelief. Tim squeezed his hand.

“I’m not saying we can’t still save him, but listen to me; you need to let him go.”

He shook his head, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I can’t. ”

“ Try. ” He pressed, “Look at yourself, Martin. You’re a mess, you’ve been a mess. Do you really think you can keep going like this?”

Martin knew he couldn’t, but he couldn’t fathom an alternative either.

“You need to move on before you destroy yourself. Drowning in grief isn’t going to save Jon, it isn’t going to help anyone, it’s just going to make you more and more miserable, and then you’re going to start screwing up more and more and before you know it you’ve already failed in a way you can’t come back from. Stop it. Stop thinking of Jon as the love you lost and start thinking of him as the person he is. That’s the only way you can actually start helping him. He isn’t that person anymore, you made sure of that, and you seem determined to never actually win him back, so stop agonizing over him every second of your existence. It isn’t healthy, Sasha hates seeing you like this, I hate seeing you like this.”

“This is who I am.” Martin said, “I-I can’t be anyone else. I can’t just move on. If I move on I’ll be nobody.”

“No, you’ll be Martin Blackwood.” Tim said, resting his other hand on Martin’s cheek.

“You don’t understand .”

“I understand perfectly, I know what it's like to define yourself with your grief. I did it for years, and if it wasn’t for you it would have ended with me dying in an explosion again. I know you’re in pain. I know you’re only still standing because you feel like you have to make this right. I know you’re still clinging to the past because you feel like it contains every ounce of happiness you will ever feel in your life. It isn’t worth it. Find a way to let go. Find a way to forgive yourself. Please.”

Tim tangled his fingers in Martin's hair and he leaned into the touch like it was a lifeline. He wondered if there really was a way to move on, untangle his life from Jon’s and find another purpose.

He could love again.

“How do I start?” Martin whispered, so quietly he didn’t even know he said it.

Tim leaned in and kissed him, and Martin didn’t protest. He had missed this, he had missed this so much. He missed the feeling of someone’s lips against his, the scent of someone else’s cologne, being adored and touched and mattering. It had been so long since he had felt this, so long he almost didn’t care that it wasn’t Jon’s waist in his hands, that the kisses were too hungry and wild to be mistaken for his. It didn’t matter, it was something. Something that made him feel again.

Tim pulled away, their faces still inches apart.

“We can take this back to my place, if you want.” He said, tracing his hand down Martin’s neck.

He nodded.

“I would like that.” 

Chapter Text

Martin was dreaming of the Lonely again.

This time, he was lying on back on the sand, waves lapping at his feet as he stared up at the great white nothingness above. Fog swirled around him and obscured the rest of the shore, but even still, Martin could feel a familiar hand in his. 

He looked to his side, sure enough, Jon was lying next to him. Smiling, his eyes full of adoration, but something was different. One moment, those eyes were green and he could feel the scar across the skin of his hand, the next, and his eyes had changed back to a soft brown, two streaks of white hair framed a face lacking any scars at all. Two Jons, the same, but different. One loved him, the other…he couldn’t be sure. It terrified him that he couldn’t be sure.

Jon held his hand tighter, his features still shifting back and forth.

“Still can’t let me go, can you?” He said.

Tears once again welled in Martin’s eyes. “I tried, I really did.”

Green then brown then green again eyes studied him curiously. “Do you even want to move on?” 

Martin let that question linger with the fog in the air for a long moment. “No.”

“Even though it hurts?”

“I don’t want to forget you.” Martin whispered.

“Do you really think that could ever happen?”

Martin closed his eyes, pretending the changing Jon by his side stayed in one form. The Jon he was used to, who he would do anything to hold just one more time.

“The—the pain is good. It keeps me going.”

“It’s destroying you.”

“I don’t care. I’m never letting go of you. Not ever. Not if it kills me. I promised I’d follow you wherever you went and I couldn’t. All I can do is carry your memory and I’ll be damned if I ever stop.”

Jon gave him a sad smile.

“Martin, I’m still here.”

“No! No you’re not!”

“I am, I’m right in front of you.”

“I’m dreaming.”

“You know that's not what I mean.”

He sobbed. “It’s not the same!”

“It’s still me.”

Martin reached over and touched Jon’s hair, the color shifting beneath his touch. “Stop it! Stop changing! I can’t do this again!”

Jon clasped his other hand and held it to an unscarred cheek. “I need you right now.” He said, “I love you.”

“You don’t need me. You can’t love me!”

He pulled him closer, their faces nearly touching. “ You need me.”

“I can’t—“

“You need to choose, Martin. Either let me go or fall in love with me again, but you can’t stay like this.”

He rested his forehead on Jon’s, his breathing panicked, the fog threatening to choke him. He wanted Jon by his side again, he really did, but he was terrified. Not just of the consequences of Jon caring about him, but of the possibility that Martin would just get hurt again. He could fail, or he would lose Jon, or Jon would lose him, or they would just hurt each other over and over again. The grief was all consuming but it was a numb pain, a dull and constant ache, not like the pain of another betrayal. He couldn’t take another loss, he couldn’t take his gilded, perfectly absent image of Jon shifting into something living and flawed. 

“Choose.” Jon whispered against his lips.

Martin shook his head, holding Jon tighter even as he changed before his eyes.

“Please.” The scent of tea and sea spray was warm on his breath. “You have to.”

He felt paralyzed. Immobile in the face of what he swore could never happen again.

Jon brushed a lock of his hair away and met his eyes. They changed brown green brown green brown.

“Do it for yourself if not for me.”

Martin leaned in to kiss him, suddenly not caring if it was the Jon he lost or the Jon who still lived. Their lips touched for just a moment, and Martin felt him smile in the brief second before he dissolved to sea foam in his arms, and Martin was left alone.

°°°

When he woke up, he was lying in a bed that wasn’t his own. Tim’s arms were wrapped around him, and Martin could feel his breath on the back of his neck. He knew that what he probably should have done was drift back to sleep, enjoy the feeling of someone by his side for a while longer. He considered it—lingering until Tim woke up—they could talk over cups of tea about what they were and what they wanted. Martin knew he couldn’t do that. Every second he stayed in this bed only made him feel worse and that was no one’s fault but his own. What was he thinking? How could he ever think—

He gingerly pushed Tim off of him—careful not to wake him—and started to get dressed. His heart felt like a lead weight in his chest, the taste of guilt lay thick on the back of his tongue. 

So much for moving on. He thought bitterly.

He was already halfway out the door when Tim began to rouse. He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, his disappointment apparent even in the dim light.

“Leaving already?” He said.

Martin sighed. “I’m sorry, Tim. I think this was a mistake.”

Tim took a deep breath and gathered the blankets in his fists. “You’re not going to listen to what I said, are you.”

Martin didn’t answer, but he felt that Tim already knew.

He buried his face in bandaged hands. “I’m such an idiot.” He lamented.

“Tim…”

“I shouldn’t have kissed you, I shouldn’t have let it get this far. Who am I kidding? I know I’m not the one you want, and thats fine, but—“ he sighed.

“Its not your fault. You wanted to make me feel better, I get it. It didn’t work.”

Tim stared down at his hands. “I want to help you. In any way I can. Name it and I’ll do it.”

“You are helping me.”

“Sure, I’m helping the cause, but I’m not helping you . What can I do that’ll stop you from self destructing? What can I do to pull you out of this abyss you’re in?”

Martin was quiet.

“Is there anything?”

He thought for a long moment, not about the answer, he knew that, but if he should lie or not.

“I don’t think so.” He said at last.

“If we actually win,” Tim said, a hint of bitterness in his tone. “If you suddenly have your whole life before you again, what are you going to do?”

Martin stared at the floor, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his palms. “I don’t know.”

“Do you even think we will win? Do you have hope?”

“I don’t know.”

Tim sighed. “Of course you don’t.” He shook his head. “Just go, I’m sure Sasha’s waiting for you.”

And so Martin did leave, feeling just as empty as he always did, and even more aimless. 

By the time he had gotten back to his flat it was dark again, and Sasha was sitting curled on the sofa with a book in her hand, as had been her evening routine for as long as Martin had known her. She looked up as he walked in, a mischievous twinkle in her eye.

“So,” She said teasingly, “Did you have fun?”

Martin groaned, collapsing into the plush upholstery. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That bad?”

“No, No. It was my fault.” He hugged a throw pillow. “I’m a mess, Sasha, an inconsolable disaster.”

Sasha just looked at him for a moment. “Yeah…” she said, “a little bit.”

Martin forced a chuckle. “Are the lizards alright?”

She smiled, “Hungry, grumpy at me I’m sure, but they’re fine thankfully. I think I’m going to assign one of my more normal friends as an emergency petsitter in case we disappear for weeks again though, just as a safety measure.”

He looked off into the distance. “It doesn’t feel right, that you need that.”

“Well it isn’t any of our faults that our job description secretly includes kidnappings and temporal anomalies that steal weeks of our lives, is it?”

“I guess not.”

“Jon is fine, by the way. He was a little shaken but I think he’s okay now. He was mostly worried about Tim, and you.”

“Right.”

“I told him you had a history with Peter Lukas but that was all. He wasn’t happy about finding out you were keeping even more secrets from him than he thought.”

“He was keeping secrets from us.”

Sasha frowned. “You can’t blame him. He doesn’t have anyone except for us, and we’ve been leaving him behind. Of course the Lonely is targeting him, of course he wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

“Are you blaming me, then?” Martin said sharply.

“Not necessarily, but I think you blame yourself.”

Martin was quiet for a long moment.

“You don’t think…he’s becoming me, do you?”

Sasha looked at him strangely. “What do you mean by that?”

“If he’s who Lukas is betting on, then am I going to have to be the one to save him from the Lonely instead of the other way around? And if that’s the case, then…”

“You’re worried that Elias is going to make you end the world instead.”

Martin sighed. “Every entity we’ve saved Jon from, I’ve been marked by instead. At this point I’m closer to being the Archivist than the actual head archivist is.”

“Well, we aren’t going to let that happen, simple as that.”

“How?”

“We can figure it out.”

Martin stared at her. “How are you so confident? We have no idea what we’re doing–We never had any idea.”

“Because the alternative is that I overthink everything until I spiral in despair.” She leaned in closer. “Which is exactly what you’re doing, you walnut.”

“I am not overthinking, I am expressing reasonable concerns considering our situation.” Martin said, offended.

“And look where that got you!” Sasha countered.

Martin stammered, trying to think of a response. “You– I am not a walnut, I don’t even know what that means.”

Sasha crossed her arms. “You are totally being a walnut right now.”

“Am not!”

She burst out laughing and hugged him. “There’s the Martin I know.”

He bit his tongue, unsure. He didn’t even think he was the Martin he knew anymore, not for a long time.

She studied his expression. “Aw, you’re frowning again. Stop that! We just flawlessly executed our plot, that time that happened there was a celebratory cheese board, you know.”

“I know, I know.” He pushed her away. “I just–don't feel like it's worth it to celebrate right now.”

“We’re alive, we’re all still alive, isn’t that enough?”

“Sasha…”

She stared intently at him. A nagging part of his mind told him that his life would be so much easier if she wasn’t such a good friend.

“Sasha, I’m not…happy. I don’t think I’m ever going to be again.”

She sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder. “You will, I know you will, somehow. Maybe after a while it won’t feel so impossible.”

Martin didn’t know if he believed it. He didn’t know a lot of things. He did know that Tim and Sasha loved him, and he hadn’t decided if that made things better or worse, but it was something to hold on to, at the very least.

Chapter Text

Martin absentmindedly stirred a cup of tea as he stared out of Sasha’s apartment window. The weather was nearly as dreary as it was in his dreams. He saw nothing but grey beyond the gently falling raindrops on the window.

It’s still so early. He thought, Maybe things will clear up later.

He knew it wouldn’t, and even if it did he would still return to that foggy coastline when he closed his eyes. He hadn’t had a single peaceful night of sleep in the days since the circus was defeated, his steadily dwindling hours of rest haunted by what he could never quite call nightmares. They didn’t scare him, not as much as the waking world did. At least in his dreams he could have what he wanted.

Sasha padded into the kitchen, still rubbing sleep from her eyes. Martin was surprised to see her up at this hour, she typically waited until the very last minute to drag herself out of bed. He didn’t think she was getting much sleep as she used to anymore. Were any of them?

She poured herself a cup of coffee and dumped her usual five sugar cubes and large glug of cream into it.

“Morning, Martin.” She said. There was a distinct lack of ‘good’ at the beginning of her sentence. Martin said nothing, just sipped his tea, which was long past lukewarm by now. He poured the rest of it into the sink.

“How’s all the archival work you won’t let me help you with?” Sasha said. She could not hide the bitterness in her tone as well as the cream and sugar hid it in her coffee.

“I haven’t found any obvious new threats.” He admitted.

She leaned on the counter, staring at her beloved lizard clock, her eyes just barely followed its wooden tail as it swished back and forth in time with the seconds passing by. The room was quiet for a moment,  the air filled only with the ticking of the clock and the drum of rain on the window.

“Do you think we’re in the clear, then?” She murmured. “Do you think it’s over?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if it will be over. Not until we’re dead. If you thought that somehow we were going to get out of here, live happily ever after, then I’m sorry, but Sasha, I think this is all there is.”

She turned to him, her eyes shining and fragile like a cup of water on the brink of spilling over. “Then what are we doing all of this for?”

Martin stared at her for a long, dismal moment.

“What else is there to do?”

“We just…wait? For the next threat, the next monster to fight off? Until the world ends or we can’t be there to protect it?” Her lip trembled as she spoke. “Is that really it? Or are you just giving up?”

He looked away.

“This can’t be it.” She whispered, “There has to be something else, there has to be another way. We can’t just keep delaying the end of the world, we need to stop it. ”

“Do you think that’s even possible?”

“I has to be!” She said, then repeated, softer, far less sure. “It has to be.”

Martin sighed. “And if it isn’t?”

“If we don’t try then we’ll never know. I can look for a solution, it's out there, somewhere. If we find it then we can fix this mess. We can escape. We can save Jon for good . Don’t you want that?”

“Of course I do, but–”

Sasha glared at him, drumming her fingers against the side of her mug as she waited for him to continue. He didn’t, he just trailed off. 

“Well while you look for the next monster to fight off, I’m going to be looking for an actual way out of here that doesn’t involve all of us ending up blind.” She downed the rest of her coffee. “You can help if you want.” She looked him up and down. “But I don’t think you will.”

Martin gave her a guilty look. It’s true, he wouldn’t. He was too busy being trapped in a tar pit of his own creation, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t change. The idea of doing anything other than sinking deeper was terrifying.

He really didn’t think Sasha was going to find anything, but if it kept her going, that was enough.

Sasha scoffed and stormed off to her bedroom, and when she closed the door behind her, he felt the tiniest wedge drive itself between them. A gap of distance forming where there wasn’t one before. A hairline crack that had the capacity to grow into a chasm. The same thing happened with Tim just a few days ago. Martin was pushing them away, he knew that. He couldn’t help but think that the only reason they hadn’t left him yet was that the Institute was still forcing them together.

Good. Martin thought, despite the parts of him that still felt things other than despair.

°°°

In the archives, two of his fellow employees were avoiding him. Sasha and Tim occasionally threw him a glance and Sasha would sometimes open her mouth like she wanted to say something when he walked by, but ultimately they ignored him. Tim filled his time by doing a lot of nothing, and Sasha was glued to her laptop and the stacks of papers she had pulled, seemingly at random, from the filing cabinets around her. She scribbled furiously in a notebook, she stepped outside to make calls to mysterious someones. Martin had no clue if she was making any progress.

Jon, on the other hand, was very much not avoiding him. This was less than ideal.

“I found some statements you might want to take a look at.” Jon said, carrying a thick stack of manila folders as he tailed Martin like a duckling. 

“Sasha’s told you repeatedly not to read those.” Martin said offhandedly.

“I didn’t! I swear! I just picked some I felt like you would need for…whatever you need them for.” Jon trailed off when Martin turned around and accidentally met his eyes. Jon quickly looked away, was he scared of what he saw? Or was it something else?

Martin took the stack of folders and set them on his desk. “Thank you, Jon.” He made himself say.

“Do you need anything?” Jon pleaded more than asked.

“No. Leave.”

“Are you sure? There’s nothing I can help with? I can find more or I could help you follow up on them–I mean, I know that's supposed to be your job but whatever you’re up to seems to be more important anyway–”

“Jon,” Martin’s voice was more desperate than cold now. “Just go.”

Jon looked at him for a long, agonizing moment. “Are you sure you want me to?”

Martin stared at the scuffed wooden floorboards. His heart beat painfully in his ribcage, dying to escape, to say something. He grit his teeth and swallowed the poetic confessions and aching words that danced on the tip of his tongue. Oh, love, the sweetest curse, a barbed thorn impossible to dig from one's flesh. How it was poisoning him, how it made every moment burn. He would do anything to be rid of it, he would do anything to hold it close.

“I don’t think you do.” Jon said softly, and he was right.

“Leave me alone.” Martin had to force the words from his lips, they came out strangled and strange, frayed around the edges.

Jon seemed like he wanted to argue more, to stay longer, to bother Martin until his resolve broke, but he must not have had it in him. Jon’s gaze lingered on him for another miserable moment before he retreated back to his office, making a point to not close the door behind him.

Martin sighed and sunk into a dusty office chair. He hoped Sasha was right, he hoped there was a way out of this. He was so sick of existing in limbo. He couldn’t stand to be trapped like this any longer.

He tried to think to the future, to the life he would have if the apocalypse was successfully thwarted and for the first time in his life he got to choose where it would go. Only he was never anyone with any long term plans, he didn’t have a dream career to pursue, places he wanted to see. The future was an empty void. If he tried really hard, he could see the outlines of something. If he let his thoughts sit for a while longer, the image got clearer. A cabin on a green hill, one he knew well. Someone by his side, who he knew better.

He opened his eyes and let the image dissipate in the wake of the lazily spinning ceiling fan. He would never go back to that cabin. He would never be with Jon again.

But Martin looked through Jon’s open door and saw him sitting at his desk, staring into space, and knew that he could if he wanted to. If he was a little more brave. If the thought of being hurt again didn’t paralyze him. 

Eager to distract himself, he picked a statement from the top of the pile Jon had given him and started to flip through it. He was about halfway through reading with no new information to show about it when he felt goosebumps rise on his arms and a familiar shiver ran up his spine. The scent of cold sea spray drifted through the air.

Peter Lukas had decided to pay the archives a visit.

Chapter Text

Martin watched as the door to Jon’s office seemingly swung closed on its own. Without thinking, he stood up and snuck over to it, pressing his ear up against the wood. Sasha watched him, her brows knit together, still clutching her notebook.

”You again.” He heard Jon say.

”Of course.” Replied Lukas, the sound of his voice made Martin’s blood boil. ”I see that little kidnapping fiasco has been resolved.”

“Yes.”

“The others rescued you, didn’t they? Risked life and limb.”

“They did.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Because they care about me.”

“And you’re sure about that?” Martin’s grip on the door handle tightened. Jon, manipulated in the very same way he was. It enraged him, it made him sick, he couldn’t shake the feeling it was his fault. It should be him on the other side of this door, didn’t he feel lonelier than anyone? 

Maybe that was why Peter seemed to ignore him. Martin had already fallen farther than Peter could ever take him.

”Peter, don’t do this.”

”I’m just asking.”

Jon didn’t have a chance to answer before Martin threw open the door and met Peter Lukas face to face for the first time since the man had dragged him into the Lonely. Peter whirled around in surprise before he seemed to register who he was looking at and a smug, satisfied grin crawled across his face.

“Rather rude to barge in on someone’s conversation.” Peter said.

“Shut up.” Martin spat, “Jon, get out of here.”

“W-what?” Jon stammered, “Why?” But he was already gathering his things.

“I believe your…friend…here wants to chat.” Lukas said smoothly, and very, very punchably.

Jon looked nervously to Martin, and then back to Lukas. He sighed and walked out of the room. His hand, ever so slightly, brushed Martin’s as he passed, sending a shiver of longing up his arm. Martin flinched, if he were a weaker person, or maybe if he was a stronger one, he would have reached forward and held Jon’s hand tight. He would have asked him to stay. He would have begged him for forgiveness, but as he was, he simply met Jon’s eyes for a split second. Martin looked away quickly but he knew Jon’s gaze still lingered upon his turned cheek. What was he thinking? Martin didn’t want to know.

The moment passed, Jon sighed, his form wilting.

“He isn’t my friend.” He muttered to Lukas. Words that both comforted Martin and stung like salt in a wound. It’s true, they weren’t friends, they probably never will be.

Martin felt Jon’s eyes burn into the back of his head until he heard the door close.

“Well then, you must be Martin.” Lukas said plainly.

“Elias mention me?” He said, his words sharp and icy.

“A few times. He said you were a “fascinating case”. Those were his words, at least.” He gave Martin a quizzical look. “Have we met before?”

He ignored the question, he hoped the glare he was giving Peter was enough to scare him off from asking it again.

“Jon talks about you too.” Peter said smugly, his eyes twinkling like he knew that even uttering the name would get under Martin’s skin. “Quite a lot actually.” He stepped closer, though Martin was tall, Peter Lukas was taller, and even if he didn’t quite literally loom over him, it still felt like he did. Martin had to force himself to stand his ground.

You’re not scared of him anymore. He tried to reassure himself, but it wasn’t true. No matter how much he wanted to think he had changed and grown beyond the need to be afraid of Peter, under his stiff exterior he trembled like a traumatized dog returned to its owner. 

“And what does he say?” The words tumbled from his mouth before he could think.

Peter smiled. “He says you’re a mystery he’d like to solve. Frankly, I can’t blame him. Look at you, what’s going on with you? Why are you even here?”

“To tell you to stay the hell away from Jon.” He hissed.

He chuckled. “Oh, I see what’s going on here.” Peter leaned in close enough for Martin to see the salt crusted on his beard. “You like him.”

Martin’s eye twitched, his breath caught in his throat.

“I’m right, aren’t I? Oh this is interesting . Now, Martin, tell me. You care about Jon enough to threaten me in order to maintain his perceived safety but not enough to actually talk to him. Why would that be? Surely if you love him–which I’m sure you do considering the look on your face when I said that–you would want to spend time with him. You’d want to make sure he feels loved and not shut away like a pretty knick-knack. Right?”

Martin’s teeth ground together so roughly that they hurt. “Stop talking.”

“You’re not as threatening as you think you are.” Peter said. “Everyone knows it. You’re not hiding a single thing. I look at you and I can tell that all you are is a very pathetic man, a very lonely man, too.”

“I know what you want from him.” Martin said, his voice shaking, every part of him shaking. “I know about your little wager, and I’m not going to let it happen. I’ll die before I let it happen.”

“Would you now?”

Martin suddenly realized what he had just said. Peter Lukas never needed Jon specifically, he just needed someone in the archives to fall prey to the Lonely. Martin was already far past that threshold, Peter could get what he wanted and not have to lift a finger. Martin could give him what he wanted.

Maybe, it could be a way out. Maybe he could save Jon. Elias couldn’t hurt him if Martin was the one in control. 

It would mean that Peter won, of course, but it would mean that Elias lost.

“I’d do anything.” Martin whispered, “I’d do anything if it meant saving him.”

He would have sacrificed himself a thousand times. He would have watched Jon’s heart break a thousand more. He would have burned the world. Anything. Anything.

Peter grinned, seemingly satisfied. “I’ll tell you what, Martin. I’ll leave Jon alone for now, and the two of us will talk sometime in the future, how’s that sound?”

Martin said nothing, just stared at the floor and tried to suppress the urge to shove a letter opener into Peter’s neck. Peter seemed to take his fuming silence as an agreement.

“Well then.” He said, stepping out of the room. “Productive chat, Martin, I’ll see you around.”

And with that, he was gone. Martin fell to his knees, exhausted by the brief encounter, exhausted by everything. He was left with the grim feeling that he had just made a terrible mistake, or maybe, he was about to fix everything. Either way, Sasha was not going to be happy with him.

The door creaked open and Tim’s head poked out. Martin was surprised he had bothered to check on him, they hadn’t spoken since Martin had rushed out of Tim’s flat. 

“You alright there?” He said, his voice lilting cautiously, like Martin was some stray animal he couldn’t afford to scare away.

“What do you think?” Martin said bitterly. Tim flinched at the venom in his tone and he regretted it immediately.

“W-where’s Jon?” He asked. God, he hoped he hadn’t heard any of that.

“Sasha took him out to get lunch as soon as he was out of the room. He wasn’t happy about leaving you behind but he’s not one to tell her no.” Tim’s tone was odd, either teasing or disgust, Martin couldn’t tell.

He nodded. “Good.”

“I’m surprised Peter isn’t dead.” Tim commented, staring down the hall towards the staircase.

“Me too.” Martin said softly. He looked up at Tim, whose eyes were as dark and cold as obsidian glass, and the tight knot in his chest grew tighter.

“Do you hate me?” He asked, his voice breaking as tears welled in his eyes. 

Tim kneeled down and placed a hand on Martin’s back. “I think you’re an idiot sometimes, but I don’t hate you.”

“I’m so sorry.” He sobbed, dug his fingertips into his arms so tightly they would surely leave bruises. “I shouldn’t have slept with you, I don’t know what I was thinking. I just wanted the hurting to stop for a moment but I made it worse, I just make everything worse, I made you worse, I made Sasha worse–” He thought back to the growing dark circles under Sasha’s eyes. How she had been going to bed later and rising so much earlier. How he could see the cracks forming in her gleaming personality.

“Martin. Stop.” Tim said sternly, “This is exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not angry with you because you ditched me–I’m used to that, and god knows it’s justified in your case–I’m angry because you just can’t seem to get it through your thick skull that you’re someone worth saving.

Martin sniffed. “But I’m n–”

Tim grabbed him by the shoulders. “ Stop. ”

Sobs racked his body and he collapsed into Tim, tired and aching and wanting to be held even if it didn’t mean anything. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Tim.” He said through the fabric of Tim’s jacket. “I don’t know who I am. God, everything hurts. I just– I want it to stop and I don’t know how. Please tell me how.”

Tim pulled him closer. “I would if I could, I swear.” He murmured.

“I don’t think there’s a place for me after this is over, I don’t think I fit. I’m not like the rest of you, the things I’ve seen—It’s like I’m not even a person anymore I’m just—something the universe assigned to fix what happened.”

“I think you’ll figure it out, eventually. Sasha will find a way to end this for good and we can all get a big house in the countryside and have a happily ever after.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Maybe. No. Only a little bit.”

Martin let himself think of that, of the four of them living together, still joined at the hip even far away from the institute that brought them together. He tried to slot himself into the group, tried to see himself tending to the flower boxes or helping Sasha bake or falling asleep as Jon read a book curled up next to him. It felt like a dream, it felt impossible, it felt like he couldn’t have it and didn’t deserve it.

“I hope you’re right.” Martin whispered. Dissuaded, for now, from going along with Peter Lukas and the plot he secretly thought could be the easiest answer.

It was still in the back of his mind, however.

A twisted seed of doubt that told him that he was not somebody who felt happiness anymore.

“Come on.” Tim said, “Let’s get you home.”

Martin went along with him, electing not to say anything else in case he choked on the words. He felt fragile and scoured, the bottom of a pot trimmed too thin, on the verge of breaking.

He really hoped Sasha found something, and fast.

Before he ran out of patience, and ran out of hope, and decided to walk into the Panopticon without any intention of ever coming back.