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Jon said he wouldn’t try to eavesdrop, so he isn’t. His ear isn’t against the door to the interview room, he isn’t peering in through the lock, he’s not even close to it. He’s sitting at Martin’s old desk, a perfectly reasonable distance from the door, staring down at a cryptic crossword. He’s so incredibly not eavesdropping.
His pencil hasn’t moved since he sat down. He can hear a slight back-and-forth of conversation from the room, Daisy’s low and even tone and the slightly higher pitch of the other woman. If he tries very, very hard, he can sometimes catch a word. Never anything important, though, just the odd well, actually or start over. It’s driving him mad. He knows Daisy took a tape recorder in and he’ll be able to listen back to anything that’s being said, but his mind is consumed with the need to know her words as she says them, as she experiences them. His mouth hangs slightly open as he breathes, the air running over his tongue. She’s talking about Beholding, he can practically taste it.
Objectively, he understands why they decided to not have him take this statement. After Jess Tyrell’s tape and the “intervention,” for lack of a better word, the others don’t think it’s the best idea to let him feed off anyone for the time being, as it seems to have become a notably worse experience since they all last went through it. A little part of his brain says If someone is volunteering themself, why can’t I take the opportunity? but he doesn’t say it aloud.
The door swings open, and he jolts in place. The strange woman looks haggard, if just about satisfied, and scurries out the exit. Jon tries not to stare at her as she leaves, but not to fantastic success. He watches the door to the basement swing shut behind her, and his mind starts running numbers on how long he could afford to sit here and still be able to catch up with her outside. He reckons the window of opportunity is already closing. The soles of his feet itch in his shoes.
“Jon?” says Daisy, a few feet away.
He snaps out of his trance. “Yes? What?”
“You alright?”
“Mmm hmm.” He blinks hard and nods at her. “How was it?”
Daisy sighs and tosses a notepad onto the desk. “It’s all on the tape. Couldn’t get much out of her, she just wanted to drop her book and leave.”
Jon’s brows furrow. “Book?”
“Yeah. A Leitner, probably. Freaky books here usually are.”
“Hmm.” He glances into the interview room and sees the book sitting on the table next to the tape recorder. “Do you know what it… does?”
“Honestly?” She squints at her notepad. “Couldn’t tell you. She called it a book version of something from Harry Potter, expected I’d get the reference, told me not to touch it if I know what’s good for me, and left. By all means, have a go at the tape and see for yourself, though I don’t think it’ll do much.”
“Right,” he says under his breath, getting to his feet. He is going to walk into the interview room and not up the stairs out of the basement. That is what he is doing right now. He’s doing an expert level walk-into-the-interview-room right now. He’s not even thinking about going up the stairs.
“Jon,” calls Daisy, “I know you’re a bit distractible, but that’s not the interview room door.”
Ah. “Right, uh. Muscle memory.”
“Of course.”
He goes over to the right door where it still stands open. The tapes of live statements usually jump out at him somehow, as if he were looking at a heat source through infrared goggles, and this one on the table is almost giving him something. It’s like someone brought a freshly cooked steak into the room then took it with them when they left, leaving the smell hanging in the air.
“Still holding up okay, Sims?”
“Yes.” He’s craned over the desk and his nose is maybe six inches up from the tabletop, but that’s fine. He switches his attention to the book. Now that seems interesting. Normally, Leitners tap directly into his “burn / bolt / berate” instinct, but this one feels different. It looks like some kind of employee handbook or conduct manual, with modern style bright white paper and a water-resistant stiff card cover. The title across its front reads Open and Honest Communication in the Workplace.
“I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but please don’t touch the book.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Say that to your hand, then.”
Looking slightly to the right, Jon sees his hand hovering about two inches from the book’s front cover. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to touch it.”
He glances at Daisy through the doorway, and she raises an eyebrow. “Right.”
“I just--” Even ignoring his mundane curiosity, the book still feeds the Eye. If he can’t have the woman’s statement, reading this might still give him something. “One of us is going to have to deal with it, right? We can’t just leave it sitting here. And it’s not like it could make me even more Beholding.”
“How do you know it’s Beholding?”
He fixes her with a look.
“Right.” A beat. “It’s still dangerous. We should get someone from Artefact Storage down here.”
Jon unfolds himself and stands up straight. “Nothing has managed to kill me yet, I’m still the safest bet on that front. It would have to try pretty damn hard to do anything.”
Daisy’s expression darkens a touch. “Wait, Jon, is this about--”
“No,” he cuts in quickly. “No, I, I’m just being practical.” He tries very hard at making an expression that looks sincere and he would think he managed it were it not for how unchanged Daisy’s face remains.
Her voice is light and conversational but unwavering. “I’m going to find the extension for Artefact Storage and get Sonja down here, you are going to stand beside me until I’ve got confirmation that she’s coming down, and then we’re going to get take out.”
Jon takes a glance down at the book again and an image of a door slamming shut in front of him pops up in his mind. He knows the course of action she’s suggesting is the right one. He knows that. He nods slowly and goes to join her in the assistants’ office.
Normal food, while a nice comfort for an hour and still pleasant enough to eat, doesn’t do much to sate any of Jon’s hunger anymore. After the takeout boxes are cleared away into the respective garbage and recycling bins, the full meal sitting in his stomach only highlights the dissatisfaction still buried somewhere deeper. He’s restless. He needs to get his mind off his hunger and he itches to go get some fresh air. Wandering around Chelsea and the river bank for an hour would be nice, he likes the way a chill night walk can clear his head. Yes. He makes his way up to the ground floor.
He’s got his hand on the main entrance door by the time he realizes what he’s doing. It’s late at night, he’s hungry, and he’s slipping out without telling anyone. That’s only ever led to one destination before, and he knows it. It doesn’t have to mean that, of course, he is capable of taking a normal walk by himself, he’s a grown adult, he doesn’t need anyone’s supervision or permission, if he wants to go out then he can go out, there’s no reason it has to end in--
He takes his hand off the push bar and turns his feet around. It takes effort to force himself to shrink back and the raw desire to stay is marrow deep, but if he gives himself another ten seconds he’ll whip up the perfect excuse and not be able to reel himself back in. A few laps through the Institute stairways and halls will have to do to get the restlessness out.
Already having expended enough energy on making that decision, he doesn’t take a lot of notice of where he’s going or why his route makes the shape it does. He doesn’t think to wonder why he’s going so quickly to the corridor outside the library, he just lets his whims carry him. It’s only when he’s running almost face first into Martin, making him drop a slim file and scatter loose papers all over the floor, that it occurs to him that he’s let his subconscious take the wheel again.
“Christ, look where you’re going, who’s even still here at--oh.” Martin glances up from his slain papers and takes in the culprit for the first time. “Hey Jon.”
Jon feels an incredibly normal amount of relief at hearing Martin say his name for the first time in over four months. So incredibly normal and average. “Hey, hi! Uh… sorry about that. Was a bit distracted.”
“Right.” Martin drops to his knees to gather up the pages back into the file.
“Here, let me, it’s my fault you dropped them, I can help.” Jon goes down to one knee so he still has a chance of standing back up again within the next hour.
“No, you don’t have--”
“It’s the least--”
“I’ve got this--”
“But I can help--”
“Jon, stop.” Martin’s voice goes thin with exasperation.
He takes his hands back to himself. “Sorry.”
Martin pulls his lips into a fine line. It could almost be a polite smile, but the worn thin patience in his eyes betrays him and turns it into a grimace. He goes back to putting everything into one pile.
Jon lingers on the floor and watches him. “How, uh, how have you been?”
“Fine.”
He chews on the inside of his mouth. “Is the view from the top floor nice?”
“No.”
“Right.” He laughs nervously. “I imagine the windows get a bit foggy.”
No response.
“Just, with the, with the Lonely, there’s fog in a lot of the statem--”
“I get the joke.”
“Of course, of course you do. You know more about it than me, after all." Beat. "Not that it doesn’t get lonely in the basement, it certainly does. Tensions run high enough down there that at any given moment someone’s bound to be giving two others the silent treatment. Well, we are actually all on speaking terms right now, but that doesn’t help much. No one’s been being particularly warm and trusting lately after the whole… well, you dropped off the tape, you know.”
All the papers have been gathered together, and Martin knocks them on the floor to try and straighten them out. “Is that why you found me, then?”
“Hmm? What?”
His voice is deceptively cool. “Are you annoyed with me for doing that? Is that what this is?”
“...no?”
“I told you not to keep finding me, and you’ve been respecting that so far, so there must be some reason you’re disregarding it now. That’s the only thing I can think of that’s changed.” He gets to his feet.
Somewhat wobbly, Jon follows him up. “I didn’t find you on purpose.”
“So it’s a coincidence that you were barreling down this exact hallway at nine o’clock at night?”
“I--” he stops. “I didn’t mean to.”
“What, were you possessed then?”
“No.”
“So then why are you here?”
Jon tries to come up with an explanation. Various answers ping around in his skull, but none that make sense, none that he could ever say. “I don’t know.”
“Right then.” Martin steps around Jon and continues on his path. “Try to not let it happen again, I’m busy.”
Jon doesn’t swear out loud particularly often. He’s not against swearing, and it’s not completely unheard of for him to do so, it just doesn’t come very naturally, and, after spending most of his twenties dressing like a stock photo academic and cultivating an air of “no nonsense allowed,” people are given to get a bit over surprised if he ever tests out some four letter words. Jon doesn’t like being treated like a curiosity, so, much like how he sometimes tacks on a decade to his age to avoid the usual incredulous questions and giggling, he keeps swearing out loud around others to a minimum.
However, the last thought he has every time he’s about to make a decision is always fuck it.
For example: I’m tired, I’m annoyed, no one’s going to stop me or be near enough to be at risk, and I am so hungry. Fuck it.
He doesn’t have a key to Artefact Storage, of course, but the knowledge of where in the building he could find one slipped right into his mind the moment he started to wonder about it. Under most other circumstances, he might be a little wary of why the Eye seems so on board with his plan, but he figures it wants him to feed just as much as he does. It’s hardly likely that it’ll want its Archivist to be fed from.
At least, hopefully.
Newly acquired key in one hand and electric torch in the other, he arrives at the door to the storage hall. It swings open for him without so much as a squeak. He can’t tell whether he knows where to find the book from some half remembered conversation about the standard protocol with new artefacts or whether that’s down to Beholding again, but he heads straight for the office just off the side of the main area and sees it sitting on a desk in the dark. Every sense he has, both natural and super-, is so keyed up that he honestly thinks he might not have needed to bring the torch, but he nonetheless shines it at the desk out of habit as he gets himself settled down.
There’s a pair of gloves and a set of tongs resting next to the book, but he doesn’t bother with them. Those are precautions taken to avoid the effects of dangerous artefacts, and if he doesn’t get a full serving of this evil workplace conduct manual beamed directly into his synapses then he will be severely disappointed.
He takes a deep breath. This isn’t his subconscious at the wheel this time, it’s wholly his choice under his own motivation. No one is around, no one knows he’s here. If this backfires, then he can weather the damage with no harm to anyone else, and if all goes well, he’ll get to feel just a little bit better for the first time in a month and no one will ever have to know.
He opens the cover and stares down at the bookplate. He expected it, but it’s still a little sobering to see the label “From the library of Jurgen Leitner” sitting so plainly and proudly down on the page. He flips past the table of contents and starts on chapter one, “Effective Speaking in Verbal Communication.”
Jon completed his English undergraduate degree at Oxford with having barely ever skipped a single page of assigned reading (the sheer amount of coffee he consumed in that handful of years just about completely ruined the beverage for him thereafter), so he’s got some credentials when he decides that Open and Honest Communication in the Workplace is the most boring text he’s ever had the misfortune to read. He has no idea what’s been said on any of the dozens upon dozens of pages he’s read so far, not due to any paranormal memory loss, but because trying to retain corporate jargon like this is like trying to make oil sink in water: against all laws of physics. If this is a Leitner of “induce feelings of abject misery in as short a time as possible,” it’s working a treat. For not the first time since taking this job, Jon finds himself regretting having learned how to read.
What’s worse is he can’t even tell if the book has any properties beyond inducing feelings of abject misery in as short a time as possible. Head craned parallel over the desk above the manual, he stops to take internal stock. His eyes, neck, and back are sore, but that’s only to be expected. He’s bored, but not frightened in any way, and he doesn’t think there’s a dread power of ennui. Most notably, he’s still hungry. Maybe more than before.
He sighs at the page and lets his eyes fall closed. Just his luck, he supposes. He gets his hopes up for a taste of relief for once and it turns out to be the only dud Jurgen Leitner ever put his name on.
Half wanting to break something and half just a little bit wanting to cry, Jon starts to unfold himself from his seat, but stops short. His hands are buried in his hair. He hadn’t noticed doing that while he was reading. Slowly, he brings them back down in front of him, and his dark hair falls down in front of his face, half-a-dozen braids hitting against his glasses with dull thunks. Looking down at his body, he sees his legs crossed into a pretzel on his seat.
He suddenly gets a vivid memory of always having used to fiddle with his hair and sit like this when he would have to read anything in primary school, and how teachers constantly told him it was distracting until he eventually trained himself out of it. Yes, it’s all connecting now, and then trying to sit perfectly still with both feet on the floor made it so hard to concentrate that that was when he started his passionate but toxic and short lived relationship with sugary black coffee. It’s a vivid memory, and one he really hadn’t been expecting to uncover today.
So why did he?
He’s probably just doing all that again out of a weird stress reaction, he reasons. He hasn’t sat down for a good long read of something that didn’t spontaneously generate a tape recorder for a while now, and that’s why he’s only just noticing it. It’s natural to him, there’s no reason to think it’s connected to the book. Leitner of “make you fidget like you’re seven again” would be a pretty weak curse.
Having safely avoided thinking about it too hard, Jon gets fully up from the chair, and his body is not happy with him. After being eaten by worms then tied to a chair for a month then blown up in a wax museum, just to name a few incidents, his body is seldom happy with him anymore, and the Eye seems less and less willing to give him any supplemental help the longer he goes without properly feeding it. His joints, stomach, and head throb in tandem.
Carefully, he closes the book again, tries to put it back in the position it was when he got there, and makes his way out. He wants very much to go to sleep, and feels a little current of revulsion zing up his spine when he reminds himself of what it is exactly that he’s longing to do. Couldn’t get the rush I was looking for so now I’m fantasizing about gawking at my victims again, great.
The walk back to the Archives is quick enough, though it feels longer with the pain in his knees. Before he opens the final door that leads into the assistants’ office, he hears Melanie and Daisy’s voices filtering through and quickly drops the key and little torch into his pocket. Even if nothing ended up happening, he doesn’t want to raise any eyebrows. If they ask what he’s been up to, he’ll say he was working his way through the few books in the library he hasn’t already read since moving into the building full time. He takes a second, collects himself, and pushes the door open.
The pair glance up at him as he comes in, trailing off their conversation.
“Evening,” he says.
“Evening,” replies Daisy.
Melanie’s eyes narrow slightly. “You alright? You look like hell.”
“Well not hell--,” says Daisy, like she’s trying to mediate.
Melanie rolls on as if she didn’t hear, not even mean, just direct. “Like, worse hell than normal, even.”
Jon’s mouth opens and all at once he’s talking. “I feel like worse hell than normal. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired, and I can hear every word said in this room from my cot, so if I want to get something even approaching a full night’s sleep I’ll have to lay down right now so I can adjust to the noise level. Really, if you could just shut up tonight, I’d appreciate it.” His mouth closes and he frowns.
Melanie’s frown goes deeper than his. “I can’t tell if you’re being an arse or this is just the first time I’ve ever heard you set a boundary.”
“I, uh…” he flounders a bit. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. I must be more tired than I thought.”
Daisy turns around where she sits to get a proper look at him. “You do look pretty drained. You’ve been gone for a while, what were you doing?”
I was combing the shelves in the library. “I broke into Artefact Storage to read that Leitner from earlier.”
Melanie’s eyes go wide as Daisy says, “You what?”
His mouth is a bit dry. “I just told you, I broke into Artefact Storage to read the Leitner. Well, I didn’t really ‘break in,’ I found a key.”
“Are you okay?” Daisy presses, incredulous.
Jon’s starting to feel almost nauseous, but he doesn’t think that’s because of the Leitner. “I’m starting to feel almost nauseous, but I don’t think that’s because of the Leitner. I don’t think that did anything either, though. It just seemed like a plain boring book that I sunk too much time into forcing my way through.”
“Okay,” says Melanie, sitting up straight, “Jon, that was a stupid idea. You see how that was a stupid idea, right?”
His lips start moving again. Jon feels panic starting to rise in his chest. “Yes, but I weighed the options and made a decision.”
Daisy stands. “It didn’t do anything?”
“No, not that I can tell.” Why can’t I stop talking?
“The woman seemed very insistent earlier, are you su--”
No no no no. “Please stop asking questions!” He brings his hands up to cover his mouth and throat.
Daisy squints. “Wha--”
Jon stammers as he speaks. “I, I don’t think I, I can’t control what I say when you ask. It just comes out.” He swallows and gives half a chuckle. “Do not like that!”
Melanie and Daisy go quiet for a moment as their expressions morph in comprehension.
“You’re being compelled,” says Melanie, slowly.
“Um, sort of?” Jon takes his hands away from his face and flexes them. “I mean, neither of you have been reading enough statements to become an Archivist, right?” A beat. “Neither of you have been reading enough statements to become an Archivist, right?”
“I know I haven’t. Melanie?”
“Me neither.”
“But you--” Daisy points to his chest “--just read a Leitner called Open and Honest Communication in the Workplace that you said was tied to the Eye.”
The understanding he’s been trying to avoid since he closed the book washes over him in full, unmistakable and unignorable. “Great.” His chest deflates and he slouches forward. “Of course that’s what it is.”
Melanie’s words are deliberately chosen. “I would like to know if you’ve arrived at the same conclusion as us.”
Oh, that feels better. “Yes, I think I have.”
She narrows her eyes. “Tell me.”
The answer is lifted out of him like a prize in a claw game. “If Beholding gets fed by me compelling the occasional person to tell the truth, then it should get more by compelling someone to do it all the time, and looking back on it, the title was a bit obvious. I particularly hate the feelings of lacking privacy and of not being in control of myself, so it should be very easy to leech off my discomfort from this.” A breath. “Please don’t do that on purpose.”
Melanie nods, receptive but not apologetic. “Won’t from now on, I was just checking if it worked for commands, too.”
Irritation creeps into his voice. “Warn me next time you want to do an experiment, maybe?”
“You don’t when you compel people,” she puts simply.
“I don’t do it on purpose!”
“Except when you do.”
“I only do that when it’s important information and I can’t get it another way.”
“Or when you see someone across a cafe and fancy it.”
“I, I haven’t, I’ve stopped--”
“I know, and so will I now, I just think it’s a bit rich for you to get testy and expect that of me from the off.”
“It’s still--”
“Hey,” Daisy cuts in, low and calm. “Maybe pick this up after you’ve both had some sleep? Rows at midnight aren’t going to be productive.”
Jon bristles and feels only bristlier at how unaffected Melanie seems. “Okay,” he relents. “Just don’t make me do things like that, please.”
Melanie shrugs. “Easy enough.”
“Good.” Daisy turns directly to him. “Jon, do you--uh, I mean, if there are any other effects you’re feeling, I’d like to hear them now so you don’t spontaneously expire during the night.”
Deep breaths. “No, I don’t think there’s anything else.”
“Alright, then I think it’s safe to put off further investigation until the sun comes up, we don’t need to be doing this when we’re tired and caught off-guard. I’ll tell Basira in the morning and we can all get working on how to un-curse you.” Not unlike a teacher trying to send rowdy children to different sides of the room, she points her hands in the opposite directions of where Jon and Melanie sleep.
He gets the idea. “Right. See you both later, then.”
The dream isn’t any different that night, not really, but Jon feels like something has changed. Like their faces are no longer blindly terrified, but drinking him in, too. Like Tessa sees to the core of him as she bites into the keyboard, like Karolina watches him back as they take a trip in her train car, like Floyd knows exactly how much he does and doesn’t regret their meeting as the sea swallows him whole.
Could all be in his head, though. It’s just a bad dream.
The Archives are well under ground and have never felt the touch of sunlight, so Jon’s woken up daily by the alarm on his phone blaring next his ear. Originally, he’d wanted to try and trick himself into waking up in good moods by setting a mellow old Oasis song he liked as the alarm tone. In the fullness of time it turned out that the only trick he played on himself was creating a surefire way to get him to stop liking mellow old Oasis songs.
He stops one Gallagher brother or another from crooning about champagne and landslides, gets to his feet, and has the pleasure of the events of the past night returning to him. He groans out loud. Still in his pyjamas, he shuffles out to the breakroom to put tea in his body as quickly as humanly possible.
Wash a mug. Dry the mug. Fill the electric kettle. Grab a tea bag. Wait. Stare.
“Morning,” says a voice by the door.
He jolts in place. “Christ, Melanie, can you knock?”
“The door was wide open.” She leans on the door frame as if to emphasize how much door is not there. “I’m sure a knock would have scared you just as bad.”
He gives his best I guess shrug. “Anyway, good morning. Are the others around?”
“Daisy’s got her physio this morning, Basira took her a couple of hours ago. It’s just us for the next while.”
“Delightful.” Jon taps his hand on the counter, waiting for the water to boil. “Sleep alright?”
“Well enough, y’know, apart from the usual parade of nightmares. I expect you’re familiar.”
He is familiar with her nightmares, yes. “Mm.”
She shifts on her feet.
He looks at the kettle.
She checks the time on her phone.
He checks the time on his watch.
Jon knows the saying about watched pots and boiling. Doesn’t mean he has to like it.
“Soooo…” Melanie blows out some air through her teeth. “How are you? Oh, wait, shi--”
Something akin to a light, almost pleasant electric shock buzzes through Jon’s brain. “Lonely,” he starts. “That’s not unusual, though, I always get a bit lonely when I make tea for myself now. I can put Martin out of my mind most of the time, but he always made such a point of making tea as an act of care that I end up dwelling on his absence when I have to do it myself. It’s like a single manifestation of his abandonment of us. I know it’s stupid, and I try to ignore it best I can, but everytime I go through these motions it serves as just a little reminder of how one of the last bright spots left in my life left. Now isn’t any exception.” His hand tightens into a rigid grip around the edge of the countertop. “Lovely,” he says under his breath as the kettle comes to a boil and clicks off.
Melanie’s mouth hangs open in a pained frown. “I’m sorry about that.”
He grits his teeth and pours the water into his mug. “It’s fine.”
“I just forgot for a second.”
Counting to ten in his head. “No, I get it, I’ve done the same to you. Easy mistake.”
“That didn’t look fun.”
“It wasn’t.” He gets the milk from the fridge and bins the tea bag.
Melanie hovers.
He pours slightly too much milk into the mug and a few splashes get on the counter.
“I mean, if you’re lonely, I’m right here--”
His whole body cringes. “Please don’t.” Counting to ten again. “Just, act like you didn’t hear that.”
“But we both know I did.”
“And maybe if we ignore it, we’ll forget,” he says, aiming for jokey but landing in painful sincerity.
“Jon, come on.”
“No, I think that until this has either run its course or we find a way to break it early, I want everyone to just ignore anything it makes me say.”
“You know that’s not gonna work.”
“Do I not get a say in how people handle my own curse? I don’t want this happening, so I want it to intrude on my life as little as possible.” His hands are shaking.
“You can’t do that by just looking the other way and pretending a bad thing isn’t there.”
“Can’t I?”
“No, and I think you know that.”
“I don’t, actually.” He puts the milk back in the fridge and closes the door with just a little bit more force than necessary and there’s a sound of wobbling bottles from inside. He keeps his eyes directed at the door, fully turned away from Melanie. He wants this conversation to stop. “Can you please just do this for me?” He can hear her breathing and shifting on her feet behind him.
“Okay,” she finally relents. “I’ll drop it.”
Being alone in a room with Jonathan Sims has often been known to cause Melanie varying levels of discomfort, but it’s usually on the spectrum of anger and annoyance. The sheer awkwardness of sitting at the breakroom table with him as they both have their meager breakfasts is not something she’s very used to with him.
Staying away from sensitive subjects has never been one of her strong suits. As silly and hammy as she and her team deliberately made Ghost Hunt UK, it was still a show based on research and journalism, and she was good at it. If a building needed breaking into, or an interviewee kept wandering off topic and required some less tactful questioning, or someone had to sink a long weekend into digging through an old archive or library, she was the one for the job. She gets a kick out of chasing leads, and she knows what she’s after when she’s doing it. Pretending like she doesn’t know or care about information she’s just received is making her feel a bit like she’s lost all grasp of language.
She sees Jon’s fingernails drumming on the tabletop as he waits for his tea to cool enough to drink. She taps her foot under the table as she tries to convince herself that the cold Sainsbury’s sandwich that’s been in the fridge for three days is appetizing.
“I am sorry about last night,” she volunteers.
Jon, at the very least, has the decency to look as uncomfortable as she feels. “You didn’t say anything that wasn’t objectively true.”
“Still, I was being a bastard about it, and I didn’t need to be. Just because something’s true doesn’t mean it needs to be said at any given time in any given way.” She chuckles. “But, I suppose you’re figuring that out.”
He squirms in his seat. “I’d like to, just, avoid that whole topic until the others get back and we have to go over it properly.”
“Jon, you know that saying about elephants and rooms?”
“Yes I do,” he replies automatically, then wilts.
She sighs. “Sorry, I need to watch myself more.”
He doesn’t respond at first, just sips his tea mournfully. “I…” he starts, cutting himself off. “I’m going to try not talking at all and see if that helps.”
Melanie frowns. “Everything I know about how this stuff works says that’s either going to do nothing or make it much worse.”
He sits back in his chair, deflating. “It’s still something. If it’s either doing nothing and letting this happen or doing something and trying to change it, I’ll take the something.”
That’s exactly what her line of thinking had been when she brought a knife up to Elias’s office last year, and it was as stupid, irrational, and ultimately dangerous a line of thinking then as it is now. Unfortunately, that also means she knows exactly how compelling it feels, and any argument short of “don’t worry, we’ll get your curse arrested soon” will just make him more resolute. She blows air out through her teeth and gets to her feet. “I’ll get you a pencil and pad of paper.”
As she rifles through stationary in the main office to find a mostly unused legal pad, the door to the basement opens and Daisy and Basira step through.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” says Daisy.
“Hey,” says Basira.
Melanie looks to Basira. “I take it you’ve been filled in?”
“Mmm hmm.” She heaves a deep breath. “Hey, at least he hasn’t caused anyone grievous harm this time, not even himself. Can’t say that for most of his other--” her voice goes dry as a bone “--great exploits.”
Melanie nods. “Shall I get him in here then so we can all talk it through? Oh, actually, he won’t be talking it through, he’s testing out complete silence to try and do damage control.”
Basira shrugs. “Well, we’ll see how that goes. But, yeah, get him. I’ll clear off our whiteboard.”
Jon, now properly dressed, sits at Martin’s old desk again, Daisy at the one she claimed as her own after Tim stopped needing it, and Melanie on top of the one formerly belonging to Sasha that she’s had since she was hired. Basira stands at the whiteboard mounted on the wall, and Jon watches as she writes EVIL TRUTH BOOK in thick black Expo across the top.
“Right…” she mumbles under her breath, stopping for a second. In smaller letters underneath the heading, she writes book ➞ evil ➞ makes you tell the truth. She stares at it. “No, that, that’s nothing, isn’t it? That’s the same thing again.”
“No, I appreciate the diagram, it makes it all much more clear,” says Melanie.
“Shut it, you.” Basira hovers the cuff of her sleeve over the words but lets it drop, leaving them there. She turns to the audience. “Well, what else should I write?”
Jon points to his eye.
“Yep, right.” Basira writes Eye related the next line down. “And?”
“Well, there’s--” Daisy starts, then stops. “Actually, nevermind.”
Basira nods. “Great work.”
There’s quiet in the room for a minute.
Melanie looks at Jon. “It’s not just truth, I think,” she says slowly. “It’s truth you specifically don’t want to tell.”
Basira points at her with the Expo marker. “Interesting, go on.”
Jon holds his breath and she starts to explain. “There are probably a lot of perfectly true things that Jon would be fine telling us all, but it seems to have freaked him out most of the times it’s happened.”
Jon’s hand flies across his pad of paper and he holds it up to show what he’s scrawled. “It’s more about being forced to.”
Melanie looks him straight in the eye. “Still, you’ve said enough stuff that you really didn’t want to that it feels relevant.”
He shrugs and grimaces.
“Could just be a him thing, though,” says Daisy. “He’s very private, I’ve been back for months and I think I’ve only had one conversation with him where he's been fully emotionally and literally honest, he could just be personally averse.”
Jon sends her a pleading look.
She looks apologetic. “Sorry, just getting straight to the point.”
“I’m just gonna…” Basira turns and writes Potentially makes you tell specifically uncomfortable truths, Jon might just be weird.
“And it only happens with direct questions or commands,” adds Melanie.
Basira starts to write that, but Jon raps his knuckles on the desk a few times to get attention and she turns. “Mm hmm?”
He seesaws his hand in a so-so gesture.
She blinks. “Any elaboration on that?” she says slowly.
He grits his teeth against the compulsion and feels his entire neck and jaw go rigid as he refuses to open his mouth, but he manages it.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to--” she says half-heartedly, but abruptly stops as her eyes go wide. “Wait, the not talking actually works?”
The question catches in him and again tries to make him answer it, but he channels it into nodding.
“That looks painful.” Melanie’s voice is half sympathetic and half interested.
He winces and nods again, holding one finger up as he takes a minute to jot a few sentences down. “It just about works, but yes, it hurts. Also, it’s not just compulsion to answer questions and commands. Those are worse, but I also feel more blunt and direct when I say anything. I think it’s more that I can’t consciously hide anything I’m thinking about doing or saying than just specifically having to answer questions.”
Daisy looks thoughtful. “Now that you mention it, that makes sense. Even when we didn’t ask things last night you still seemed more open.”
Basira comes over to where Jon’s sitting and points to his pad. “That’s a lot to write down on the board, can I just…?”
The question bites again and he very much wants to say No, I’d prefer you don’t, but I can’t actually stop you, but instead he gestures at the paper in a “by all means” type way and lets her tear off the piece on which he’d last written.
“Thanks,” she says. She pins the paper to the whiteboard with a magnet that had been pushed off to the side and jots something down beside it. “Daisy, was there anything at all useful in the statement?”
“It wasn’t comprehensible at the time, and anything that I’ve parsed since then is stuff that we’ve already figured out.”
“Okay then.” Basira steps back a few steps and takes in their work thus far.
EVIL TRUTH BOOK
book ➞ evil ➞ makes you tell the truth
Eye related
Potentially makes you tell specifically uncomfortable truths, Jon might just be weird.
Only questions (see below)
At the bottom of the list hangs Jon’s note with an arrow next to it pointing to the first sentence and the words “it” refers to refusing to talk at all.
Jon, face entirely blank, holds up his writing pad again. “This inspires so much confidence in me.”
Basira rolls her eyes. “Alright, now that we’ve got all our info laid out, anyone have any thoughts on ways to move forward?”
“Our main focus should be on lifting the curse. We don’t know what will happen if it’s left to run its course,” says Daisy.
Jon thinks about spindly legs and sticky webs pulling a body in through a doorway that shouldn’t lead where it does. He shivers. Yes, he rather agrees with that assessment.
“So…” says Melanie. “How do we do that?”
Basira taps her chin with the marker and looks to be turning things over in her head. “It wants him to tell truths, so its main goal might be getting him to say something he’s really, really scared to say.”
He holds up the pad. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Yeah, yeah of course.” Basira waves her hand semi-dismissively but with her gaze sharply focused on him. “We’re not aiming to let the curse eat you, Jon. With how these things work, it probably wouldn’t even break if that happened, it would stick around to leech off you in the fallout.”
What a great thought.
“From what I can tell, these things usually let go if you stop being afraid of them,” Melanie muses. “Jon, d’ya fancy stopping being afraid of this?”
That one really gets him, sinking into his throat like a fish hook. He slaps his hand over his mouth and groans into his palm. It seems to be getting worse each time he rejects a compulsion.
“God, sorry, I keep doing that.” Melanie looks piteous for the both of them.
He takes his hand off his mouth, smiles, and jots down, “I need the practice.”
Melanie shrugs. “Anyway, yeah. If you can, just, stop caring about it, that could do the trick.”
His face scrunches up. Easier said than done, but if everyone acts like it isn’t happening after this little meeting is over, then he might be able to put it out of his head long enough to stop minding. “I’ll try.”
“Alright,” says Basira, putting the marker down on the bottom ledge of the whiteboard. “That’s about as much as we can do for the moment. Uh, meeting adjourned, or, y’know. Whatever, leave if you want.”
Jon’s stomach aches. It’s not real hunger, of course, but if he had to guess he’d say that what’s left of his human body is trying to interpret signals from his new inhuman features and is sending him the best messages it can, like how mint isn’t actually cold but plays on the senses to make it feel like it is. Yesterday, eating served as a comfort and a distraction. Now he feels sick if he thinks about trying to get anything down.
He doesn’t want to read a statement. He can’t do them silently anymore, and he shudders to think what he might have no choice but to say if he starts talking and a tape recorder clicks on.
With no statements to feed nor occupy him, he feels at a loose end. He could, what, do some real archiving? Sort statements into categories or date order? Type up transcripts for any live ones that don’t have them yet? Fulfill the role not of Archivist but of Head Archivist? He’d rather sit front row at a Grifter’s Bone concert.
He taps his hands aimlessly on the surface of his desk and pushes off it to do a slow spin in his chair. He’s bored. He wants something, but has no clue what it is. The part of his subconscious that never knows when to leave well enough alone helpfully suggests: you could hunt.
He runs his hands over his face. He’s not actually sure he could, this curse might have made him unable to compel. And he doesn’t want to, he just… wants to. It’s not--he doesn’t--it’s that… it would feel good, but it wouldn’t be good. He knows that. He definitely, 100% knows that. He shouldn’t want to, so if he wants to, he’s going to ignore it. That’s fine.
You could go find Martin.
That… that he could still do. Just thinking about it for a few seconds lets him know exactly where Martin is (up in his little office on the top floor, though Jon wouldn’t have needed special Knowing powers to guess that’s where he’d be in the middle of the workday). The main stairs only take a minute to climb, and no matter how Martin may have changed and not want people around, he’d never be the type to keep someone locked out while they stand outside his door. It would be so nice to see him. He got the chance yesterday, but it wasn’t right, he didn’t take it all in properly. He’d like to see the way the light shines through Martin’s curls, the way he smiles when the desire to be snarky pushes through his anxious demeanor, the way his posture shifts when he realizes something needs doing and he’s the only one to do it. He pictures reaching out a hand to touch Martin’s elbow, no, his shoulder, no, his cheek, taking a deep breath, and--
And nothing.
Jon won’t be doing that, because it’s ridiculous, and Martin has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want to see him. He doesn’t even know what he’d do upon arrival, he made enough of a fool of himself yesterday to know that much. He impresses on himself that he doesn’t have a plan for what he’d do, and repeats it in his head over and over. He’s just bored and lonely and frustrated and it’s making him stupid and have worse ideas than usual.
He gets up from the desk and leaves his office for the mini staircase leading to the back exit. If he’s ruled out all the other bad decisions he could make, he’s going to have a cigarette.
The August air is hot, but it’s been worse out. The bit of paved area behind the Institute where they keep the bins is as deserted and grim as ever, lone bits of plant trying fruitlessly to grow up between the flagstones as the sun beats down. Jon leans against the wall and lights the cigarette where it sits between his lips, the taste of smoke stealing over his tongue.
He’s got the whole Archive running around trying to fix a problem he made again. Everyone’s busy trying to clean up a mess he made that affects no one else but him. Part of him wants to storm back down the the assistants’ office, erase every stupid bullet point from that whiteboard, and keep himself to himself until he’s either dealt with this on his own or its dealt with him. It’s his business. He wants to keep this closed and contained and his problem alone. Lacking the ability to do quite that, staying silent and waiting until it gets normalized enough to him that he stops caring seems the best alternative.
The back door creaks open a few feet beside him to reveal Daisy standing within the frame. “Afternoon.”
He nods at her.
She squints. “You don’t have your pad of paper with you.”
He shrugs. He hadn’t been expecting company.
She steps fully into the outside, but doesn’t close the door behind her. “It’s weird when you’re quiet.”
Stop talking about it and it won’t be.
“Everyone’s a bit mopey at the moment, I was about to ask the others if they want to come out to the pub. Do you, er, if you would like to come, you would be permitted.”
Jon takes a final drag of the cigarette and drops it to the ground to be crushed under his shoe. Fuck it, he may as well. Someone else can order for him.
When everyone is situated into a booth in a fairly empty pub at 1:17 p.m. on a Thursday, Daisy pulls out a notepad and pencil. “Drink orders everyone? Personally, I’m getting a cranberry juice.”
“Same,” says Basira.
“Same,” says Melanie.
“Same,” writes Jon.
Daisy looks between the three of them. “What, everyone? Well, I know why you, Basira, but both of you, too?”
“Started on some new meds recently, can’t drink I’m afraid,” says Melanie. “Wait, Basira, why aren’t you?”
“Melanie, I know this may come as a shock to you, but I’m actually Muslim,” she deadpans, resting her head on her hand through the navy blue fabric of her hijab.
“Right, course, should have thought about that for two more seconds. Alright Daisy, your turn if you’re so inclined.”
“I’ve got weirdly high tolerance, always have done. At a certain point it’s not even worth the time, let alone the money, and juices taste better anyway.” She turns to Jon. “What about you?”
He started writing as soon as the initial question was asked, channeling the desire to answer into his hand. He flips up the pad of paper. “Already have no filter, not making you put up with that.” In a fitting complement to Daisy, his tolerance has always been on the low end of the low side. As truly appealing as getting a little help in relaxing is, he’s not even going to make them deal with one-drink-Jon.
Daisy looks around at the table. “So we’re four adults in our thirties skipping work to come to a pub in the middle of the day and we’ve got the same drinks orders as a bunch of secondary schoolers with fifteen pounds between them.”
“I think Melanie’s actually twenty-nine,” says Basira, helpfully.
“That’s true,” says Melanie.
Daisy hasn’t even written anything down. “Anyone at least want a different kind of juice?”
No response.
“Right then.” She gets up and goes to the bar to order.
“When’s your birthday, again?” asks Basira, turned to face Melanie. “I know you’ve had one since I’ve known you but I forget when.”
“It’s still a couple of months off, November third.”
Jon’s pen slips out of his hands and lands on the table.
“What?” says Melanie.
He points to his chest.
The realization steals slowly over her face. “That’s your birthday, too.”
After the first round, Melanie suggests they move to a cafe or something where there would be more food since no one’s interested in the pub’s main selling point, but no one feels strongly enough to do it, so now they all sit with empty juice glasses and bags of crisps strewn around the table like debris from a shipwreck across a beach.
Basira crunches a crisp. “I’ve been thinking about this curse thing a bit more.”
Jon groans internally.
“Yeah?” says Melanie.
“Yeah,” says Basira. “I looked back through some statements and thought about my experiences, and you can sometimes just figure out ways to get yourself out of these things, it doesn’t always have to be removal of fear. That’s how I got out of The Unknowing, anyway. Reason your way out.”
Jon thinks using knowledge and facts to counter a force based on illusions and the unknown is a bit different to using knowledge and facts to counter a force based on knowledge and facts, but that would be a lot to write out at the minute. If her idea isn’t good then they can just ignore it and move on.
Melanie sits up straighter in her seat. “Go on.”
“Well,” Basira holds her hand palm-up in front of her, “what’s the opposite of truth?”
Lies, supplies Jon’s mind as he bites his tongue.
“Lies,” says Daisy.
“Yeah, so, my thought was: we could just try getting Jon to answer direct questions with lies.”
Jon frowns. Not answering questions by itself already hurts enough.
“Are you sure that will work?” Melanie rests her chin on her hand. “That doesn’t sound like it makes sense.”
“Alright then, Melanie, no need for you to sugar coat it. Of course I’m not sure if it’ll work, it’s just an idea.”
“No, that wasn’t what I meant by ‘doesn’t make sense,’ I see where you’re getting the idea, it just doesn’t--” she picks her head up off her hand and interlocks both sets of her fingers together-- “make sense? Like, I feel like it doesn’t go together.”
Daisy looks like she’s almost coming to an understanding. “Explain more.”
Melanie sighs. “A lot of this weird magic stuff doesn’t seem to work on rules, or logic, or really even efficiency, it’s a lot more, like, what should work, if that makes any sense at all. Solutions aren’t usually a step-by-step process like you’d get out of an instruction book, they’re more like what feels right, or what would make a satisfying story, and that doesn’t really feel right to me.” A pause. “God, I hate talking like that, I feel like a teeanger going on about crystal energies or something.”
“We can’t just look for something that feels right, Melanie,” says Basira. “We have to come up with ideas and try them out, otherwise we’re going to be sitting around waiting for divine inspiration of what should be the right move.”
“Alright, I was just saying.”
Daisy turns to Jon. “If you have any thoughts, I’d like to hear them.”
I think that we should leave it well enough alone, his mind supplies. Even though it was in response to neither a question nor command, he has to bite his tongue to avoid spitting it out. He picks up his pen and writes, “Do whatever.”
Basira shifts and sits up straighter. “Alright then, I’ve got a question or two for you to answer.”
“Hey, wait, shouldn’t we do this back at the Institute?” asks Daisy.
“I don’t see why,” says Basira. “It’s just talking. Worst that can happen is he doesn’t manage to lie.”
Jon keeps his face neutral.
Daisy looks unconvinced, but she doesn’t say anything else.
“Right. You ready to answer out loud, Jon?”
He nods.
“Are you ready to answer out loud, Jon?”
“Yes.” The pressure building behind his skull subsides just a little bit as he gives the answer.
“Okay, easy one first. What’s your name?”
“Jonathan Sims,” he replies automatically.
Basira stares. “Did you forget to try or is it really that difficult to lie?”
“Didn’t really try.”
“Right. Let’s try this again, what’s your name?”
Jon really tries this time. He bites back on the compulsion and tries to send another word out instead. “Jonathan Sims,” he says, strained.
She leans in. “Let’s try a bit more simple. What’s your first name?”
“Jonathan.” The word is out in an instant. “Wait,” he says, when Basira looks to be about to try again, “I need a second, I can’t come up with a different name and ignore the compulsion at the same time.”
She nods, staying quiet.
He thinks back to his childhood home and the faded little old photograph that his grandmother kept on her bedside table. It must have been from the 60s or 70s, and it showed a close up of her and a smiling man standing together, the collar and shoulders of his sherwani just visible in the frame. Jon never met his grandfather, but he heard his grandmother talk about him enough over the years to know his name. “Try now.”
“What is your first name?”
It pulls at his vocal chords, making his neck tense up. He feels his eyes get warm. He visualizes keeping the compulsion at the back of his throat, away from his mouth, and he speaks just with his lips and the tip of his tongue. “Mitesh,” he says, small and hoarse.
Basira lets herself have a small smile. “And how did that feel?”
He wonders if there are chiropractors for throat muscles. “I--” he coughs and grits his teeth. “It’s fine.”
“Melanie, you got any questions to ask?”
Melanie’s got that look of half-concern half-curiosity on her face again that Jon recognizes very well from his own. He finds himself wishing that she wouldn’t speak, though his knowledge of what motivates that expression tells him she won’t. “And you’re okay with this, Jon?”
Having already managed to lie twice, he knows how to do it this time. “Yes.”
She stays quiet for a few seconds and runs her tongue over the inside of her bottom lip. “When’s your birthday?”
“November…” he starts, then makes himself stop. His head hurts. “November th--th--” he presses his eyes closed-- “thirteenth.”
She squints. “That looks like it’s worse than just not answering.”
“It… isn’t.”
“So it is, then.”
He tries to smile in as uncontorted a way as possible. He hears pounding blood behind his ears.
“Do you want this to stop?” asks Daisy.
His lips are made of rubber and his tongue isn’t his own. “No.”
“Where did you grow up?” asks Melanie.
He can do this. He can keep this up. “Bristol.”
“Is this helping?” asks Basira.
It’s hot everywhere in his head. “Yes.”
“Try harder, then. Lean into it.”
“Are your ears pierced?” asks Melanie.
It’s like he’s playing tug-of-war against the three of them but they get to use their hands while he has to bite down on the rope. “No.”
“Are you in pain?” asks Daisy.
He remembers her once using the phrase “secrets pulled out like teeth.” He remembers her putting a pocket knife against his voice box when he tried to compel her. He remembers the cut of the dull blade on his skin. “No.”
“Is it getting easier?” asks Basira.
He’s learning the proper way to unconnect his mind from his lips. “Yes.”
“Do you often feel lonely?” asks Melanie.
What? Is that about earlier? She said she’d leave it alone, but maybe the rules are different if he’s said it’s fine to ask questions. He’s straining so hard he feels like he’s about to snap. “No, I’ve got no reason to.”
“Tell me how you’re feeling,” says Basira.
He holds his breath. There’s something in him, trying to get out. He feels it spasming in his chest. He scrambles for his pen and paper and scrawls an uneven “ TOO MUCH ” and takes a deep breath then--
“I don’t like this, it hurts.”
Basira squints. “Like, actually, or--”
“But realizing that it hurts makes me feel guilty because I got myself into this situation when I had every warning sign telling me not to and I still went forward with a stupid decison and now I’m wanting treatment and respect for myself that I don’t give all of you--”
Daisy’s hand on his shoulder. “Hey, breathe.”
He doesn’t. “--because Melanie was right last night, I like to think that I don’t use my abilities for bad ends, but I only get away with that because whenever I want to use them I decide that it isn’t for bad ends.”
“Take it slow now,” says Melanie.
He doesn’t. “This feels invasive and like I don’t have control over myself and those are some of the feelings that I hate most and I don’t even think twice when I put them onto other people, so when I get the full force of them directed at me like this it’s not just painful but makes me feel guilty but then I get angry with myself for feeling guilty because all of those actions and desires were and still are mine and I have no right to wallow in self pity when I should just stop instead.” Finally, he breathes. “But there isn’t much I can do right now so shutting up and letting you all get on with it seems like the very least I can do.”
The sounds of a slightly empty bar. Light chatter, the clink of glasses, footsteps milling around the room.
They’re looking at him. All three of them, right at him. Even some of the other patrons, not knowing what’s going on, turned to take a look at the idiot talking at a million miles per hour.
Melanie fumbles with her jacket pocket, not looking away. “Um… there.” She pulls out a crumpled tissue and places it near Jon on the table.
“I don’t think that worked, Basira,” says Daisy, low.
Jon’s ears ring. “Daisy, can you stand up please?” he asks very quietly, staring at his notepad.
“I’d like to know why.”
At least his head’s stopped throbbing. “I need to get out of the booth, and you’re in the way.”
“If you’re thinking about leaving, I’m not sure that’s a good--”
“I need to get out of the booth, and you’re in the way.”
She stands up and aside.
Taking the paper and pen, Jon gets up from the booth and leaves through the bar doors at just short of a run. He wipes at his face with his sleeve as he goes.
Melanie said they should give Jon twenty minutes before they go after him, with the explanation that she never likes it if she’s trying to get some cooldown alone time and keeps being barged in on, so Daisy waits patiently in the pub with them until those twenty minutes are up. She waits patiently as the other two discuss whether to get a few groceries on the way back, and she says very calmly that she’ll be going back ahead of them, as a quick dip into a Tesco Express surely isn’t more than a two person job. She takes the walk back to the Institute at a very regular speed. Well, maybe a bit faster than she should, given the state of her leg muscles, but certainly not fast enough for anyone to raise an eyebrow.
She reaches the main doors to the building. There’s only the smallest chance that what worst-case-scenario thought has crawled into her head could be true, but she’s going to check anyway. She takes a second to make sure that her heart’s not racing, that her blood isn’t pounding, that she’s calm. The afternoon air tickles her skin and lightly blows her hair. The weak sun warms the back of her neck just where the very top of her scar peeks out over her collar, trying to reach the light like, well, like a daisy. The background sounds of traffic and pedestrians and whistling birds blend into one in her ears, and slowly, she filters them out until all she focuses on is a hushed quiet. She does not want this to be a hunt, so she won’t let it be, no matter how good it might feel. She’s just looking for an upset friend.
She takes a deep breath in through her nose, and picks apart the scents.
With instant relief, she can tell Jon’s already been here. He’s already inside, he didn’t go out alone on his own mission.
Or, if he did, it was very quick.
Tracking his scent won’t work inside the Institute, he’s been there too much, her senses will tell her he’s hiding in every room at once, so when she steps through the doors she has to think before going anywhere else. Where would Jon go? Most of the time, when something frightens him, he goes back to base, back to his office. This feels different, though, he was trying to get away from them, and his office would be the first place any of them would check. The Institute as a whole is also the first place they would check, but she thinks this is less a conscious attempt at not being found and more an instinctual desire to hide.
She goes to the main staircase, ascends two flights, and stands just at the door to the top floor, listening. She could go in and ask Rosie if she's seen him come through, but Rosie has been understandably wary every time Daisy has tried to talk to her, and she’d prefer to avoid the interaction if at all possible. She takes a second to listen. Rosie, at her desk. The Institute Head’s office, empty. Martin, in his office down the corridor, alone. No sign of a third heartbeat. Even as much and she knows Jon feels for Martin, she didn’t really think Jon would come up here unless he’d had some sort of personal revelation to spur him to ill-advisedly race up the stairs on knees only marginally better to hers, it was just another option whose possibility existed just enough for her to want to check.
The basement next. He’s most likely to be somewhere down there, but there are also more places to hide there than the top floor. She sees no reason why he might be in the assistants’ office, and after a quick glance around it, she turns up no Jon. On the off chance that he is just sitting at his own chair like he always is, she pokes her head into his office, and turns up no Jon. The pen and paper he’d been using is sitting on the corner of the desk, though. That could mean any of a number of things, including, as Daisy realizes all at once, that when she caught his scent at the door, it was from him coming in to drop those off before going out again. She doesn’t like that idea, not one bit.
She can entertain the idea of coming into the breakroom to see him huddled around a hot mug of tea like a lizard warming up in the morning, but she opens the door and, once again, turns up no Jon. She’s not starting to assume the worst, not at---okay, she’s not assuming the worst, but she is starting to think it more likely, and it’s best to be honest with herself or she’ll trick herself into believing and doing all sorts of things. She is considering it, but nothing more.
He could easily be camped out in the Archive itself, sunk down in a corner recording a statement to sate a bit of discomfort. She knows it’s not a rational thought, and they certainly don’t seem to keep him satisfied or in good health, but she sometimes envies him for the ability to get something from his patron, measly and miniscule as the statements are. She opens the door to the Archive and knows as soon as she sees that the lights are off that he’s not here. Still, she paces around the stacks of files, looking at any surface or dark crevice where an Archivist with no regard for his spine might fold himself. Predictably, no Jon.
She is starting to get a bit worried now, potentially for Jon, potentially for others, potentially for both. Last time he was stressed and hungry and on his own he got himself cursed (should she have looked in Artefact Storage first? she can double back up in a minute), he’s not the best at self-preservation. She doesn’t mean that as an insult, it has to be a conscious effort for all of them at this point, but his tends to express itself in the most dire ways. She’s staying calm, though, she’s making sure she doesn’t start running and getting worked up.
The “back garden” of the Institute, as it’s sometimes called, is her last port of call in this part of the building. If she has any luck at all, she’ll find him in exactly the same position as earlier, maybe sitting on the grimy ground this time, cigarette clutched in his ever so slightly trembling hand with a mournful expression. Maybe his hand will be trembling more this time, who knows. Anything’s possible.
The old metal door opens outward with a shudder and no Jon. The smell of smoke lingers from earlier as well as dozens of previous cigarette breaks, a scent she’s never been fond of. She notices her breathing getting heavier as she quickly makes a lap around the tiny area, and she makes herself stop. In four, hold seven, out eight. In four, hold seven, out eight. The sounds from the London street are distant, and it’s even easier to tune them out one by one until she just hears the quiet of the air. She doesn’t want to lose her cool, so she’ll make sure she doesn’t. That’s all she has to do.
Going slowly down the stairs back into the basement, she finally notices that the door to the old document storage room is open a crack. They almost never go in there anymore; when everyone already has their own cots elsewhere, crashing in a room with a barely plastered hole in the wall leading to the tunnel network doesn’t seem that appealing. So, either that dog she’s been told about in no less than three retellings of the anecdote has found its way back into the Archives, or she almost entirely forgot about the place where Jon has actually been hiding himself away. Well, if she were ever looking for any reassurance of how completely she can reject the hunt.
She slips down the last few stairs and gently prods the door open with the tip of her shoe. The light from the hallways spills into the room wider the door opens until eventually it illuminates the curled up form of one Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of The Magnus Institute, London, sitting on the cot with his back leaning against the wall and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He glances up at her as she steps into the room.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
“This isn’t your bed.”
“What a startlingly good observation, Detective.”
She breathes out through her nose in half a chuckle. “You know what I’m trying to say, Jon.”
He looks at his knees. “Why don’t you just ask me, then?”
“Because I don’t want to, and because you’ve shown that you could lie if I did.”
He sounds so mournful and resigned. “Not well, certainly not well enough to hide it. And not for long. If you kept asking then you could get me to say anything, no trouble at all.”
“Well, I’m not going to do that. I’d still like you to tell me, though.”
The angle of the light hitting the frame of his glasses sends a shadow over his cheekbones. “It feels more secluded in here, more private.” He pulls the blanket tighter around himself, perhaps without even noticing. “And it’s sort of comforting, being somewhere that reminds me of people who aren’t here anymore.”
“Like I’ve told you before, Jon, Martin’s not dead, he’s upstairs making a higher paygrade than the rest of us. You can see him again properly when all of this is done with, no need to be so morbid.”
“It’s not just him.” He lifts his head to look at the wall with the cracked different color plaster about the height of a tall man.
“Oh,” she says under her breath.
“Actually,” he lifts his hand from under the blanket to point at her position just inside the doorway, “if I’ve got everything figured out properly, that’ll be about where I last saw Sasha, the real one. She leapt out of the room to save Tim, and Martin kept watching through that little window, but I had a leg injury and was stuck sitting on the floor. The other two would have gotten to see a bit more of her, but my last sighting would have been just before she left when she was crowding there with Martin. Doesn’t really matter though, it’s not like any of us could remember properly.”
“I’m sorry.” Daisy never knows how to soothe, she’s more of a “practical next step” type of person, a “this isn’t useful, get your mind off it” type person, even Melanie can do this kind of direct thing better than her. “I never knew--”
“You never knew Sasha, yes, I know. You could ask Melanie for details if you wanted, or I could see if those tapes of her have survived everything that’s happened here.”
Should she say she’d like to hear those, is that what he wants? “I…”
His shoulders slump. “You don’t want to do that, of course, I get it. She wasn’t your friend, why would you want to hear a few snippets of her in conversation? With how much that thing played with my memory, she might not even have been my friend, either.”
“That doesn’t sound fun to have to know.”
“It isn’t.”
She looks over her shoulder back down the hall. “I saw your pen and paper in the office.”
“Right.”
“I could go get it for you.”
“You don’t need to.”
“So you’ve gone fully back to talking.”
“Yeah. It was a stupid idea in the first place, it didn’t do anything.”
She toes around a bit of pebble on the floor, keeping her focus on it. She wants to keep this delicate. “I’ve got a few things to say.”
“Please don’t.” She hears the edge of desperation in his voice.
“I won’t get specific about earlier, I promise.”
No response.
“First, it wasn’t cool that we pushed you like that, we shouldn’t have.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles.”
“Second, sitting here alone wallowing in it all isn’t going to help.”
“I like having space sometimes.”
“And you can have space sometimes, but now might not be the best time. I won’t force you or anything, but I’m willing to sit on the floor and listen to some Archers with you. Maybe we could even switch to a good radio drama as a special treat.”
That gets a throaty laugh. “You must mean it, then.”
“I do.”
He toys with the hem of the blanket. “I’m sorry, I just need space right now.”
“I could sit on the floor in silence and while we both pretend we’re on our own in the room.”
“I need space, Daisy.”
Something in the way he insists catches in her mind. She has to do this, but she’s going to do it as gently as possible. “Okay, then I have one final thing to say, and it will have to be a question.”
“And you’ll go away after?”
“Yes.”
“Then do your worst.”
She lifts her head and looks him dead on. “Have you done anything?”
His jaw twitches, and he says, “Clarify please?”
“You know what I mean. Have you done anything?”
His stare is clear and steady if slightly shiny. “No, I haven’t.”
“Good, good.” She nods absently. “Will you do anything?”
He takes a sharp intake of breath. “I mean, I’d hope not, but I can’t know what will happen in the future.”
“Jon,” she says. “I assume you get why that doesn’t sound like a good response to me.”
“I mean it.” He sits forward on the cot. “That’s how this works, isn’t it? I can swear blind one day that I never want to do that again, that I’ll keep control over myself and tell people if I’m slipping, and the next day I’ll get hungry enough that I’ll invent excuses for why it’s okay this time. It’s not a one choice and done type of thing, I have to keep making the same choice over and over and over again, and if I even slip up once, then people get hurt. There were years at a time when I fully thought I’d never smoke again, and look how far that got me. I’m not--” he breaks off and silently moves his lips, seemingly looking for words. “I’m not good enough to do the right thing every single time. If this want in me keeps going long enough, and I know it’s not going to stop, then eventually I’m going to let it have its way.”
It’s almost absurd how much she can empathize with what he’s saying. She’s fairly certain she’s got a diary entry buried in her notes app that says almost exactly the same thing. “That doesn’t mean you can just give up trying, though. This isn't about cigarettes, this is people, Jon. You’ve got put in the effort, for yourself and for others.”
“It doesn’t feel like it’s up to me sometimes.”
“And a lot of it isn’t. Forces outside of your control can get you most of the way there, and that’s not fair, but when the last step between you and hurting someone else is one that only you can take, you can’t just let it happen. You have to look it head on and figure out a way to walk yourself back from it. You’re right, it is making the same decision over and over, but keep taking them one at a time and it’s easy. Do it often enough, and you’ll learn the best way. You don’t have to be ‘good,’ whatever that means, you’ve just got to know when to make a choice.”
Jon is quiet.
“So, I’ll ask you again: if I leave you alone, are you going to do something bad?”
He meets her gaze, steady and solemn. “No, I won’t.” His jaw and neck strain with tension. “I promise.”
Since his first encounter with the supermarket cleaner, Jon has run the gamut of possible excuses he can make for himself.
I can’t stop myself.
I can stop myself on my own, no need to tell anyone.
Basira just let Melanie attack people, she wouldn’t even try to stop me.
Basira helped me with Melanie’s surgery, I don’t want to wake up and find something like that happening to me.
It helps me heal.
I need to be strong to help everyone else.
It’s killing me if I don’t.
If fate or whatever wants me to stop, I’m giving it plenty enough chance to kill me.
I need to be alive to help everyone else.
The ends justify the means.
Basira could have stopped me, and she didn’t, so she must have wanted me to.
It’s involuntary.
I’m being controlled.
I don’t want to do this, so if I keep doing it, it must not be up to me.
It’s my decision.
I know what I’m doing.
I don’t need to think about it.
It feels good.
I want to.
It helps.
And none were quite right. Some of them he can tell were at least more honest than others, and some he has no idea. Some of the most honest were the ones that seemed most contradictory. That’s what happens when you spend months with a secret buried so deep that you barely even let yourself consciously think about it, you get so self-involved that you can’t see the flaws in your own story anymore. He spent so much time on the details of weaving himself a disguise that looked good up close that he never stepped back and saw the gaping holes in the rest of it. He created strict rules for self-regulation and self-punishment that he assumed must have been working because they hurt so much and still managed to never come anywhere near addressing the real problem.
Today, he adds a new excuse to the list.
I’ve given in enough times before to know that wanting it this much means that resisting is pointless, I’m just going to do it again. Fuck it, why even pretend I could be better?
Melanie and Basira still aren’t back, and Daisy’s laying down for a nap, so it’s easy to slip out unnoticed. He goes out through the back door, not the front, he doesn’t want to accidentally bump into the other two on their way back in. In less than a minute, he’s out on the street behind the building.
It’s less busy out here than the main road, as far as “less busy” means anything in central London. He doesn’t have to keep his mind on his surroundings so much, so he thinks about what he’s going to do. It’s well past lunch time but still a good while before most jobs will be letting people out, so he might have to scout around for someone. For a victim.
It’s summer, so the Tate’s apt to be busy, it would be easy to find someone there. A tourist attraction filled with families and students visiting on school holidays.
He crosses the street, going in the opposite direction of the museum.
It’s a little bit exciting. He’s been just eeking out survival for weeks and weeks and weeks, the rush is going to be incredible. A flood of instant relief on pain so deep seated it’s become nearly indetectable. He has no idea how he’s put up with it so far, just thinking about it for a few seconds makes the need almost unbearable, his legs feeling weak. It crosses his mind that if he can be careful like this more than once, he won’t even have to wait next time he’s hungry. He could go out again in two days. He’ll never once have to starve again if he doesn’t want to.
Daisy was right, of course, but she was speaking from her own perspective. Of course she has to be that careful and strict with herself when her thing is hunting and killing people. When she’s the one causing the harm in that situation, naturally that would be her perspective. Jon just talks to people, nothing nearly so violent as that.
He never listened to the tape left by Jess Tyrell. He didn’t have to. The very point of it was that he knew exactly how scared and helpless and unsafe he made her feel. It wouldn’t have felt nearly as good for him otherwise.
Still, her fear was rooted in the Buried, and he didn’t collapse that tunnel on her. Of all the avatars out there, burning and maiming and chasing and tearing and having a damn good time doing it, surely he should be allowed to not waste away? It’s not his fault he’s like this, and he doesn’t do the original harm, he shouldn’t have to take all the damage, he should be allowed to feel better, to pass it on. Right?
Thinking about it for a moment, the sight of Jess crying but trying to stay calm as she pleads with Martin projects itself into his mind's eye. Just tell him, like, I mean that--it’s not okay. You know, right--I’m not--I don’t know what he did, but you know, he can’t just go around and well, you know, just keep doing--I just, I don’t want to see him again. Ever.
He turns down into a tube station. It’s busy, but it’s definitely not rush hour. He gets a very strong desire from something outside himself to stay by the entrance and wait. Sure enough, within a few minutes, an anxious looking old man with fully white hair in a long tan coat comes up through the gates and rushes over to one of the ticket machines, presumably to put more money on his Oyster card. Jon can’t take his eyes off him.
He takes a few steps towards the man. Not enough to be noticeable yet, but enough to make a difference. Enough that Jon can snatch glimpses of his story. The man had once had a casual friend who managed to be so abrasive that all his other friends left, leaving just the two of them, until the friend abruptly cut ties and the man found himself locked alone in his flat for a month. Lonely, probably, with hints of Desolation, but Jon would need to get the full statement to properly understand.
He comes in another few steps.
“Excuse me, young man, is there a reason you’re standing so close?” No one's ever called Jon “young man,” not even when he was still in school. He supposes that, to this man, everyone else really is young, he must be somewhere in his seventies or eighties. Jon idly wonders for a few seconds and is immediately greeted with all the information about the effects of stress and trauma on life expectancy in old age that a person could ever possibly ask for.
“Yes.”
He looks at Jon properly. “Can I help you, then?”
“Yes.” His mouth waters.
“What do you want?”
The question so cleanly pierces into him that he doesn’t even have time to think about trying to stop it. It passes right through layers of guilt and self-deception and pessimism and hunger in less than the blink of an eye. The answer rolls right off of Jon’s tongue, obvious as anything. “I don’t want to do this.”
The man frowns. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”
“What I was about to do, I, I want to, but I don’t want to want to. I don’t think I should do it. I can want it and still know it’s wrong, I don’t have to do it.”
The man looks mildly alarmed. “Are you feeling alright?”
“No, I--” Jon shakes his head like an Etch-a-Sketch-- “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have bothered you, I need to go home.”
“Is there anything--”
“I’m sorry, really, I just need to go.” Jon turns around and bolts out the door.
His feet pelt down on the pavement back to the Institute. There’s a measure of let down sitting in his heart, and he can’t ignore it, but it doesn’t even touch the strange power trip pushing him forward. It’s not a headrush gifted by the Eye in return for doing its dirty work, it’s not the childish feeling of getting away with doing something bad, it’s just his. It’s a pure feeling of personal control that he hasn’t gotten to taste in quite a while.
So that was when to make a choice.
“Daisy? Hey, Daisy?”
“Hmm?” She opens her eyes, not having been heavily asleep. “Oh, hey there Jon.”
He kneels in front of her cot to get on eye level. “Sorry for waking you.”
“No, it’s alright, it was just a quick cat nap, no harm done.” She blinks a few times, propping herself up on her elbow, and gets a better look at his face. Wide eyes, heavy breathing, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Something’s wrong.”
“Yes, um…” he takes a few breaths, collecting himself. “I was lying, earlier, about not planning to do anything.”
That wakes her up the rest of the way. “Oh shit.”
“I didn’t, I, I stopped myself, nothing happened. I didn’t take that last step.”
She sits, slinging her legs over the side of the bed. “You went out hunting?”
“I know, I know, and I’m sorry for lying about it, but I didn’t hurt anyone. I turned back. I made the choice, and it was good! But I don’t feel very, um, like it’s sustainable right now? I don’t know if I can… is that Archers offer from earlier still on the table?”
“That’s… good. That’s very good, Jon.” She gets her thoughts in order. No one’s been hurt and he’s come to her voluntarily. That’s all that matters. “I’ll just get my phone.”
Night finally falls, and Jon stumbles his way out of the empty office Daisy repurposed for sleeping and heads directly for the breakroom. It has been a long two days, he’s exhausted, and he feels a bit like a collection of rocks in a Jon suit. He intends to banish every higher thought from his head, inhale whatever passes for dinner in the Archive these days, and become unconscious as quickly as humanly (inhumanly?) possible. If the dreams are anything like they were last night, they won’t do anything in the way of rest and recuperation, but at a certain point a person just needs a short reprieve from being awake.
He definitely still feels shaken by about a half dozen of today’s incidents, but dissecting them and/or having a good old fashioned nervous breakdown while hiding under his desk and holding a pillow to his face and chest can wait for tomorrow. He’d like to lay down and sleep and not have to talk to anyone for the next three weeks. If he lays very still, maybe his emotions will think he died.
He enters the breakroom and starts making tea by muscle memory. Brain half on, he slips on the communal marigolds and sets about washing and drying a mug for use. He’s setting the kettle on to boil by the time he realizes what he’s doing and he almost drops the mug. A cold sensation travels out from his heart and up his arms, making him freeze in place.
Stop that, he tells himself. You’ve just spent hours with Daisy, there’s no reason to feel lonely. She and the others are just as viable companionship as, uh, as anyone else. Stop getting so worked up over tea.
He didn’t even come in here for tea, he came in here for dinner. He’s being stupid. There are a few cup noodles around here in some cabinet that’s almost almost too high for him to reach.
A minute spent fishing around to find what he wanted, and he turns to get to the microwave and nearly jumps out of his skin. “Jesus, you’re quiet!”
Basira looks up from her book, the dark blues and blacks of her outfit today giving her remarkable camouflage into the long shadows in the corner by the table. Jon doesn’t know how she can even see the text in that level of darkness. “Sorry.”
“I nearly dropped my cup noodle!”
“I’ll flip the pages more loudly next time to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
“Thanks, Basira,” he says dryly.
“No problem.”
The conversation drops as he prepares his noodles, but he sees her staring at him as it microwaves. “Yes?”
“You disappeared earlier.”
“I did.” Jon knows Basira well enough that he knows she won’t try to press what made him disappear. Neither of them are really the “talk about feelings” type. He appreciates that, even when they aren’t getting on as well as they ever have.
“It had Daisy pretty worried.”
“Sorry about that.”
“I assume you did something between then and now.”
“I did. I spent the last couple of hours with Daisy, if you’d like to know.”
“But there was also time before then. You weren’t here when I got back.”
“Yes.”
“You must have been occupied then somehow.”
“Indeed.”
“And you’re skirting around telling me what you were doing.”
“It would start a long conversation, and I’m exhausted. I can tell you in the morning.”
“It feels to me like you want time to come up with a good story.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re dodging the question again.”
“You haven’t asked any.”
They stare at each other. Jon didn’t know he had this amount of obstinance left in him at this hour. It’s tired him out.
“There are a few questions I’d like to ask you, actually,” she says.
He deflates. “Wait until my noodles are done, we can do this in my office.”
Basira sits across from Jon at his desk. She’s been resolutely telling herself it isn’t worth it to force something like this all day, and she’d be lying to herself if she said this wasn’t partially what she was hoping would wind up happening at the pub, but now that she’s got the opportunity. She feels like she’s holding back every second she doesn’t spend firing off questions. She’s never been able to tell whether he’s lying or hiding something from her, plenty has slipped past her before that she really should have stopped. Now, she finally can. “I’m going to start now.”
“And you’ll let me sleep afterwards?”
“Yeah.”
“Then go ahead.”
She stretches her neck. “Did you hurt someone today?”
His words come easily. “No.”
“Did you go visit Elias?”
“No. And you’re one to ask, you know he won’t let me in.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I came back here, cooled down a bit, talked to Daisy and…” he pauses, but it doesn’t look like he’s straining, it looks like he’s anxious, “…waited until she was asleep to go out and find a victim.”
Her mouth falls open. For fuck’s sake. “You bastard, you said you didn’t hurt anyone!”
He holds his hands up. “I didn’t! I swear, I didn’t. I went out, but I turned back before I could do anything bad.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You just talked yourself out of a good meal right when you were getting take out?”
He shudders at the turn of phrase, but he doesn’t object to it. “Not exactly. The man I picked out--”
“You got as far as picking someone?”
“--when I approached him, he--”
“You got as far as approaching someone?”
“--asked me something about what I wanted, and I realized how much I didn’t want to hurt him. It completely snapped me out of it, and I came right back.”
“So, what, if you hadn’t been cursed then you would have gone right ahead and eaten his brain?”
“Probably, I don’t know. I don’t think I would have snuck out if I hadn’t just had that experience at the pub.”
“Oh, you’re putting it on me now?”
“No, I, ugh.” He runs his hands over his face. “I am answering your questions truthfully, and if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have gone out like that. It is that simple.”
Basira bristles. “Do you see why none of this makes me trust you? You are telling me that if you get stressed enough you just decide to go out and make it someone else’s problem for the rest of their life.”
“I do see, and I know. I’m trying to get better about that.”
“‘Trying’ doesn’t cut it if innocent people are at risk, you just need to not.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Did you or did you not just decide to turn around and come back?”
“I did.”
“So make that decision before it gets that far.”
He actually sips at his noodle broth before responding to her. “Can you leave now? I’m tired.”
“No, actually. I said ‘a few questions’ before, and if this is how far I can trust you, you better be prepared to answer them.”
He closes his eyes briefly, looking like he might be counting to fucking ten or something, and opens them again. “Go ahead.”
“Are you planning anything with Elias?”
His jaw drops. “Basira, really--?”
“Are you planning anything with Elias?”
“No! Of course not! I just said, I can’t even speak to the man. Why would I even want to do that?”
“I dunno. Plenty of brains to eat when the world’s remade in the Beholding’s image.”
“I don’t want that.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes! Emphatically yes! I don’t want an apocalypse!”
“Are you planning anything with Lukas and Martin?”
He looks pained. “I can’t talk to them either.”
“You’ve got email. Are you planning anything with them?”
“No, I’m not, nor am I planning anything with anyone else.”
“Do you want to plan anything with anyone else?”
“If I could have a proper conversation with Martin and find out what he’s doing, I’d do it and join him in a heartbeat.”
“So you would work for the enemy.”
“Since when is he the enemy?”
“Since about two months before you woke up, I’ve told you this, keep up.”
“Fine, then. If it turned out he was also trying to do a ritual, I wouldn’t join him. Happy?”
“No.”
“Great. Can you leave now?”
“No. Do you trust me?”
“Yes.” He makes a point to look directly at her as he says it.
“I’ve gone behind your back plenty, so why?”
“Because if I don’t trust people, I get so paranoid I can barely think or function, and you’ve seen it. I need to, so I choose to. If you started, I don’t know, regularly killing people and refused to stop, then I probably wouldn’t trust you, but until that happens I will always act as if I believe every word you say and that you have everyone’s best interest at heart.”
“What does ‘act as if’ mean? Do you not really believe that?”
“Sometimes I have doubts, but I can’t control that, and I ignore them.”
“When’s ‘sometimes?’ What makes you have doubts?”
“This!” He holds his arms out over the desk, smiling wide and half-manic. “This right here! I’ve asked you to let me eat and go to sleep twice now and you’ve ignored me both times when you told me you would let me!”
“Part of trusting someone is listening to them when they tell you you’re screwing up and taking the advice on board.”
“And this isn’t that! When you let Martin go work for Lukas, Melanie threaten people with violence on sight, and Daisy actually kill people for years, this doesn’t feel like you telling me the harsh truth when I need to hear it. I know what that looks like from you, and I appreciate it when that’s actually what you’re trying to do, but this just feels like punishment, this hurts.”
Basira stops. The circles under his eyes are dark and deep, his hair hasn’t been washed in a few days, and that pale yellow shirt looks like it’s meant to be white. And she’s keeping him here, awake, answering her questions.
He swallows. “Sorry. I didn’t mean for everything to come out like that.”
She licks her lips. “Jon, are you scared of me?”
“Sometimes.” His hand is clenched tight around his cup noodle. “Not much more than anyone else, it’s just been longer since Melanie or Daisy have said they’d kill me than when you last did.”
Ah. She sits with that for a few moments. “Does being scared help?”
“No.” He looks almost surprised to be saying that. “Being scared doesn’t mean I’m less likely to slip, it means I won’t tell you when I think about it, because as far as I know you’d just punish me for it. It makes it worse.”
She looks at the corner of the desk and wonders absentmindedly if it’s ever been replaced or if it’s been the same one in this office for 200 years. “You know what I said about part of trusting someone being telling them when they’re screwing up?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say all this before?”
“I couldn’t. You’ve said yourself, you don’t trust me an inch, you wouldn’t have reacted well and I don’t think I’d have had the words or the nerve to say it. You’re one of the only three people who will still stand to be around me, I’ve had to make do.”
“Right.” She nods. She’s going to be calm about this. “I’ll go soon. How do you feel?”
A little bit of strain in his jaw. “Now or in general?”
“Let’s go for now, first.”
“Hungry and tired, like I’ve said. Got a headache, too, if that’s of note, but I usually do at some level these days.”
“There’s some paracetamol around here somewhere, I think.”
“Good to know.”
She holds her breath. “And generally?”
“Usually it’s a mix of old favorites like lonely, guilty, hungry, angry, and scared. Sometimes they blend together to get something more interesting, like bitter or terrified motivation, or self-pity, or mostly passive suicidality.” His eyes go wide. “Sorry, I, uh, didn’t consciously know about that last one.”
She decided to be calm about this, so she will continue to be. It's not like she couldn't have figured any of that out with a little bit of thought, this isn't something she should react to emotionally, like breaking news. Neither of them would like that. “Well that’s not very good.”
“No, it isn’t.” He chuckles.
“You could ask Melanie for her therapist’s number.”
He frowns. “That would be too weird, talking about each other to the same person in different sessions.”
“You think Melanie talks about you in therapy?”
“I’d definitely talk about her.”
Basira laughs, just a little. “Well, I’d say consider it or something. Sounds like you’ve got some problems.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Have you considered therapy? You’ve got at least six months worth more events to be mentally ill about than I do.”
Nice subject redirection, very smooth. She can play along with it. “I don’t think that’s how that works.”
“You still should.”
“I dunno.”
“Excuse me, what did you just say about trust and listening to people?” His face has a small, playful smile, but it’s still serious.
“Maybe, then. Not right now, though. I’m a bit busy.”
“So am I. So’s Melanie.”
“Alright, Mr. Logic, this is the part of the conversation that I think I can leave until tomorrow. I’m going to go have a lay down.” She stands up.
“Right. I’ll be doing much the same.”
She gets her hand on the doorknob. “Thank you for saying all that, Jon. It’s good when you’re honest like that, and it shouldn’t have had to take a curse to do it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good.”
At night, Dr. Elliot screams and falls to the ground, his limbs once again not working. His scream is wordless, but it’s nonetheless a clear cry of help, please, anything. The Archivist has spent a long time getting used to that scream, and last night he could have sworn that Lionel could tell how little it moved him, and scorned him as heartless for it. Tonight, Jon sits down beside him on the bloody classroom floor, and Lionel looks confused. To be fair, Jon doesn’t know what he’s doing, either.
Lionel’s hand spasms, and the apple he’s been clutching rolls out of his grip. Curiously, Jon takes it and holds it up to whatever illusion of light this strange realm provides. He once saw the real thing, he remembers, but he never properly held it. It was in two halves already when Lionel brought it in, slightly rotten, and, crucially, rather full of human teeth. The only interaction he’d had with it was to gingerly pick it up by the top of its plastic bag and put it in the right box for sending to the dental specialist. When Dr. Elliot first brought it up and Jon had asked whether he’d eaten it, Lionel had said “Do I look like an idiot? Of course not!”
It certainly looks and feels like a normal apple to Jon’s eyes, even with how many he’s got in this dreamscape. Fuck it, he’s never been good at self-control, even on the best of days, and he’s not even awake right now, this is basically sleepwalking.
He raises it like a champagne glass to Lionel and takes a big Snow White bite out of the apple. He chews and considers it for less than four seconds before promptly spitting it out. He sputters, trying to get the last of it out of his mouth. “Careful, there’s teeth in there,” he says once he feels sufficiently cleansed.
Lionel’s throat might not be quite right, but there’s only so many ways to mess up the sound of an incredulous laugh.
Jon’s already sitting at the breakroom table with his tea by the time Melanie comes in this morning. Trying to avoid any repeat of yesterday’s breakfast, Jon had gotten up a bit early so he could be in and out before she woke up. He had thought himself successful until now, when seeing Melanie with two red Costa cups and a small bag of pastries makes him realize that she must have had the exact same idea.
“Morning there, Melanie,” he says groggily.
“Morning, Jon.” She takes her seat at the table and sees the mug in his hands. “Shit, I wanted to get you tea.”
“No, this is already done.” He turns the mug upside down as evidence. “Nothing to stop me drinking that one.”
“You’re a greedy fucker,” she says, taking one cup from its carrier tray and passing it to him, then opening the pastry bag. “Fancy a pan au chocolat?”
“Yes, actually, thank you.”
She passes it to him, and he takes a bite before her face falls. “Wait, dammit. That was a question, sorry.”
He swallows the bite and says, “Honestly, I don’t care at this point. Just don’t do it on purpose and don’t pry.”
“You’re talking again, I notice.”
A moment of pastry eating, then, “Yeah, silence was a stupid idea, I was grasping at straws and, surprise surprise, made a bad decison that blew up in my face.”
She scoffs. “I could have told you that.”
“You didn’t, though.”
“True. You’ve been on a roll with those kinds of decisions lately.”
“Thank you, I am quite aware.”
“You’re welcome, I try my best.” She takes a sip of her drink and pulls out her own pan au chocolat.
“What inspired this sudden burst of generosity?” asks Jon, dry and idle.
“It’s been a rough couple of days, figured I could do something for you. Didn’t want you feeling lonely, with, uh…” She’s very clearly staring at the ceramic mug that he’s been holding when she came in, but as soon as she catches on that he’s catching on she looks away. “Y’know.” She takes another sip of her drink, using it as an excuse to do something else with her face.
Jon looks for a way off this topic. That particular insight into himself wasn’t something he ever wanted living anywhere other than inside his own head. “What did you get for yourself?” he asks.
She looks at her cup as she brings it away from her mouth. “Black coffee with about as much sugar as it could dissolve. I’m gonna sink myself into the library after this and read up on anything about truth spells, I’ll need help focusing.”
A sip of his tea. “Ever considered getting assessed for ADHD?”
She squints and laughs low in her throat. “Okay, armchair psychologist.”
He ignores the dig. “That’s what I always used to do when I needed to focus. Just seems familiar, is all, that and a couple other things I’ve noticed about you.”
“YouTube commenter teens used to diagnose me with it en masse on a weekly basis.” She shrugs. “Might mention it to my therapist, see what she says.”
“Nice.”
Another minute of quiet breakfast sharing. “I also wanted to apologize again,” Melanie starts. “We all definitely let that thing in the pub yesterday get too far, really stupid idea to make it so we couldn’t tell if you were actually saying it was fine to keep going or not.”
Jon’s instinct would be to say it was fine. “Thank you. That wasn’t great for me, as you could probably tell.”
She pauses for a few seconds before speaking again. “Have you… hmm.” Melanie starts. “Is there--no, would you--no.”
Jon puts down his cup. “Just say it in a question, it’s more efficient.”
She looks at him with doubt. “I just apologized for asking too many questions.”
He rolls his eyes. “I assume it isn’t something weird or prying?”
“Of course not.”
“Then just go ahead.”
“Alright, have you made any more headway on how to break your curse?”
“No,” he says, lazily. “I’m less freaked out about it than yesterday, though, so it feels less urgent.”
“I suppose that’s good, then. Would be better if we’d made some more headway, but that's what I’m going to be doing today anyway.” She goes to take a sip of her coffee, something dawns across her face, and she almost spits it out. “Wait, you’re less scared of it!”
“I guess, yeah.”
She blinks purposefully. “And not being scared of it should make it leave you alone.”
“Oh? Oh!” He bolts up straight in his seat. “You’re right, I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“Is there a way you can stop being scared of it at all now that you’re this far?”
“I don’t know, I, I don’t think so? I don’t think I can just force it.”
“Maybe you can. ” She sits forward and puts her finger on a table like she’s pointing out a spot on the map. “Do you know what it is that’s been making you more comfortable with it?”
“I--” not quite feeling like spilling everything that’s happened since he saw her last at this exact second, Jon chooses his words carefully-- “I think I have a rough idea, yes.”
“And may I know that rough idea?”
He quickly goes over a way to condense it. “Yes.”
“Then tell me.”
“I’m not sure about this, but having it make me be honest and me letting it, even encouraging it a bit. If I decide to tell someone something on my own accord and then give it permission to not let me turn back.”
Melanie claps in the air and points to him, brimming with excitement. “Yes! That makes sense! That feels right!”
Jon feels a bit giddy. “Yes, yes it does, doesn’t it?”
“This entity magic bullshit is always about intent and symbolic actions, so of course that must be it.” She sounds like she’s partially thinking out loud, eyes slightly unfocused and she runs things in her head. “So, with that figured out, if you choose something big to be up front and honest about with someone again, and you both actually want to do the honesty thing and you consciously think of it as a symbolic ‘screw this, saying true things is fine actually’ gesture, then that could break it.” Her eyes are wild. “Am I making any sense?”
“Yes, yes you are.” Jon’s heart hammers in his chest.
She purses her lips. “I need a second, this one might be a bit prying so I’m not gonna do it as a question.”
“Appreciated.”
“Sure.” She spends a moment running her tongue over her teeth until she looks like she’s satisfied. “I’m assuming that what you’ve been choosing to tell people have been significant things, not that you just don’t like their shirts or something. There’s no rush, you said you’re not very bothered at the moment, but if you’ve got something else like that bottled up inside you, then now would be a good time to start thinking about it.”
He is glad she circumvented the question. “I will take that into consideration.”
“Good, good.” She stands abruptly from her chair, grabbing her coffee and pastry. “If I don’t go type up this speculation right now, I’m gonna forget all of it, and we should definitely get this to Artefact Storage in some kind of formal way.” She turns on her heel to go, then immediately turns back. “Let me know how everything goes! If you try and it doesn’t work, try to spare me the agony of having to tell Sonja to throw out my report.”
“I will,” he says, a bit dazed.
She tries to give a thumbs up with the hand holding the pastry bag. “Oh, and try to drink your tea before it gets cold, I spent £2.45 on that.” With that, she flees out the door.
Well, uh, right, Jon thinks. That’s, that’s useful. That’s good to know. He eats some more of his pan au chocolat and mulls it over. Of course, he doesn’t have a clue what the final thing might be. He’ll have to do some soul searching if he wants to figure that out and get himself unentangled from this mess. Maybe he’ll have to take an op-ed in The Guardian, maybe he’ll have to hire a plane to write out his darkest, most innermost secrets in clouds above London, maybe he’ll have to go streaking, who knows.
He takes a sip of his tea. It’s taste is fine enough, and the warmth running down his throat is nice, but it’s still not quite right. There’s a way he likes to make it, and that was modeled on trying to recreate the way someone else makes it in their absence. He doesn’t know why that’s the only kind of tea that feels right to drink anymore, and it feels very strange to do, but nothing else is quite the same. All the reasons he can come up with are irrational and shouldn’t be the case, so he disregards them. Really, he can’t figure it out. It’s a mystery.
It’s barely perceptible, but he’s starting to get a headache.
For Christ’s sake, this is getting ridiculous. Fuck it, I know exactly what the reason is.
Martin types up another memo at his desk, trying to translate some of Peter’s strange, passive jargon in his latest email into something that real people who’ve had more than four conversations in their lives can understand and act upon. Half of him is considering sending it right back to the man with just the response “Makes no sense; be less weird. Try again.”
Distantly, he hears footsteps on the staircase across the hall. With how little goes on on the top floor nowadays, he can hear a remarkable amount of what’s happening in the rest of the old, echoey building. It’s annoying and distracting most of the time and he does occasionally see the appeal of being able to send people into the void at the wave of your hand, but he keeps his cool and stays himself to himself, and almost every time it turns out to be something completely unrelated to him.
Though the footsteps do seem to be getting louder.
Much louder, actually.
And now they’re coming down the hallway outside his door.
Without further ado, Jonathan Sims barges into the room.
Martin stares from his desk chair. “There better be another pack of murderous creatures flooding in through the Archives’ walls.” An unlikely occurrence, but it has happened twice before.
Jon’s chest heaves and he looks a bit wobbly on his feet. If he took all the stairs at a run with knees like his and there’s no emergency, Martin would not be thrilled but he would also not be surprised. “No, nothing like that.”
Martin gets to his feet, half because it feels a bit strange to have a full conversation with only one party seated and half because he foresees needing to place a gentle but firm hand on Jon’s shoulder and guide him out the door. “I’m all ears for what it really is, then.”
“There are some things I want to tell you.”
“Yeah, I guessed that.”
Jon wrings his hands together.
“I’m waiting.”
“Yes, sorry, I, I’m just trying to figure out how to phrase it.”
Martin scratches his nose. “Are you just here to waste my time, Jon?”
“No,” he says emphatically, his posture straightening and his hands unclasping from each other. “I’m here for a specific reason. I need to tell you something.”
Martin waits.
“It’s, I just…” Jon’s gaze goes straight through Martin as he tries to collect himself. “Have you heard at all what’s been going on with us downstairs for the past two days?”
Martin narrows his eyes. “No, I haven’t.”
“Oh, right, uh.” Jon scratches his top lip and shifts on his feet. “So, I got a bit cursed the other day.”
Martin blinks. “That’s not good.”
“Yeah, and it was--” he cringes “--sort of on purpose.”
“That’s…” Martin sighs and feels a tension clutch in his chest. “That is worse, to be clear, but I’m not even that surprised, honestly.”
Jon smiles sheepishly. “I had reasons for it, but still not one of my best ideas.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.” Martin looks him up and down, careful to be measured and not frantic. “You seem alright.”
“Yeah, it isn’t, it isn’t a physical curse, it’s something else. It’s essentially turned my compulsion back against me, so now I have to answer any questions put to me, with a few add ons as well.”
A little bit of the tension in Martin’s body subsides. That could be worse. “Doesn’t sound that bad.”
“It’s been, uh…” Jon trails off and glances sidelong at his shoes. “I don’t like it. I’ll be glad to not repeat the experience.”
He looks a bit morose and vulnerable, and Martin can feel two very distinct reactions to that sounding off in his mind. The first reaction is to do something comforting, to offer tea and see if there’s anything he can do to help in the short term. The second reaction is thinking that, since Jon has proved he’s not in any imminent danger that requires immediate assistance, this moment of vulnerability where he’s less apt to put up any arguments is a good one to try and get him to leave. The first feeling is much more familiar and established, and does just feel better, but the second is making some good points. There’s nothing Martin can do here, Jon just wants a sympathetic ear, and that could be anyone. “That’s all you had to tell me?”
“No,” says Jon, sharp and instant. “That’s just some lead in.”
“Okay, then I’m still waiting.”
“I…” Jon’s mouth twists up. “Sorry, I still don’t quite know how to say it.”
“Any hints?”
“I know how to break the curse, and I need you for it.” Jon blows air out through his lips. “What does it say about me that it’s almost freeing sometimes to be forced to be honest?”
“Oh, that forced you?”
“Yeah. Like I said, it’s all questions and a few other things.”
“Right.” It finally sinks in what he said a second ago. “You need me for this?”
Jon smiles. “Yes.”
Not just anyone, then.
Jon goes to speak again, and then, like before, shuts his mouth and cuts himself off short. “I can’t just say it.”
“I’m guessing that’s part of the curse, too, then. Not letting you tell people how they can break it sounds like just the type of thing we’d have to deal with.”
“No, no, quite the opposite.” Jon laughs nervously. “This is just a, um, ‘me problem.’” He looks up directly into Martin’s eyes. “I want you to ask me.”
He feels a touch of wariness. “You said you didn’t like being forced to say things.”
“I want to say this one, it just--” he pantomimes pulling at his throat-- “I can’t make myself. I’d want to say this even if I didn’t need to.”
That’s… hmm. “Right, uh.” Deep breath. This feels like it should be said with some gravitas. “What do you want to tell me? Why are you here?"
Jon’s face relaxes and a light smile sits on his lips as he talks. “You asked me the same thing the other day, funnily enough. You asked me why I’d found you, and I told the truth as best as I consciously knew it, which was that I didn’t consciously know. I felt it in me, and I knew on some subconscious level, but every time the idea would come fully into my mind, I would smack it down and dismiss it. It didn’t feel like a good enough reason, and it was scary because every time I’ve seen you recently you’ve wanted me gone. If I didn’t acknowledge it, then it couldn’t hurt me.”
Depending on how this speech concludes, this might end very badly or very well for Martin. Likely both at the same time.
“Of course, the answer was incredibly obvious. I found you because I wanted to see you. I was feeling tired and mopey, and I enjoy being around you, so I sought you out. There are other people I can talk to, but they aren’t you. It was that simple, but trying to say it or even think it directly was like trying to reach through a television screen to take a character’s newspaper.”
Martin barely even thinks before speaking again. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
Jon swallows. “Not tell, no. There’s something I want to do.”
Christ, this is definitely ending both wonderfully and terribly. “Then do it.”
Jon worries at his lip and puts his hand on Martin’s elbow, thinks better of it, moves it to his shoulder, thinks better of it, and moves it to his cheek. “You’d like me to?”
Was that threaded with compulsion? Martin can’t tell. “Yes.”
Without a second of hesitation, Jon closes his eyes and comes in to kiss him.