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There is something terribly wrong. Irreversibly wrong. With what, well, who’s to say?
Also, Jon’s awake; he knows this much, at least.
At first, the sensation of waking up is so unfamiliar that he doesn’t really know how to progress from there. He just stays there, head against his knees, and takes in the inoffensively neutral scent of a newly furnished desk.
Whose newly furnished desk is nearby? he wonders, idly. And shoots bolt upright when the answer doesn’t come to him. And promptly knocks his head against something. “Argh!”
Whose? he thinks, again, with more urgency this time. Then, Why am I here? For he’s sat on the floor, bent uncomfortably into a shape not unlike that of a crumpled wad of paper, holding his stinging scalp in his hands, and from where he “lies” he can see the bottom drawers of several extremely familiar filing cabinets. He has spent so many torturous hours in this office, poring over statements, unable to wrench his body out of his wooden prison (was Gertrude ever able to appreciate swivel chairs?), thinking just one more over and over again, shivering with a little flame of anticipation whenever he identified one that was real — he has spent so many torturous hours in his office.
But never once has he actually huddled underneath his desk like this — when not in immediate danger, anyway — and fallen asleep, no less. What the hell?
Nor has the Archivist ever had so many questions go unanswered.
The last thing he remembers is not the tower, or the explosion, or even the look on your face, though those things stab into his heart individually as he recalls them. No, the first thing his disoriented brain decides to call up is the feeling of power, of terror, running and buzzing underneath his teeth and through his gums and along the black magnetic tape that encased (composed?) his entire skeletal structure. It feels so real that when he reaches for it, and comes up empty, something hot begins to build behind his (two) eyes.
The first thought, one well-rehearsed but pushed away and deemed forever unnecessary: I can’t protect you anymore.
The second: Where are you?
It is this second thought that finally gives some strength to his limbs, constitutes a dam for his tears, pushes him to his feet. It is this that drives him, fumbling, not used to complete darkness, toward the light switch. He can feel everything he’s repressing trembling beneath his skin. All of it is seconds away.
And then the light comes on, and it shrinks mercifully away from the reminder of reality.
It looks . . . different.
Most of what he remembers is still here, all polished wood and calm lamps and definitely only one door. But now there are odd little trinkets littered about the place: a figurine from something he doesn’t recognise here, a broken keychain there, a ceramic mug inches away from his unsteady hands . . .
Jon doesn’t know what to think, and is for once glad to have to leave this mystery behind. For now, he assumes another Archivist must have taken up residence in his absence. He does find it a bit strange that the Institute is still here, and suppresses a groan at the idea that he’ll have to burn it down manually.
It is absolutely silent in the Archives, though it could contain an actively performing circus for all that the noise in his ears is allowing him to discern. (Maybe only one ear. His right side is entirely taken up by a shrill ringing.)
What time is it?
He checks (a pulsating, grotesque eyeball taking up residence on his left wrist) his watch, finds that it is long dead, tears it off, and sighs. His gaze lands on the gold-framed desk clock that the new Archivist has apparently purchased.
8:28 AM.
18th June, 2016.
Next to it is a plaque: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist.
For a moment, he just stands there, mouth slightly open.
He knows not how, so the only other thing he can think to ask (someone, anyone) is Why?
Why have I been given another chance?
And then: Did it work?
. . . Is it possible that I am . . . elsewhere? Or is this . . . .
It has escaped the Archivist’s attention that when he noticed the date, some of the dust motes on the ground began to swirl like they should’ve ten minutes ago when he created footprints in them.
And, like clockwork, a door opens in the distance.
His body comes to life and he scrambles out of the office. Think, Jonathan, he tells himself frantically, as he shuts the door as quietly as possible behind him. Who always arrived on time?
Well, nobody — among his fear there is confusion — Tim and Sasha were always late together, and you were always early — he enters a room, ducks behind a desk, and shoves a random box of files in front of him — I don’t know about Elias, I always supposed he just lived up there in his stupid extravagant voyeur’s stronghold. Where am I? Oh, brilliant, Jonathan. Nice work. Pay attention to where your feet are going next time.
He’s in the middle of the bullpen. And somebody is definitely going to see him!
Abort!!! Jon stands up, trying to appear as nonchalant as he doesn’t feel, and pretends he was just taking a shortcut through — when the door opens.
He whips around.
It’s . . . someone he doesn’t know.
So it must not be our world, then. He shoves that thought down, because if he spends any more time on it, he’ll start thinking about what it means.
“Hello,” Jon says politely. He’s astonished by how composed he sounds.
“Er, hi,” the unfamiliar woman replies, glancing over her shoulder. “Uh — ”
“Jonathan Sims,” Jon tells her, feeling a strange sort of giddy pride that she doesn’t already know.
She stares at him. “Yeah, I know, Jon.” Oh, he thinks, and he feels his expression fall. Then it registers with him: she hasn’t said Archivist. Just Jon.
When he doesn’t reply, she quirks an eyebrow, and what comes out of her mouth next rocks his entire world.
“Sasha James.”
What?
“You’re — ” he chokes out. “You’re — ”
She sighs. “Don’t have an aneurysm. Come on, sit down . . . .”
“How?” he whispers, so quietly, voice not broken but shattered.
“Pardon?”
“I — it’s — er — ”
“Jon, what’s going on?”
He can’t form words. Can’t do anything but memorize her complexion, the way her nose juts out like his (Sasha’s nose was smaller and flatter), the thick frames of her glasses (Sasha always preferred contacts), how her pretty chocolate eyes have a sort of light in them he hasn’t seen in — years, really (Sasha had piercing hazel irises) —
“Oh, hey,” comes her voice, still so new, “hey, what’s wrong?” And he realises he’s crying.
“Sasha — ” There is something so raw in his voice he doesn’t think there’s any way in the world to feel anything other than this ever again. He barely hears himself. All he knows is It’s her. It’s really her. And I still don’t know who she is.
I had a foolish sort of hope, when we walked through the doomed world I created. The Eye forbade me from Knowing anything about Sasha, or any other victims of the Not-Them — it would defeat the purpose, or something stupid like that. I always thought it was so stupid. I never told you. I think you knew anyway.
I thought that if I ever saw her again, if I met her somewhere else, that I would remember.
I was stupid, as well.
“I — ” How he wishes, beyond anything, that he could be so gone with grief in this moment as to lose control of his verbal faculties. How he wishes he could tell her.
The two of them stay huddled on the floor against your desk for several minutes, as Jon dissolves and dissolves and dissolves.
Finally, after the shaking has subsided, after her inquisitive brown eyes have regained the courage to peer through him again, he asks, “Why are you early?”
Sasha frowns, but not much. “I’m always early. I live close.” She’s not quite holding him, but she’s exhibiting a distinctly protective sort of emotion in a distinct bubble around him. That’s closer than he deserves.
More tears slip out from underneath Jon’s hands. He can’t say anything.
“I’m sorry.”
The words seem to come as an immense surprise, and Jon begins to tremble again for how comfortably they settle on her gentleness. “For what?”
“I — I can’t — I’m just sorry.”
He realises, with another shuddering gasp of breath, that he expected her to say something else. That he’s always going to be wrong.
In time, Tim enters the Archives, arms full of documents. Sasha’s back at her desk, typing casually away. He stops dead in his tracks as soon as he spots Jon, sitting against Sasha’s desk drawers, tracing circles on his knees.
Tim makes a few noises — the beginnings of multiple sentences, which Jon can see dying in his throat — and finally settles on “Hey, boss,” in a soft (if a bit strangled) tone, more so than Jon’s ever heard from him. It’s terribly, horribly, incredibly jarring to hear his voice. Jon still hasn’t looked up.
“Tim,” Sasha whispers. “Need to talk to you.”
“I can hear you,” Jon mutters. Oh, he really hasn’t changed, has he?
“I know, Jon,” she replies patiently. To Tim: “Meet me?”
Some inaudible shuffling of nods occurs, and then he is alone in the bullpen. He doesn’t know how much time passes before they’re back, but he knows he’s graduated from sitting on the floor to standing at an awkward corner, staring vaguely to the right toward where I know you would have been by now.
“Jon,” Sasha calls from some far-off place. “Jon, how would you feel . . . do you think you’d like to, ah, be alone, right now?”
He murmurs, “Sure.” Currently the Archivist does not care much for being known.
“Okay, then — we’re going to head out for lunch early. And — and then we’ll be able to give you a full hour. How does that sound?”
He likes the way Sasha calls it a “full” hour — not some half-baked forty-five-minute thing with bites taken out of it, but at capacity and swelling gently into some mythically perfect light. Its prettiness and yellowness mesmerises him for a moment, before a different sort of mesmeriser takes hold of him, and he turns leftwards to face her again.
“A full hour,” he repeats, tasting it in the air, not quite an affirmation but not a refusal either.
“Er, yes,” Tim says. Jon can practically taste the curiosity burning off of him like fire and smoke and curling flesh, and silently he loves him for both its presence and its lack of manifestation, loves them both defenselessly, crudely, so naturally, and totally undone.
After a moment, Sasha speaks up with, “What’s gotten into you, Jon?”
And he thinks she might be concerned, but she might also be teasing him, and for all he knows she could also be laughing her head off, raucous with the joy of seeing him again; but of course she’s saying it sadly, just like she’s supposed to, because she knows what he’s thinking she knows I don’t remember her —
As an answer he just smiles, stupidly, and sits back down, and suddenly it is time to leave. And only when he gets home does he realise that she had a befuddled expression on her face, and why. Only when he gets into bed does he remember that something very deep in him is desperately sad.
The night is full of ghosts.
I can see you standing there. Come back to me.
Cruelly, undeservedly, he sleeps, and when he wakes nothing has changed because you are not here. You are not here.
For the next indeterminate stretch of time, maybe days or weeks or months, nothing changes and you are not here. A variable multitude of things happen, and do not happen, and together constitute the tapestry of Tim and Sasha’s lives (their lives, because they are living), and at some point for you he watches the lick of ash curl away from the Institute into the late and brightened sunset, and none of it matters. I do not live, and everything is as it’s meant to be. He watches, as he has always done without you, and he drinks without you, and he rests without you, and I am numb without you, and I do not know without you. There are no more beautiful things left in the world. They keep asking me things I don’t have the answers to. Love, dearest, where are you?