Archive of Our Own

---

Jon's daemon vanished with the old world. She's either at the Panopticon or she's gone altogether. Hard to say which is better to hope for.

"We might as well have severed a long time ago," Jon says when the latest statement has faded from his throat, and with it the unsatisfied man now pulled in every direction by daemons who would never stay and who were not his own. "I wasn't expecting to see her after I woke up. We already had more time than we deserved."

"That's good though, isn't it? Doesn't everybody want more time?" Martin asks, whose first reaction to his mother's passing was relief. Nobody else knows that, unless Jon's looked. Nobody except Molly, who doesn't have to carry the secret anymore. Nobody except Peter, who guessed and thought it was funny.

Jon looks at him blankly. Jon is all eyes now, piercing pupils expanding and contracting, eyes that never close and yet he still manages to look right through Martin like he's not there. Martin relaxes.

"It was cruel." Jon swallows. "She shouldn't - She didn't deserve that."

Martin doesn't ask what Jon thinks he deserves. Frankly Jon's already made his opinions a little too clear on that. "She always seemed alright when I saw her?" Hardly happy, but Sofia never had been, at least as far as Martin could tell. For a while Martin thought there was something about him specifically that bothered her - there definitely was something bothering Jon - until he realised she jumped and fluttered like that at everyone when they walked in. The only time he ever saw her stay settled was around Elias, wings flattened to the ground like she was swooning.

He remembers with awful clarity when all of this was coming out into the light - when Jon decided to confront Elias, as if that could have stopped any of this, and Elias had just looked so desperately smug. Elias' awful hawk had stood over Sofia, beak lowered, and thinking back Martin isn't sure whether it was predatory or reverential. Either way, the memory makes him sick.

Jon chuckles softly, breaking Martin’s thoughts free with the discrepancy. "Yes, I suppose she did."

Martin waits, but apparently Jon thinks that's enough to go back to staring into the middle distance. Not that there is a middle distance now - Martin just prefers not to think about Jon staring at the Panopticon with his face soft and brows lightly furrowed.

"Was she pretending?" Jon is hilariously and appallingly bad at deception, but he’d hardly be the first person whose daemon had different strengths.

"No. It's just faulty data."

Martin laughs awkwardly. Jon does not, and even if Jon usually has no idea how to act like a normal person, he does generally at least smile to show when he's making a joke. He doesn't do that now. Martin breaks off. "Wait, I don't get it."

Jon lifts one shoulder in a shrug. It's like a lot of his movements now: sluggish, detached, impersonal. It isn't Martin he's pushing away though, it's himself. Like he's possessing his own body. "You were around. Of course she looked better."

It takes Martin a moment to process the implication, if only because it's so instinctive for him to push that thought away. Jon can't think like that; Jon can't feel like that; Jon can't -

"Oh."

"Exactly."

It took Martin so long to realise that when Jon is angry in a certain way, it means he's embarrassed. It was such an incredible revelation, as if he'd cracked some sort of code and now Jon was a human that he could comprehend. Completely stupid, really - Molly had been right to ask just what he’d thought Jon was before.

"I assumed something similar was happening with you."

"What?"

Jon clears his throat, hunching down into his coat. "Well, whenever we - I saw you and you - She seemed - " He coughs again, skin beginning to darken. Someone avoiding eye contact is such a strange effect when they have that many eyes.

It dawns on Martin, incredible and horrible. "Molly, you mean." Jon carries on avoiding him. "You thought she - " What, exactly? What did Jon think? It can't be that he thought she looked happy. Towards the end, she was barely there at all.

"It's nothing," Jon grumbles. "I was being ridiculous. Fanciful. Optimism bias."

"Opti - " Martin starts to echo, before trailing off into a laugh and a shake of his head at Jon's utter inability to say what he's really thinking. "You didn't realise how bad it was."

"I should have." Jon's eyes flare a little. "I should have noticed before it was too late. I should have helped, I should have - "

"Hey." Martin stops; reaches out and grabs Jon's hands, feeling the difference between clear palm and burn scar. Jon's eyes are still turned towards the Panopticon, so Martin tugs again, stepping closer, until one by one they all slowly turn back towards him. "You didn't know. That's okay. That's normal. That's human."

"I wasn't - "

Martin catches him before the same old self-loathing can leech into the air. His first instinct is to kiss him, only that doesn't solve anything. Instead he uses his hand on the back of Jon's neck to pull him in to rest their foreheads together. He shouldn't do this for long - the difference in their heights means that he can already feel a twinge building between his shoulderblades - but he can do it for as long as it takes.

As long as Jon needs.

---

Peter Lukas didn't have a daemon, so Martin doesn’t either. That's all there is to it.

Waking up in Scotland, for the longest time Martin thought the nightmare was over. He had been weighed down with tiredness from the trains and the drive and everything beforehand, but now he was comfortable and warm and not alone. Everything would be alright. The world existed in a soft sepia haze of comfort and thin curtains. Someone was breathing softly next to him, intimate, loving. For a while, drifting in and out of consciousness, Martin got to live out just one of the dreams he used to have. The one where all that mattered was being happy.

Except then he turned, and as much as the sight of Jon lit up his pathetic little heart, there was only one shape in the bed next to him. And nothing had really been fixed after all.

Sofia had always been odd, because Jon was exceedingly odd and Martin delighted in telling him this again and again. Jon blushed and smiled and did a thousand things Martin never thought he'd see but which unavoidably and unquestionably meant that he loved. It would never be quite enough, Martin knew; he let it soothe the panic a little anyway. Sofia scurried into hiding when he did this and peeked out through Jon's hair. Other times she hovered in front of his face, an inch away, as best she could with her wings, until Martin gave her somewhere to land.

Their distance was extraordinary, to the point where they didn’t seem to realise if the other one wasn’t around. Martin had never seen anyone so absent-minded about their own soul. Even he’d made a choice. He didn't just forget.

Jon ran through all the ways the powers had torn souvenirs from him, steady as reading an itinerary and also shaking with fear and tears. Martin always listened. After all those violations, it was still sickening that Sofia was so accepting of being touched, but at least he understood why. It actually didn’t have anything to do with Molly. Or it didn’t have to.

Molly would have hated the stairs in the cottage, just as much as she’d hated the narrow terrace where they’d grown up. Everything creaking under her weight with no room and the constant pressing sense of a space not made for you. Martin sympathised. Now he felt that all on his own as the wood shifted under him, the banister making his steps less steady. It was easier without worrying if she’d make it up. Everything was easier.

Jon was always cold. Always. Martin had known this a little from the Archives, how even in the obligatory annual London heatwave Jon would find it necessary to layer up, but the temperature had been so carefully regulated down there and Martin had wondered as the statements piled up whether it was a comfort thing too. Now Jon felt he could cling on for warmth and Martin was deeply concerned. The first time cold hands had slipped under his jumper, he’d almost screamed. Molly would have been perfect, the furry furnace. Martin touched Sofia all the time, after all. It would have only been fair to reciprocate.

The people in the nearby village had been so lovely about Sofia. They told Martin she suited him, the browns the same as the streaks left in his hair, the greens and blacks shimmering with splendour. They were right that she was beautiful. Molly had used to nip at him and grumble when he’d stared too often, too closely, especially when Jon had been talking about emulsifiers or ergot poisoning or whatever else had him lighting up like stained glass. She’d also told him it wasn't his business if he took in tea and saw Sofia lying so very still on the desk as Jon labelled a new recording.

Without Molly, Martin was left making his own decisions as to how much staring was enough, which left him defaulting to nothing. It didn’t matter that the local butcher had a cat with the most luxurious fur he'd ever seen, or that Rob the postie's kestrel was fast and lithe and turned the most magical circles in flight. He glanced at them the same way he glanced at their hair, their clothes: idle details. It helped him blend in. Less than a week and apparently he was considered one of the locals - him and Sofia, and whoever apparently left him smiling whenever he said he had to get back to the house.

"She could be yours," Jon told him, the first night. "I can't - Going outside - Other people are a problem for me, now. You need her more."

Martin still couldn’t fathom the relationship between Jon and Sofia. Was it the Beholding that left Jon so freely offering her up? Had the statements taken her voice? She’d never been exactly chatty to begin with, in the time Martin had known her. Did she ever berate Jon? Cajole him? Console him?

Even when they were so far apart, Molly never stopped helping him.

---

Martin is the reason he’s alone. Peter was just the excuse.

As the two of them trudge on through the apocalypse, Martin knows that he made a choice and that's why it's just the two of them here. Jon never got to make a choice, no matter how he sees it. That hawk of Elias' might as well have swooped down and swallowed Sofia whole. Christ, as much as it hurts to think of her, he thinks he'll always treasure the memory of Molly pinning that hawk to the ground as statements turned to ash in his hands. He treasures it even as he remembers Elias’ fingers digging into his thought as sure as talons.

The first Lonely domain is bad. The next is worse. By the time they reach Martin's, he thinks he's ready for it. That's how the Lonely always got him, in the end.

He faces it alone, which is pretty much what he expected. What he didn't expect is to see his own face, resigned and self-deprecating and acidic - or the company that walks with him. Or flies, technically.

"I thought maybe she'd be here," Martin says, looking at Sofia. He isn't talking about her.

"Yeah, we're bad at wishful thinking," the other Martin agrees. Sofia alights on his shoulder and raises her wings with all the awkward affection Jon can instil in a single raised hand of greeting. Looking at her, Martin aches for Jon, to be with another half of himself he might comprehend, and the fog billows thicker and closer. The other Martin is watching him way too closely and Martin doesn't like it in the slightest.

"How long's she been here?"

"Since this started. Or ended, I guess," the other Martin says, with a twist of a smile that might as well be a knife. "Can't really say when exactly - it's not like I've been around longer than that. Technically."

"Technically," Martin echoes. The oolong sours in his mouth, which he didn't think was possible when it already tastes so awful to him. It's lukewarm, too - worse than hot or cold, in his opinion. The other Martin winces a little every time he takes a sip, mostly hiding it except for the pinch around his eyes. Molly used to practise that with him: watching for the flaws, warning him of the giveaways, nudging him if he forgot himself.

Very slowly, he reaches out a hand. At first Sofia doesn't move - she never has been that energetic in all the time Martin's known her, save for her sudden jitters and flutters like Jon’s fingers when he really gets going. Her antennae twitch ever so slightly, beaded with moisture. This really is the worst place for her. Then she shudders, before finally rising up and swooping to Martin's hand. When she touches his fingers, he breathes again, just staring at her.

"It isn't that he trusts us with her," the other Martin says. "He doesn't trust himself."

Carefully, Martin brushes a little of the moisture from Sofia's body. When she shivers but sinks into his palm, he risks the antennae. They're so fragile, his fingers huge and clumsy in contrast. (It’s not because of the contrast.) It's only the softest touch as he holds his breath, constantly aware that at any moment he could hurt her, break her. She holds perfectly still for him, and when he pulls away slightly she lowers her antennae to tap his skin, the intent unmistakeable. Before Sofia, Martin never thought you could have 'proboscis' and 'nuzzle' in the same sentence, yet now he feels his heart bloom ridiculously as he feels the familiar tickle against his thumb. For one very brief moment, the safehouse is there in his mind as it was, not what it became.

"He knows that he can, though," Martin says softly, as if she's really going to be startled by something as small as his voice. "That's as good as he can manage."

"Should he though?" The other Martin tilts his head, seeming genuinely curious. "After what we did to Molly?"

Sofia squeaks a little when Martin flinches, wings fluttering as he inadvertently shakes her loose. He stutters inane apologies as he tries to coax her back. She does land again, although this time she opts for the inside of his wrist. The tickle there feels intimate, less a hug and more a kiss. Hideously, he thinks that he's blushing.

"She's different, though."

The other Martin raises an eyebrow, as if he somehow doesn't know the answer. "How?"

"She's Jon's." She's precious, odd and flighty and so full of love that she doesn’t know what to do with. She's never scolded him or pushed him; never warned him about the world or taken it on so he didn't have to. She's suffered so much and she knows what sacrifice is. She's endured enough sacrifices in her time.

"Because she's not ours."

---

Peter thought the concept of daemons was just so funny. He didn't say as much, not as bluntly as that, mostly because he never did use one word where twenty existed. Still, Martin could tell. The trick with Peter was never listening to him; it was watching him. Watching the way his eyes glinted, or the smirk every time he looked at Molly. The little head tilts as he looked at her as another person, someone intruding.

"Did you even get born with one?" Martin asked, hardly expecting an actual answer. That was why he said it so wearily, already regretting it, already anticipating the long rambling speech he was inviting. Christ, you'd think Peter would be more sympathetic to someone who didn't care. Unless that was the point.

Peter had sat back in Elias' chair, on one of the very few occasions he actually bothered to manifest in the office he was supposed to be running. For a shivering moment of afterimage, Martin expected him to steeple his fingers and rest them on his lips. Elias always did that, and as ridiculous as it would have looked on anyone else, Martin always stayed quiet and tried not to make eye contact with him or that hawk.

Instead, Peter rubbed his beard absent-mindedly, almost like he was checking it was still there, and he said, "Of course I did."

The absence had always spoken for itself. "Is she - Are they still out there, somewhere?"

Peter sighed. He always sounded so tired, and yet Martin knew he would always keep on talking whether you liked it or not. Acting like it was all some incredible inconvenience - Peter was good at that. Too bad Martin already knew how to handle people who considered him more work than he was worth. (Too bad he already knew that wasn't how Peter saw him.) "The point, Martin, is not caring whether she is or not."

Martin really wishes he'd never made the connection - that when Peter was talking his mind stayed exactly on the moment and nothing else. Now, though, sometimes he'll think The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts, the words that meant so much to him growing up, and then there's Peter in his head, looming.

"So she's alive, then."

"That's not what I said."

"But it's what makes sense." The Lonely way of thinking came so easily - as easily as working out Peter's way of thinking. Because they were two different things, even if Martin never met any of the other Lukases. He had an inclination, after all. That was how Peter put it. "Killing them means they matter. It's a loss. Maybe that works for victims, but not for avatars, right?"

Peter smiled. "Do you know, Martin, you're nowhere near as dull-minded as Elias told me."

Martin smiled too, since it wasn’t all that hard to do. It was just making your face into the right shape. Peter manipulated and preened but he never really did anything Martin hadn't seen before.

After that, Peter vanished, naturally. Too much like giving answers for his liking. He kept on never giving Martin Lonely statements, definitely nothing actually useful, and in the end Martin had to go do research of his own because Peter never seemed to get how much that made Martin's curiosity flare up.

Molly had shoved her face into his legs every time he thought that. Once or twice she'd bite him if he sounded too arrogant in his own head. "He wants you to look," she'd say, or "Don't be an idiot," or "We have to stay focused." The same way she'd warned him over and over, throughout their life.

Maybe it's different for different people, but Martin and Molly never had to actually say what they were thinking. Conversations started partway through, already tearing apart the excuses or rationalising the next step. Molly could play dumb with the best of them as well, or became utterly unremarkable in a way someone that big made of black and white and teeth shouldn't be able to. Afterwards, she'd remember everything she wanted to comment on. She was always listening and always ready to talk about it, even (especially) when Martin wasn't.

That was why Martin would probably never know which one of them thought it first. Who made that leap and who realised what was going to happen. Was it better if they both got there at the same time? Were they both terrible for agreeing to it? Martin wasn’t going to delude himself that there hadn’t been a choice. Obviously he was always going to choose this way, but that didn’t mean there weren't other options. That didn’t mean he got to duck responsibility. That wasn’t the way to remember her.

---

Martin knows he doesn’t deserve to have a daemon.

That's the heart of it - of the way his chest wrenches as Sofia tucks herself against his neck. Martin would do anything for her - protect her from the whole world and all the entities - but he wouldn't do the same for his own soul. Christ, what does that say about him, that he'd rather look after someone else's? Or is it worse than that? Did he throw Molly away then steal a replacement? Is that what regret looks like now?

Without the other Martin, the questions are back inside his own head. Questions and the memory of how the other Martin had just shrugged at the idea of Sofia leaving, in a way that meant even Martin didn't feel compelled to offer to leave her behind. It's no secret that Martin isn't the biggest fan of himself but it's something else to feel the way the anger welled up inside him at the idea of anybody treating Sofia as if she's less than special. The other Martin's an idiot, a bastard, taking someone like Sofia for granted when she's so much better -

Paper-thin wings brush against his skin, accompanied by a mournful whine. Martin still has no idea whether moths really do make sounds and he just never found out or whether this is one of the many oddities of Sofia. She never speaks, after all, at least not if she can possibly avoid it. For someone with a daemon as obstinate as Molly, that silence has echoes. More than anything, Martin would like to hear her voice, and yet it's the wordless gestures which mean everything.

Wordless like the way Jon reacts when he sees his daemon on Martin's shoulder: standing still, eyebrows raised, mouth slightly open, and yet apparently nothing to say.

Sofia doesn't fly to him. She doesn't leave Martin's side. When Martin says awkwardly where he found her, Jon just nods once, more like tucking his chin into his chest than an affirmation, and they carry on walking. He takes it as much in his stride as Martin does with the news of Helen's death. That's the apocalypse for you, maybe.

In the end, Martin asks because he supposes that he should, really. "Can you see her anywhere?"

"Who in particular?"

"Really?" It's not like it was an easy question to say, to put out there. It's nothing he wants to think about or even acknowledge, but Martin is trying and frankly he'd prefer it if Jon did too. "You're, what, feigning ignorance now?"

"I'm not feigning - " Jon breathes in, pinching at the bridge of his nose where his glasses used to rest. Bizarrely, the thought flashes through Martin's head of whether Sofia ever rested there. He has a vague childhood-blurred memory of Molly doing something like that, a butterfly alighting in a field. Mind you, maybe he's actually remembering a film or something. The image in his head is so Wordsworth that he feels ill.

Sofia weighs so little that half the time it's only her twitching that tells Martin where she is. He must look a picture with her in his hair, especially when he must be doing something stupid with his face whenever he realises that's where she is. She could be watching Jon, except Jon seems to suddenly be taking an interest in Martin's throat, his hands, his feet, and Sofia never seemed the type to watch the way Elias' hawk did. Carefully, tentatively, Martin reaches up his hand to offer his palm to her, an awkward platform next to his head. He feels like an idiot doing it, which is only slightly helped when, after an initial brush of antennae, she crawls her tickling way across. Slowly, Martin lowers her down, and then holds her out.

Jon flinches.

"She's yours," Martin says.

"Hardly," Jon mutters, then presses his lips into a hard line. Martin can practically hear him telling himself off from here.

Martin wants to ask. There's nothing unusual about that: Martin has always wanted to ask. He's never seen a pair this distant without some reason, but whatever that reason is, he knows it's going to tear at him. This isn't right, this isn't fair, and somehow it's the second one that keeps on ripping at him. Jon deserves to be whole. He doesn't deserve to have his soul in Martin's hands.

Jon's fingers twitch at his sides. His chin turns this way and that, mutters and reasonings escaping which Martin doesn't bother to listen to. Sofia sits and quivers and doesn't fly away, for all that Martin imagines that she wants to escape this spotlight. Martin's arm starts to ache a little from holding her out but it's not real pain, not really.

Slowly - achingly slowly, as if it's the hardest thing he's ever had to do - Jon reaches out a finger. He hesitates, over and over; pulls back at other times. Every time, Sofia quivers, and Martin can't tell which of them is reacting to the other. It's like just trying to touch is hurting them - like they're the ones trying to do the impossible.

Jon bites his lip as his fingertip hovers a breath away from Sofia's antennae. That tiny space seems to boil and roil, stretching and warping and screaming. The sense of being watched, never all that far away, suddenly intensifies between Martin's shoulderblades, sure as a knife sliding home. He forces himself to be still.

Jon pulls back his hand. "Martin, I - " Hissing through his teeth, he shakes his head. "I can't."

"Yes, you can." Before he can think about what a mistake it could be, or how a moth is not the same as a badger, Martin grabs Jon's wrist and pulls him the rest of the way.

There's no way to be ready for the arc of electricity down his spine, even if he'd known it was coming. It sparks and tingles and burns, the sensation jumping through his body, so vivid he can feel it in his teeth. Daemons have never been off-limits for Martin, or at least Molly never was, with the way his mum used to kick at her or make her do something useful as well. He doesn't know what a forbidden touch feels like - when Peter dragged his fingers through her fur, the two of them were halfway severed already, so that Martin didn't know until he turned around. Martin's soul has never been something precious or untouchable.

Martin's not exactly small. There's a bulk to him he'll never be able to shift, and he just had to make his peace with that. Jon's the opposite, spindly and slight as the winds of the world buffet him - not that Martin would ever breathe a word of that, but he doesn't have to. There's no way Jon should be able to catch him, and yet the next thing Martin is aware of is Jon's hand on the back of his neck, the other in the small of his back, with the staring sky overhead. There's ground underneath him, the same plodding dry mud ground as ever. Jon does not let go and Martin doesn't want him to.

Through startled tears, Martin chokes, "Sofia?"

A tickling sensation at his throat. Too small for fingers, the same way the sound is too small for a voice: "Martin."

Choking isn't quite the sound Jon makes. It's much closer to gagging. His mouth opens and the only noise that comes up is that strange hacking cry.

"Martin," Sofia says again. Her voice is weak, so weak she could be dying. At the very thought, Martin's hand flies up, his two forefingers stroking along her body to check for any damage, anywhere that hurts. There's nothing; she settles. "Martin." Stronger this time, although still high and wavering. She sounds, Martin thinks, like the exact opposite of the Archivist.

Cold at the back of his neck; Jon wrenches his hand away to clamp it over his mouth, his shoulders still heaving. Every inch of him is trembling, Martin realises, shaking in the same non-existent wind that makes Sofia's wings shiver. Her wings still; his shaking grows worse.

"Martin, my Martin," Sofia is saying as high as a wail, "you're my Martin, always, Martin."

Jon's throat moves - swallowing, Martin thinks, or maybe going in the other direction. From the tingling of electricity, he suddenly feels heavy, drawn down toward that last point of contact with Jon even as the weight at the base of his throat intensifies. He's still touching Sofia; he reaches up to grab Jon's wrist again, and Jon flinches because of course he does. Martin tries to sit up but Sofia won't stop crying, so he pulls instead and Jon collapses by his side. Sofia clings to Martin and Martin clings to Jon and the sky blinks overhead. Every time Sofia says, "Martin," Martin says, "Jon," and they draw closer together.

Limbs intertwine; desperate fingers find clothing, hair, skin, all just trying to get closer. Trying to keep some hold of himself - Jon and Sofia can't, Martin can feel that, he can feel it - Martin catches his thumb behind Sofia, slowly dragging it forwards. She grips and pleads but he finds that Lonely core of himself, the cruel place where a daemon should be - where Molly should be - and he forces her forwards, until her frantic wings brush Jon's cheeks.

The repulsion comes again - the bolt, the strike, and the thunder of Martin's heart. This time he's already on the ground so there's nowhere to fall to. Pain blossoms in his side, in his shins, sharp enough that he assumes it's more of the same until he registers the dull ache that follows. Jon is fighting him, limbs flailing, anything to get away. Martin didn't realise he had such a hold on him, yet now he tightens his grip, pull the hug closer, and forces them all into the same space. If he has to breathe mist to dull the pain, then so be it.

Martin never cut Molly away. That would have been too easy – too noble. Their bond withered and mouldered like the house where his mum used to live. This though – this is wrenching, this is painful, this is tearing out his heart to give it to Jon instead, and the whole while Jon is sobbing that he doesn’t want it. If their roles were reversed, Martin would give Molly to Jon in a heartbeat, but they’ve never been the same person at all and Jon is so much better than him.

He doesn’t stop. Jon asks him to – asks him to stop hurting himself, as if he isn’t coiled in pain as well – and Martin’s mind narrows the way it always does when he decides he has to do something that hurts him. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have Molly to tell him what to do. He keeps on pushing forwards, pushing Sofia forwards, and it’s hard to know where the cries are coming from. This feels too important.

Then Jon plants his palm against Martin’s chest and through a mouthful of static he says, “Tell me why you’re doing this.”

---

They used to go for drinks, the three of them, back in the old days when there weren’t even worms to worry about. Sometimes they’d invite Jon, although somehow he always had too much work to get done. Tim had always said that was normal, and Sasha had said something biting and sarcastic that has teeth in Martin’s memory. Martin didn’t know Jon at all, besides knowing that Jon didn’t like him no matter how much Martin tried to be inoffensive and helpful. Looking back now, everything becomes a sign, a warning that he must have been blind to miss.

Martin didn’t actually like the time that they spent together as assistants, mostly because it wasn’t actually the three of them: it was Tim and Sasha, and him. Always the other side of the comma. He doesn’t think the Stranger changed that much of it, if only because he can’t see why it would bother. Even if he’d used to be close to the real Sasha, he’d still think of himself as the third wheel. That’s the way it’s always worked. Maybe Jon felt the same, but he didn’t force himself to face it in person. That’s Martin’s problem.

Everything about those nights felt engineered to mark him out as out of place. It’s hard to call that the paranoia of the Lonely reaching back; just plain old personal experience. It was sitting in a booth watching a mynah bird and a rat leaping and flitting around each other with the solid immovable weight of a badger against his leg. It was Phoebe and Zachary being just as much a part of the conversation while Molly sat silent and bored. It was a thousand in-jokes and reminders that even Jon fitted in better with them, and Jon didn’t fit in with anyone.

“I’ve been doing some digging,” said Sasha.

“So what else is new?” said Phoebe.

“Don’t you want to know into what?” said Zachary.

“Like you’re not going to tell us anyway,” said Tim.

Martin’s hands twisted in his lap as he said nothing, and Molly breathed in the smell of spilled drinks and humans pretending to have fun.

“How about you, Martin?”

Martin’s head shot up. Sasha was smiling at him with a thin slice of lips like a sneer, while over her shoulder Martin could see Tim taking a swig from his bottle with a blithe grin. Is that an afterimage or did Tim find her funny like that? They drifted apart after Prentiss but so did all of them, and Tim kept on drifting until his own Phoebe was at odds with him, Tim showing up every now and again from the tunnels with talon marks on his cheeks. How much did they ever know each other? How much did they ever care?

That’s the Lonely talking. Martin hopes so, anyway.

“What about me?” he asked dumbly, as if that would deter her. It worked on a lot of people, at least. It worked on Jon, who’d heave an exasperated sigh like the burden of the world and turn away.

Unfortunately, Sasha did roll her eyes, but she didn’t leave him alone. “Don’t you want to know what I found out?”

“You haven’t said anything about it.” Martin didn’t mean to sound so bold, so he looked down to soften it. “I can’t really say, can I?”

Tim snorted. “He’s got you there, Sash. Just spit it out already.”

“You’re no fun.” Sasha might have been teasing Tim or she might have been telling Martin a fact. It was the same either way: it made Martin’s stomach turn. “Okay, spoilsports,” she carries on, producing paper from her bag with the flourish of a magic trick. Naturally Phoebe darted forward to get a better look, until Zachary swiped her away. “You know Jon, right? Scrawny bloke with perpetual anxiety and a bad taste in haircuts?”

Martin bristled, which was nothing compared with what Molly did under the table. He fumbled around to touch her head in warning and he could feel the tension in her jaw. Of course, all he said was “That’s not exactly fair.”

“I’m not wrong though.” Sasha looked at Tim. “Right?”

Tim held up his hands. “It’s a pretty terrible haircut.”

Martin bit back everything that came to mind and just let it happen. Molly probably thought he was a coward. At least she couldn’t get up on the table – she just had to listen to all this.

“I was having a look into the boss,” Sasha said, and maybe it’s the Stranger who made that sound like an insult, “his uni days and all that. Standard.”

Tim was shaking his head. “Okay, one: you need to stop saying this is standard, you nosy lunatic. Second: didn’t you already do this when you met him?”

Sasha dismissed him with a shake of her head and Zachary chittered in what Martin assumed was amusement. “Just the basics. And the thing is, since we moved down there, don’t you think he’s getting…weirder?”

Tim took a long swig of his beer, holding his index finger in the air in case anybody thought about speaking before him. He swallowed, still not putting it down. “Jon’s weird. That’s his thing. Like yours is invading people’s privacy and Martin’s is…” He trailed off with an exaggerated shrug that probably meant this was supposed to be a joke, then gave Martin a wink. “Tea?”

Martin wasn’t quite sure what noise he made there. It was pathetic, whatever it was – as pathetic as the smile that went with it. He’d never tell Tim that those sorts of jokes got to him, mostly because that would go against trying to keep his head down. The whole point was to seem quiet and unassuming, the sort of background detail that belonged without question. He made himself bland and helpful and for some reason that meant Jon hated him. Molly hated it too, but that was normal. Doing what they had to in order to survive didn’t mean she had to like it. Sometimes Martin was so helpful that it set his teeth on edge too.

“Thing is, him and his daemon have always kind of bothered me,” Sasha went on, and Martin couldn’t help the way his back straightened. He felt Molly come alive next to him, head pointing upwards. “Didn’t have a problem with it – still don’t, mostly – but, well, I was looking into him generally and…” She trailed off, dangling the paper in the air. Phoebe swooped from Tim’s shoulder and she snatched it back with a grin. “I found something.”

Tim crossed his arms and leaned back in his seat, projecting the kind of casual disinterest Martin can make in others but could never manage himself. “You can’t just say that like it’s impressive on its own.”

“Martin?” Sasha dangled the paper in his direction, her whole face turned sly, still dodging Phoebe’s attempts to steal a glimpse. Zachary was watching him. “Don’t you want to see?”

He did. He really did. It was embarrassing, the way the tiniest crumb of information about Jon made him twitch. Molly kept on warning him about it, how dangerous this all was, and yet he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to play into whatever Sasha was doing either, though. He hunched in on himself.

“Sash,” Tim said, a bit of a warning tone coming into his voice. Warning about what, Martin didn’t know. “Get on with it.”

“So this might not sound like a big deal,” Sasha said, “but I was looking into the usual stuff – Facebook, societies, that kind of thing – and I found a picture of him. Second year, from the date. Out for drinks with some theatre society - and yes, the boss did student theatre and I’m even saving those videos for another time, because this is so much bigger. Because you know what I saw? Or…” She paused dramatically. “What I didn’t see?”

Martin was hooked and he hated it. He hated it even more when he said, “What?”

She beamed triumphantly, her eyes and her daemon’s glinting in the bright pub lights. “A moth!”

There was a long silence, filled only with distant drunken yells and the beeps of the slot machine.

Slowly, Tim said, “You didn’t see a moth.” When Sasha nodded, he sighed. “Assuming that’s meant to mean Sofia, so what? She could have been hiding. She does that.”

She did do that, more and more, and Martin had no idea what it meant. Christ, sometimes he had nightmares about putting a mug of tea down on her by accident. He’d had a few near misses with that one - more heart attacks than anyone should. While Jon had never actually said anything about it, Martin knew that he’d noticed. Martin being a clumsy idiot, again.

“That’s what I thought,” Sasha said. “But here’s the thing: there is a daemon there with him. Has to be Sofia. Only she isn’t a moth.”

Martin could feel the gears in his head grinding. "Wait, so - what, she hadn't settled?" He shifted uncomfortably with the percolating sensation that this was something he really shouldn't know. This was much too personal. "I mean - Yeah, that's rare, but that doesn't make him weird or anything." His face was heating up; his hands were shaking where he'd clamped them around his glass. He snatched them back into his lap; he should never have put them where people could see the tells. "People are all different, you know?" He wanted to run. He wanted to stand up and run out the door and never ever have a conversation ever again. He shouldn't know this.

"Hey," Tim said, raising a hand, "it's okay, calm down."

"I'm calm!" He squeaked a little bit as he raised his voice too loud, so he could add ‘mortified’ to all the emotions turning into a sickly roiling stew inside. All Molly did was rest against him, with more of her weight than she usually did. “I am,” he said, lowering his voice so that now he was almost whispering. “But this – Sasha, we shouldn’t – ”

“How is it hurting anyone to know?” Sasha asked. Thinking back, she asked that a lot. It was so very Beholding that maybe the Stranger wasn’t lying in those memories. Or maybe the whole point was to make you uncertain. “Yeah, okay, I suppose that part might not be so weird, if you’re going to be a Scully about it.” She shot Tim a conspiratorial smirk and Phoebe laughed and then ducked away when Tim swiped at her.

“What’s weird though,” and she grinned, too wide and too gleeful, “is what she is instead.” And she slapped the paper down on the table.

It was a printout of a Facebook post. In the detached way that you do when horrified, Martin thought how weird it was to print it out rather than just showing her phone around. Who did that?

At the same time, he recognised Jon. Yeah, he was younger, his hair longer and his smile actually visible in a way Martin had never been able to imagine; Martin still knew him straight away. He knew the line of that nose, those cheekbones, and those fingers frozen in midair. Without a doubt, he knew Jon was in the middle of explaining something – one of those long rambles like the one at his birthday do. The ones Tim teased him about and Martin could listen to for hours, just to see the way Jon lit up. Presumably that was how the photo happened: with Jon too distracted to object.

There was a woman sat next to him, dark skin and dark eyes with a dark cat curled up at her side, and she was watching him with an expression that Martin didn’t exactly recognise but understood. For a moment, he was too caught up in looking at her (Who was she? Did Jon know she looked at him like that?) that he missed the point. As usual.

There was something next to Jon on the table, half-concealed by his pint glass. In the same way that people always knew not to scream at Sasha’s rat, or got awkward when they had to tell Martin to wait for the next lift with his huge mass of a badger, Martin knew that it was a daemon.

It had to be Sofia. He could see the cat of the woman next to him, and the few other people around the table either had their daemons visible or were sitting too far away. There was nothing else that close to Jon, and few daemons would drift so close to another human without belonging to them. Never mind the shape, that one had to be Jon’s – had to be Sofia.

She looked about the size of Jon’s hand - the same size as she was now. She didn’t have any wings though, and Martin might not have known Jon very well then but he could tell how wrong the shape was.

She was a spider.

---

London sprawls out ahead of them, and Martin still doesn't know how to talk about it.

Jon’s apologised. Jon’s apologised a lot. Jon’s apologised for the part that Martin is vaguely aware that he should be mad about and a lot more besides. Martin wouldn't say that he particularly enjoys the sensation of losing control of his entire body because of one question from his boyfriend, only focusing on that almost seems petty compared with, well, everything else.

Sofia is in the right chest pocket of Martin's coat. She's been in there since she found the strength to move, and Martin keeps brushing his hand against it just to feel her there. He wants to coax her out, to tell her that it's going to be okay, only he doesn't actually know that that's true and he has enough self-awareness to realise that it's what he wants to say to the man next to him as well. They're not supposed to lie to each other.

In the end, it's the sense of an impending deadline that forces it out of Martin's mouth. Nobody ever knows exactly where London starts, after all. And once they're there, well, the Eye'll be all around them. The Eye's already watching them, of course, but for now Jon can focus.

"Did you know that would happen?"

"You'll have to be more specific," Jon says, not looking away from London, "or you'll have to accept that I know everything."

Martin scoffs at that, mostly with fondness. "Well, in that case you should know what I'm talking about."

"I know a trap when I hear one." Martin presses his palm against Sofia's pocket, and even though he's not looking at him, Jon deflates. "I...didn't know that it would hurt."

"That it'd hurt me or hurt you? Or her?"

"Most things hurt me." Jon murmurs it, then winces and shakes his head while Martin's indignation is still building up steam. "Sorry, that was - I knew I didn't want to touch her. And not in the Eye sense - at least, I don't think so. It felt...more like how you know when you're looking at a daemon and not an animal. Or how you know that if you touch fire, it won't be pleasant." Another wince, with a twitch of his hand. Martin wasn't there for most of Jon's scars, so he didn't see how they affected Sofia. He does know she doesn't like flames, though.

"That's not actually that helpful, Jon." Martin gets it, for the most part. He's a poet - he's written poetry, anyway - and he's had plenty of things happen to him that he doesn't want to think about unless he dresses them up as something else. It's something that always drove Molly mad, he thinks, blunt and biting as she was. Still, maybe it's the statements or maybe it's the end of the world, but trying to get a straight answer out of Jon is making Martin suddenly sympathise with his daemon. If she were here, she'd maybe find that funny. Maybe.

As if sensing Martin's mood, Jon leans towards him, enough that their shoulders brush as they walk. He's standing on the other side from where Sofia is hiding, which Martin would love to think of as a coincidence.

"I am trying," Jon insists. "Some things are too instinctive to really put into simple words. You held her out and I - " He hmms to himself. "It wasn't a question of wanting or not wanting. I just didn't."

Martin would point out that she's Jon's daemon, except not only would that be a little redundant by this point, but he isn't even sure how true it is anymore. He remembers the jolt that ran down his own spine; remembers the silent daemon crying his own name. "What about me?"

"She likes you," Jon says. Martin loves how to-the-point Jon can be about some things, at least. It's a relief, honestly. With Jon, the things you avoid and the things you just say are flipped around, and it’s immensely loveable. "Who else would she go to?"

"My - Christ, I still can't believe I'm saying it - My domain?" Looking away from Jon, Martin tugs his pocket out a little, just enough for antennae to reach out to brush against his finger. "That didn't suit you at all, you know. Too damp."

He's expecting Jon to say something. When the voice he hears is high and female, it takes him a genuine moment to process it: "I knew you'd be there."

Martin can't help it: he stops walking. So does Jon, whose eyes have gone comically wide (it's comical even with what the Beholding has done to them). "But I wasn't," he says dumbly.

"You were eventually. I just had to wait."

A little awkward with the weight of it, Martin mutters to Jon, "She's a lot more patient than you."

Jon struggles to form a coherent word for a moment, before he smiles fast and false and says, “That was her job.” Then his brow flattens out and he looks away again.

Martin feels the tickle of fur under his hand. Sofia has crawled out of his pocket, apparently for the purpose of staring up at him. From what he remembers from Google, moths don’t have the best eyesight. It’s still disconcerting, though, because she opens up her wings and becomes all eyes.

Really, it feels more like a confession. “I know I shouldn’t, but – No, that’s – ” Martin swallows. He can’t say Sasha’s name, or Tim’s for that matter. He doesn’t want to bring them into this, the grief of it all. He should have said something back when it was safe, in the house in Scotland - only they were still feeling out the edges of this thing between them, and neither of them ever wanted to talk about daemons. As for before, well, Jon had either been his boss or Martin couldn’t, wouldn’t talk to him about it.

Just once, it had been there, on the tip of his tongue. The Lonely had told him that this would work - that this was what would push Jon away. He’d come so very close to it, enough that he can picture it in his mind: Jon babbling on about eyes, asking the impossible, and even pointing at Molly to demand whether Martin realised what he was doing to her, and Martin had found himself on the brink of asking just what Jon had done to his daemon. It had all lined up in his head, perfect and cutting. He hadn’t known why he didn’t say it, although now he’s so desperately grateful that he didn’t.

Molly had stumbled to her feet. That was it. Martin had barely noticed her at the time, save for how Jon’s eyes widened and cut to the side. The conversation lurched away, and ended with Martin all but throwing himself to the Lonely, and after Jon left Molly had collapsed onto her side with her chest heaving. Martin doesn’t know if she ever stood up again that day.

It was typically Molly, he supposes, not even sure whether he’s annoyed or affectionate. It was never about making things easy for Martin. Just what he needed to do.

Sofia is soft to the touch, quivering, always soft. Molly was never like that. Martin doesn't know whether badgers just have coarser fur than you'd expect or whether it was just her. He just knows that he never used to sit there petting her, and she never wanted him to. That wasn't the way they touched each other. Would it have ended better if it had been?

Neither of them have ever interacted with their daemons the way they should - the way you're always told that you will.

His lips buzz with the truth Jon tore from him. Something frantic and full of self-sacrificing anguish, about how much he wants Jon to be okay. About how, just for once, he wants to make things better, not worse.

Martin doesn’t want to hurt Jon. It’s just that there’s no kind way to bring it up.

“Sofia – She wasn’t always this shape, right?”

Jon comes to a halt. Because of the difference in their heights, Martin has to quickly step back when he realises.

Jon’s mouth starts to say “how did” when his eyes are already narrowing, the static in the air intensifying. Martin makes himself stay still and take it. “Ah. Hmm.” Like most of Jon’s reactions to new knowledge, there’s no indication of how he feels about it. “That’s – ” His mouth turns down and Martin’s stomach drops. “I didn’t realise how separate you felt, then.”

Martin tries to readjust to that line of thought. Jon only blames himself, he knows this, except it’s still jarring not to get yelled at when he thinks he deserves it. “That’s not the point.”

“It’s a point,” Jon murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m thinking of banning you from ever using that word again.”

“That isn’t about ending the world,” Jon says, “it’s what I did before that, when I was a terrible boss.” He quirks an eyebrow, almost like he thinks he can make it a joke.

“Jon.” Martin can’t have this conversation at the same time. “Focus.”

To his relief, Jon nods. “Right. Well.” He sighs. “She was...that shape, ever since - well, you know.”

“You’re a surprisingly shit storyteller when it comes to yourself, you know that?”

The smile that breaks free on Jon’s face means everything. “I suppose I am. That’s probably ironic, somehow.”

“Probably.” Martin won’t let him keep dodging, though. “So, she was...different. What changed?”

“We joined the Institute.”

Martin waits. Eventually he says, “And then what?”

“That’s all it took.” Jon swallows, and Martin feels Sofia tuck herself into his palm, shivering. “Elias – ” He bites back the rest. Martin already feels ill, anyway.

“Did he do something to you?”

“Nothing as obvious as what you’re picturing,” Jon says, sounding awfully amused considering how horrible Martin’s imagination can get. Maybe Jon’s just eaten enough that Martin’s images are adorably tame. “He offered the research position after making it very clear that he was aware that we...weren’t exactly happy together.”

Martin can’t help the way his other hand flies to Sofia, so that he’s doing everything he can to hug something that’s so easy to crush. She doesn’t fly away from the danger.

“I didn’t say it’s something I’m proud of,” Jon says, with the wry weariness of someone who isn’t proud of anything they’ve done. “She settled after…” He makes the vaguest of hand gestures, first wiggling his fingers before closing them into a knocking fist, and Martin nods, much preferring to admit he’s listened to the tape of Jon’s childhood on loop rather than force him to linger on that book. “Well. When you’re haunted by spiders, it’s not an especially convenient shape for your daemon to take.”

Sofia practically vibrates through Martin’s grip. Jon adds, “It wasn’t her fault. And I’m sorry,” he says to Martin’s hands, “I did that to you and you didn’t deserve it.”

“You didn’t – ” Martin breaks off and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay. So that’s – That does explain some things. About you two.” Molly’s whole thing was pushing closer to Martin, grabbing hold. If Jon spent his life pulling away from Sofia, and if Sofia thought she was hurting him – Martin wishes it didn’t make sense. But it does.

Jon’s voice cuts through his thoughts, formal. “In the interests of confession: I joined the Institute because I spent half my life trying to sever us.”

Sofia makes a soft noise. Martin quickly relaxes his hand, and she flutters up out of his palm, coming to rest on the join between his neck and shoulder. It tickles, a little. He registers that with a distance that’s Lonely, purely factual and emotionless. He tries to force it back, as much as he doesn’t want to meet the horror waiting outside that safe part of his mind, the one that sickens him.

Sensation bleeds back in. He feels Sofia brushing against him – soothing, he realises. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s the past. You weren’t there.”

Jon averts his gaze, like he’s watching something private. It’s such a human impulse that Martin is charmed even as it pains him. He stands by what he said: Jon deserves to have a daemon, one who supports him and whose love doesn’t scare him. He’s never deserved to question the heart of him.

Molly was Martin’s guide and anchor and ally for years, and she let Martin do it to her. Their bond became dried up and diseased and while she argued whether it would work, she never fought to stop him.

Martin’s a monster. That’s what the Fears make you.

“How many times did you try?” It comes out blunt, harsh in its lack of sympathy. Martin winces, willing Jon to realise he doesn’t mean it like that. He’d say it out loud but now the words are hanging there in the air and he can’t bring himself to try to hide them.

Jon freezes, the glow from his eyes intensifying. Martin realises his mistake as he starts to look a little ill. “I - More times that I thought, apparently.” Apparently to himself, he muttered, “I’d forgotten some of those.”

Somehow Martin doubts Sofia could say the same. He lifts her to eye level, and almost jerks back when she slips from his hand and towards his face. Her beating wings fill his vision, their emerald and ebony false eyes blinking in and out, and he feels a touch on his nose, as light as a kiss. Then she drops down, sliding back into his chest pocket as smoothly as if she’s been doing it all her life.

The warmth inside Martin’s chest shouldn’t belong to him.

“I imagine that would have been rather unpleasant if she’d never changed shape,” Jon observes. It’s his own version of Martin’s Lonely voice, detached and speculative and superior. It’s far too close to Elias for Martin’s taste.

Trying not to think about Elias, or what Sofia just did, or Jon watching it happen, Martin asks, “Do you suppose that was the Beholding? Sort of…claiming you?” Not that Martin likes the idea at all.

“I certainly agreed to it.”

Exasperated, Martin says, “That’s not what I meant, Jon.”

“No, I know, it’s just – “ Jon presses his lips together. “The way the Fears operate – they affect daemons. That’s only logical.” He narrows his eyes – all of them. “Yes, that – When they mark you. It only stands to reason.” He laughs a little, not because he’s happy. “All those spider daemons.”

“Does that mean that when Daisy…did her thing?” Martin hates even thinking about it.

“Yes,” Jon says slowly. “Yes. That’s how the Hunt works.” His eyes go distant. “No wonder Jac never really recovered, after the Buried. She was pushing him away, too. In the end,” he says with real misery, “the Hunt was all the two of them had.”

“At least it was both of them.” Martin regrets saying it in seconds, the same way he regrets how his first instinct is to lengthen his stride and pull ahead. He regrets the way that Jon’s misery turns on him with a palpable sympathy that makes Martin recoil.

“Martin, about what happened, about - well. I - I am sorry.”

“Jon, what did I fucking say?” It rips its way out of him, or maybe it’s more like acidic bile in his mouth that has to escape. Jon flinches and he’s right to. He’s right to look stricken as well. Martin can hurt the most powerful being in this apocalypse and it’s exactly why he shouldn’t. The anger turns to shame with the ease of a lifetime of practice, which no doubt Jon can see as well but that doesn’t mean that Martin wants him to.

Crossing his arms, Martin mutters, "Look, just - just forget about it, Jon."

"Her," Jon says softly.

Martin scrunches his face up, tilting his head to the side. "What?"

"You might as well use the correct pronouns," Jon says, far too casually looking towards the horizon (Martin can tell: he’s too calm to be looking at the Panopticon). "You're asking me to forget about her."

Martin sucks in a breath; refuses to let it out slowly because that will make it look like he's angry, and he's not. Not really. "Fine. Forget about her, Jon."

"No."

Martin throws his hands in the air. "What do you want me to say, Jon? She isn't here; she isn't anywhere. She doesn't exist anymore!"

Frowning, Jon says, "You don't know that."

"But you do!" Honestly, Martin feels sorry for Sofia. She's so light, so fragile, that it's so easy for her to be pulled to and fro. Grabbing onto her would be cruel, so he grabs onto himself instead, fingers digging into the elbows of his coat. "Just tell me, honestly, Jon: can you see her?"

Jon's silent, in that exact way that means there's something he doesn't want to say. Most people probably wouldn't learn silences to that detail, only there have been so many things that Jon hasn't wanted to tell him.

"Seriously?"

"No, no, I - " Jon makes a frustrated sound, wincing like it hurts. "It's - It's hard, I'm trying to see but there's the Lonely and the Eye and - " A crackle starts in Martin's ears, one that starts to build to a whine as the air starts to tremble around them. The pressure drops, along with Martin's stomach. Jon's gaze is fixed on a point just over Martin's shoulder, only Martin knows that there's no point in turning to look. Even if he did see anything, he wouldn't comprehend it. At least, he hopes not.

Feeling the air like treacle in his mouth, Martin says, "Jon."

Jon's eyes are glowing, although that's basically normal now. It's so normal that Martin forces his head to turn downwards instead, because, well, he's sort of curious. But no, there’s no glow coming from anywhere else, no sounds of growling or anything. Somehow he forces his arm to bend, enough to tug his pocket open wider. Inside, Sofia’s still - a little too still. When he breathes, she sways a little with the motion, but that's it. He tries to reach in to touch her and she doesn’t react. Feeling a touch of panic that has nothing to do with what’s taking Jon away from him this time, he cups his fingers around her and drags her into the light that shines from the Archivist. It turns her sickly, washed out, almost dead.

"Jon."

Jon's eyes narrow. "They have to be somewhere," he says to himself through a mouthful of static. "If they don't kill them, they have to go somewhere - "

Martin does the first thing that comes to mind. Why it's the first thing, he couldn't say. He just knows that he's reaching out to Jon, feeling that fragile hand in his, and then he's dropping Sofia into it.

The pressure - the world - changes so fast that it's a bomb and a wrong note and electrocution all at the same time. Martin drops from the shock of it; Jon drops because it's like he can't hold himself up anymore. Fortunately, Martin's still cupping his hand, so when Sofia falls with them, she's safe.

They lie there for a moment, the air full of what - Martin thinks fancifully - would be petrichor if it was a sound.

Jon opens his mouth and at first just a line of static comes out. Then it's his voice. "Martin?"

"Yeah, I'm here." Weakly, Martin heaves himself up to look at their hands, and very gently coaxes Sofia to move her body enough to detach from Jon's. "Sorry. I know you don't like me slapping you and, well..."

"You thought that would be kinder." Jon doesn't say it like an accusation. He doesn't say it like anything, really.

Martin squirms a little rather than shrugging. "I don't think kindness entered into it. I just thought it, and I did it."

Jon sighs, letting his head fall back.

"Who are 'they', anyway? You started talking about 'them' and how they have to go 'somewhere' and - " This time he moves much faster, grabbing onto Jon's wrist. "Stay with me, Jon."

"I wasn't - " Jon starts, then relents with a wry twist of his lips. "Yes. Well. I suppose I was thinking - I wondered what happens to all the Lonely daemons."

All the other Lonely daemons, Martin thinks but doesn't say. "They die."

"Do they?"

"They stop existing." Martin shrugs. "The whole point is that it doesn't matter," he echoes.

"So you can't know either way." Jon frowns. "I saw... There used to be a basement. No," he goes on, as Martin’s heart stops, "there is one. It didn't - It's too important. If the Lonely wants to be itself, separate, then it needs it. Or that's how it works there, in that domain."

"You're getting cryptic again, Jon."

"Sorry, I just - " Jon squeezes his eyes shut and squeezes Martin's hand. "The daemons the Lonely takes - they still exist. It - "

"You can do this, Jon."

"I can say it, but you don't want to hear it."

"It isn't about what I want, Jon. It's if you want to tell me."

Martin can see Jon wanting to hold back, the way his lips compress. He doesn't want to ask because he knows how much the Eye loves curiosity, and it's not like he's never had to bite his tongue before.

“None of the daemons died. Not even when their humans did. There’s whole generations down there, lost and alone. Their humans stop caring but they keep on feeling and they feel so very Lonely, Martin.”

A door opens in Martin’s mind. It isn’t a metaphor, rather a memory. It’s the same door that haunted Martin’s dreams when he could sleep, at the safehouse and Salesa’s. Behind the door are steps going down beyond where the light reaches; at Martin’s back is a presence that pushes him forwards. He should turn to look. He shouldn’t care.

“Jon,” Martin says, his mouth so very dry.

“The Fears,” Jon says. “All of them - it happens differently but in the end it’s always the same. Daemons get in the way, but they also make it easier. It’s how they attach.

“They feed on the daemons, and they replace them with themselves.”

---

Most of Daisy’s kills happened where Martin couldn’t see them. He liked that, and he hated that he liked that. The Institution went and hired, what, an official assassin? If you were lucky, you couldn’t see her; if you weren’t, she was there in the corner of the room, staring at you. Elias stared, and obviously Jon stared, but it was different. She didn’t just want to know, she wanted you to know.

One time had been different, though.

There was no reason for Martin to miss Jon out in America. He told himself that over and over: how what he really missed was the old way of things, hopelessly nostalgic thanks to the Stranger. He missed when the world was normal. Not too normal though - selfishly, he didn’t want to go back to Jon hating him. He could take a few worm nightmares for that, even if Molly called him childish. Told him to stay focused.

London was full of dark alleyways, and not-quite-alleyways, and dodgy streets, and generally if it hadn’t been for the job Martin wouldn’t have lived here. People (Southerners) might have said that it was rough up north but Martin never felt quite so grateful for Molly up there in terms of sheer intimidation. Not that Molly went around getting into fights, nothing that would actually draw attention to them, but people reacted to her shape the same way they reacted to Martin’s size at night.

Honestly, maybe Martin wanted to get into trouble. That was Molly’s theory anyway: how there was no reason to go wandering after work unless he just didn’t get his fill of danger in the murder institute. (Her words, not his.) He couldn’t have said, himself. He just knew he didn’t want to stay at work and going home sounded bleak rather than a relief. He’d moved since Prentiss, to even more of a featureless block than the last place.

The Archives didn’t feel right these days, though. Sort of lonely, almost. There was no Jon and Tim would just surface long enough to serve out some insults (if Martin was lucky: they’d all picked up scars from Phoebe swiping at anybody near her, and Tim wouldn’t even acknowledge it), and Basira was weird and Melanie was angry and Daisy –

You shouldn’t investigate mysterious growls. Never mind Martin’s standard conflict about whether to help if he heard someone in trouble (what if he made it worse? What if it wasn’t what it sounded like?), growls were definitely not a human problem for humans to deal with, and he got enough of the non-human with the statements Elias insisted on them doing.

It was a Desolation statement, earlier. The kind that made Martin shake hard enough for even Molly to offer sympathetic grumbles and her head for him to pat. Could be that was why he was out here, alone (with her).

He stopped in front of a boarded-up kebab shop, staring at the light-up sign opposite for non-specific chicken. He swallowed.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Molly growled.

“What are they going to do, fill my flat with worms again?” he asked as he turned the corner.

Apart from the worms, Martin didn’t actually see any of the bad things. He just read about them. He liked it better that way – he was from the Library originally, and he’d figured transferring to the Archives wouldn’t magically change his life into an adventure.

He definitely never expected to see someone right after they’d been Hunted and caught.

All he could see at first was the blood, practically black in the shadows but some of it bright red as it caught the chicken sign behind him, some of it reflecting sickly yellow as a car went past the other end of the alley. It gave the bins a sheen that had nothing to do with rubbish. It stained the creature as its back heaved and its claws tore.

When it looked around at him, he knew it was Daisy.

He couldn’t say how. So much of her was fur and sharp teeth, and yet maybe it was the smirk or maybe it was the eyes, but the fact was that he Knew. It was Daisy, and it was Jak too, even though the only shapes were the Hunter and the victim they were crouched over. One moment he saw Daisy and the next he saw Jak and yet none of them ever moved.

Martin noticed all of this because he couldn’t move.

The shape lumbered forward a step or two, and Martin’s eyes stung as in the space between one second and the next he went from seeing one figure to two: Daisy standing, hunched over with a knife in her hand, and Jak at her side with his lips drawn back to expose his teeth. His eyes, Martin noticed, were the same yellow as headlights, and just as paralysing.

Daisy’s mouth moved as she said, “What are you – ”

“ – doing here?” Jak said. “You shouldn’t – ”

“ – be here.” Her voice was low and thick, his higher than usual, and it seemed to Martin that it was all the same voice in the end.

Pain seized his hand: the pain of a badger’s teeth sinking into skin. Martin jerked back, and Molly snapped, “Run!” And when he didn’t run – when he cradled his hand and started to ask what she was doing – she growled and swiped at him, and butted at his legs until the world started to blur and the panic made his breath come hard and all that mattered was the alleyway was behind him.

Every time he started to slow, she’d snap at him again. He barely even realised he was back at the Institute until he was letting himself in through a side door, almost falling down the stairs to the Archives. He drew himself up short, grabbing hold of the banister. “What the hell was that?”

“Nothing for us to deal with.” Molly sniffed at the top of the stairs, as unimpressed as ever. Easier than trying to use the lift, though. Lifts broke down, that was what she always said. How would they lift out a badger?

“Nothing for – ” Martin laughed, mostly just for the sake of making a sound. “She was – They just – ”

“Killed someone,” Molly stated. “They killed someone and they were going to kill us if we didn’t leave.”

“But she works for the Institute!” Badgers couldn’t raise an eyebrow. Molly only managed to give the impression of it by tilting her head to the side, lifting her shoulder and looking at him. It never failed to turn Martin’s fear into annoyance – the kind of embarrassment that made him bite. “I don’t know, shouldn’t we tell someone?”

“Like Elias?” Molly asked flatly. “Or do you want to explain it to the police?”

“I don’t know, we could do an anonymous tip or something.”

“Which Elias would make go away. That’s if he didn’t try to make them think it was us.” Molly shook her head. “We do what we’re good at. She does the same.”

Martin’s hand tensed around the banister. “You’re awfully calm about this.” Nothing novel about that. Sometimes he thought nothing could get any reaction out of her.

“We don’t have options. There’s no reason to worry about that.”

Martin drummed his fingers as he watched her begin the descent of the stairs, one plodding awkward step at a time. “I suppose there’s no point in asking whether you’d have fought them off?” Fought Jak off especially, although then it came back to him, the vision of that thing that was somehow both of them. Would it feel like touching a daemon, when it tore into him?

“I wouldn’t have won. Better off running.” As if to make her point, she kept her head down and kept on moving until the pull in Martin’s chest forced him to follow.

Basira was sitting at her desk, reading, as usual. Suleiman’s head swivelled as Martin came stumbling in, and made a noise in his throat that made Basira look up, eyes narrowed.

“What happened to you two?”

Still smarting, no longer afraid, Martin waved the hand with Molly’s bitemarks. “Just a little stroll, no big deal. Just getting some air.”

Basira’s expression did not change. “I thought you were going home.”

“Well, I thought that too.” Martin dropped into his chair and scowled at his desk. Molly set herself up on the other side, apparently not interested in any comfort he might have got from seeing her. His scowl deepened, as petty as her. “I saw your…Daisy. Apparently it’s a good night for murdering.”

Basira was already so still all the time, the same as her owl, but Martin could see her tense anyway. “Where?” she asked, then, “No, I don’t want to know,” before, “Did you recognise them?”

Martin threw his hands up. “How should I know? Everybody looks the same when they’re ripped up like that.”

“Martin,” Molly said.

“No, it’s okay,” Basira said, which made Martin wonder just how Molly was looking at her. “I get it. I just – ” Her mouth flattened.

Suleiman asked, “Did you see both of them?” before slowly rotating his head to meet Basira’s glare. “Theories need data.”

Naturally, Molly had decided to go mute. She did that, around most people. Nothing but silence and carefully neutral words. Safe.

Martin couldn’t be bothered to pretend not to understand. His hand was starting to hurt a fair bit. It had been his job to top up the first aid kit yesterday, and hopefully there was still disinfectant after Tim’s trip today. “You’ve seen them do that before?”

“Define ‘that’,” Basira said, her arms crossed, and Suleiman's head swivelled back to Martin. If he’d been trying to make an impression, he was out of luck: Martin was used to people seeing him as prey.

Martin waved his hands uselessly in the air. “The – The double image thing. It was like there was just one of them, and – and they did this really weird thing where they swapped their sentences around too.” Martin wasn’t sure exactly why that’s the part he deems ‘weird’. This place did that to you, though. Everything made its own sort of sense.

Suleiman didn’t move; neither did Basira. “Shit.”

Only Basira could have made swearing sound so mundane. “That’s a yes, then?”

Basira scowled, eerily reminiscent of Jon when he had to explain things. Any minute now she’d start lecturing him about research protocols. “I thought – When I caught her with Jon.” It took Martin a moment to remember she meant attempted murder and not…anything else. “It didn’t look right. And the talking – they were definitely doing that. Guess I was hoping it was a one-off thing. Or that was it.”

She tapped her fingers on the latest pile of books. Martin had worked in the library long enough to recognise that some of those really weren’t supposed to be taken outside their assigned room. Given what he’d learnt about the Institute since then, he suddenly had a very strong desire to be elsewhere. Molly probably realised earlier: nothing much missed her. “I’ve been doing research: daemon stuff. I’d heard about some of the things alchemists used to do, but – ” She shook her head. “Honestly, I never expected that much of it to be true.”

“Right.” Martin was pretty used to pretending he knew what people considered ‘common knowledge’. Jon never seemed to pick up on it, but he saw Basira sigh.

“The Church banned it here, and most other religions did the same, but that didn’t stop people looking into it.”

“It was usually the Church encouraging it,” Suleiman intersected, and Basira’s mouth pulled to the side in a smile that had nothing to do with happiness. Despite himself, Martin felt a twinge of whatever Catholic guilt was when you were feeling guilty about Catholicism.

“Yeah. They did all sorts: stretching, severing, starving – most of it a waste of time,” she added, apparently noticing Martin’s face. “Thing is, that stuff’s still there in the Enlightenment and the Victorians and all that, but this stuff?” She tapped the books again. “There’s just a lot more…theory. It’s horrible but you also get questions like – like whether it’s possible to change your daemon’s shape. Even whether you can exchange them with someone else.”

“What would be the point?” Martin asked, resisting the urge to peer over his desk at Molly to see what she made of all this. “It’s still your soul.”

“If you believe in that stuff.” Basira said it like she was talking about the weather forecast. Martin’s breath froze in his chest. “Thing is, though, a lot of it? They’re talking about the Fears – sort of. They don’t call it that. But the Fears are definitely mixed up in daemons. There are people trying to figure out if using the Fears would have the same effect. Mind you, once Magnus and his lot get involved, you lose all the good ideas and it’s just…” She sighed again. “That’s the English for you.”

Martin thought about the thing he’d seen in the alleyway. How it was both, and neither. “The Fears – what? Make daemons more malleable?” It felt like sacrilege just to think it; to say it with all the sarcasm he could manage. He hated talking to Basira. She could at least have pretended that this wasn’t comfortable to discuss.

“Wouldn’t surprise me if there were some statements like that.”

Martin thought of the Desolation statement he’d recorded earlier, and didn’t give her the pleasure of hearing it.

“Makes you wonder what working here does to them.”

Suleiman blinked once, slowly. Finally, Martin broke, shoving his chair back to stand up and look over his desk.

Molly didn’t even look at him. She was pretending to be asleep.

Christ, he just wanted things the way they were before: shit but normal. It seemed like the only things changing were bad; the bad things stayed the same.

---

“So. You and Jon, then?”

Martin nods, not entirely trusting himself to speak. Melanie’s been easy enough to talk to: without the Slaughter or the Lonely, they can maybe be friends. Not close friends obviously, but not bickering the way Melanie does with Jon. Something simple, if simple exists anymore.

Georgie, though. Georgie, who Martin finally met at his worst moment and who he’s now realising was at one of her lowest moments as well. She was the woman in the photo, he realises now: the one with Sofia before the Beholding defined her. She was sitting right next to Jon, a cat curled up on the seat between them. A cat who isn’t there anymore, despite her seeming just as whole as him – more so, actually. With Georgie, it’s like she doesn’t have a shadow; with Martin, the shadow’s all that’s left.

Martin doesn’t think that Jon has a type. Two people isn’t enough to call a type, if nothing else. However, he does have enough painful self-awareness to realise that he didn’t like Georgie when he met her because she was similar to him in all the wrong ways. The instinct’s still there, which is exactly why he is trying to be better and do what the Lonely wouldn’t want from him. It’s the kind of thing Molly would have pushed him into, in another life. If Melanie can be on the other side of the room talking to Jon, Tenyeo curled around her feet, then Martin can talk to Georgie for five minutes.

Unfortunately, there are only so many things that they can talk about.

“Me and Jon,” Martin confirms. With the same overly casual air, he asks, “So, what happened to yours?”

Georgie blinks, large and exaggerated in a way that makes Martin suspect it’s a play for time. “You’re as friendly as ever.”

“I’m a recovering avatar,” Martin says, something about the prickling under his skin making him say the words he usually tries to avoid, “and I’ve been travelling with the Antichrist. I’ve been better.”

“Is one of those why it’s just you?” Georgie lifts her eyebrows, challenging. Then they go even higher, in genuine surprise, when Martin’s pocket squirms and then Sofia finally raises first her antennae and then the tiny dot of her head. Martin raises a hand but she ignores it, crawling free and then fluttering up to his shoulder.

Georgie’s mouth forms an O and Martin feels a satisfaction that’s entirely petty.

“Sofia?” she croaks.

“Georgie,” Sofia whispers in reply.

Georgie looks back and forth from the daemon to Martin and back again. “No, that’s – Why do you – Seriously, where’s yours?”

Martin brushes a finger along Sofia’s back. It helps. “I don’t know.”

Reasonably yet irritatingly (from Martin’s petty point of view), Georgie asks, “How can you not know?”

“It’s complicated.” Technically it’s very simple; that doesn’t mean Martin wants to talk about it. Jon can’t see Molly anywhere, which means she’s gone altogether or she’s in the Panopticon. Martin’s resigned to the former; Jon’s hoping for the latter. There’s a logic to it that Martin can’t quite ignore though: Molly would go where she’s needed. Rather than trying to rest or find a home, she might have found her way to London.

Either that or a cold dark basement ate her a long time ago.

Georgie snorts, bringing him back to the present. “I’m guessing it’s not, but don’t worry, I get it. Honest. It’s just, well, I do know where mine is.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I even visit him, sometimes.” She tilts her head to the side, indicating either the door or the exit to the tunnels somewhere in the distance. “He’s got his little End domain, and I get the tunnels with my girlfriend. Funny how life works out.”

Right. The End. “I thought that maybe he’d died?”

“It’s complicated,” she quotes, with a glint in her eye. Then possibly she takes pity on him. “I was at uni – before I met Jon. Mysterious events at the local hospital, that sort of thing – It’s okay,” she adds, apparently noticing the way Martin’s glancing around for tape recorders. “I told Jon this already. I – I sort of made him make me? Mutual experiment. It wasn’t easy, otherwise.”

Martin had been under the impression that Jon refused to use his powers until Oliver made him choose to think of himself as something other than human. The idea that the End keeps on finding him, in these oddly intimate ways… The End’s patient and Martin doesn’t like it at all. It has a way of trying to claim everything he wants.

Georgie is still talking, he realises with a stab of guilt. He should be listening - unless she’s on to something with how the story is already out there, it’s not like Martin’s free of the Eye either. “I still – I watched my friend just lie down and wait for death. This corpse, it came over to me and it whispered, in my ear – ”

Martin’s lips move with hers: ‘The moment you die will feel just like this one.’

Georgie nods, as if it’s perfectly natural that Martin would know the words. Worse, she smiles like that means they’re closer now, when really Martin just did the reading.

“And just like that it was me and the Admiral standing there, and we just…weren’t the same person anymore. Figure I got lucky,” Georgie adds with a snort, “he could’ve just vanished. But then, I guess I didn’t really die? It just didn’t mean anything anymore, the idea of it.”

“Christ,” Martin breathes, the way he should, “I’m sorry.”

“Nah,” Georgie says, flapping her hand in the exact way that indicates that it matters quite a lot, she’s just not interested in tearing the wound open right now, with him, “it’s not so bad. It’s not like he became a normal cat or anything. He stayed next to me most of the time – at least, he did when it first happened. We drifted apart a bit, but that’s what living on your own does to you, I guess. You get comfortable giving each other space.”

“Still.” That kind of indifference – it sounds more like Jon and Sofia more than anything else, only Georgie doesn’t seem uncomfortable with the very idea of discussing her daemon. “Jon didn’t know?”

Georgie hesitates, just for a moment. “I didn’t tell him,” she says slowly, “not until, well, until all of this kicked off.” She waves her hand around them, as if the dark and dingy tunnels can encompass ‘the monsters consuming our lives’. “It’s not like him and Sofia have ever been what you’d call ‘cuddly’. Besides – ” And she breaks off suddenly, biting her lip and looking away.

Martin wants to ask about Sofia, about this version of Jon he never got to know because by the time they met they were already in the Archives and Sofia had already changed and Elias had already started on both of them. There’s what he wants to know and then there’s the obvious question when someone is so obviously avoiding something. Martin could just not poke at whatever makes her look so guilty, except it’s Jon, and it’s Sofia, and if Georgie really didn’t want to say she could just leave.

“Besides what?”

She exhales, shoulders lowering. “They’ve always been funny with each other, and, well…” Her mouth twists. Martin has no idea why she wants to tell him this, when it clearly hurts her. Maybe Jon had been right, when he’d said about the hold the Eye has over him. He’d just assumed Jon was talking about himself. “The thing is, Jon had never had a girlfriend before me? Or a boyfriend or anything, really.”

Martin still doesn’t know what she did, but he can feel his hackles rising already. That’s always been a more literal metaphor for him: Molly never could hide her anger the way he does. “So?”

“So I might have just told him that it was…normal? If a daemon likes your partner enough, then they might just want to hang out with you?” She shifts on the spot. “Touch you?”

The bottom drops out of Martin’s stomach. “It never hurt you?”

“No, I didn’t even feel it. But Sofia always made him jump, with her legs and the way she moved, and me and the Admiral, we really did want to help him somehow, and we really did - do - care about him.”

Martin’s struggling to comprehend this. It doesn’t help that he can feel Sofia against his neck and she isn’t shaking, either with fear or anger. From the way he can feel her antennae drooping against his skin, he thinks she’s sad. She’s part of Jon, he supposes: she blames herself.

He doesn’t think he can say the right thing, so he says something else altogether. “What did you think when you saw her…like this?” He raises his hand as he says it to shelter her, comfort her. There’s a quick bloom of warmth when he feels her cuddle against his palm, the tickle of a proboscis like a dog licking him.

Georgie lets out a nervous laugh, shrugging too widely. “I mean, what can you say? Your ex shows up on your doorstep wanted for murder and chased by entities with his daemon a different shape – you just sort of have to pick your battles, you know?”

“You just didn’t talk about it?” Martin asks, feeling like he might laugh too.

“Not if it meant talking about what happened to us. And then he told me about the Archives, and then I knew I had to.” She sighs. “I think he was more bothered by the not-knowing than anything else. He had the Admiral on his lap the whole time, purring up a storm, same as always.”

Jon’s more comfortable with daemons than he is with people. It’s one more of those thoughts that takes on a whole new meaning now. “You didn’t mind? I mean, you don’t?”

“Of course I mind. I wouldn’t tell him that though, would I? Not with the shit that he’s had thrown at him. We can talk about the apocalypse, but no one deserves a daemon they’re scared of.”

Now Sofia’s shaking. Martin can’t help but think of what that must have done to her after all those years. Did it feel like freedom, trading in her legs for wings? Or was it her own violation?

Martin doesn’t look at her. “Did you really get born with a daemon called Admiral?”

Georgie laughs, this time surprised. “It was a joke until uni. Then it helped, and everyone thought I was just quirky. I think most of my listeners thought it was one of those things people do to stand out online.”

“But why ‘Admiral’? Did you go sailing a lot?”

“Nelson.” Georgie smiles and even the dank lighting in the tunnels reflects on her cheeks. “His name was Nelson.”

---

Daemons couldn’t exist in the Lonely. It made sense, in the same way that anything about the Fears made sense: picture what should have been impossible and see whether your mind could stand it - whether you could acknowledge that nothing about the world had ever been fair or true. At least Martin was already used to the first one.

Peter had taken him there a few times, “giving you a feel for the place”. Molly waited because she didn’t have a choice. Apologising wouldn’t exactly fit what they were trying to do.

The Lukas mansion was real, with a heaviness to it that Martin didn't expect at all. Peter always seemed big, enough to look Martin in the eye if that didn't make both of their skins crawl, but there was nothing to him, really. When he pressed close against Martin's back to supposedly read the computer screen better, it was his presence that Martin felt, not the physical weight. He’d assumed that was true across the Lonely - he’d always found it easiest to believe he wasn’t there until everyone else believed it too. The sprawling mass of brick, the looming oaken doors, the fog-choked grounds: they were all unquestionably there.

Molly didn’t say a word. She didn’t say anything, anymore. She was in pain, he thought, and he also thought about how she used to move through his mum’s house without any of the doubt or the pain that he had. Still, he didn’t need her to tell him that there was no point in the anger, nothing to be gained. The gravel underfoot as he got out of the car crunched oddly, the fog swallowing the sound whole so that there was no echo. He had no idea when Molly’s bulk hit it.

There were steps up to the entrance, straight out of a period drama. Martin would have been excited, a thousand years ago. Now they were just steps. Nothing special about them, nothing to inspire, absolutely nothing. When Peter held the door open, Martin stepped through without a thought.

Right inside, Martin’s foot sunk into the carpet, a startling untouched softness, for all that they looked old. This time his footsteps didn’t make a sound, swallowed whole in a way that was either disturbing or overdramatic. He rolled his eyes anyway. There was a hallway opening up before him, staircases and doors and dull paintings of landscapes, and it was all completely tedious in how much it wanted to be impressive.

The door closed, a sensation rather than a sound, and he felt a gaping emptiness open wide behind him.

From the moment you were born, you knew the difference between a daemon and an animal. Scientists had studied it and religions had condemned them for it, and in the end none of it actually mattered because everyone already knew it without needing a reason why. Martin could talk about Molly’s claws or Sofia’s wings (he shouldn’t though), while never thinking he was describing something as common as a pet.

Martin turned, looked back, and he saw a badger.

It was black and white, lumbering forward, and utterly at odds with the house. It didn’t belong there: it was a wild animal, something that should have stayed outside. Martin had never even seen a wild badger in person. All those evolved instincts the cities didn’t need told him to hide, to freeze, to run you idiot. When she sniffed the air and her lips pulled back from her teeth, he gulped in fear.

Hard to say how long it was before a hand landed on his shoulder. Hard to say how long Peter was enjoying what he saw.

Peter smiled a lot. It was a very clumsy way of saying it, but that was what Peter did to Martin: he stripped back the illusions and the poetry and he left Martin feeling heavy. Peter smiled a lot and it had always been fake before. Too much teeth with too little life in the eyes. Martin knew what to do with fake smiles. He didn’t know what to do with this one: smaller, very real, and horrifying beyond measure.

"Shall we?"

There was a pressure at the small of his back, a cold that seeped into his spine which could only have come from Peter’s touch. It felt like the cold was looking for something, as much as it was guiding him forwards. Something inside him.

The badger stayed where it was. With a sort of numb relief as the fear paralysis freed him, Martin found his feet moving to follow where Peter led. There was a faint ache in his chest as he left the badger behind, but that could have been from anything. That could have been Sasha, or Tim, or Jon. That could have been his mum. That could have been a cough working its way from infection to contagion.

There was a door beneath the stairs, built into them. The sort of thing you’d assume led to a closet, a cupboard full of old toys or walking boots. The one in Martin’s mum’s house had had whatever tiny certificates he’d won from school, shoved in alongside old coats and threadbare Christmas decorations that never once went up. For a hysterical moment – as hysterical as he could manage when there was a wild animal sat in the middle of the hall, watching them – Martin thought he was going to be shown actual skeletons.

When Peter pushed it open, Martin didn’t understand. There was just darkness – not the kind that blinded you, just normal everyday darkness. That was before he noticed the stairs.

Sounding as blandly amused as ever, Peter said, “Aren’t you going to ask me what’s down there?”

“I assume we’re going down there anyway.” Part of Martin – that animal hindbrain hanging on – wondered whether a badger could manage those stairs. The rest of him looked at the descent and saw only inevitability. They’d come out here for a reason, after all. Peter didn’t seem to want Martin to really learn about the Lonely, but he definitely wanted Martin to learn this. “What’s the point of asking?”

“Exactly.” Peter said it with such relish, his satisfaction weighing down Martin’s shoulder when he touched it.

Before he took another step, Martin looked over his shoulder. The badger he knew was Molly was sitting there, although as he watched she lay down, flattening herself against the carpet. She didn’t say a word, and Martin felt silly for thinking that she might have done or for caring about whether or not she did.

Then he looked away again, and followed Peter down into the dark.

The pain in his chest got better once he stopped caring.

---

“You look distressed, Martin.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”

Martin’s only met Annabelle Cane once, at least as far as he knows. That doesn’t stop the exasperation surging inside him. It might not be entirely her fault, but she’s standing right there at the bottom of the ladder back up to the surface and it’s just one bloody thing after another, isn’t it?

Annabelle winces in what’s probably supposed to be sympathy. That seems to be how she plays with him, anyway. “That sounded rough. I know no relationship is perfect but I find that love makes the hate hurt more.”

“It’s not – ” Martin just catches himself in time, clenching his fists with the effort not to rise to her efforts. If you can call them that – she always makes it look so natural. “What do you want?” Not that he expects her to answer truthfully, but it reminds him who he’s dealing with.

“I’d say that I don’t want anything, but somehow I doubt you’ll believe me.” She smiles with half of her face, the other emotionless. “I’d say that I happened to be in the area, but you won’t believe that either. You’re cynical about help and I understand that about you, Martin.”

What Martin really doesn’t like about Annabelle isn’t the manipulation in itself. It’s the fact that it feels so familiar to him.

“What happened to Salesa?” he asks. Obviously the man’s dead, or at least that’s the kindest version of what might have happened to him. Martin still doesn’t know how he actually feels about the man, but he does feel a pang at the thought of his albatross daemon vanishing into nothingness. It’s an odd thing to think about one daemon in particular, but she’d been so alive and so present that it doesn’t feel right to think of her as gone.

“What you think happened to him,” Annabelle says, “more or less.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You don’t actually want one. You just don’t want to talk about anything else.” Annabelle hums to herself, coming closer. Martin would step away, but what would be the point? “It’s fine – like I said, I understand. That’s how you deal with conflict, Martin. It always has been. You either want to ignore it or you want a solution. The talking’s just pain.”

Martin has no idea what it is about the Fears that makes so many avatars want to lecture him about who he is and how he does things. He’d chalked it up to the Beholding obsession with knowledge, only it keeps on happening and it’s getting silly now. “Am I supposed to be amazed by your insight?”

“Hardly. You’re self-aware enough as it is – you have to be, in your condition.” Annabelle’s eyes linger at his side, where there’s nothing standing next to him. “Does it hurt when there’s rain coming?”

Martin says nothing. He doesn’t trust himself to.

“Did you hope you’d see her up there on high?” Annabelle asks. “Do you think she’s dead? Do you think she’s hiding from you?”

The truth is, Martin didn’t even bother to look. Molly could have been standing just a foot away and he wouldn’t have noticed and he wouldn’t have cared. What mattered was the look on Jon’s face as he looked up at Elias. What mattered was what that meant.

Quiet and withdrawn as she might be, in the Panopticon Sofia had been all fluttering frenzy, back to the way she could be in the Archives around certain Strangers, darting around Martin’s head and out towards Jon’s back before suddenly pulling back as surely as if she’d struck a brick wall. The whole time she’d been talking – nothing much, a blur of ‘Martin’ over and over, a backdrop to Elias’ endless chant, but Martin heard it anyway. He heard it because it sounded just like what was happening inside his head. It was only the names that were different.

“For all I know, you’ve got her,” Martin says. “It’s not like you’ve got one yourself anymore. You’re just spiders.”

“What makes you so certain that my daemon isn’t a spider?” she asks, sounding genuinely curious. “You know that daemons can change shape. You know that the Powers can do all sorts of things to souls. He could be right here,” she reaches up to tap lightly at the hole in her head, “or in my pocket, or just over your shoulder.” Martin resolutely does not look around. “But no, you’re so positive.”

Martin could be petty and say that Annabelle doesn’t have a soul. Unfortunately, he has a pretty good idea of how that would go: with laughter and patronising pleasantries. “All of your spiders just look like spiders,” he says. It’s completely nonsensical but she doesn’t so much as giggle so at least she realises that he’s familiar with the difference.

“Maybe that’s what I want you to see,” Annabelle says brightly.

Martin can’t help it: he laughs with all the bitterness he has in him now, the bile of being so scared for Jon that he yells at him. “I could say anything, couldn’t I? Absolutely anything, and you’d just – You’d spin it whichever way you want.”

“It does come with the territory.” Annabelle’s eyes flick down to Martin’s pocket, and this time they stay there. There’s no movement in response. Martin does not check to see if Sofia is alive. “Do you think the Beholding has been any kinder to her than the Web?”

Sofia spent almost two decades in a shape that Jon was absolutely terrified of, left waiting as he longed to sever the two of them. The Beholding made her passive and as much of a victim as Jon. “You make it sound like that would make the Web good.”

“There’s no good in the world, Martin. You know that. There’s just better.” She tilts her head to the side. “After what you did, most people would call you the monster here. Some people,” she lingers on the words, swirling them around her mouth like a fine wine, “some people might wonder whether you’ll do the same to her.”

Martin’s hands both fly up to shield his chest pocket as anger flares inside him. “I’d never hurt her.”

“And I’m sure if I went back and asked a past version of yourself, you’d say that you’d never hurt Molly either.” Annabelle smiles, small and venomous. “That was her name, wasn’t it? You do remember that Sofia isn’t yours, don’t you?”

“She’s not yours either,” Martin snaps, then hesitates as to why that’s what flies to his mouth first. Something about the way Annabelle says it, the way she made him respond (is that what happened?), it makes him feel guilty. Like a criminal. Like the kind of person who’d steal and murder a daemon. “I want to save both of them.”

“I can show you a way.”

Martin blinks. “What, just like that?”

“I wouldn’t say that it’s easy.” Annabelle shrugs, in exactly the way that nobody does if it doesn’t actually matter. “But you’ve done worse to help them before. You’ve done harder, too.”

Sofia still isn’t moving in Martin’s pocket. He thinks again about Jon’s face – about losing him, losing someone so bright and perfect because sometimes the Fears just won’t let you go. About Jon giving in and nobody could blame him except himself, after everything he’s been through.

He wants Sofia to wake up.

---

The beep of the heart monitor stopped meaning anything weeks ago. Now it was one of those background sounds like the wind or the rain: the kind of thing you only noticed when it stopped.

“We’re not achieving anything here.”

Martin kept his eyes on the stillness of Jon; on the tiny form on the pillow next to him. Both grey with a lack of life and a lack of death. He wrote that in a poem last night, before chucking it in the bin. Molly hadn’t told him to do that, or said that he shouldn’t. She knew the whole thing was a distraction.

“Moping around doesn’t solve anything.”

“I’m not trying to solve anything,” Martin snapped. Molly sat on the other side of Jon and Sofia’s bed, also more interesting in watching them than her other half. “I just – Christ, what’s wrong with having a little mourning?”

“What’s wrong with a little lying to yourself?” Molly growled. “Nothing’s stopped. We have to do something.”

Martin knew that. He’d already known that, before the Flesh had attacked the Institute. Before he’d run, and before something had reached out to Molly and –

His side twinged. Still, he knew better than to ask Molly if it hurt her, the part of her that was gone. Maybe next time the Flesh attacked, Jared’s stupid hybrid daemon would have some badger skeleton sticking out of them. He’d probably make it obvious. Maybe he’d have a badger leg himself, for all the sense that made.

“Rib,” Molly said. “It was a rib.”

The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts. Martin first saw that film on TV when he was five. Molly had rolled her eyes when he started repeating it over and over, but she never stopped him. She knew he needed to hear it.

Between Phoebe’s talons and Tenyeo’s teeth, Martin was getting really tired of getting hurt by other people’s daemons. He didn’t know what it was about the Fears, that made daemons no better than animals, but it made him feel sick. Sick and frozen to the spot. Molly had been fighting Tenyeo. She’d never fought anyone before.

“It’s a terrible idea,” he said.

“It’ll hurt me more than it hurts you,” Molly said, “and I don’t care about that.”

Martin winced, the same way he winced every time she said it. “What if I care? Severing isn’t just about you – ”

“It won’t be as easy as severing,” Molly interrupted. “It can’t be. It’ll hurt more than anything, probably.”

It would be worth it, for Jon. For Sofia. Martin just wished he wasn’t such a selfish coward that he cared about how much his daemon wanted rid of him.

“This isn’t about us. It’s about what only we can do.”

Jon’s eyes were moving under his eyelids. Apparently that was quite a trick for someone who was supposed to be all but dead. “You always told me I wasn’t a hero.”

“I told you not to act the hero. There’s nothing heroic about this.”

Easy for her to say. “You sound like Mum.” She could never stand him either. That was the simple truth of it, sitting in his chest alongside her ashes. Martin just couldn’t love enough.

“You sound like a child,” Molly told him. “What happened to making sure they have something to come back to?”

Martin sighed and lowered his head, the phantom pain stabbing at him. She’d had something stolen from her but she still kept going. He was the one who could only react. “Peter Lukas can’t want anything to do with us. Not really.”

“Then find out what he does want,” Molly hissed. “He – ”

She broke off a second before the static as the world let someone slip through the cracks.

Martin ignored that too – ignored it until the hand on his shoulder, the cold grip he felt through his jumper. Martin always felt cold these days.

“You both look like you’ve been in the wars,” Peter said cheerfully. Not that ‘cheerfully’ was that much of a change for him. “I’ve always found the Flesh rather tiresome. It’s more about making a mess than anything else. I suppose I’m also a little offended,” he went on, voice barely changing, “attacking now the Institute’s mine. It’s hard not to take that personally.”

“Maybe they wouldn’t have if you’d been there,” Martin muttered without thinking. Molly was too far away to stop him.

It wasn’t laughing, the sound Peter made. Not if you paid attention to it. “Maybe. That’s why I need help, you see. Elias had his gift for all that work but I’ve always found that assistants make everything easier.”

It never startled Martin, when he looked at Peter and saw just him. There was no sense of a gap at his side or at his back. No sense of being anyone except himself. Truth be told, Martin wasn’t sure he was capable of standing on his own like that.

Molly let out a quiet groan as she shifted on the other side of the bed. Peter shook his head with an oddly indulgent smile, as if marvelling at Martin’s imaginary friend.

“Speaking of making things easier,” he said, “stand up, would you, Martin?”

Martin didn’t especially want to do anything Peter Lukas asked him to do. On the other hand, Molly had always suffered in silence before.

Peter’s touch was cold, not ice but like the drizzly days that ate into your bones. When he touched Martin’s side, he could feel it sinking in, piercing and aching through. Absolute numbness.

His side didn’t hurt anymore.

When he looked over at Molly, he could still see the lopsided hollowness of her chest. She took a step to the side, and growled in pain to prove it to him.

“We all have to let go eventually,” Peter said. “Shall we?”

---

They have a plan. It’s not a great plan, but it could work, and that’s what matters to most of them.

Jon has a different plan. Martin already knew that; that’s why he’s here. Sofia is urging him on up the steps of the Panopticon, darting forward and back with the energy of panic, and Martin can only move so fast. He knows he can’t outrun Jon’s own guilt, but maybe, just maybe –

And then he’s there in the heart of it, and he knows he was too late. Jon’s kneeling there next to a dead body that looks extremely ordinary, with ordinary blood spreading across the floor and an ordinary knife by his side. Martin was too late, and Sofia was too late, and something snaps into place as they both realise what’s going to happen. What has to happen, and what that means, and what they’re about to sacrifice. It’s okay: they’re both good at sacrifice. Too good at it.

Hard to say which of the two of them thought of it first: telling the others to go early. Melanie had seemed pretty bewildered by the new voice, Tenyeo bristling; Georgie was surprised, but she thanked Sofia first. Basira had just nodded, the same as Suleiman. Basira always already knows. If this works, the Fears will be gone, but something tells Martin that that’ll stay true.

It’s only as they approach – Martin with Sofia at his side – that Martin realises that those aren’t just knife wounds in Elias’s body.

Sofia is the one to gasp and dart upwards, and Martin has an odd moment of double vision: Jon’s back hunched over, Elias’ corpse at his side; Jon’s hands buried in black and white striped fur.

Martin has no idea how he stays on his feet long enough to resolve the two images. When he sees everything, his legs finally give out, and he doesn’t even notice the blood soaking into his jeans.

Molly says, “You’re late.”

Dully, Martin says, “I was here before.”

“You weren’t looking for me.” She nods. “That’s good.”

“Is it?” he asks, a little hysterically. “Were you looking for me?”

“I knew you’d come here.”

Not ‘I knew you’d be here’. No waiting. That’s Molly. She can think ahead and she does what’s needed.

“Jon did most of the killing,” she says. “He needed it.”

Martin isn’t even going to begin to start thinking about that, let alone arguing it. If the interview Jon mentioned is anything to go by – the one that marked Sofia for the Eye instead of the Web – the relationship between Jon and Elias is something that needed to end, as violently as necessary. When he looks over at the body, Sofia has landed an inch away, feeling out towards the sticky blood with her antennae. Checking.

“Jon?”

Jon’s whole body moves as he inhales, straightening his back as he lifts his head. In the incredulous chaos of his own head, Martin starts thinking about biblical paintings. There aren’t any wings from Jon’s back, but there’s the sense of something pulling out of it; there’s no halo around his head but there is the constant impression of eyes, eyes everywhere.

Jon’s hands look very normal – worm holes and burn scars and all – and they are deeply entwined in Molly’s fur. She looks incongruous, out of place, yet not in the same way she had done back in the Lukas mansion. She’s still very much a daemon, here. The insight comes to Martin all of a sudden, with a certainty to it that has to come from somewhere beyond him: the Eye doesn’t want her here.

“I’m here,” Jon says, in the same voice as the Archivist.

“Are you, though?”

“Yes. And everywhere else, maybe.” Jon smiles, a little dazed and detached. “It’s…rather a lot.”

Before Martin can respond to that, Molly harrumphs. “Yes, endless domains of torment. Aren’t you tired of that yet?”

Martin gapes at that. He still can’t believe she’s here, and she never used to talk to other people because she couldn’t ‘stand being polite’. Jon laughs, though, too similar to when the sky looked back at him. “It is endless, though. Infinite variety. There’s a man in the woods with an axe who knows it won’t be enough and a woman whose tears cut through her skin and a boy who eats and eats and a girl who – AH!”

Molly doesn’t even lick at the blood as an apology. She just settles her head back into Jon’s lap and waits as he stares at the bite mark in the fleshy part of his hand. When it heals, Martin notices that there’s still a line of unmistakable teeth in its place. He lost count of how many times she used to do that to him.

“Jon,” Molly says, “focus.”

Jon wriggles his fingers in the air, until Molly bats his hand with her head and forces him to hold on to her again.

Sofia is still by Elias, creeping slowly around the blood and closer to the body. She’s moving towards the head, Martin realises as he leaves the other two to help her. “What do you need?”

“His eyes,” Sofia tells him. At his approach, she lifts into the air again, bolstered. Still, Martin’s not surprised when she flies to him, landing on his wrist as light as a kiss. Carefully he crouches down and holds her out over Elias’s face. He’s not that surprised that you can barely tell there even were eyes there to start with. Even without the Watcher, Jon would know what to aim for.

Sofia urges him further and further down, until she can tiptoe just an inch or so forward and touch Elias’s skin. Then she suddenly speeds up, scurrying across his face, tracing the shape of his skull. Martin doesn’t know exactly what she’s checking for, but he also doesn’t want to know. What he does care about is the blood starting to gum up Sofia’s legs, and he refuses to let Elias drag her down with him. He takes a glove out of his pocket – he hasn’t worn them since he found Sofia again – and says, “It’s over. Leave him.”

It isn’t over. They both know that. But Sofia steps onto the glove and starts to clean herself on its surface and Martin turns his back on Elias. He remembers how terrified he was of Elias’ demon, how the hawk always looked seconds away from gulping down daemons like something out of mythology. He wonders if that bird even survived the apocalypse, or whether the Eye was as jealous as ever.

Jon’s mouth is open and he looks stunned. In the literal sense of being hit around the head. “What is it?”

“The lighter,” Jon says. “Oh God.”

“I asked where it is,” Molly says. “The Web’s always got a plan.”

“Does that make you feel better?” Martin snaps at her. “Being right doesn’t mean we’ll be okay.”

“Better than pretending,” she snaps back, more literally in her case as her teeth flash.

Now pressing herself close against Martin’s neck again – he can feel her pulse as surely as his own – Sofia says, “There never was a way out.” She sighs, as far as a moth can sigh. “At least we had a little time, at the end.”

“No, this is – ” Martin sucks in a breath. “Okay. There has to be a way, we can’t just say there’s nothing.”

Jon starts to say “Martin – ”

“No!” Martin jabs a finger at him. “Don’t! Don’t you dare say that I have to – ” It catches in his throat and makes him choke. None of them have actually said it out loud – the thing that needs to be done. At least they can all agree on that.

“I can try to hold the Fears here,” Jon tries to say, despite the way that Molly starts growling at him. “I can still do that.”

“Not an option,” Molly says. “Try again.”

“Well, the only other option is killing me,” Jon tells her, bristling a little even as he still doesn’t let go of her. “You didn’t seem excited by that one before.”

“Because that’s not an option either.”

Jon looks up at Martin, eyebrow raised. Martin crosses his arms and shrugs. “I’m not going to argue with that.”

Closing his eyes – Martin can see them moving behind the lids, darting from side to side the same as in his coma – Jon asks, “Sofia?”

It’s the first time Martin’s heard Jon say her name – at least since they found her again. He feels Sofia go very still, the same as him. When he does finally move, she dodges away from his hand, launching herself up only to land again on his other shoulder, and then again up to the top of his head, where he can feel her starting to burrow deep.

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, because that is what Jon always says. “But it’s – It’s not just about me. I don’t…actually know what would happen to you.”

Maybe if Martin had still been drowning in the Lonely, he would have made an unkind comment there. The thought does still cross his mind, because those are the thoughts that have always convinced Martin that he can’t be a good person: You never cared about her before. Only of course that isn’t fair. Jon doesn’t care about himself. Sofia, as cruel as it sounds, has always been collateral.

Slowly, achingly, Jon drags himself to his feet. Molly helps, supporting his weight as he stumbles. Martin sees his hands grasping at nothing when he can’t hold on to her anymore, and he also sees the way Molly rests her weight against him. Once he’s upright, that sense of something at his back tightens, so that Martin can practically see the string pulling tighter. There’s a whispering building in the air, a rage muffling at Martin’s ears. The Eye, he assumes. It doesn’t like being ignored.

Jon hesitates in front of him. His eyes flick up to Martin’s hair, to Martin, and back again. He licks his lips and for all the cleverness in that head, Martin can tell that he can’t find the words. It’s not Martin’s place to say them though – or Molly’s, who Martin knows must be practically vibrating with the waiting by now.

Carefully, Jon holds out his hand. His jaw is set. “Sofia. It’s time.”

The sensation of a moth squirming in your hair is not one Martin could ever have predicted. It itches without itching; it tickles and shivers and yet it doesn’t actually do any of those things. It’s disconcerting and Martin realises that it’s what he wants to feel. He wants Sofia to feel safe there. He wants her to belong.

Martin raises his palm for her, trying to think comforting thoughts and softness. There’s a small grumble from Molly, but before Martin can say anything Jon just waves his other hand at her and she calms. Very slowly, Sofia peeks out and crawls step by step onto Martin’s hand. Gently he lowers her, so that the tips of his fingers are brushing Jon’s. He suddenly realises that Jon is so tense that he’s trembling, the faintest of movements against Martin’s skin so achingly similar to Sofia’s.

Martin steels himself as she starts to move. He remembers the pain from before, the electricity and enormity of it all. He remembers the tears and the recriminations, the way nothing made sense other than that the world hurt.

Sofia’s probing antennae reach out to brush Jon’s fingers and…nothing happens.

She crawls the rest of the way and while Martin might feel a tug in his stomach, a shiver down his spine, he doesn’t hurt. It’s just…odd.

“I’m sorry for what I did to you,” Jon says.

“I’m sorry for what I did to you,” Sofia replies.

Jon nods. “Molly?”

Martin blinks and looks down, to see Molly move away – never entirely leaving Jon, he notices – and bend her head next to Elias’ body. Something glints in her jaw as she returns, silver and crimson.

Without meaning to, Martin grabs hold of Jon’s wrist. “What are you doing?”

“I’m cutting her free,” Jon says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “The way we always wanted. I know how, now.”

Martin and Molly’s bond died a slow, withering death. Much like his mum. “How will that help?”

“I think – ” Jon takes the knife from Molly. “I’m not entirely sure.” He smiles at something he clearly thinks is funny. “It just feels right.”

“Annabelle said we’d have to kill you.” Martin’s panic makes him blunt. “Are you seriously going to make me watch this and then kill yourself as well?”

“It won’t kill her.” Suddenly Jon sounds far more certain. “There’s not much left anymore. But the Eye won’t have her. That’s all that’s left between us now.”

And, before Martin can stop him, the blade flashes through the air.

Molly surges forwards; catches Sofia before she falls to the ground. Martin moves at the same time, wrapping his arms around Jon. The thing at his back hisses and buzzes, screaming and angry. Martin can see it now – or is it Seeing? It surges and watches and stutters like tape, and if he kills Jon then he Knows that it will take him instead. It wants Jon but it is petty enough to do it.

The tendrils of it are breaking free, crawling towards Sofia. There are more falling back from her, broken and writhing. Molly bites and snaps at them and they bleed images into the air.

Jon was right, Martin realises. The only thing left between him and Sofia was the Eye.

“Martin,” Molly says. “Finish it.”

There’s something else there that the Eye is trying to latch onto. Where it touches, it corrupts, large blotches spreading and reaching out for a daemon. The Fears need a soul to work with, after all.

The knife clatters to the ground by Jon’s feet. Martin takes it up.

He knows where he has to cut.

---

There’ll be a house in Derbyshire, close to the local village without being too close. Every time he goes to buy groceries, Martin’s accent broadens a little more, settling into something steady and settled. His daemon will swoop besides him, lingering on flowers and bright paint alike. She’s curious but Martin will always ask the questions for her, and she will thank him with all the love she has. She’ll draw his eye to particular pastries at the bakery, or a particularly fine shirt in the Oxfam. The latter isn’t for him, but he’ll still agree and buy it in a heartbeat.

Martin will walk home, no matter how much he’s bought. His daemon can’t help him but he doesn’t expect her to. After walking the length of an apocalypse, twenty minutes with heavy bags is nothing. He savours the aches and the heat, the signs that the world is as it should be. He will gripe when she lands on his wrist, claiming that he can’t possibly carry the shopping and her as well. He will smile as he says it.

At the gateway to the house, Martin will stop. In the front lawn, there’s a pond, trickling water and babbling streams across the levels. There’s a pair of frogs in there, and tiny fish, and small birds skim the surface every morning for a drink. Martin will remember last winter, when it rained so much that it broke its boundaries and reshaped the garden. Sometimes destruction happens, and something else follows.

Next to the pond will be Jon. He’ll be lying there on a blanket, spread out in the sunshine. He will be dazzling and perfectly ordinary, and his head will be propped up against his daemon. Her eyes will be closed in sleep as her side raises and lowers. She will be solid and dependable and everything he needs. When Martin opens the gate, Jon will twitch and try to sit up, and she will rouse herself to her feet to push him upright, and once he’s standing she will guide him towards Martin with one hand bound in her fur.

The moth will offer Jon a kiss. The badger will nudge Martin’s legs with her head, just to see him smile. They’ll be happy.

Jonathan Sims will have a daemon, and so will Martin. That’s all there is to it.