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When the Dark ritual collapsed, a large part of Gertrude Robinson collapsed along with it.
Funny, she thought - without the smallest particle of amusement - to be so knocked to the ground by the world not ending. Because she had hoped this would be the result, of course; had gambled the whole world on her assumptions, and yet; it turned out that part of her had wanted to be wrong.
Because, if the rituals had always been doomed to fail, all along, then what did that mean for her whole life?
At the start of her role as Archivist - when Gertrude had first realised what a mess she was in and what a weight lay on her shoulders - she had taken it calmly and well; for the most part. There had been some … mental adjustments to make; but she hadn’t wailed and crumpled under the strain, had neither bemoaned her fate nor let her anger uselessly consume her, but simply taken a look at the situation and worked out what needed to be done.
She had never been a ‘soft’ person, in any case, but she had made a focused effort to cut out any small traces of sentimentality, squeamishness and unnecessary scruples, which she might still have about her, aware that they woud only get in the way. She could afford no frill and fripperies of personality, only that which was straightforward, plain and effective.
This wasn’t a fairy story, or some thumping moralistic tale, in which good triumphed simply by virtue of being smugly, radiantly good. If it was to triumph - if the whole world wasn’t to end, in the worst possible misery and suffering - then it would have to do so through cunning, strategy, deception, ruthlessness; and, wherever possible, explosives.
(Gertrude had really enjoyed the parts with explosives.)
So she had set out to be the hero which the world didn’t at all want, but very much needed; and had succeeded better than she had ever imagined.
There had been suffering, of course, her own and others; casualties and hard choices. Moments when she had had to forcibly remind herself of what her end goal was and why her actions were necessary, in order to steel herself to make them; though these instances had become less and less common over the years, as the lines between the carefully constructed version of Gertrude Robinson - Unstoppable Badass with a Heart of Pure Flint - and her original, more vulnerable, self, blurred and wavered and, in some cases, vanished altogether.
Gerard Keay had been the last person she almost, sort of, loved: the son she’d never wanted, but might have not hated having to put up with, had he lived. When he died - and when she bound him to the skin book, her mind and emotions detached from the proceedings and watching in almost as distant a fashion as the Eye itself - she lost that part of her entirely; and didn’t mourn it.
But it had all been worth it - or so she had believed - because the world was free from unending terror and she had done that. Her sacrifices, her ruthlessness, her gradually calcifying soul: all were just a small price to pay, for the safety of the planet.
And now she knew exactly how worthless all of that had been. If she hadn’t really been saving the world - if it would, in fact, have limped along just fine without her, thank you - then all she had accomplished was … what, exactly?
She didn’t care to look into the faces of her ghosts and answer that question.
There was one last job to do, one last act of destruction she had intended; but the overwhelming knowledge which settled over her, as her suspicions were confirmed, knocked down all of her intentions, along with the last traces of a Gertrude she hadn’t even realised still existed; an idealist, of sorts.
For a moment, she teetered on the brink of self-loathing and utter despair (Elias would kill her if he found her and wouldn’t that round things off rather neatly?) but then a rising tide of anger surged up from her centre and obliterated such inexcusable weakness.
She should have been right. And she would have been; had it not been for the gross incompetence of all those fools who thought they held the secret to their ‘gods’. Goodness knows, she knew far more about the Fears, by now, than any of them; any of those people who felt themselves to be special, embraced; chosen; loved.
The Entities didn’t love their worshippers; they only used them.
And Gertrude had used them, too, sometimes. People were so very easy to use; to manipulate and trick and, when necessary, to kill. Were they so very far from the cattle the Fears treated them as, after all?
A spider crawled companionably close and Gertrude snorted at it.
“And what, pray tell, do you wish to use me for?”
Knowledge slipped into her head, smooth as a knifeblade, and she honestly couldn’t tell if she’d sought it or if it was gifted to her. Elias - Jonah Magnus - had a ritual that would actually work; and he was coming, right now, to kill her.
After all her efforts, all of that long, painful life of futility, he was going to win.
A man like that, limited in his understanding and selfish down to the bone - or, perhaps, she should say, to the retina - had no right at all to do so. If anyone was going to bring the Entities into the world, it ought to be someone who didn’t kowtow to them, who didn’t see them as gods, but as malign, otherwordly beings, who were powerful, certainly; but which could yet be countered, contained. Controlled. At least, by the right person.
Someone who wasn’t afraid to do what was necessary, rather than what was … pleasant.
Someone who had - she suddenly realised - not wasted her life, and those of others, in utter pointlessness, but had, instead, been training and honing herself for this very moment.
Someone who could not just break the world, but break it right.
And if she felt that the world had broken her first, then the thought was so fleeting it hardly existed at all, before she laid her plans for a talk with Jonah Magnus, which was not going to go at all as he probably suspected.
Gertrude Robinson had a purpose again; and she never, ever turned aside from a goal.