Chapter Text
If Jon didn’t acknowledge how much his kidnapping changed him, hurt him, he could keep all of his vulnerability and shame and grief hidden deep down inside him where no one had to look at it. No one would have to think about it; he wouldn’t have to think about it and it would all go away.
Right?
It wasn’t like he’d been beaten, or injured beyond where the ties bit into his skin as he struggled in vain. As far as kidnappings go, Jon rather thought his experience tame when compared to what could have happened.
Nikola could have kept all her many promises, could have taken his hide.
She could be wearing it right now, readying herself to dance the Unknowing.
Micheal could have killed him had Helen not so fortuitously appeared and whisked him away.
So, shouldn’t he be grateful? Focus on the positive; that he was alive and mostly well despite the tectonic shifting of his sense of self?
Wasn’t it ungrateful of him to take this gift and squander it, to feel sorry for himself when so many others never had even a chance? Stories already written once they drew the attention of that which crawled and choked and blinded and fell and twisted and left and hid and wove and burned and hunted and ripped and bled, and died. Like Tim’s little brother, Danny. He hadn’t a hope in the world once the need to know and to understand and to discover grabbed hold of him, leading him right into their claws.
Leading Tim right to the Institute.
Leading right to him.
Jon scrubbed a too-soft palm down his face, digging the tips of his fingers hard into his temples in an attempt to stave off his steadily worsening headache. Lord, he was tired, so tired of it all. Coughing lightly into his elbow, he curled up under the quilt, silently thanking Martin when it soothed the chills wracking him from top to toe. He was just rundown. That was all. Anyone would be after spending a month in those accomodations.
Inhale.
Hold.
Exhale.
Repeat.
And gradually, Jon began to sink, the exhaustion rooted in his marrow tugging him further and further away from document storage and into something adjacent to sleep. Underwater, rocked back and forth by an undulant current, Jon let it all go.
A veritable mountain of paper carpeted the surface of his desk and Jon wished he could lose himself in the work of untangling the myriad threads connecting each statement to another (to another to another) if only to stop his mind descending into darker thoughts. He drank the tea Martin provided, even ate a biscuit or two when he wasn’t paying close attention, and poured over hundreds of files with the feverish ardor of one living on borrowed time. The answers were here, in the tapes, in the pages yellowed with age. He just wasn’t quite certain of the question. Even now, the statements seemed random, and Jon wasn’t willing to ask anyone else to put themselves in danger poking around alone. The Unknowing was coming. Nikola would find another costume eventually and for that Jon was so, so sorry.
Unfortunately, no amount of Martin’s tea seemed sufficient to clear away the fog that settled over his mind like clotted cream, thick and impenetrable. It was a wonder he could keep a thought in his head at all. The door slammed open, startling him enough he dropped his pen and scattered his notes.
“Here.”
“Uh.” Jon stared at the folder in Tim’s outstretched hand, bewilderment written all over his pallid face. If Tim weren’t so interested in his petty revenge, he might’ve worried.
“You asked for this.” He hadn’t. Hadn’t asked for anything lately. But Tim had been messing with him for days now just to regain some sense of control over this place. Let Jon be paranoid about something real for once.
“I, I did?” Nope.
“Figures.” Tim threw the folder down on the desk and watched Jon scramble to keep the pages together when they spilled across the blotter. “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”
“I. No.” Somehow, Jon’s face fell even further. “But I, I’m making progress! At l’least--at least I hope I am.” Watching Jon struggle because of him assuaged the creeping, crawling desire to lash out at anything that moved, and Tim reveled in it.
“And you,” Tim paused, articulation pointed and sharp enough to cleave, “think that’s good enough. That you’re the one we should be trusting to make decisions.”
“I don’t--” Jon cut himself off, a flipbook of emotions passing over his face too quickly to interpret. “I don’t.”
“Spit it out.” That earned him a stern look, some of the old Jon peeking through the veil.
“I don’t want anyone else to be hurt.”
“As if you have any say in that.”
“Maybe I don’t.” Jon drew himself up to his full, diminutive height in his chair, squaring his shoulders and furrowing his brows. He’d always seemed bigger than he was. His nettlesome personality was successful as both a mask and a barrier that kept everyone at arm's length enough to hide the deep well of insecurity growing at his core. Now, he just looked small, like a child playing make-believe against real monsters that would do harm. “It doesn’t mean I get to stop trying.” For all the good it did any of them.
“And what does that mean for us?” The force of Tim’s palms striking the edges of the desk triggered an avalanche of documents, the susurrations of shifting paper interspersed with collisions like thunder. Jon shrank back, all pretense of bravery gone, and Tim smirked. He’d done that. Made him afraid. In the quiet, the creak of wood under Tim’s grip echoed like a gunshot. "You're no hero." His bitter laugh was the last nail in the lid of Jon’s coffin, and he crumpled under the weight of Tim’s stare, turning away, bottom lip quivering. Tim left him gathering horrors with trembling hands.
“Going out. Get your coat.” Jon startled. Tim never spoke to him if he could help it. Not since before he'd been taken, and certainly not after their last conversation.
“Wh’what?”
“Pub. Martin’s coming.”
“Oh. Uh, alright then.” His assistant was already gone, Jon could hear him shouting at Martin from across the archives. It sounded good. Right, like a missing puzzle piece finally found and it lifted the weight sitting heavy in Jon’s stomach enough for him to breathe around the ache. Maybe this was Tim’s way of letting Jon know he was ready to forgive him. He pulled on an old uni jumper, now large on his lanky frame, and joined Martin at the door, offering up a tentative smile when he was greeted in kind.
“Glad you could join us, Jon.”
The walk was pleasant, Tim filling up the space with good-natured chattering while Jon hurried to keep pace. He didn’t want to think about how exposed he was out here, instead pressing as close to Martin as he dared, hoping the bigger man wouldn’t take notice. It felt safe, or something close to it, and Jon swiped his eyes as surreptitiously as he could in the dark when the sodium glare on the pavement began to blur.
It wasn’t a good idea, but Jon downed the shot Tim handed him anyway, losing himself in the burn of cheap vodka long enough to be pushed into a booth, a pint shoved into his hand. Martin took pity on him and slid beside him, his warmth rushing in, blanketing Jon in the faint smell of bergamot. He took a sip of foam.
Hours passed. Jon was pleasantly loose, head fuzzy, the sounds of other patrons a far-away hum. Tim was telling stories about their time in research; pranks he’d pulled at the expense of Jon’s pride, those times they’d taken turns dragging the other home after they’d gotten caught up in one project or another. Jon caught Martin grinning at him more than once, a flush drawn liberally across his face as if with a wide brush. Jon grinned back; shy. Blaming it on the drink to no one but himself. Good lord, he was tired, body heavy, the desire to just allow himself the relief of leaning against Martin, soft and shielded, becoming impossible to ignore. Surely, he wouldn’t mind. Would let him rest. For a moment, nothing more.
“--Sasha loved that.” Like a bucket of ice water, reality flooded in, sharp and sour. “Right, Jon?”
“Eh. R’right.”
“Never could leave well enough alone, could she? Our Sash.”
“Tim?”
“Jon here has some stories, I’m sure! Never been against a bit of rule-bending, ‘ey?” Tim’s inhospitable expression belied his jovial tone.
“Um. N’no.”
“And yet, for all your daring, she’s the one who’s gone.” Martin went stiff beside him, catching on in the time it took for Jon’s head to straighten itself out. “I mean. You’re supposed to Know everything.”
“No. It. I n’never--” Tim cut him off, voice even and razor-keen.
“It should have been easy, Jon. Did you even try to keep us safe?” Pushing himself away from the table, Tim scoffed. “I’m just trying to understand here.”
“Oy, leave off.”
“What? You don’t like it? The truth? Without you and me, Martin, he’d be completely alone.” Tim slugged back his drink, slamming it down with enough force to make Jon flinch, curl into himself in shame. “Who else wants anything to do with you?”
“Tim-!”
“N’no, Martin. He’s. I suppose he’s right, yeah?” Just please don’t leave him alone. He’d made mistakes. He understood. And even if Tim had planned this all along, even if he’d faked all his niceties, Jon preferred that to abandonment. He’d never recover if they left him. Please.
Please.
“Yeah,” Tim agreed, laughter limned with cruelty. “I’m right.” He reached over- sneering when Jon couldn’t suppress a tiny yelp of fear- to drain his pint too. “I’m always right and you always wanted this job.” Jon felt his jaw drop at the accusation, throat working uselessly. “You took it from Sasha because you knew, didn’t you?” The way he said it was so matter of fact that Jon almost thought it was true.
“No! That’s-- that’s not what happened!” Even to Jon’s own ears, it sounded as though he were whining despite the hoarseness of his voice.
“Sasha was better qualified than you and you couldn’t just let her have the thing she’d worked for her whole career.” Of course she was. Talented, beautiful Sasha whose face he couldn’t even remember without that thing in the way. “Gertrude saw her potential.” Tim leaned in, breath stinking of beer. Jon was trapped. Which was ridiculous. This was Tim. Tim wouldn’t hurt him. No matter how angry he was. “Just admit it, you’ll feel better.”
“I. I didn’t.” Didn’t he though? Hadn’t he basically asked Elias for the job by accepting that interview?
“Makes a man wonder just what you had to do, Jon. To get here.”
Martin may have made sure he got back to the Institute, but Jon didn’t remember the walk, just the numbness and trembling of his arms, like Jude hadn’t left well enough alone with his hand. Martin was gentle with him, more so than Jon could ever deserve, and he couldn’t even thank him. All the words he wanted to say were stopped up behind the lump in his throat.
Martin didn’t apologize for Tim, didn’t make excuses, and for that, Jon was grateful. It was already taking everything he had left in him not to break down and beg him to style; to admit he was scared of being alone because the fragments of himself were that much harder to keep hold of without the constant reminder of his presence.
Martin left him to the cot, slipping away with a quiet, “good night.”
Jon dreams.
He dreams that he’s still there and wakes with the taste of blood behind his teeth from his screaming. Nikola may not have taken his skin, but she may very well have taken the rest of him. He feels the phantom press of her plastic fingers as she draws imaginary lines across his skin, slick with lotion that overwhelms his senses, that floods the room with a smell he can’t quite describe but would know anywhere. Unscented. Not quite. Not when there was so much of it covering every part of him.
Like clockwork, they came.
He hears her words and trembles under her unwanted touch and heaves when she pours all her wretched knowledge of skinning a being alive into his eyes until he’s so full of dread he thinks he might die from it. Jon can see his own terror, trace where she had traced, an invisible scar no one would ever understand mapping the road of arteries and veins she threatened to nick.
Messy business, she’d said, being flayed.
But she'd had so much practice.
His office is abruptly too small, the walls closing in on him, sliding closer and closer until he’s certain he’ll be crushed. He stood, violently enough that his chair went skidding into a corner, crushing statements in its wake, and nearly collapsed when dizziness washed over him. Out. Out. He had to get out. The door stretched farther away with every step Jon took, reaching, scrabbling for the knob, nearly panicked enough he failed to open it on the first try. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t. All the air was gone, squeezed from his chest with a hacking cough that wouldn’t stop. Black threatened to swallow him up, steal him away.
The cement of the archive floor pressed painfully into every joint, exacerbating their ache, and a warbling noise very gradually transformed itself into his name repeated anxiously.
"Jon?" Martin coalesced above him, out of focus but unmistakable. Strong hands pressed along either side of his face, holding him still. One slid carefully to his brow. "Warm," muttered to himself as though confirming a hypothesis. "Jon?"
"Hafta…" like marbles in his mouth, Jon's words slid over each other, crashed together, more syllable and sound than anything intelligible.
“Shh, take a minute.” Martin’s voice reverberated in his ears, fading in and out like it was coming from underwater, while Jon tried to pull together all his disparate pieces. “Are you with me?”
“Wi...M’with…” He couldn’t bring himself to speak above the whisper catching on a desert-dry tongue flooded with salt. He could barely bring himself to breathe for fear of cracking completely in half and exposing his sawdust insides.
“Okay. Just relax.” Martin stroked his cheek, let him stay there, pillowed in his lap, and cocooned in safety.
He woke later, muzzy and distant, blinking up at a familiar ceiling and hemmed in by file cabinets. The sound of a page turning drew his attention and he let his head loll to the side. Martin looked up from the little book of poetry he was flipping through, smiling with what might have been relief.
“Hey there.”
“‘Ullo.” Jon croaked, letting his eyes drift closed again.
Jon was at a loss, caught between all the wrong choices, and while he wouldn’t admit to outright hiding from Tim, he certainly wasn’t going out of his way to find him. Instead, he tried to keep away from everyone and their judgment, too fragile to sustain the enormous weight of it on his brittle heart. Ever since coming to with Martin and his poetry beside him, Jon had felt wrong, somehow. Like he was lingering a half-step behind his own body and watching himself perform a poor imitation of one Jonathan Sims.
Inhuman.
Disconnected.
Nothing felt genuine or substantial, as though, if he attempted it, he’d be able to pass through walls, straying aimlessly through dark hallways and winding up places with no memory of how he’d come to be there. Mugs, files, pens, tape recorders all seemed the same. Only objects, unfamiliar in his hands until he’d come back from wherever he’d gone away to and startled, badly enough once that he dropped the tea, long cold, convinced it was spiders. He didn’t remember slicing open his burned hand on broken ceramic until Martin tugged him into a chair to bandage it. There wasn’t much feeling in it anymore and while his skin was so sensitive the brush of his oversized clothes was like claws raking across his body, the pressure exerted by Martin’s skillful fingers as he dabbed away old clotted blood and wrapped it neat and tidy with a bright white bandage, was grounding.
“Jon?”
“Mm?” He got the sense that Martin had been trying to get his attention for several minutes. He had to look away from the worry in his face, lest he break down entirely.
“I was saying, you don’t look well.”
“It’s fine, Martin.” Jon pressed the heel of his good hand against a closed eye. The throbbing behind it made it hard to think. “Tired, is all. Please.” He had to take a moment to get himself under control, the ache of being witnessed cloying in his throat. “Don’t.”
“How can you justify whatever you do in here all day while we’re being hunted?”
“Tim.” Jon couldn’t keep the pleading note out of his voice. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to argue.
“What, Jon? What?”
“I’m trying to help!”
"You're bloody well taking your time!”
“I, I don’t know what you want from me!” He didn’t mean it, didn’t mean to yell. He didn’t want to fight, least of all with Tim, but everything was so mixed up, pieces missing, and his coworker spinning riddles like yarn. “Just tell me! Tell me and I’ll do it.” Tell me how to fix it. Tim’s unkind laughter cut through him like an icy winter wind.
“But you're not trying, are you?" Tim got close, so close that Jon’s ears shook with his roar. “You just let things happen to you!” Red washed over everything, blotted out Jon’s vision.
“Oh yes, Tim!” Hurling his name like an expletive, Jon stared up at him, narrow chest heaving, uneven and fast. “I just let the Circus have me. I just let them t’t. T, touch me!” Breath catching in his chest, Jon felt the tears begin to fall, hot and embarrassing. “You know nothing about how hard I'm trying!” The whole of him was shaking now, shuddering as he sucked down noisy gulps of air. “Always sulking! Maybe if you’d been paying better attention you’d have noticed Sasha was gone!”
“Don’t.” Tim’s voice was low and dangerous, the rattling warning of a snake fixing to strike. But Jon couldn’t stop, filled to bursting with recklessness, intoxicated by danger and dizziness.
“You claim to know me so well, Tim, but clearly, you never knew her!” Lunging with a hoarse cry, Tim snatched him up by his collar to yank him close enough he was on his toes.
"Should've been you." And it was Daisy, of all people, that shoved herself between them and stopped it going any further.
“He’s not worth it, Tim.” She jeered as she pulled him bodily away, his fingers separating from Jon’s collar with a reluctance Jon could feel in his bones.
He wasn’t. He wanted to be.
He shouldn’t have said that. Not to Tim.
He had to start doing the right things. Acting the right way. Then Tim would stop looking at him like that. Like he’d been replaced.
Like Sasha.
With legs made of jelly, Jon limped along the hallway in the opposite direction and took refuge in the restroom, begging his innards to calm while he splashed his face with cool water from the tap. He stared grimly into the mirror, setting his shoulders, and examined the gaunt lines of an unfamiliar mask, watched the liquid trace paths he didn’t recognize. The dissonance was overwhelming. This was someone else. This was a stranger. This was unequivocally, irrevocably him. Without looking away, Jon reached for a handful of paper towel and scrubbed his face clean. When the reflection gawking back at him seemed no less alien, he scoured his skin until it was raw and red, until his eyes watered with unshed tears.
Maybe he’d been replaced after all. Maybe Nikola took his skin and left him with this. Or maybe he was still there and this was just his hell.
So, he forced himself to look. To look, and look, and look until moisture stung his cheeks, dripping from a trembling jaw. Until he lost the battle with his stomach and was sick with the sight of himself, his not self, turning just in time to dry heave into a toilet bowl, violent spasms arching his back, drawing straining muscles tight enough Jon could feel his shoulder blades trying to escape his skin as he clutched the porcelain for dear life and was finally, finally allowed to close his lips around a silent sob.
He collapsed, then, against the tile, his chest heaving, hitching, fists curled, convulsing.
No noise. Mustn’t make noise. Noise means violence. Threats. Fear. Touching.
No. No noise. His voice was worth less than nothing anyway.