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Martin stabs him. Jon feels the knife slide between his ribs and sink into his heart.
This has to fix things.
It has to.
If it doesn’t… if it doesn’t, Jon can’t think about what that will mean. He doesn’t believe they’ll end up somewhere else. That would be too good, too perfect an ending. He doesn’t deserve it.
As static builds and tapes unspool around him and Martin’s weeping face above him starts to fade and blur, there’s only one thought in Jon’s mind.
I wish none of this had ever happened.
*
His phone alarm blares.
Jon opens his eyes.
He’s curled up on his side, the duvet kicked off in the night because it’s so hot, the sun already blazing in through his thin curtains.
And he’s in bed. His own bed. The one he hasn’t slept in in weeks – months – years?
He sits up and stares wildly around his bedroom. It’s all there. The charity shop paperbacks messily stacked on his bookcase, the half dead plants on his windowsill, the crack in the paint on the wall by the window that looks just like the one from Doctor Who. His teddy bear, sitting primly on the other pillow.
And the world outside his window – normal.
What the hell?
*
The Magnus Institute is… is the Magnus Institute. It’s not a tower. There’s no Watcher at the top, no guards at the bottom. There are, presumably, tunnels underneath, but he’s pretty sure at this point that he won’t find a cult that worships his ex-girlfriend living down there. Just… oh, hell, if it really is 2016, like his phone says and the little calendar stuck to his fridge says and the whole, unbroken – or no more broken than usual, at least – state of the world says, Jurgen Leitner must be down there.
That’s something he’ll deal with later.
For now, he walks through the Institute’s large double doors, nods to a couple of people he doesn’t recognise and doesn’t Know as he crosses the lobby – he doesn’t Know anything – and descends the stairs into the archives.
He’s a bit late, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when he walks into the assistants’ office and they’re all there. He pulls up short anyway, his unstabbed heart thundering in his chest. Martin. Tim. A short Black woman with large glasses and a quizzical frown who must be Sasha. He stares at her. She stares back, one eyebrow lifted.
“Sasha,” he croaks.
“In the flesh,” she says, tilts her head to the side. “Heavy night on the town?”
“What?”
“You’re six and a half minutes late,” Sasha says, her frown softening into an amused grin.
“Oh,” he says, still staring at her. She seems so much more real, so much more alive than the bland, smiling thing that replaced her ever did. “I, ah, no. Just a… a strange morning.”
Tim laughs, tilting back in his chair and putting his feet on his desk, crossed at the ankles. Once, Jon would have scowled and made him put them back on the floor, but now it just makes his heart surge with fondness. He looks so young. Now that he knows it’s there, Jon can see the hidden sadness in his eyes, but he’s smiling and cheerful, acting like they’re the best of friends. Jon supposes they are still, as far as Tim knows.
“Would you like a cup of tea, Jon?” Martin says, and Jon turns to him.
Martin is smiling, but not easy and carefree, like Tim. There’s an anxious little crease in his forehead, and Jon can see his fingers twisting together behind his computer.
The faint whisper of hope that perhaps he’s not the only one this has happened to, that they might have really ended up together, dies silently somewhere between Jon’s ribs. The heart that shouldn’t be beating stutters.
“I…” he says. “Ah, I… yes. Yes, please, Martin. That would be lovely.”
And, unable to look at the old Martin any longer, the one he’s been so horrible to that he can barely look Jon in the eye, he scuttles through between their desks and takes refuge in his own office, where he sinks down into his stupid big leather chair and buries his face in his hands.
This is a nightmare.
*
He starts to make things right with Martin. He apologises to him. He explains where he’s going wrong and how to improve. Martin does improve, by leaps and bounds, and gets very pink and flustered every time Jon praises him. Jon wonders why he didn’t just do this the first time around. It would have been so easy. But he’d been drowning in his own private whirlpool of fear and anxiety, and hadn’t noticed, not even for a moment, that Martin had been drowning too. Tim beams at him and Sasha gives him approving nods. It feels good.
He stops reading statements. Real ones, anyway. He’s not sure how long it’ll take Elias – Jonah – to notice, but hopefully a good long time. They’d only come along every two or three months at first, and Jon’s already recorded two onto tape, he discovers when he investigates, so he should be able to get away with avoiding them for a while yet. Long enough to come up with a plan. Long enough to try and dream up some way to fix things, to stop Jonah from marking him and doing his ritual. There must be something he can do, and not becoming the Archivist seems like an excellent first step.
He starts taking proper lunch and tea breaks, and accepting invitations to get drinks with the other three after work. They sit in the nearest pub, Tim and Sasha on one side of their favourite table and Jon and Martin on the other, close enough that their arms keep brushing, and Jon looks at Martin far, far too much. He knows Tim and Sasha have noticed, they keep exchanging little conspiratorial smiles and finding excuses to leave early and leave Jon and Martin alone together. He thinks Martin might have noticed, too, although he never says anything. His face just gets very pink and he turns his head away from Jon to hide the expression on his face. Like Tim, he seems very young. He’s so much less sure of himself, so much more anxious than he’d grown to be by the end.
Jon still loves him.
*
It’s actually quite enjoyable, bypassing the real statements and investigating, recording, discrediting and filing the fake ones. This is the job Jon had thought he was signing up for, all the way back in the beginning. He likes organising things. He finds himself getting quite enthusiastic about it. It doesn’t matter than none of them are real, it’s just satisfying to feel the archives slowly, so slowly, taking shape around him. Even ignoring everything that’s real, it’ll still take years to get everything properly organised, but that’s half the fun. Digging his teeth into something challenging yet achievable.
He'd almost forgotten what that was like.
He’d almost forgotten what having friends was like, too. It’s wonderful to go over to Sasha’s on a Saturday afternoon to dig through her vast collection of heist movies and pick the weirdest, most obscure ones they can find and laugh at them. It’s delightful to ring Tim’s doorbell and be welcomed in with a grin and a hug and spend the afternoon competing fiercely over board games. At least, he and Sasha compete fiercely while Tim and Martin mediate and mock them by turns. He’d forgotten how competitive she was. How could he have forgotten that?
Later on, they order pizza, and Tim and Sasha squish themselves together into one of the armchairs while Jon and Martin sit at opposite ends of the sofa, their feet carefully arranged in the middle, Jon’s slotted between Martin’s. Not touching.
“It’s really nice having you back, Jon,” Sasha says idly, licking the pizza grease off her fingers.
Jon whips his head around to stare at her. “What?”
She quirks an eyebrow. “You know, it just seemed at first like you were going to get all lost in your head, you were so anxious and snappy those first few weeks. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Oh,” he says, relieved. Better. That’s one word for it. He still has no idea how this happened or how he’s going to make the most of it, and if he’s being honest with himself, he’s been letting himself coast since he got back. He’s taken no steps towards becoming the Archivist, but he’s taken none towards fixing anything, either. Except for his relationships with his assistants. His friends.
Perhaps that was always the most important thing.
*
When he comes out of his office, tired but pleased with his progress, a few days later, Martin presents him with Laura Popham’s statement.
“It wouldn’t record on my laptop,” he explains. “And it properly gave me the willies.” He shudders.
“Oh, Martin, I’m sorry,” Jon says. He’s been setting the real statements aside in their own box with the vague idea of taking them home and burning them one day, when he’s built up a good stock, and the fact that they won’t record on a computer is a good excuse to save them for later. Nobody’s questioned it yet, anyway. “This must have been very unpleasant to read, with your claustrophobia.”
Martin frowns at him. “How did you know I was claustrophobic?”
Ah. Damn.
“I…” Jon hesitates. “I suppose you must have said so at some point.”
“Right. Yeah, I’m sure I did. I mean, it’s not that bad, it just… I don’t like small spaces much, that’s all.”
“Well, I’ll put this one aside with the others,” Jon says, taking the statement from him. “We’ll get to them when we’ve run out of ones that will record to the computer, since that’s far more accessible and useful than a tape.”
“Sounds good,” Martin says. “I’m just about to make a cuppa, do you want one?”
“Oh, yes please,” Jon says, unable to stop his eyes from skimming down the statement. Now that he knows to expect it, he can feel the first, weak tendrils of compulsion, making him want to read. But it’s nothing like how bad it was after the coma, or after the change, when he couldn’t stop consuming statement after statement, the only thing that would sustain him. It feels good to resist. He looks back up at Martin, smiling. “Thank you, love.”
He goes up on his tiptoes to press a brief little kiss to Martin’s lips, and then turns back to his office to stash the statement away. He’s only got five real ones so far, counting this one, although he knows it would be easy to find far, far more if he tried. But he has time. He can make a proper plan.
He’s just about to close the door behind him when Sasha shouts, “Jon!”
He jumps like a startled rabbit and swings around.
“What? What are you yelling at me for?”
She stares at him, and then waves her hand at Martin, who is standing frozen in the middle of the assistants’ office, his fingers pressed against his mouth, absolutely scarlet in the face.
“What?” Jon says again. “Did I say something?” He casts back through the conversation they’ve just had to find what might have upset Martin so badly, but he can’t think of—
Oh.
Oh no.
“Ah,” he says. “I… I… I’m so sorry, Martin. I wasn’t thinking, I just…”
He stares at Martin, agonised. What a stupid thing to do! And he’d been making such good progress with Martin, too. He’d thought, or hoped at least, that they were becoming friends.
Martin lowers his hand from his mouth.
“You weren’t thinking?” he echoes, his voice all high, the way it gets when he’s indignant or upset about something. “You kissed me out of, what, absent-mindedness?”
Jon feels himself flush. He shuffles from foot to foot. Why is he so bad at people? He always seems to ruin things somehow. “I… sort of, yes. It’s… it used to be… I mean, I…”
“It used to be what?” Martin is staring at him, still crimson-faced.
“I…” Shit. Shit. Jon can’t think of a single thing to say that would explain any of this. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.
“You called him love, too,” Tim puts in brightly, when it becomes clear that neither Jon nor Martin will do anything more than stand there, staring at each other in silence, possibly until the end of time, if not forced into actually talking to each other. “It was very cute.”
Jon scowls automatically. “I am not cute,” he says.
“Sorry, but I’m afraid you are,” Tim says, shrugging. “I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”
“He’s right,” Sasha says. “It was very cute. It was also very weird, Jon. Why did you do that? I thought we were going to have to take poor Martin to A&E with a heart attack.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Jon says. He scrunches his cuffs up in his hands anxiously, letting his fingertips brush over the buttons there. It helps a little.
“But then why did you?” Martin says plaintively. “I… I mean, I don’t mind, it’s just that you’ve never showed any sign of wanting to, you know, kiss me before this.”
Jon laughs, a high, slightly hysterical little bark. “I always want to kiss you, Martin,” he says. “I… ever since I got back, I can’t stop… but you’re not… I mean, I’m not…”
“You… you always…?” Martin says. His eyes are so wide that Jon might laugh if it weren’t for the unmitigated mess he’s made of the last five minutes. As it is, he mostly just wants to crawl down through the trap door into the tunnels and never come out. Suddenly, he feels as though he completely understands Leitner. Well, all right, no, he’s not going to go that far, but spending the rest of his life hiding underground and never talking to another human being? Yes.
“Well, have you seen you?” he mutters defensively. “It’s a wonder anybody gets any work done around here.”
Martin seems struck dumb by this.
“He’s not wrong,” Tim says to Martin. “You’re a catch, mate. I’m just surprised it took him this long to snog you.”
Jon wrinkles his nose in disgust. “It was hardly a snog, Tim,” he says repressively. “It was just a… an absent-minded… you know.”
“Kiss,” Sasha supplies helpfully.
“Yes, thank you, Sasha. I haven’t forgotten.”
“Oh, good,” she says. “Because it seemed like you were trying to act as though going around absent-mindedly kissing people was a perfectly normal thing to do, and if you were Tim then maybe I’d buy it, but this is you, Jon. You make it sound as though you’ve been concentrating hard to remind yourself not to kiss him.”
Jon’s face flares hot again. The worst part is that she’s completely and utterly right. He has been watching himself around Martin, trying not to act as though he wants to kiss him, call him pet names, or generally show how completely besotted he is. He’d thought, for the first day or two, that maybe it would be different, since this isn’t exactly his Martin. What he hadn’t bargained for was the fact that it’s still Martin. In any iteration, Jon can’t help but love him.
“Oh my god, you have been concentrating on not kissing him, haven’t you?” Sasha says, apparently reading far too many of his thoughts right off his face.
“I… not… not exactly,” Jon mutters, staring at the ratty carpet and wishing it would grow a mouth and swallow him up.
“Mmm,” Tim says. “Is that ‘not exactly’ defined as ‘yes, that is precisely what I have been doing’?” Jon glares at him. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Boss, I love you, but you’re an absolute disaster. Why haven’t you just asked Martin out?”
Jon curls his hands around his cuffs again. “I… it’s complicated,” he says.
“Why, because you’re his manager?” Sasha says. “Because, and correct me if I’m wrong here, Martin, but I kind of get the feeling…”
“Yeah, I don’t care about that,” Martin says. “You know, as long as you promise not to fire me if we broke… if it didn’t work out.”
“Oh, Martin, I wouldn’t,” Jon says. “I’d never.”
“Okay,” Martin says. He gives Jon a shy, pink smile. “Then… then I, you know, if you asked me out, I’d definitely say yes. If that helps at all.”
Tears prickle at the backs of Jon’s eyes. He wants.
“It’s not that,” he says miserably. “I mean, that’s not why I can’t…”
“Then why?” Martin steps closer to him. “I… I like you, too, Jon,” he says, all gentle and earnest, and Jon can’t bring himself to back away, to keep the distance between them. He wants to let Martin to wrap him up in his soft, strong arms and tell him that it’s all going to be all right.
But he can’t.
Maybe if he fixes things, it’ll be different. It will take a while. Things will be less uneven between them by then. Martin will know Jon better, and Jon will know this Martin better, even though he feels like he already knows him quite well after all the time they’ve spent together over the last few weeks. He’s similar to 2018 Martin in so many ways, just quieter, less sure of himself and his own worth. But his kindness, the way he wants to do the right thing and be good to people, the hidden sharpness inside him, that’s all there. Jon is already falling in love with him.
“I…” he says, and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to think. “It’s just… there’s too much you don’t know. It’s all uneven. I’d have to tell you, and I…”
He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to see Martin’s face grow horrified and afraid. Doesn’t want to watch him draw away. How could Martin ever forgive what Jon did in the first timeline? It had been different then, it had all happened so slowly, and Martin had grown to love him before he’d become a monster. He’d been there for it, understood the choices Jon had had to make. They’d been through it all together. This Martin has experienced none of that.
And it’s not just him and Martin. It’s Sasha, replaced and written over, and Tim, angry and dead, and everyone else. It’s Jonah, sitting up there in his office, even now plotting cheerfully to end the world.
It’s all so bloody complicated.
“Jon, just tell him,” Tim says, his voice gentle in the silence that’s fallen around them. “Whatever it is that’s got you all tied up in knots, it’ll be better if you tell him, and then you can work through it together.”
Jon opens his eyes and looks at Tim. Remembers him saying I don’t forgive you, but thank you for this.
“It’s not just Martin,” he says. He looks at Sasha and remembers finding the tape. Her last words, I see you, and then her screams as the Not-Them destroyed her. “It’s… it’s you two, as well. It’s all of us. There’s… I need to fix things before I can… before I can…”
“Fix what?” Sasha says. “Yeah, you were a bit of a dick at first, but we’re all good now. You know that.”
“Not that,” he says again.
“Then what?” Tim says. “Jon, come on, you’re freaking me out a little bit here. Whatever it is, can’t we help?”
Jon blinks.
Can’t they help?
He was so alone, the first time. He’d bullied Martin, let Sasha be replaced without even noticing, pushed and pushed at Tim until even he couldn’t forgive him. Melanie had never liked him and Basira had thought him a monster. There’d been Daisy, for too short a time, and then Martin, also for too short a time, but even then there’d been a burden on him that Martin could never entirely be part of.
And none of that has happened yet.
Perhaps it never has to.
Perhaps this is the way to stop it.
Jon takes a long, slow breath. He looks at Martin.
“I do want to be with you,” he says, faintly surprised at how steadily his voice comes out. “But there are some things you need to know first.” He looks at Tim and Sasha. “You two need to know them, too. Will you all come… come home with me at the end of work today? I’ll tell you everything.”
Martin takes his hand, squeezes it gently, and then lets it go again. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Of course we will. Won’t we, guys?”
Tim and Sasha are already nodding.
Jon gives them all a wobbly, grateful smile. “Thank you,” he says. “I think I’m going to need to ask for your help.”