Archive of Our Own

“Jon.”

He clenches his fists. The softness in the other man’s voice makes his stomach clench.

“Jon,” Elias- Jonah- Elias, if he can’t have anything else he can at least cause the petty irritation of calling him by the wrong name- says again. “Come here.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but to his horror a jagged sob comes out instead. One they start, he can’t stop them coming; all he can do is put his hands to his mouth to muffle them and try not to let them bow his shoulders.

A perfectly manicured hand alights on his shoulder. “Let him go, Jon. It’s all over now. The worst is over. If you let him go, nothing else can hurt you .”

Let him go , he didn’t think even Elias could be so callous, when Martin-

“Nothing but you, you mean,” he spits out instead of dwelling on the thought of that. He means for it to be acidic and cutting, but he can’t make his breath even out enough, and instead the syllables are hiccupped out one at a time in between wracking sobs.

The hand creeps forward, coming around to wrap around his chest and pull him back into Elias. His head is buzzing too much with the crying and the hatred and the grief to organize a physical resistance, so he goes, half-collapses backward into Elias’ embrace. “ Why would I want to hurt you?” His other hand comes up to pet Jon’s hair, making Jon shudder as his voice goes low. “My perfect Archive.”

The moniker feels like worms crawling into his flesh, a mark of ownership and failure. How could he have thought that he’d be allowed to use its power against Elias? He hadn’t, deep down! He’d always suspected he would fail, but he hadn’t made Martin stay behind, and now-

He jerks away. “You have hurt me!” He turns, gesturing wildly at his whole self, the scars that litter every inch of him, inside and out. “You may not have held the knife, but it was still you- you orchestrating it, arranging it, choosing not to stop it!” He hates that the words still won’t come smoothly.

Elias looks him up and down, and Jon burns under his gaze as it seems to fix on each scar in turn, every individual pockmark and windburnt alveolus. He can’t seem to remove himself from the study, fixed in place like an amoeba in a microscope slide, frame still crying convulsively with every breath. When finally, finally, the inventory is complete, Elias’ face goes even softer as he meets Jon’s eyes. Jon hates it, hates him. “I won’t let you go through something like that again.”

Jon takes a step back, wants to scoff only it comes out more like a wail. “Unless you do it yourself!”

Elias looks at him with the kind of pity one gives a particularly dense student. “Why would I hurt you, Jon? Martin,” he sneers the name, “was the last thing preventing you from embracing your full potential.” He smiles. “You’re perfect. My David, with no more marble to chip away.”

Anger surges up in him, and Jon lunges at Elias, but the other man catches his hands easily, holding his wrists together between them with one hand. “This will scar, in time. Like all the others. I’ll give you some time alone to grieve.” He says the last as though he’s doing Jon some grand favor, before pushing him down onto a chaise that hadn’t been behind him a moment ago and sweeping out of the room before he can leap up and attack him again.

-

It’s both an icy shock and wholly expected when he finds that he cannot leave the top levels of the Panopticon, now that he’s here. He knows Elias must be there, too, but apparently he meant it when he said he’d leave Jon alone. Jon can’t find him, either by searching conventionally or trying to Know. He’s alone.

He hasn’t been alone, properly alone, since the Change. Just that terrible period when he’d thought he’d well and truly lost Martin to the Lonely’s embrace, and he’d been too frantic trying to find him again to really ruminate on his solitude. Now he has nothing to do but think about it, and he can feel the Lonely nipping at his heels.

There are other entertainments in his prison, technically. There’s a library, seemingly infinite in both contents and architecture. If time still held meaning, he might have said he spent an entire day on the floor crying when he skimmed through the shelves and came across a book of poetry. Here, the period goes unmeasured. It wasn’t even good poetry.

Even with the library sectioned off by his grief, there’s still a pool, a gym, a tennis court- every absurd entertainment someone with too much money and not enough sense might think to squeeze into their home. And who can forget the endless delights of looking out one of the omnipresent bay windows (most with window seats, plush and exactly the kind he’d fantasized about as a child) to gaze upon the suffering masses?

He can’t See any of those he’d like to, of course. Basira, Melanie, and Georgie are still hidden- he wonders how long it will take them to realize he and Martin had failed, what they’ll try next- and Martin and Daisy have gone somewhere he can never See, like Tim and Sasha before them. The closest thing to a friendly acquaintance, even, who isn’t hidden from him is Oliver Banks. And checking in on the current state of the Coroner’s apathetic nihilism hardly does anything positive for his own mood.

He spends a lot of time in the too-large bed he’d claimed. The room itself had been empty when he’d finally gotten sick of wandering and decided to rest regardless of whether he technically needed it , one of dozens of bedrooms scattered throughout the building (as if there would ever be guests here), but once he’d made himself at home more personal items started to appear. The empty dresser and closet filled with clothes; nearly every item had a subtle eye pattern woven into the cloth or embroidered on. The en suite bathroom had filled with toiletries- not exactly the ones he’d bought for himself, before, but more expensive products with similar scents. He’d nearly quit the room entirely, to choose another or take his restless naps on window seats or floors instead, when the handful of personal items he’d left in the Archives when he and Martin had fled to Scotland had started showing up in drawers and on tabletops. Only the thought that they’d likely follow him wherever else in the Panopticon he started to spend his time keeps him in place.

He left it all alone. He didn’t want anything Elias had given him, and his influence was obvious even if his presence wasn’t. But even without the need to eat or sleep, the grime that had accumulated on his skin eventually made itself known. He told himself, when he cautiously ran a shower and stripped, that he would be brief, that he wouldn’t let the pile of worn and filthy clothing out of his sight. He must blink, though, or his attention wanders, because at some point the whole ragged stack, down to the overlarge jumper he’d stolen from Martin before the Change, vanishes. The shower isn’t brief; however long he stays collapsed on the tile, immobilized by his latest loss and latest flood of tears, the hot water never runs out.

When he finally pulls himself up, he’s tempted to stay wrapped in the fluffy bath sheet as a motion of fruitless rebellion instead of wearing the clothes Elias provided. But the towel is from him as well; everything Jon has came from him, from his bed to the power that still gives him a sick rush when he stretches it.

The clothes still feel like a collar, a mark of ownership. When he breathes, sometimes he thinks he exhales curling mist .

-

He’s been staring out one of the big windows, looking blankly without either seeing or Seeing, for long enough to nearly forget that anything outside his limited gaze exists. The streets are far enough below him that movement there does little to change the view; he can just lose himself in the expanse until he can start to feel the sting of Knowing fading at the edges with icy mist. Would it be so bad, to let the Lonely have him instead? Would it ease the ever-present pain in his chest, or intensify it? The constant stream of fear he feeds on is such a constant it fades into the background; that pain is the only sensation that can hold his attention anymore, and he bounces between wanting it gone and prodding at it by dredging up regrets and fading memories. The fog muddles them, but the hurt remains. He thinks sometimes that the pain’s always been there, and he’s always been here, and anything else is just a daydream.

A warm, broad hand presses against his back, palm flat to his spine. Jon jerks, spinning around. It’s been so long since he’s seen another person before him, without Beholding mediating his gaze, that it feels like it takes too long to parse the figure into a man. Into Elias.

“ Hello, Jon.” He smiles as though he’s met Jon by chance on the street, the whole thing a delightful coincidence, and sits beside him on the window seat without invitation, pressing their sides together. The contact almost burns, after so long with the fog and nothingness.

It takes him too long to marshal enough coherency for a response. “Elias.” It feels like he should move away, break the contact, but the anger is as inaccessible as every other feeling besides grief.

“ Are you feeling better, now?” Elias leans in closer. Jon blinks slowly. Better than what? Asking questions brings back the panicky knowledge that something in his mind is slipping away the longer he remains. He can’t quite remember how he’d ended up here. Had Martin been dead before or after he’d tried to kill Elias? How had he died? He couldn’t remember, and the Eye was no help. The entire incident should be within the Archive, but the details of any of its contents are difficult to parse, shrouded in obscuring mist. The statement from the woman whose son had been eaten by the sky- was that Mike Crew’s mother? Had the cadaver at the university spoken to Oliver or Georgie? Which statements had he taken live? He doesn’t know, and the Archive won’t give up those secrets .

Elias- is he Elias? This is why he’s taken to looking out the window; it’s less confusing- tucks a crooked finger beneath Jon’s chin, turning his head to look into his eyes. “ Jon. I asked you a question.”

He furrows his brow. “Did you? I’m…” Is he supposed to be sorry to Elias? Isn’t he angry with him?

Elias smiles indulgently. “It’s alright. Does it hurt less?”

No question what that’s about. He thinks Elias already knows, but he answers anyway. “No.”

“ Would you like it to?”
He’s not meant to. The pain is important, is- is Martin . He’s supposed to hold on to Martin, so he can’t let it go.

Elias’ face goes soft, as though he can hear Jon’s thoughts. Maybe he’d said them aloud. “There’s nothing there any more, Jon.” Because Martin is dead. Martin, who’d loved Jon, the only one, Martin, who’d- “You know he’d want you to move on. He’d want what’s best for you.”

“ What’s that?” He’s so confused, and tired, and Elias looks at him so kindly. Martin had wanted him to be happy.

“Would you like me to show you, Archive?”

He wants to nod, only- he can’t, he can’t get to the Archive any more, it’s all mixed up and blocked. If the Archive isn’t for him, then neither is the offer. Maybe Elias Sees the impulse, because he weaves fingers through Jon’s hair and then he isn’t seeing Elias any more.

There is a man, young and unsure, who Jon distantly realizes is himself. He stumbles through his interview, nervous to be applying for his first real job in academia, but he is qualified, and the mark of the Web shines bright on him. There’s something in his- Elias’?- mind he hasn’t quite settled on yet, but it never hurts to have a convenient piece to hand, even if it goes unused.

He is sitting in the center of a prison, inmates Watched a nd writhing a ll around him as Beholding presses heavy upon them all, and it’s glorious. He Knows exactly what he is meant for as it all crests to a peak and-

His younger self is stumbling through his first recordings as Head Archivist, and he feels an echo of that triumph, certain this time his plan will not be torn asunder at the last moment.

His Archivist is taking to the role better than he could have hoped, and he spends hours watching him furiously try to unravel mysteries and uncover secrets, feeding their patron slices of his soul with every all night research session he persists through despite the various bandages and injuries he accumulates.

His Archivist Knows more, has learned some of those secrets, but still searches just as fervently. He Watches him even when he isn’t working, drinking in the way he slumps into bed and almost immediately gives in to the even breaths of sleep as greedily as he had the way he presses record on a tape.

He is in a library, torn between relief and regret as he decides there is no way to stop the Rituals without giving himself over to one of the Dread Powers. He shivers as he feels the first threads of Beholding’s might creep through his veins at the decision, and it is ecstasy and defeat at once. Years later, he’ll look back at this moment and feel sure the moment he gave in was the best decision he ever made, finally feeling at home in his place and his power in the way his human self could never manage.

He has to spend the anxious moments waiting for his Archivist to emerge from the Lonely elsewhere, but he still feels the urge, when the man finally appears, fully marked, his Archive , to grasp him by the shoulders and embrace him.

The Archivist trembles and snaps at the assistants surrounding him, before he knows what he is, as he’s learning it, when he’s finally chosen power and life and been rewarded for it. None of them understand him, understand what he’s Becoming, and it almost saddens him that he cannot share with his Archivist the memories of his own journey. No one knows better what he’s going through, but to do so would stunt his development, cut his potential off at the knees. Instead he Watches, ever transfixed .

The Archive travels through the world they’ve made, glorious and powerful despite the irritant still attached to his side. He’s been obsessed with the Archive, fond of it, possessive, related to the man and shaped the monster, but it isn’t until he brings down the power of their God to annihilate his enemies that he realizes he’s in love. Has been in love. It’s been so long since he’s felt it, after all. He aches when his Archive startles at the power; all he has to do is accept it, and they can be united with each other and their patron and the world they’ve crafted. He wants it.

Jon’s vision clears, and he gasps and heaves as he tries to sort through the memories, to assemble meaning from disconnecting image and feeling. There are two strong arms wrapped around him, holding him up, holding him in. “ You just need to accept it, my Archive,” Elias whispers into his hair, “And we can be happy. You have the entire world; don’t you want happiness to complete it?”

“They hurt me,” he mutters, seeing the progression of scars and bandages that had decorated his younger self. He can feel the Eye, the Archive, throbbing in his head, practically begging him to dive into the endless knowledge and fear they offer and forget everything else.

“I won’t let you go through something like that again.”

And Jon believes him, leans into his warmth as he lets collected fear and memory overtake him, power crackling and making his hair stand on end. Elias leans back, eyes wide, and looks at him . Jon doesn’t know what the look on his face means. “Elias,” he says, an order and a plea.

Elias smiles, and Jon mirrors it; if Elias is smiling then it must be alright. “You’re beautiful.”

“Oh.” He feels so much , the lines between himself and the statements and Elias and the Eye blurring together until he’s almost sure they’ve always been a single being, that it feels only natural to catch a thread of feeling tying him to the man in front of him, to follow its impulse and lean in for a kiss.