Chapter Text
Jon let out a breath as he set the statement down, reaching over to stop the recording. It was only a few paragraphs, just another test, and now came the proof-
He clicked play. Static blared out of his laptop speakers, louder than it should be at the level his volume was set. A few words could be made out - his own name, statement of, and a random, surprisingly clear and in the middle of the recording. The rest was incomprehensible.
He sighed. He'd had IT in to look at it yesterday, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore the facts: his laptop was not the problem. Most of the statements he read recorded fine, and the statements that didn't... well. They didn't record on Sasha's computer either. Or Tim's. Or Martin's. Or on any of their phones.
He'd unearthed an old tape recorder in storage yesterday, along with a box of cassettes. He... really didn't want to have to use it. It was cumbersome, old fashioned, and would complicate the organizational system of the Archives even more than it already was if half the audio recordings were in a different format than the others. Still, it would be better than nothing.
It was sitting on the desk near his elbow, right next to a mug of lukewarm tea that Martin had brought by earlier. Jon curled his lip. Speaking of annoyances...
He shook himself. Not the point, not the current issue. He would dispose of the tea before trying the tape recorder, though. The idea of using it was setting his teeth on edge, and he'd take the excuse to put it off a little longer.
His three assistants were hauling boxes in the corridor as he passed by. Tim gave him a cheery wave, balancing his box with one arm; Sasha smiled, keeping both arms firmly around her box; and Martin-
Martin tried to wave, and dropped his box on the floor, sending a tidal wave of old paper spilling out across the scuffed wooden boards. Jon winced.
"Oh, god, sorry! Sorry, I'll just-"
Martin dived for the papers, scrambling to pick them up. Jon rolled his eyes and continued walking.
"Do try to be a bit more careful, Martin, we have enough to organize as it is."
"Yeah, yeah, sorry, I just-" Jon was gone before he could finish the sentence.
The breakroom was blessedly quiet. Jon dumped the tea down the sink, rinsing the mug and leaving it in the rack to dry. He stretched, trying to ease some of the tension out of his shoulders. It wasn't that he disliked Martin, per say, it was just...
Well, it would have to be him, wouldn't it? First time he was actually assigned to a position of responsibility, and he gets Martin Blackwood on his team. Martin Blackwood, king of accidents and delays, who never seemed to be entirely at fault for things going wrong but who always made a project take twice as long as it would have otherwise.
That was probably an unfair exaggeration. Jon didn't care.
He took a detour through the main storage area on his way back to his office. It was a large room, as large as the library a few floors up, and absolutely packed with shelves of paper. Some was loose, some in boxes, all of it crammed in wherever space allowed with no apparent rhyme or reason.
Two hundred years of clutter. And he was supposed to organize it.
There was an odd creaking sound from behind a shelf. Jon frowned. Was one of the shelves going to collapse again? He'd thought the ones in here were sturdier than the ones in his office... could be wrong, though.
He crossed over, rounding the corner to find-
A door. A yellow door, in the middle of a shelf, bisecting the boxes and files that filled it as though it were meant to be there. It was hanging open half an inch, invitingly. Jon's stomach dropped. He had a... thing, about doors.
It creaked open a bit more, and he stumbled backward, away from the dark emptiness on the other side and whatever many-legged horror was about to-
A grunt, and an oof of pain. A man tumbled out, landing on his hands and knees on the floor in front of Jon. He had long hair, dark skin; his right hand bore the marks of a severe burn, clenching and unclenching against the floor. His left had a small silver ring around the fourth finger. His sweater was baggy, hanging off one side to expose a bone-thin shoulder, and all in all Jon found him entirely unthreatening, despite the oddity of his appearance in the Archive.
"What the hell?"
The man froze for a second, then scrambled to his feet. The door behind him shut as he did so, and- and there was no door, just the same unaltered shelves as there had always been, and Jon found himself trying desperately to focus on this and not the face in front of him because the face in front of him was-
His own.
Pockmarked with scars. Weathered, with lines around his eyes that Jon did not have. More grey in his hair, a true salt-and-pepper instead of the few silver streaks in his own. Wide, startled eyes that he knew from the mirror, and a growing smile stretching that impossible face in an expression of disbelief.
"It actually worked..." The voice was his as well. A bit softer, a bit less of the forced professional tone Jon tried to maintain, but incontrovertibly, undeniably, impossibly, his.
"Who the hell are you?" He could feel his hands shaking.
The man laughed, taking a step forward and raising a hand to point at Jon.
"I'm you, from the future!" Then he swayed, eyes going unfocused, and collapsed to the floor in a dead faint.
~~~~~
"He a relative, or something?" Tim's words were hushed.
"Not that I know of. I don't exactly have a big family."
The four of them were huddled around the door to the old document storage room. There was a cot pushed up against one wall, and in it slept a figure that...
Well. Looked like Jon.
Martin bit his lip, glancing between the two. According to Jon he'd just shown up in the Archives through some weird portal, claimed to be a time traveler, and fainted. They brought him through to here to recover - and Martin had not been pleased to find out Jon had a cot in here in case he decided to not go home at night - but that was an issue for another day.
"D'you think we should get him to a hospital?" This from Sasha, ever the practical one.
"I don't know." Jon was barely taking his eyes off the man. If Martin was any judge, this was really freaking him out.
"I know some first aid," he volunteered. "If someone has a torch...?"
Tim wordlessly pulled out his keychain, disconnecting a small LED torch and passing it over to Martin. Martin took it, and then took a hesitant step closer to the cot. Then another, and, when it seemed like the man wasn't about to wake up and panic, a few more until he could kneel down next to the recumbent figure.
He reached out, placing two gentle fingers against the man's neck to check his pulse. Steady and even, nothing to worry about there. Martin wished he could say the same for his own. Or at least, he wished he could explain away his racing heart entirely with fear.
The thing was, though... Martin was a caretaker. Always had been. And he'd long since stopped trying to tell himself he didn't think Jon was attractive. So combine attractive with unconscious, vulnerable, and definitely in need of a caretaker, and... well. Martin's heart was racing. Even though this wasn't actually Jon.
He turned the man's head, looking for any signs of bleeding, then lifted one of his eyelids and shone the torch in his eyes. Again, nothing to worry about. He leaned back, letting the man's eye drift shut again.
"Pupil dilation normal, I don't think he's got a concussion." Martin set the torch aside, glancing back at Jon and the others. "It really is uncanny, though. He's an exact copy... well, ignoring the scars."
"Right? Sure you don't have a twin, boss?"
Jon waved off Tim's comment. "Positive. I don't know who this is, or what he's playing at, coming here, but I've never seen him before."
There was a soft sound behind Martin, and he turned. The man on the cot was stirring, eyes blinking open, one hand reaching up blearily to rub at his face.
"Martin...?"
Martin frowned. How did he know his-
The man smiled, suddenly, with a warm affection that took Martin's breath away. His hand came up to gently cup Martin's cheek, and Martin froze at the soft touch.
"Hey there." Then the smile dropped. The gentle hand shifted, moving up to examine his forehead. "What happened to your scar?"
"My what?"
"Who are you?" Jon's voice was sharp. He took a few quick steps forward, grabbing Martin's arm to pull him away from the cot. The man sat up, awareness creeping back into his eyes, and then froze when he saw the other figures in the room.
"Tim?" His voice was low and rough. "Sasha?"
"How do you know our names?"
Sudden tears filled the man's eyes at her words. He covered his mouth with one hand. "Sasha... it's you."
"Yeah. The question is, who are you?"
"I..." The man's breath hitched. His eyes were darting between Tim and Sasha, unable to settle, and his shoulders were shaking slightly.
"Answer her question."
That pulled his gaze away. The doppelganger turned to look at Jon, taking a deep breath and using one hand to swipe away the dampness from his eyes. "It's like I said. I'm you, from a future I desperately hope I will be able to prevent."
Jon's eyes narrowed, and Martin found himself glancing back and forth between the two again. It was... impossible, how similar they were. The face, the voice... Martin had spent a long time learning the many looks and tones of Jonathan Sims, and this man shared them all.
Jon's chin tilted up slightly in a challenge. "Do you have any proof to support this claim?"
A small smile flickered around the man's mouth, one Martin had seen Jon wear before when he was about to deliver the final, crushing point in an argument he knew he would win. "Only this: that I know things about you that you have never told another living soul."
"Such as?"
The man's eyes narrowed, matching Jon's expression. His voice dropped into a deeper register, and Martin felt a shiver go up his spine at the sinister tone of it.
"Mister Spider wants more."
Jon paled and took a step backward. Martin raised a hand to catch his arm, steadying him.
"How...?"
"I told you." The man stood, straightening his sweater and brushing his long hair back from his face. "I'm you."
There was a long, silent moment while the two stared at each other. Then Jon began nodding, still pale, still shaking slightly, though he brushed off Martin's hand and stood on his own.
"I believe you."
"Say what?" Tim's words came out on a snort. "You, Jonathan 'the skeptic' Sims, believe in time travel? Just because this guy-" he jerked his thumb at the imposter "-said something about spiders?"
The man turned to Tim with a raised eyebrow and half-smile. "I'd forgotten how much you laughed."
"Okay, now that's just creepy." Sasha took a step forward, moving in front of Tim protectively.
"Sorry." The man was still smiling. "I've just missed you."
"How does that work, then?" Martin's own voice came out louder than he intended. He flushed as everyone turned to look at him. "I'm just saying. You say you're him-" a nod toward Jon "-from the future, and you say you missed them-" pointing to Tim and Sasha "-but you expected me to have a scar on my head, weren't surprised at all to see me there when you woke up. So why not them?" Tim and Sasha again.
Once again he found himself trapped in a warm gaze, laden with emotions he wouldn't dare pin a name to. The man raised a hand, traced a line down his own forehead. The ring on his finger flashed in the light.
"Here," starting an inch above his left eye, "to here," across his temple to his ear. "Falling roof tile from a house in Scotland. And I expected you here because you were supposed to come with me. As for them..." Martin took a deep breath as the man's eyes moved back to Tim and Sasha. "...I lost them a long time ago. There's a reason I want to change the future."
Sasha frowned, and Tim started laughing again. "Are you saying we died?" The man's gaze didn't waver. Tim's laugh trailed off. "Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"Yikes."
"So how exactly do you plan to change things?"
Martin jumped at the voice beside him. Jon again - his Jon, young Jon, unscarred Jon, who didn't look at him like he was the only person in the entire universe that mattered - but their voices were so similar that it took him a moment to realize it.
The other Jon - and Martin found it was easy enough to think of him that way, putting a name to the familiar face - started ticking things off on his fingers. "CO2 at Vittery's, quarantine the table, warn her off of India, keep them from joining the Institute, talk to Michael before he gets to Helen, probably still take down the Unknowing for his sake but safer this time, probably still get Gerry back from the Hunters but, again, safer this time, avoid any and all murder charges, and a hell of a lot of inaction where I made the wrong moves last time around. But first-" and he closed his hand into a fist. "I need to make sure Elias knows exactly who he's dealing with."
"Okay, none of that makes sense, but especially that last bit. What does Elias have to do with anything?" Sasha seemed remarkably unfazed by his speech. She crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow.
Jon - scarred Jon - smiled. It was cold, and it was cruel, and there was no mercy behind it. "Everything."