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Ever since Jon was a child, there has been this presence, this being, in his dreams. Not every dream, but with enough frequency that he’d started considering them -it?- a recurring character. He didn’t dream all that often to begin with. Most nights being blissfully taken by the soundless and continuous void of a dreamless sleep, so this being was definitely a noticeable change. Except it wasn’t a change at all, since, as far as he can remember, it has been there from the very first dream he could recall. There it stood. In the corner of his mind, staring at him with all its many, many, eyes; far too many for his limited human vision to be able to perceive. Jon didn’t know how, but he had known from the very first time he saw the creature that it could -would and did- watch him from angles he could never even phantom. That it didn’t matter where he hid, it would always see him. It would always know him. He knew, from the very first time it appeared in his dreams, that the thing had known him far longer than he had been alive.
He had been terrified the first time. Woke up with cold sweat soaking his hair and pillow, his tiny hands gripping the blankets so tightly that it had hurt him to shift his grip and pull the covers over his head, trying to hide from that overpowering gaze. Trying to shake off that feeling of being known. That was the start of his relationship with the many-eyed thing, and also with chronic insomnia, both of which would follow him way into adulthood.
The thing is, even though he had been absolutely terrified that night and unable to sleep until morning came, leaving him very grateful for the dreamless sleep he had on the nights that followed the cardinal encounter, he had also been… intrigued. Jon had always been an incredibly curious child, for better or worse. And, for the most part, that meant his curiosity was far greater than his fears. In the quiet moments of his day, his mind couldn’t help but wander back to the strange creature. To how it had so many eyes, way more than should fit in a body, and yet still turned its head when it looked at him. To the way it had looked at him. Seeing, knowing, watching? Yes. But, also, so very surprised. Like it hadn’t expected him to be there at all, like Jon's presence was just as odd to it as it was to him.
So, by the time it next appeared in his dreams, Jon’s curiosity had overcome his fear. This time, he didn’t jolt awake as soon as those eyes laid on him; no, this time he looked back. The creature stood in a far off corner, as well as it could manage in a seemingly infinite space, and Jon had the distinct feeling that it was trying to look away from him. It failed, since most of its eyes were still fixed on him. But a couple were closed, a few looking the other way, and its head was turned sideways, pointedly staring into the distance. At that moment, Jon realized that it had a head, a human one at that. For all the time he spent being eaten away by his curiosity, he had failed to realize how humanoid the creature actually was.
The thought of it being even slightly human unsettled him, far more than the perpetual watching did. It felt both like it did and didn’t belong in there, with him, in the dissonant place that eluded his dreamless sleep. Familiar, but not in the warm way that a home is supposed to feel like, but rather in the way that being thoroughly known by something forces you to feel.
He remembers taking a step closer, feeling emboldened by his own need to know more about it. Remembers the being turning its gaze towards him, so suddenly that it startled him awake, and then he was in his bed. Gripping the blankets so tightly and feeling so very small and so very afraid once again.
This became a new normal, of sorts. Sometimes the being would appear twice in a week, and sometimes it would disappear for months, but it’d always come back. Always standing far, looking away. Its long black hair always draped over its shoulder, back and face; disheveled enough as if it had just dried in a wind after a storm, some of it up in odd angles while some was still wet and sticking to its skin. Maybe it had just been in a storm. He had no idea where it came from after all.
And that was another thing, in all those years that Jon’s dreams had been visited by the creature, it never once occurred to him that it could be a simple figment of his imagination, just a hallucination created by his subconscious to keep his mind entertained during the night. Although that wasn’t completely true, he had thought about the possibility, but it seemed wrong, somehow, to consider it anything else other than real. Like it was an idea that didn’t quite fit in his brain. And it made absolutely no sense at all, since the being’s existence was a concept impossible by definition. And yet. The idea that it would be anything other than real still seemed wrong to him. Not oddly unfitting, like when he realized the creature might be -or, at least, might’ve been- human at some point, it just felt purely and simply wrong.
It had to be real. Jon didn’t know why he felt so strongly about it, but he did, and it was. And so his curiosity kept eating away at him, one unanswered and unasked question at a time.
It’s not like he didn’t want, or try, to ask, but every time it would turn its gaze towards him the fear would drown him from the inside out, and he’d wake up. So they’d mostly just stay there, in that nightmare-ish dreamscape in complete silence, while his head would flood with questions from a never ending stream. Where did it come from? Why was it here? Why him? Why now? How did it know him? Did it want something from him, with him? Was this an accident or on purpose? Did it want to be here? That didn’t seem to be the case. Could it go back? Was it stuck?
Were there other beings like it?
Jon didn’t have to ponder that one for too long, with reality deciding to crash in on itself one day, by giving him A Guest for Mr. Spider.
That book changed everything. All he knew to be true and real went down the drain. Long gone were his certainties regarding reality. He kept remembering his bully’s almost scream. How he saw those lines propping and puppeteering his body in front of the door. Remembering the fly’s face in the book, a face he was sure mirrored his own at the moment he saw those spindly legs reach out and grab. Grab at whatever it could reach. The man, his limbs, the air, Jon’s sanity. How he had wanted the book back so badly, despite it all. Remembering how he didn’t remember how he had gotten to the park, or when night fell, or where Mr. Spider’s house was, even after trying to retrace his steps.
How he did remember the name stamped on the backcover.
He couldn’t forget it, even if he wanted to. It rattled his bones, cracking them at the edges and seeping the knowledge deep into them that reality as he knew it was wrong. Incomplete. An unfinished puzzle of the Truth. That there was more out there, more than his eyes could see, more than his skin could feel, more than his mind could possibly hope to comprehend. That name carried into its shoulders the worldly weight of the realization that this strangeness was not, and could not, be contained in the immaterial realm.
The next time it had appeared in his dreams, Jon looked at the being with the knowledge that it had bones and flesh and tangibility just like he had. Just like Mr. Spider had.
He closed his eyes.
“Are you Jurgen Leitner?” It was not the first time he had attempted to ask a question, but it was the first time he had managed to finish one without scaring himself awake the moment he felt the stares. He shut his eyes even tighter, until he started seeing colorful dots dancing in the underside of his eyelids.
It didn’t answer for a very long time, long enough that Jon started questioning if it could even speak. It seemed odd that it would be a problem with understanding him, since it knew him. He swallowed, readying himself to ask something, anything, again.
“Do you remember his name?” The being asks, his voice a lot softer than Jon expected, a lot more human than he expected.
It catches him so off guard that he opens his eyes without thinking, expecting to wake up in his bed as soon as he feels his face unscrunch from keeping his eyes shut. But, he doesn’t. He opens his eyes and he stays, looking at the creature he had been so sure just a moment ago was inhuman. And it stares back at him, with a look of equal astonishment mirrored on its face.
“Wh-whose name?” Jon manages to croak out, he may not have woken up, but the fear was very much still there.
“The boy who saved your life from Mr.Spider. The bully.” It clarifies, looking away once again.
Since it wasn’t looking directly at him anymore, Jon felt like he could breathe a little better for a few seconds. Those few moments of bliss were all he got before his brows furrowed in confusion as he tried to remember his bully’s name. Of course he knew his name, he had been in his house just a couple days ago, helping his grandmother with something. Not that he cared all that much about him, but still, he should probably know it. Why couldn’t he recall it?
“I guess not.” The thing turned to him once again, a look of disconcerting fondness in its expression that Jon didn’t really understand or appreciate. “I thought that might be the case, but had hoped you’d remember regardless, since it only just happened.” It paused, sounding exhausted and resigned. “Still, I suppose it’s fitting that the Spider found a way to elude me once more.”
Jon had the feeling that the being wasn’t really talking to him. He knew what it felt like when adults talked at him rather than to him, and this felt very similar. So, instead of asking how it knew about the bully, Mr. Spider, or the book, he repeated his first question:
“Are you Jurgen Leitner?”
“No.” It answered easily this time. “He’ll be much more disappointing to meet.”
“What-” he started, but truly, didn’t really know where to begin asking. So he let that particular train of questions lie for now. “What- Who are you then? What are you doing here?”
It stared at him for a long, long time, not saying anything. Its green eyes unnaturally focused on him in an almost hypnotic way; their stare so unblinking and unnervingly unmoving, that Jon couldn't say for sure how he knew they were watching him, but they were, and he knew. At the same time the only different set of eyes, the ones with a deep brown shade, looked at him with sure uncertainty. Jon found himself briefly comforted by the faltering humanity he found in them, clinging to the caring nature that swam in the dark color, as it seemingly searched for something in his expression. He didn’t know what it was that it searched for, but he almost wished it hadn’t found it when it finally answered:
“I’m The Archivist.” And then its brown eyes were consumed by the same unnatural green rue from the rest, lighting them from within like a lighthouse. As if those simple words, The Archivist, had called to it. Summoned that unnerving stillness of the watching and the seeing and Jon immediately regretted thinking that this thing had any semblance of humanity in it.
He turned to run, and woke up on the floor of his room, his heart beating so fast he was worried it might come out of his chest. He got up and ran to the bathroom, almost missing the toilet as he hurled into it.
He stays there, shaking and not crying on the cold bathroom floor for a good hour. He wasn’t worried about his grandmother finding him there, she most likely hadn’t even woken up, with the sleeping pills and the hearing aid. He wondered if he’d even want to be found and comforted. He doesn't know. He's tired, afraid, and partially disappointed in himself for being tricked by yet another dangerously strange and strangely dangerous being.
So he just stays there. Curled up on the floor, thinking about what the monster had told him. So Jurgen Leitner is someone, or something, he will meet. In the future. And it’ll be disappointing.
How did it know that?
Knowing him was a thing, a weird and incredibly off putting thing, but still somewhat conceivable nonetheless. But the thing -the Archivist- had said it in such a casual way, like it was an unquestionable fact. It was going to happen, and he knew about it. Jon would meet Jurgen Leitner, and he would be disappointed by it, and what does any of that even mean?
He got up from the cold floor, slowly wobbling back to his room. It had also mentioned the Spider, and how it had -how did it put it- eluded it once more? Does that mean it knew Mr.Spider personally? Was Mr.Spider as eloquent as the Archivist was? What he truly wanted to ask was if it was as human as the monster from his nightmares, but he didn’t want to ponder that particular question for too long. Mr.Spider hadn’t seemed as human, if anything, it ventured more on animalistic. Though he supposed that was not quite right. It felt… hungrier, somehow. A hunger far too great and far too wide to be purely human or animal. It felt like something beyond and above, something that painstakingly encircled humanity from all sides, not once a part of it.
However, just because Jon had grown a little accustomed to the constant and unending watchful eyes, didn’t mean that the Archivist was any less of a monster than Mr. Spider was. Just because it was his monster, didn’t mean it wasn’t a monster. Or something. He wasn’t too sure anymore. Not with the way its voice had sounded so tender when it spoke about his bully, how its eyes, the brown ones, were so full of emotion and sad fondness when it regarded him, how it had hesitated before telling him who, or rather what, it was. It all felt far too human for him to ignore. And yet. He had felt that same hunger from it -in a much less literal sense- whenever the eyes would bore into him. Watching his every breath, taking in every minute muscle spasm from his nose to his head to his throat to his chest, and Jon swore it could see from within his ribs as his lungs inflated and deflated. It eagerly consumed every new thought, action or emotion he had offered by existing in its presence.
He had felt that hunger far more personally than with Mr. Spider. But even so, he could not bring himself to say that the Archivist was as far beyond, removed from humanity, as Mr. Spider was. If anything, he felt like it had once been a part of it. Like it still tethered a connection to it.
He laid down in his bed and pulled the covers up, not managing to fall asleep until the sun seeped through his blinds, and he heard his grandmother start her day.
He didn’t have any dreams that night. He wouldn’t have any for a long while.
The next day, he asked his grandmother for the bully’s name, but she just dismissed him. Beckoning him towards the new books she had gotten him, with pleas to leave her be as she was too tired for his questions today. He did as he was told. Partially to not upset her further -he may be a difficult child, but it wasn’t always on purpose- but, mainly because of the morbid curiosity forming in the pit of his stomach, that begged him to search for another book marked by The Library of Jurgen Leitner. Despite what had happened only yesterday, or perhaps because it had happened only yesterday, he wanted to know more, to see what and how many other supernatural creatures were out there. He could feel a grotesque fascination bubbling from deep within him, and could not bring himself to smother it. At least not fully, for as the years passed and the dreams stopped, it became easier to think of it all as a childhood phenomenon of a boy with too vivid of an imagination.
. . .
Jon woke up to The Admiral bopping his face. A very gentle, but efficient, wake up call, from a very gentle, and hungry, Admiral. He smiled at the cat, petting him for a bit, before dragging himself out of bed to check if Georgie had left a note next to the food bowl. They found out recently that the Admiral had been taking full advantage of the fact that there was a new human in the house, a human very unaware of his usual feeding schedule, and thus receiving a few extra meals a day. Since then, he and Georgie had decided to write down whenever they fed The Admiral, to make sure no one was being duped by the cat.
“Ah, I’m afraid you’ve been fed already, Admiral.” Jon wiggled the pink post-it note in front of the cat’s face, who tried to catch it a couple times, before realizing he was not getting fed twice in this particular morning, and losing interest.
Jon got up, crumbling the paper into a ball and threw it into the Admiral’s general direction. The cat seemed uninterested at first, then pounced onto the tiny paper pall with all the ferocity his tiny predator body could muster, fiercely hunting it down as it skewered away from him. A smile crept up Jon’s face as he watched the cat entertain himself, and made his way into the kitchen. The Admiral may be fed, but he could use some coffee.
He had slept like shit. It had been ages since he had any dreams, let alone ones regarding his childhood. And yet, it seemed oddly fitting to now dream about the event that had started it all, his first encounter with a Leitner.
He recorded the whole thing on tape, recounting it as best as he could. Not that it would serve any good to the Magnus Institute, of course, he was no longer employed by it and was currently on the run from the law. But it did give him a bit of peace of mind, like scratching an itch he didn’t know he had. It felt good to put those thoughts out loud, recorded for eternity, even if the thoughts themselves were somewhat painful.
At the time, he had been too young to fully grasp what had happened. He was no stranger to the concept of death, of course, he’d been living with his grandmother for a reason after all. But, that was different. His parents' deaths had happened far away from him, in a place further enough that his toddler mind could never hope to fully understand; not beyond the fact that now he’d live with his grandmother, and that mommy and daddy were never coming home. Perhaps some of him felt unwanted or abandoned by them, but no part of him felt responsible for it. But, the incident with Mr. Spider was different. It’d happened right in front of him. It had happened because he’d picked up that book, because he hadn’t let it go - like he’d done with so many similar others. It’d happened because he had been such an unmanageable child, so much so that his grandmother, in her desperation to keep him entertained, had given him a cursed book by mistake.
Jon had given a cursed book to a boy and didn’t even have the decency to remember his name.
A small, and insanely loud, part of him believes he should’ve done something to help. Called someone, pulled him away from the door, dropped the book from his hands, anything, anything at all. Which is absurd. He was a child, barely old enough to know basic fractions, let alone save a man twice his age from an impending supernatural doom, he didn’t even know was possible. And yet the guilt gnaws from inside his stomach sometimes. Whispering to him from time to time that it was on that day that everything started; that on that day he had not only doomed the man to an inexplicable death, but also himself to the inevitable fate of a guilt-ridden life. From that day forward, he was bound to live by it. The weight of his sins just piling up on top of one another forever and ever, until the day he inevitably returned to ash and earth. The sin of having picked up that book. Of being an unwanted and unmanageable child. Of being far too unknowledgeable and thus unable to offer any help. Of being fundamentally unlucky. And Jon suspected he’d be left to redeem himself until the end of his days. Perhaps a terrible death awaited the end of his time - a fitting end to such a terrible sin of being born and daring to grow up, only to make such terrible choices.
Perhaps.
Regardless, the dream of the incident with Mr.Spider had sparked a different memory in him as well. A vague one, of an infinite space and a strange creature in his dreams, telling him to remember and that this is not just a story. He didn’t recall much else, just how terrified he’d been to be in its presence, despite the low and soft tone of its voice, and how it had been a rather recurring nightmare. He wondered why they’d suddenly stopped, after so many years of being a staple in his nightly life, and if one day he’d ever have them again.
. . .
The strange dreams did return one fateful day. Although Jon wouldn’t be able to say exactly when that was, since, after being certainly blown to pieces in the Unknowing, he’d found himself in that strange landscape once again, the same one he’d often end up in during his childhood dreams. The ones he’d buried deep inside his mind, side by side with his monster. The Archivist.
A disturbing feeling grew in his stomach at the realization that his monster, the one he had struggled so very much to see as human, had been him all along.
Or maybe it wasn’t. He had listened to that one statement of the Archivists found in that Library in Egypt. Maybe it was one of those. Maybe it was a different Archivist, from a different Institute. Maybe it wasn’t really him. Maybe there was another possibility out there, somewhere, that he just didn’t know about yet. Maybe.
But, even as he listed off all the other possible explanations as to why his monster had known so much about his life, and why it had introduced itself using his title -the title that preceded him in every interaction he’d had recently-, he knew there was no other possibility. It was him, it had to be. An alternate version of him, maybe in the future, that somehow found himself in the dreams of their younger selves. Although, he supposed that maybe a future version of himself was no longer in the cards, considering what happened that led him back to this dreamscape in the first place.
And as he wondered why The Archivist hadn’t told his past self who he truly was, a vague memory started to resurface of a dream he had long forgotten, together with most memories from his childhood, in which he was fairly sure the Archivist had told him something more. A longer conversation, maybe. But, no matter how much he pulled on it, vague the memory remained; for that’s how childhood remembrances work, sometimes, no matter how much you want to remember a specific thing someone told you -someone’s voice, a face, a toy, a home-, sometimes you’ll get nothing more than a semblance of it. The blurriness almost compatible with how important it was. An irony from life, to make the memories we’re so certain we’ll remember for a lifetime, to be the first to be locked and buried safely away from the conscious mind.
“Do you recognize me this time?” A voice, his voice, called him away from his momentary trance. “Or are you going to vanish the second we lock eyes again?”
It took Jon a moment to answer. There it was, the future version of himself, looking every bit as disheveled and tired as he remembered him. With hair looking freshly out of a storm and the same shirt from years ago that, given his most recent life choices, Jon could easily recognize as stained with blood. Not even fully dried blood, seeing as some of it seemed to still be wet.
“I do.” It- he, The Archivist, turned to look at him as he spoke. “Have you been here this whole time?”
“I never left. For all I know, you came to me every time.” The Archivist shrugged, a truly weird motion to witness. For such a simple and natural movement, it felt odd watching all the eyes in and around his body reaccommodate themselves to the scrunched, and then stretched out, muscles. “Well, I suppose it’s been quite some time for you, given how last I saw myself I was still a child. Assuming, of course, that you’re the same Jon that came here as a boy to ask me if I was Jurgen Leitner.” The contempt in his voice as he said that name was one he recognized easily. “On that note, how was it? Meeting him, I mean. Disappointing?”
“Yes,” he sighed, “he was much less interesting than I expected.”
The Archivist hummed a quick sound of understanding.
“Such a grand reputation for such an absurdly average man.” It was Jon’s turn to hum in agreement. “But, at least meeting Gerry was incredibly cool, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was.” Jon cleared his throat into his hand to try and cover the heat threatening to take over his face. He hadn’t had a lot of time to think about his meeting with Gerry, or anyone to talk to about it. So this reaction felt as much of a surprise to him as it apparently was to the Archivist.
“Oh God, I forgot we had a crush on Gerry.” He looked amused, of all things. Jon wanted to dig up a hole and die in it. Never has he wanted to wake up more fervently than right now, with his future self teasing him for having had a crush on someone.
“How do you even forget something like this?! It’s not like we have a ton of others.” He really didn’t. Jon could count on one hand the amount of times he’d had crushes throughout his entire life, and even less than that for the amount times he’d actually fallen in love with someone. He was pretty sure Gerry only ever made it into the list for the sheer impossibility of something ever happening between them -since, well, he’s been dead for a while now, then got turned into a book, and then re-died when he burned said book-, and that gave Jon a sense of security to be able to acknowledge how cool and attractive the man actually was, without the lingering possibility of it ever becoming more.
“I don’t know, so much happened,” the Archivist still sounded somewhat amused as he answered Jon’s question, although his tone quickly sombered as he continued, ”and so much will still happen, both in that department and in general. It just kinda slipped my mind, I suppose.”
“What do you mean? What else happens?” He had left the question purposely vague, but by the look on the Archivist’s face, he had failed to suppress the actual reason he wanted to ask.
“Yes, the thing that’ll still happen in that department is with Martin.” He answered softly, much softer than he had anticipated.
He looked at the endless space with such a fondness in his eyes that Jon didn’t even know existed in him before this point. He didn’t know he could look so gentle. Jon wanted to ask more so badly.
“How did it happen?” It felt wrong to sound so eager to know, but even worse to not ask at all.
“Slowly, and then all at once” A chuckle escaped his lips, surprising both of them. “I mean, we hated the man. I suppose it’s somewhat ironic how quickly he became the most important thing in my life, as soon as I let him. As soon as I felt him slip away, that is.”
This last part was added quietly, so quietly that Jon felt like it might not be right for him to listen, even though it was also about his life. The Archivist stared at his hands for a long while before continuing.
“It’s funny, I never gave much thought to the saying that you’ll only realize what’s truly important once it’s gone, but… that’s exactly what happened with Martin. I didn’t realize how steady he kept me until I could barely catch sight of him in those damn halls. Until I could only hear his voice through the recordings. Didn’t realize how much I needed him until it was my turn to grab his hands and pull him to the ground.” He squeezed his hands tight. “Sometimes I wonder if those were the right choices to make. If maybe I should’ve chosen him earlier, or maybe not have chosen him at all. But, at the end of the day, I know I’d make the choice to keep him by my side all over again, given the chance. He’s- was- is everything that's left for me, of me, perhaps. My reason."
And the fondness in his voice was an obvious and undeniable thing. Clear from the way he’d said Martin’s name alone, and how his posture softened a bit with every word, how he immediately knew what Jon was referencing to with his vague question. How the mention of Martin and their relationship was clearly a well loved, and well felt thing; that left behind such a sadness and longing at the back of his eyes. Such a tenderness in this touch and voice, in both the sense of a delicate and soft thing that deserves the utmost care, and in the sense of an aching wound that throbs with every touch, serving as a reminder of survival from impossible odds. It made him glad to know these complicated feelings he had been harboring in his chest didn’t go to waste in a different timeline, even if it did hurt a bit to know it wouldn’t be in his.
“So you were together?” he asked despite himself.
“Until the very end.” There it was, that joyful sadness in his voice. Filled with far too many memories and emotions for Jon to be able to understand from word alone.
“It’s almost a pity I won’t get to live it.”
The Archivist turned to him with an odd look in his eyes.
“What do you mean you won’t get to live it?”
“Well, I died in the Unknowing, didn’t I?” The annoyance clear in his tone. It was one thing to know there’d be things that he didn’t get to live, but it was a different thing having to admit it was his choices that led to it. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. If it meant he stopped the Stranger from completing its ritual, it’d been worth it.
“You didn’t die.” The Archivist said it with such certainty - not even that, because certainty implies a level of conviction, of convincing, that was simply gone from his voice - he knew what he was saying to be the absolute truth. There was no need for convincing or certainty, for it was a simple and lived fact.
Jon stopped breathing for a second.
“…What?”
“You- we didn’t die at the Unknowing. You’re not dead." He looked at Jon as if finally understanding where exactly he was placed in their shared thread of life. “I suppose you wouldn’t know that yet. We fell into a coma, protected from death by our ties to The Eye, or something similar enough. Tim- not everyone else made it. But, we did. Or, well… that’s a choice you’ll have to make soon enough.”
He was not dead.
That changed things.
He stopped and actually looked at The Archivist in front of him, truly observing him for what might’ve been the very first time in his life. Really took in the exhausted weight looming over his every expression, the heavy eyebags, the hunched position his body seemed to default into, the increased amount of grey hairs. Took in the resigned way he stared into the endless void, like this situation is no more and no less than what he expected from life. The fear, the guilt, the regret he knew were bubbling just under the surface, because he knew exactly how they had settled into his bones and festered into his marrow. Took in the blood not yet dried soaking his shirt. Took in the endless watchful eyes around and within him. Took in the fact that he didn’t look that much older than Jon was.
“So this is our- my future?” He tried to not sound as weary as he felt, but didn’t think he did a good job. He had never been good at masking his own emotions. Which is why he knew exactly what was going through the Archivist’s head when he replied with a strained, heavy:
“Yes.” It was not a happy end, and it was a certain one.
“And it’s inevitable?”
“I don’t know. It certainly seems that way sometimes.”
So this future, the future where something horrible happens, where he loves and loses Martin, where he looks so distraughtly resigned, where he dies apparently from a stab wound, where he becomes something that his younger self failed to even recognize as human - this future is unavoidable?
He can’t accept that answer.
“It can’t be inevitable, nothing is inevitable. I-I’ll just have to make different choices.”
He just needs to know more details, know how and where and when it all happened. Know which choices lead to which consequences. Who will be there with him and who’ll try to sway him from the path, and to what end. He just needs to know more. He turns, tugging on the presence of The Eye that beckons them both from within him.
“Tell me everything.”
Jon could hear that phrase echoing across space and time, compelling The Archivist to tell his story so he could avoid it becoming their tale. He could hear his own voice reverberating all around him, desperate to make a change, desperate to choose right. Pleading for the right to make a choice that had already been made. Pleading for the right to make a choice, any choice. Pleading for the right to make a choice that was not his to make. Determined to choose differently, to choose better, without realizing that was the same will that plagued all the ones before and after him. And that, despite such fierce determination, it’ll have made no difference to the echoes of time.
The Archivist, Jon, he, begins the tale, repeating the words as he remembers receiving them in the past, and reciting in the future:
“Remember, this is not just a story, this is our future.”