Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Time felt like an ill-fitting jumper.

It pulled and strained across Jon's skin, so itchy and glaringly wrong, so at odds with the general state of reality. It shifted, and there was a horrible slash in the spot where Jon's third rib would have been. Martin hadn't been too careful about placement, and the knife had glanced off the bone, before edging into the negative space between and nestling itself deep against Jon's heart. Time felt...awful, and altogether quite painful.

It was beginning to unravel, right where that gash began. It did not fit, it was broken, and it hurt.

Jon felt so, so angry. And guilty. He had done this, he knew. Had he been right? Had he done all that he could?

Martin, Martin, he thought. It was all he really could, in the end. There wasn't much else to do, except bleed and die, and neither of those options was particularly riveting, and so he chanted Martin's name like a hymn.

No. No, he had not done all that he could, because Martin was here, crying, and not leaving like he should have been. He was going to die, still clutching Jon's waist and neck like some lousy lifeline, and it was never going to be enough. They would both die, and it was still not enough.

Time felt like an ill-fitting jumper. Jon wanted to take a goddamn seam ripper to its fringes and remake it into something of his own proportions. His own invention, his own design.

The Eye was so faint, now. It hadn't been, right before Martin sank that knife in. It had told him exactly where Martin needed to pierce, and then, when he had technically missed the mark, how much longer it was going to take Jon to die because of it. But that was manageable, for the Eye, because it meant there were just that many more seconds to feast on the fear of a dying man. It was savoring him. He Knew this, and felt so, so revolted.

Of course, why should he be spared? Wasn’t that all he was, in the end? Another meal? Another goddamn victim, some vile ouroboros, voyeur to his own fear?

Time felt like an ill-fitting jumper. Perhaps it was due for a change, so to speak.

The panopticon was still standing, albeit shakily, when Jon felt the first tentative snap of thread. It felt, in the most horrifically kindred way, like a particularly staunch spider-web breaking. The comparison threw a full-body shudder through Jon, and he imagined how immensely smug Annabelle must have been, now. She’d won, hadn’t she? He was no more clever than some fucking fly, still caught in her web. The building was still standing when Jon used whatever vestiges of strength he still had left to seize Martin’s arm and pull the other man in even closer than he already was. He could count his freckles if he had the time.

He didn’t, but he didn’t need to. Jon knew Martin inside and out. He knew Martin had thirty-one freckles on his face and neck, the same way he knew he had grey eyes and hated Oolong tea. He hadn’t needed the Eye for any of those things. He learned them by virtue of loving the man, and he absolutely refused to know, capital K or not, what it would be like to exist in any world without him.

The panopticon was beginning to fall when Jon pressed a kiss to Martin’s cheek, then moved to whisper something in his ear.

It sounded an awful lot like “I’m sorry”.

Chapter Text

Snap. Snap. Snap.

Riiiiip.

An echo, a terrible cacophony of web after web tearing and breaking and becoming undone reverberated through Jon's ear. The sound was awful. Loud, wretched snapping where no sound should have been; the Web was never one for the whistles and bells of a performance, but Jon Knew the effect was for his benefit, or something akin to it. How dare he? How dare he rip and tear at this beautiful thing? Such an intricate design: Gone, with shallow grief. Jon felt as if he had just taken a particularly long stick and slashed a spider's home to strands.

Good, he thought. Let her feel displaced, for once.

It was here, in the in-between of sound and silence, of terror and comfort, of betrayal and hope, that he Knew three things, at once:

1)He was still capable of Knowing. A quiet sort of dread lingered to the thought, resigned as it was.

2)His chest was in agony, and it was not the type to behave and sit still. No, this pain traveled to his lungs and arms and legs, and it bloody hurt. 

3)He was splayed over Martin's torso and legs, tangled into the other man, and the two of them were prone on the floor of Artifact Storage.

"Hnngmm," said Martin. He did not elaborate.

"Hnng, indeed," Jon tried for, but wound up wheezing something significantly less comprehensive, punctuated with a terribly wet cough. Good Lord, were stab wounds always going to be so painful? Even with the slow stretching of his skin slinking itself back into one piece, exhaustion tempted its way into his periphery. He recalled how easy it was for him to swing into debility, precedented by days of shrugged essentials and little to no sleep, from the Before period. Was this going to be of the same pattern? How unfair, to be rid of apotheosis, only to be reintroduced to fatigue, and hunger, and any of the other pesty human restrictions he'd gotten quite used to bypassing entirely.

Was he human, now? A cursory glance towards the Eye told him, no. No, he was not. He could Feel the inky blackness that sat unmoving where his blood should have been, and the eyes that swarmed over his skin in a terrible mass. He was buzzing with them.

"Jon? Jon!" Martin had, evidently, flew through the usual motions that precedented easing into consciousness, and fell flat into an unrelenting panic. His voice, like Jon's, was hoarse. He had taken to blindly grabbing at what he probably hoped was Jon's general figure, but mostly wound up with one hand tangled in his hair, and the other skating clumsily over his ribs. Which, ow. He was still only partially through healing what amounted to a fatal wound to the heart. A little whining was permitted.

"I...I'm here, Martin. Oh, Christ, we're really here. I, ah, fuck," Jon's elbow bent with pitiful effort, jabbing Martin's collarbone--Oof!-- as he went to prop himself up. The second attempt when better; Which is to say, utilized both his arms, and not just the one Jon now Knew was positively sprained, and narrowly avoided attacking Martin with his limbs a second time. Painful, still, but not nearly enough to prevent Jon, hellishly stubborn, from bracing himself into a position where he could at least look his boyfriend–He's alive, He's okay, He's here--in the face.

His right arm was more suited to such a herculean task, and, with it, came the sort of knowledge the Eye hadn't bestowed upon him: Martin was absolutely, positively, soaked in blood. A glance down upon his own formed revealed no disparity;  the two of them looked like they had murdered a trolly's worth of people and then bathed in the carnage for good measure. Martin's glasses were also quite shattered, bent inwards on one of the legs. 

"There's an Auerbach & Steele less than five miles from here," Jon said. "They're having a sale on the frames you like."

"What?"

"S-Sorry. I, ah, your glasses? They're broken. And I, suppose the Eye thought that might be good to know?" He, at the least, had the common decency to grimace in embarrassment. Nothing says "I love you and am happy you are still alive", quite like a promotion for a rather mediocre vision store. The Eye's priorities did always lay elsewhere, unfortunately.

"Right, sure, of course? Yeah. That's probab--Wait," Martin moved to sit up now as well. He had a significantly better time of it, due to his own build, and by virtue of not having been stabbed. "Five miles? That can't be right. We're not--" He blinked. "Oh my god. Jon, where are we?"

"I, heh, think you mean to ask, when are we?"

"Who the hell are you, Marty Mcfly? What does that mean?"

"Oh. I thought it was rather. Uhm. Okay, so, do you actually not know where we are right now?" Jon asked, shifting to make the last of his deliberately slow trek off Martin's body and onto the unforgiving, chilled floor below him.

"No? It's kinda dark, wherever we are? Um, I mean, I can tell we're on the floor somewhere. Tile, I assume. And you're here! And I don't exactly feel dead, but I guess maybe I wouldn't actually know if I were or not," Martin shrugged, wincing with the movement. He had fully sat up not too long after Jon, and, like Jon, sorta wished he hadn't.

Martin was right, Jon realized. The room was nearly pitch with darkness--thankfully, the normal kind, that originates from off-switches and a lack of windows, rather than the terrible kind, the sort that eats you. Jon took a moment to comprehend, with another wave of dread, that he couldn't actually see in here--but he could See. There really was no reliable way for Martin to possibly know where they were. In fact, it wasn't even a wild assumption to presume oneself to be dead.

"Ah. I see."

"Can you?"

"Quiet, you," Jon quipped, but he could hear the smile in Martin's voice, and See it reflected onto his face. "I'm going to stand up, and flip on that light switch. I, uh, that should clear up, at the very least, the where of...where we are."

Oh, damnit. His legs, having also traveled in much of the same condition, were in no better shape than his arms, and he nearly fell flat onto his arse. A scuff here, slight limp there, and Jon was bracing himself against a wall, the one he Knew had the overhead light switch for the room.

A flip, and--

The door, the one that technically shouldn't have been left unlocked (but that Alec Jackson, new to the institute, twenty three years old with the naivety to prove it, had mistakenly done exactly so), swung open with no pretense whatsoever. Both Jon and Martin had squinted against the light of the fluorescent bulbs ahead, so the figure in the doorway took more than a moment to fully register as a presence, let alone as another person. When he did, it felt as though the world was ending all over again, for how much Jon's heart bottomed out. 

Tim Stoker stood haltingly in the doorway. He held a pale manilla folder in his hands, only just beginning to fall lopsided from tensed fingers.

He looked so...healthy. Alive. So unmarred by all the sorts of things that went hand in hand with the man towards the end, like pock-mock scars and inconsolable rage. 

"Tim?" Martin breathed, voice cracking ostentatiously.

"You were just..." Tim trailed off, his face contorting ever so slightly into that godforsaken, lopsided confusion he'd worn a time or two in the past, and it felt so, so good to see. It was better than anger. It was better than grief.

"You aren't--How did--What?" He continued. The poor folder, under the notion of distress, and gravity, fell down to the floor. A soft whoosh accompanied the movement, and Jon, working under his own notion of distress, went instinctively to retrieve it.

A bad move, he'd later lament.

Tim looked at his face, into his eyes--THE STRANGER--and something indistinguishable from horror spread across his face, jumping from his eyes and slinking its way down to his feet. He stepped back once, then once again. He was no longer straddling the doorway, but easing into the hallway with one hand still on the door handle.

Before Jon could say, could do anything, Tim had taken the unfortunate initiative to slam the door shut. Its hinges, seemingly not yet oiled at this point in time, shrieked appropriately with the movement. Jon heard the distinct click of the outer lock pressed into place, and Knew Tim had grabbed the rarely-used chair shoved unceremoniously against the wall to further barricade the door shut, pinning the handle in place. 

Jon's leg was beginning to shake, again. Perhaps he should surrender back to Martin's side on the floor. Maybe cry.

"And that," he rasped. "Should clear up the when."

"Christ, he's...There weren't any scars, there, were there? F, From the, uhm, Prentiss? That didn't happen yet?" Martin, standing now, joined Jon by the door. He did as any man would, and tried the handle, which did not open, as expected. The handle hardly even moved, mulish inaction to emphasize simply how ridiculous it felt, being separated from this world by nothing more than a completely average door.

"No," Jon said, forlorn. "He's from...July, 2016. The worst thing that's ever happened to him is still the death of his brother."

"That's...weird. The, heh, time travel? Weird to think about. I didn't really think that was...real? Like, okay, fear gods? Fine, whatever, that's...I'm used to that. I know that. But time travel?" Martin shoved a hand through his own hair, right in the patch of white that threatened to cover his whole head even after he escaped the Lonely. "Are we...are we actually here? In, what did you say? 2016? Christ, Jon. I can barely remember 2016! What the hell...How the hell did we get here?"

"I...I don't quite, ah, Know? Or, well, I Know, but I don't think it's something I could put into words if I tried. It's so...ah, ah ah, shit!"

"Jon!" Martin leaned forward. "Are you okay? What's going on?"

"Yes," He said, a moment after composing himself. He lowered his hand, the burned one, from where he had pressed it to his temple. "I probably shouldn't try that again, though. It...hurts."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, love," Martin said. "Is it, ah, the Eye? I mean, just, it's the same? You're still a part of it?"

Jon thought about it. Yes, he did still feel the nudging interference of the Eye. As it was, it appeared that severing his connection to the Pupil did nothing to cut him off entirely. The wound over his heart, now a shiny new scar, ached. 

All for nothing, then. He was still...like this. Still terrible. Still serving a terrible thing.

He said nothing, but hadn't hardly a need to; Martin watched this play across Jon's face in quick succession, and let his own face tell Jon what he wanted to say: That he was sorry, that he still loved him. It felt useless, and Martin felt a resurgence of anger for the thing that watches, for making the man he loved feel so powerless.

"So much for us actually being dead and this just being a really awful version of Heaven, I guess," Martin tried to joke. It fell flat, but Jon appreciated the sidebar, regardless.

"You mean being effectively trapped in a dusty room brimming with artifacts gearing up to kill you isn't Heaven to you? Shame."

"Heh. So, this is Artifact Storage, then. I wasn't sure, I haven't been in here in...well. You know. Actually, I don't think I really came in here when we actually, like, properly worked here? Even though I wasn't completely, ah, sold on the idea of the supernatural back then, the artifacts that came in were still just...spooky, like, regardless? I mean, a doll doesn't have to actually be haunted for it to be haunted, you know?"

"Yes, I know what you mean," Jon said. "But these actually are haunted, unfortunately. We should probably...not stay in here for long?"

"Yeah, probably! Think we can bust the door down?" Martin stepped backward, lifting his arms in suggestion. The door was solid oak, Jon Knew, but it was rather old.

"You may be able to. I think I'd break just about every bone in my body if I gave it a go. The Eye doesn't care much about physicality, evidently," Jon muttered, gesturing to himself. And, in doing so, slipped out a quiet "Oh."

Martin repeated the sentiment, having also come to the same realization.

"Jon," He said. "We're both completely bloody, and you're covered in...eyes. Just, a whole lotta eyes. I don't think I can blame Tim for being so eager to lock us in here."

"Oh, hell. He thinks we came from one of those artifacts."

"I don't suppose we can explain, 'No, we're not some evil thing that climbed out from a table or something, we're just from the apocalyptic future, also we miss you because you're dead'?"

"Probably shouldn't lead with that, no," Jon chuckled, casting a look around the room. Some corners were too Dark to see, but others were--

Others almost seemed to beckon.

"Oh. Oh, fuck, Jon?" Martin reached for an arm.

"Mhm?"

"'Evil thing that climbed out from a table'? If Prentiss hasn't attacked the Institute yet, that means Sasha is...is still Sasha," He lit up. "She's still alive!"

"That's...you're right. She is. I, I can't...See her? I mean, I can tell she's here. I Know she's sitting at her desk right now, which, um, apparently is the one next to the one Not-Sasha had...anyway. She's there, and I Know that, but I still don't know what she looks like. It's like as soon as I Look at her, my gaze slides right off, and I forget whatever details I'd picked up in those few seconds," Jon huffed. A lingering effect from the Stranger, he supposed. Even now, or then, before that thing had ever taken Sasha in the first place, it still kept its claws in his mind. 

"I'm sorry, Jon," Martin sighed. "That...that sounds terrible. At least, we can go see her, like, in person?"

"That would be...wonderful. Although, I doubt we'll be let out of here anytime soon?" Jon waved a hand. "Tim still thinks we're, ah, monsters."

"Well, he's not completely wrong there, heh," Martin grinned, before watching Jon's face flinch, ever so slightly. "Oh, Jon."

"I just...we're here. In the past. And Tim and Sasha are both right there, and we still don't get them back. You remember how Tim was when I was only just beginning my descent into..." Jon sighed. "This. Locking us in a room seems best-case scenario, all considered. We can't talk to him. He isn't...he isn't our friend, here."

"Well....tough luck!"

" What?"

"Who said the past had a monopoly on Tim? We're here for a reason, and it's a good thing, right? We can help here! We can, can save Sasha and Tim, and maybe not be so stupid this time around. No stalking, no Unknowing, no goddamn death. We've...lost too much, already. Maybe we can actually fix this?" Martin looked, as Jon always thought he did, beautiful, the way he did when he got a particularly stubborn idea in his head. It was the sort of Im-Going-to-Save-the-World attitude that demanded compliance, and Jon was grateful for it. It was nice, knowing Martin still had the drive he’d become to dependent on.

"I'm not sure there is one, though," Jon sighed. "A-A reason, I mean. For us being back here. Not one that I can See, anyways."

"Oh, come on. We've been living in a world where the only reason was dream logic, and you don't think there's something a little fantastical about this? We fucked up, Jon. So many times. Maybe...Maybe it's the Web, and we're falling back into its trick. Maybe the Eye got too bored of that world and figured out how to shove us through time. Maybe we are dead, and now we get to spend eternity together. Either way, there's.... something. Something to do, and a reason for it. Why not... make the best of it? We know, at the least, Tim's here. And Sasha isn't a stranger. We deserve a second chance, to do this right. "

"You're awfully optimistic. Do You really think, after all the pain and fear I caused, we just get to... restart? Rewind the proverbial tape? What if it IS the Web, and I make things worse, somehow? Fuck, Martin, I can't risk that!"

Jon, with all the suave of a man with very little, slid down to the floor clumsily. It was still rather cold, and a few specks of dirt stuck to his, admittedly, already ruined-beyond-salvation trousers. Tears pricked his eyes. The two usual ones on his face, at least. The others sort of blinked, terribly.

"I don't know how we got here. I don't even think I can Know why this happened," He conceded.

"But we are, Jon," Martin dropped to join him on the floor. "And honestly? I'm tired too. You know that. If this is some nefarious scheme put on by eldritch fear gods, would we even--be able to avoid it? I...I don't think we could, truth be told. Even with everything we know now."

"You're terrible at pep-talks, Martin."

"I'm not done, Jon. As I was saying, maybe we can't fix everything. Maybe not even anything at all. But I think it would feel so much worse to just sit by and watch it all happen a second time," Martin emphasized. "Let's...let's try, okay? One step at a time."

"Heh. Nothing like taking baby steps in preparation for stopping an all-consuming apotheosis."

"Exactly."

Jon brushed what seemed to be the last of his tears from his face, scrubbing away flakes of blood in the process. A sniff, and he moved in closer to Martin, essentially climbing into the other man's lap. Martin made to comb through Jon's hair with his fingers, only to grimace when an eye opened up in between the locks. That might take a second to get used to, he supposed.

"Okay," Jon said. "Okay, let's...save the world. For real, this time, I hope. What...ah, what's the first of our many 'baby steps' going to be?"

"Hm," Martin made a show of bringing his free hand up to his chin, a mockery of thought on his face. "Probably breaking out of Artifact Storage, I guess."

"Ah." 

Chapter Text

If one were, say, particularly unobservant, and could possibly ignore the man sprinting down the tiled corridors, and the extraordinarily bloody men who had spun the whole thing on, it could be said that the Magnus Institute was having a rather un-peculiar day. The bulk of employees, for the most part, were simply milling about, and stealing unsubtle glares at clocks and watches and phones, willing time to do the one thing it was good for, and pass , so that they could leave for home. It was a quarter till five, so this general state of mind was on masse throughout the institute. To put it plainly: No sane person would see the time, and then see Stoker flying down the halls, and offer up any sort of service, helpful or elseways. Unfortunately, while so few in the institute could be constituted as 'sane', the amount of paperwork surely to be ordered for such an ordeal was enough to override any sort of curiosity, morbid as it may be, and so he went off alone.

Tim, for all his better qualities, did not process a single person in the halls at all. He was, for a man of no plan and mostly fear, utterly gunning for Jon's office.

The...whoever, or whatever the hell he'd come across in Artifact Storage certainly was not the sort of situation to be left alone, but Tim thought, with rising hysteria, it would have been worse to hang around or, God forbid, answer the damn things when they said his name .

Maniacally, Tim's thoughts found it appropriate to bounce between the two general points that accompanied the usual event of stumbling upon, and then running from, the two doppelgangers of your friends-slash-coworkers: First, paralyzing fear, and then, the notion that Jon was likely to be less than pleased that he'd dropped and left that statement. Tim had only been directed to Artifact Storage in the first place after Jon had requested 'More Research To Be Done', despite that department being a whole floor above theirs, and notably with entirely different purposes. 

Palpable relief fell over Tim with the approach to the Archives themselves, which, quite traitorously, immediately replaced itself with trepidation.

Tim, working under the assumption that he did, in fact,  work in a place where there were numerous amounts of strange and under-researched objects capable of such a thing, had initially assumed the doppelgangers in the storage room to be, well, exactly that: doppelgangers. A double, something that could still exist alongside the two people he had already known. It was here, less than a step from crossing the threshold and into the Archives Proper, that he found himself pausing, considering all the other, quite awful, alternatives.

Were those... things the same as those who had taken Danny? The same awful, ripping dread crawled into Tim's throat, as he considered what it would mean. What it would do to him, knowing he would simply have to... deal , with the knowledge that it had stolen more from him--more people, more memories, more of himself. The next room was so, so very quiet, he thought. Far too quiet.

And if those two were the very same Jon and Martin he'd already known? If they'd gone to Artifact Storage themselves, only to read a Leitner, or pick up something they shouldn't have, or something , and Tim should have helped , but ran instead? If they were hurt, and he fucking ran ? It had to have been something , Tim thought. Something, something--

It was that damned something . He just had no idea what it was. No amount of theorizing, or spiraling, or whichever one he'd likely attribute this stunt to at a later date, was going to help, not in fixing the issue, nor in making the apprehensive final steps into the Archives. He had to go on, he knew. He just wished it weren't so quiet.

He steeled himself, once with a deep breath, and again with a stupid grin plastered over lingering terror. 

Play dumb, Stoker , Tim thought. You're always smiling like an idiot, like a dumbass. Keep it on, and hope these things don't see right through it. 

Tim's hand went for the door, while his heart went to his throat, and he threw it open carelessly to reveal--

To, uh. Reveal...?

Oh, what the hell?

Sasha herself was roughly in character, kneeling on the floor just outside Jon's office with a glass cup held gently against the closed door; this was, while a tad concerning, justifiably relieving--to see her simply fine and only committing a slight invasion of privacy.

Next to her was Martin, who was mostly out -of-character by doing much of the same as Sasha; his glass cup was still hovering just a hair away from the door, like he hadn't quite made the decision to actually trespass, but to imitate it in style.

Oh. Oh! Martin!

He looked...well, he looked terrible, but that was credited more to the thirteen days he had spent under siege by Jane Prentiss (and the subsequent week he had been living in the Archives), and less to any sort of body-snatching creatures that may or may not already be loose in the building. 

Tim had hardly even opened his mouth to speak what he would have hoped to convey a casual inquiry, but would have undoubtedly come across with unfiltered agitation, only to be spared by Sasha, and a finger pressed to her lips. She waved him over, and he was glad for it, if only to be able to confirm, up close, that this was his Martin, and not the one with the weird dye job and possible evil Jon companion.

Sliding up next to the co-conspirators, Tim pointed to the cup, then to the door, and hoped he didn't look quite as foolish as he felt, trying to mime out the question of 'what in the world are you doing?'.

Sasha mouthed out the general pronunciation of 'Elias', and gnawed on her lower lip before gently pushing herself away from the door and back onto upright legs. She walked back over to her desk, followed by both Martin and Tim. If Sasha were less focused on her own thoughts, and more on her companions, she might've noticed how severely Tim appeared to be studying Martin; Unfortunately, she was a rather ordinary woman who sometimes suffered from ordinary tunnel vision, and lent no indication either way.

"I can hardly hear anything, anyway," Sasha sighed. "But Elias just stormed down here, demanding to see Jon!"

"Yeah, it was...weird? Like I honestly kinda thought he ran down here, he was so out of breath," Martin cut in, gesturing largely with his hands. "I have no idea what for, though. Um. That's why we were, uh, sorta..."

"Eavesdropping like the world's most cliche and terrible spies?" Tim asked. 

"No! Well, I mean, sorta, but it wa--"

"Yup!" Sasha cut in. "My idea, don't have a conniption like poor, sweet Martin here." 

"Listen, I just don't want to face whatever ire Elias is currently monologuing at Jon right now, and there's no way he won't if he finds us just, just crouched outside the door!"

"You still grabbed a glass, though," Sasha pointed.

"...might've been a little curious," He mumbled. 

"Did Elias say anything about Artifact Storage before he cornered Jon?" Tim prodded. If Martin was, well, still Martin , he imagined Jon was much the same, but it still warranted investigation. Artifact Storage still held those two interlopers, and Tim didn't imagine he would be so lucky to simply find he'd developed a tendency for hallucinations, instead of the tendency he'd already had for being haunted by terrible, otherworldly monsters. 

"Not that I remember," Sasha said.

"Oh! He had been asking us... like, where Jon was, specifically? Did something happen in there, Tim? That could, um, be why Elias thought Jon wasn't in his office?" Martin tried for. The group had gravitated naturally to the surrounding desks around Sasha's, and had taken residency as such. 

"Jon wasn't in his office?" Tim asked, unable to keep the slight nervous tilt out of his voice. There were too many layers to this, he thought. First Jon was his usually bossy self in the office, sending him to the No-man's-land that was Artifact Storage, and then he was in Artifact Storage, all bloody and eye-filled, and now he was evidently... simultaneously being berated by Elias in the office and somehow, in an entirely new location. Tim's head was beginning to split something nasty, trying to follow the story, or whatever it may be.

"See, this is where it gets weird!" Sasha insisted. "He was in his office, Martin and I had just seen him walk back in there and close the door after he sent you to Artifact Storage, which is exactly what we told Elias."

"But," Martin said. "That just made him... I don't know, not quite... angry, but he started implying that, that we were lying , for some reason? Like, he said if Jon had stepped out and, and gone somewhere, we didn't need to cover for him?"

"And then ," Sasha grinned. "Jon opens the door and asks if everything was alright."

Here, Sasha paused, presumably for effect. Usually, Tim would have rather liked to play along, if only for how entirely endearing Sasha got when she was regaling office gossip like it was a fantastical story, and often reacted as such. Unfortunately, he felt a tad off-kilter from the whole, 'There's Something In Artifact Storage', and so he did nothing of the sort, and only motioned for her to continue. She did, though clearly without the same enthusiasm as before.

"Elias seemed surprised to see him there, at the least. I, ha, suppose the rest of the story is kinda boring in retrospect! Elias just asked if he could speak to Jon in his office, and..."

"And they've been in there since you've been gone," Martin finished, still quiet.

"So," Tim said, "To summarize: Jon is , as he literally always is, in his office, which Elias threw a hissy fit over, and is now holding an impromptu meeting slash berating over...something."

"That just about covers it, yeah," Sasha said. "And now we wait, either for the next few days of literally prying details from Jon, or--"

"Or until he comes out and starts ranting about exactly whatever it was Elias wanted to tell him. For hours, if last week's 'incident' is anything to go by," Tim said. 

"Heh, yeah," Martin said. He was now nervously fiddling with the glass in his hands, rolling it back and forth between his palms. He had been a relatively ordinary man, one with nervous tendencies and a habit to fiddle; Now, after Prentiss, he was still a relatively ordinary man, in the sense that he had reacted as any man would, and developed even more nervous tendencies and a habit to be afraid approximately all of the time. 

"Do you think he's--" Sasha was cut short, quite rudely, by the door to Jon's office swinging open. Elias looked as much as Elias as he always did; He was composed, and calm, and not like the sort of man who has just been yelling at an employee. He smiled, letting the office door shut behind him.

"Ah, Tim. Jon told me he had sent you off to Artifact Storage for research purposes. Were you able to find what you needed?"

With the question came the sort of unease Tim was beginning to associate quite flush with Elias; Was he to lie? Did Elias...know, already, about the two men in that room? It hardly seemed the sort he would simply let happen at his Institute, and even more so that he would rely on someone like Tim to properly relay the information. 

Elias seldom spoke to Jon's assistants. Why now? When had Tim even been brought up in their conversation? He felt pinned to the floor.

"Oh, just some info on one of the artifacts that came up in a statement. We needed to verify one of the incidents that brought the thing to the institute in the first place, nothing too important," Tim said, evidently also feeling like a liar. 

"....I see. Well, of course, you are always welcome to collaborate with other Departments to ensure the Archives continue to progress at an acceptable speed," Elias said. "So long as it suits the Archivist's methods."

Oh, ouch. Maybe Elias had finally told Jon to...archive, as he was meant to do, and not moonlight as an underground research department. Tim didn't quite mind this as much as he could; It could be fun, on the days when he got to use the Institute credit card on what were practically dates, and when Sasha and Martin let him set up a Beautiful Minds styled Murder Board in the break room. Not so much when his associates went missing for two weeks from Worm Reasons, but every job had its fallbacks. It was fine. Tim was fine.

With that, Elias spared no more than a cursory look at the other two before turning on his heels and leaving the Archives proper. 

A few beats passed, in heavy silence.

"Should...Should we check on Jon?" Martin posed. "Er, well, maybe not...not now , he probably. Um. I can make tea?" 

"Oh, that does sound nice," Sasha said. "Think we can use it as an excuse to interrogate Jon?"

"That's not--! I don't want to interrogate him, I just thought it might, might be nice."

"Er, not to interrupt," Tim said, doing exactly that. "But I...There's something I think I really need to tell you. All of you, actually. Think Jon's up for a second meeting?"

"...That depends," Jon appeared in his doorway, promptly sending a shockwave of mild fright through the three assistants. "Is it--"

"Christ!"

"Oh, hell!"

"--Going to be as terrible and confusing as the last one was?" Jon continued, unbothered. Well. Not quite as nonplussed as he probably hoped to project; Tim could see the (thankfully, still entirely familiar) quiet steel that crept into Jon's eyes when he was particularly upset, or angry, or generally caught off guard. He was sporting all three today, and did not have any extra eyes, or blood, so Tim felt rather confident in his confirmation of his continued existence, at least as a separate entity from whatever may be in Artifact Storage. He did still have the conscience to feel rather sorry, if only for the knowledge that this information was certainly not to do any favors for Jon's steadily greying hair.

The feeling did not extend too far, hardly even a passing thing before the looming dread still racking his body bypassed the notion entirely, swinging right back into a mantra of 'Oh God, We're All Going To Die'.

"Well," Tim began. "Probably. I...You know what? This might be significantly easier to just...show you?"

"Wait, did something happen in Artifact Storage?" Martin asked. "You never actually answered me earlier, I mean."

"Ha! You could say that," he replied. "Sasha, you don't still have any pull up there, do you?"

"Hmm. I really wasn't up there long before moving to the Archives, but Elaine and I did hit it off for the week I knew her. Why?" 

"We may need it. Or, at least, a reliable way to keep everyone out of Artifact Storage for...well, hell, until we figure out what to do with them," Tim explained.

"'Them'?" Jon cut in, having moved closer to Sasha's desk. Predictably, his sour mood dissipated quite cleanly with the promise of something new--something to be researched, something he could do . 

"It's...it's a long story," Tim waved a hand. "No, not even long, just complicated , I'd say. If we can keep everybody else away, we could probably.. should probably handle this one ourselves."

"That doesn't make any sense," Jon argued. "Artifact Storage is significantly better equipped to properly deal with the artifacts they keep. Why wouldn't we...They tend to handle 'incidents' in-house, as it were."

"There are dozens of protocols in place up there," Sasha said. "If something has escaped, or was handled incorrectly, surely they already know?"

"It's not--I can't--"

"Did something happen , Tim?" Sasha emphasized. "You are entirely out-of-sorts, and you don't even have that file you left with!"

Jon seemed to startle at that; it appeared that he, caught up in the debacle that Tim had dragged in with him, neglected to notice the substantial lack of statement in Tim's hands, nor anywhere within reason within the Archives. A pang of regret: Tim had been hoping it would slide, given the excitement of Elias's unwelcome visit, and the aforementioned debacle.

"I, We need to--This isn't," Tim struggled. "I don't know . It...This involves us, somehow. Or, at least, Jon and Martin, and I don't want it to get...completely fucking obliterated by protocols before we can get any answers!"

"Tim," Jon said. His voice was low, and grating, and not all-too-unlike the one he used for statements, or their givers. " What did you see in Artifact Storage? "

"You. And Martin."

Jon blinked, in which Tim replied in kind. Oops. 

"Uhm," Martin said. "I haven't been to Artifact Storage today? Or, like, at all, in the past month?"

"Neither have I," Jon said, hands at his sides. Tim hadn't realized he'd slapped them to the desk until he'd taken them back. "So, Tim, I think you'd better explain, in detail , what you saw in there." 

"Oh, for--Will you just follow me? Please? So I can stop feeling like I've gone insane ?" Tim said. "Jon and Martin specifically, since this does--"

"--Does seem to involve us directly, yes, I got that," Jon interrupted. He sighed, and spent a likely few concerning moments staring off into nothing, which happened to be roughly within the same vicinity as an old scuff mark on the wall. "Well, Tim. Lead on, I suppose."

"Right. Come on."

It was....remarkably easy to keep Artifact Storage out of their own department, Jon thought. 

If the same had been proposed to him, that he, under the guise of a rather flimsy and transparent lie, should allow his Archives to be used and explored and squandered , he'd have a rough time of it not being very bloody suspicious, and subsequently reporting the intruders, without much doubt.

Evidently, Artifact Storage held none of the same concerns, or paranoia, despite their lucrative reputation, and welcomed the Archive Staff with little fanfare. If it had been Tim with the supposed 'companionship' within the department, Jon would suspect something rather unseemly of the arrangement; unfortunately, the connection was through Sasha, so likely had less to do with an affair, and probably more with her innate ability to simply click with other people. And perhaps something to do with illicit computer skills; Jon never could quite tell. Either way: the misconduct was sanctioned, and well upon its way.

Despite Jon's misgivings over blindly following Tim down the corridors to Artifact Storage, he found himself doing exactly that: walking barely a half-step behind Tim, a decent side-step from Sasha, and several feet in front of Martin, all with a singular goal in mind: To know what the hell went on within the institute, and to, if all was to go well, not die in the process.

"Are we... sure this is a good idea?" Martin voiced the question that was otherwise content to simply hover at the peripheral of everybody's minds, lending itself to a nervous gait and twitching fingers. 

"Well, it's this, or just to take Tim at his word," Jon griped. "And I'd rather not, no offense."

"Ha, none taken," Tim glanced back, making brief eye contact with each of them in turn. "I don't think I'd believe you either, if this were the other way around."

"You've yet to explain exactly what it is you did find. Far be it for me to simply... dismiss, whatever this may be. And proof is always much appreciated," Jon said.

"You, uhm. You said you saw...Jon? A, and me as well, in there?" Martin asked.

"I think so, yeah," Tim said. "Or, at least something that could look , and sound...mostly the same."

"Mostly?" Sasha piped up.

"Eugh. I'm beginning to regret telling you guys anything before I could actually show you," Tim groaned. "I don't know! I don't know, okay? There were definitely two 'people' in there, and they looked like Jon and Martin, if Jon and Martin were also... different people!"

"How is that--"

"Shush!" Sasha demanded, with the usual means of holding a hand up, and with the less-usual means, by yanking brutally at the sleeve of Tim's jacket, nearly pulling him down upon his ass. "Do you hear that?"

As the hallway stopped echoing their own steps, and began to echo the silence instead, it became rather apparent that it was, in fact, not silence, but rather just its adjacent: a room devoid of sound, except, of course, the unmistakable knocking that came in short, aggressive bursts. They'd approached the door to Artifact Storage in a state of unease, which soon morphed into rising fear, having finally done the sane thing and froze in place.

"Um," Martin said.

"Alright, there is definitely something in there!" Sasha said, still with a hand clutched at Tim's jacket.

"Really loving the vote of confidence here, Sash."

"Still," she whispered. "Now we get to investigate. Who wants to open it?"

The question was met with the unfortunate silence (sans knocking) that tended to accompany the sort of knowledge bestowed upon researchers within a preternatural institute; which is to say, the type that haunts the mind, and, regretfully, will only keep the lot of them from actually opening the door for a rather limited amount of time. 

"Jon?" Tim suggested, rather casually.

"What? Why in the world should I ?"

"...Status? You're the archivist! You've got, I don't know, managerial hierarchy. And, it's sorta...you, in there?"

"Christ. Tim, I sincerely doubt whatever or whoever is in there cares whether or not I'm your boss ," Jon said. "We shouldn't open that door at all. This--This should be reported! If not to Elias directly, then at least to the actual Head of this department. It’s likely to be an animal, anyhow."

"An animal," Tim deadpanned. "You really want Bouchard in on this? The same Bouchard who was just yelling at you for, get this, being in your office? "

"Yes! I mean, that doesn't--He's still in charge here, Tim! I'm not going to risk...rabies, or a prank , or whatever this is, because of a performance review ."

"Um," said Martin, going wildly ignored.

"Uh-huh. Right. So," Tim said. "You don't want to see what's behind that door, then? Totally content to just, let this one slide? Possible doppelganger or not, you don't find that suspicious at all?"

"H-hey, guys--"

"I'm not--This isn't--We don't know what's in there!"

" Hey! " 

Jon and Tim ceased their bickering, to the general surprise of all three of them; Jon and Tim, because they hadn't realized quite yet that they were bickering, and Martin because he wasn't fond of raising his voice, but did find it rather effective, and quickly pushed that information back further into his mind.

"Sorry, sorry, I just--Uhm. The knocking stopped?" Martin pointed, lamely.

" Oh " had been the general consensus of the room, though it was Sasha who had actually reached the conclusion aloud.

Unfortunately, Jon thought, Martin was quite right; Somewhere in between defending his professionalism, and then his character, the rhythmic pounding fell quiet, leaving behind only silence, and residual terror. Something rather capable of eavesdropping then--or, baring the intelligence to comprehend , then at least the good sense to quiet itself when presented with four loudly arguing adults.

"Well," Jon sighed. "Er, Hello?"

The look shared between the remaining three people was one that could have been interpreted to mean 'What In The World Is He Doing', or perhaps 'Has He Lost His Mind'; unfortunately, Jon, preoccupied with the door, did not see any of these glares, and went on with his poorly executed 'plan', if one were being generous.

Although, it was plain fair to say most of that, in the spirit of comradery, went right out the window just as they heard the unmistakable sound of Jon's own voice echoing the sentiment from behind the closed door of Artifact Storage.

Chapter Text

Upon hearing a remarkably accurate impression of himself through the door, Jon considered a number of things he could do; He could, of course, still run away from this thing, and be fine. He could open the door and promptly be not fine, but at least with the consolation of having some damn answers before this thing killed him. Of course, he followed through on exactly none of these, choosing rather to stand lamely in the halls, sandwiched by three others, all of which were operating under the same terrible dilemma. 

"What...Oh my god? What do we do? " Martin said, tinged with palpable panic. "This isn't...Um, I don't know what this is?"

"Of course not, Martin ," Jon snapped, having figured out not only how to speak again, but how to be a dick as well. "None of us do. What do you think , pray tell, we're doing here in the first place?"

"Will you two be quiet ," Sasha said, gesturing uselessly to the door.  "I think we've got a bigger issue than the stick up your ass, Jon!" 

"Hey!"

"You, um," Martin said. "You mentioned..getting Elias? Or, or, just--not opening the door? We don't have that many options, but..."

"We coul--We should get Elias. Yes, let's," Jon said, seemingly to already have forgotten his initial argument in the twenty seconds he'd made it. He made to turn down the hall. It was noted that this action was done with completely fabricated confidence, and utterly no plan, but was complimented nicely with the alarm bells shrieking in Jon's head. The sounding of it urged him to leave, and he was trying his damndest to do exactly that.

Unfortunately, the voice behind Artifact Storage was trying rather hard as well. It was raspy, but loud, and, most notably, shouting obscenities through the door; largely about Elias, but--to a negligible lesser extent--about Jon as well.

"What did--"

"I think they just called Elias a bitch?" Tim's voice turned up in the usual hysteria towards the end, punctuating the statement like a question.

"Um," The door replied. "Yes?"

The group fell back into a rapidly familiar position; one of complete surrender to the gradual absurdity they had found themselves in. It was familiar, but not particularly welcome, and was getting old.

"Okay. Okay, fine," Jon said. "Let's, we need to--hm. We can always--"

"Open it," Sasha deadpanned. "We can always just open it!"

"Sasha, those things are not fine! Not Jon! Not Martin! Something probably very fucking evil too!" Tim cried.

"We won't know , unless we open it, Tim !"

"Yeah, and you know what else we don't know? What it's like to die , Sasha."

"We won't kill you!" The door said once more, getting rather tired of it. It sounded like Martin. "Promise!"

"Oh, okay!" Tim threw his hands up. He'd stretched out the 'Oh' like he knew everyone hated. "Since it promised, of course , we'll open right up! Have a goddamn cuppa!"

"Tim!" Sasha said.

"No! Oh my god, no! I don't care what those things are," He said. "We aren't going to humor them."

"No, we aren't," Jon said. "We're investigating , Tim. And I still believe the proper route would be to alert Elias to these...trespassers."

"Oh, for--" The door said. " Elias is the one who wants to kill you!"

 Tim, tipping rather fully into hysterics, began to laugh, perhaps absolutely gone on the idea that Elias could do anything more threatening than reorganizing a spreadsheet into a slightly less comprehensive manner. He laughed, and the others jumped in response. It was a slow thing, but Martin began to giggle along--not because he fully agreed with Tim's assessment, but because he was and had always been the sort of man to find laughter on the wrong side of contagious, and simply followed Tim's lead.

Sasha was sporting a wide grin, though the edges were tinged with a mild panic; She did not know what to do, and found this quite paralyzing.

Jon, of course, was unnecessarily affronted by the clear lack of respect and tact his associates were treating what felt to be rather important--he could not fathom the laughter, the same way he evidently could not fathom that Tim was, quite obviously, not laughing at him . He should take charge, he thought. They must respect that, surely.

Surely, if he could just... fix this.

It was a few steps to the old oak door, a mere three feet between safety and a very, very bad decision. Jon swatted the chair, courtesy of Tim, and made to do the same with the handle; it was the push sort, and went easily, if a bit aggressively, with the force Jon had put behind the action.

The door went just as smoothly, having forgotten it was meant to shriek and groan and amble along with no real glide. Instead of a terrible loud door, they were left with something much worse--complete silence in the face of something very stupid. Bereft of noise, and sense, it was all Jon could do but gape, perplexed, into the eyes of the man who shared his face. Bits of it, at least. There seemed to be a wild surplus of eyes, and scars, and grey hair.

He shared none too few similarities, however, for Jon to discount the man's...possible identity, as absurd as it was, right from the jump. He knew what his face looked like, as much as anyone did, and that was it--the nose, his mouth, even the hardly noticeable smattering of freckles, albeit difficult to distinguish between the pock-mark scars littered across his cheeks. They were there , and familiar, and completely nauseating. 

Jon stared. Other Jon stared directly back, though he seemed to be cheating, since he did have the advantage of having significantly more eyes. 

"Oh my god," Martin wheezed from somewhere behind him.

Er, his Martin. Not, er, his Martin, but surely not the other one, standing just behind the... other Jon, looking rather unlike Martin himself, same as Jon. That's all.

This... other Martin (If he even was ) held the same impromptu competition to be named Martin Blackwood as the other Jon did--He was Martin, if not for the hair, or the stubble, the blood .  It was difficult to see that man, and reconcile him with the assistant who only last week had drowned Jon's follow-up report in tea. 

Jon could hear Sasha's little gasp, halting as it was. Tim, outstandingly, was silent in all respects, including the ones that seemed necessary, if not required; Jon thought he'd stopped breathing.

"Uhm," Jon, the wrong one, said. "This...I mean, this shou--"

He found himself cut off abruptly by some sort of coughing fit; the force of it sent him of-kilter, and he propped an elbow against the frame in a way that suggested it did little to help. Wheezing, he continued:

"May we h...um, sit down?"

There were stone slabs more comfortable than the utterly rigid plastic things Jon and Martin were sitting on, but they'd found it a bit absurd to argue, and so they sat, and sort of wished they'd just stood instead. It was a mercy, after all, that they'd been led to the Archives at all, and not killed and/or arrested on sight. 

It was the sort of curiosity that got them killed, but Jon and Martin could appreciate the irony of it for the sake of their lives.

Jon tried very hard to forget this, and to ignore the tiny voice in the back of his head telling him he did not belong ; he failed in both parts, and added the way Tim was staring bloody murder at him to the mix while he was at it.

"Tea? Do you want tea? I'll make some tea," Martin said, skirting around his fear in favor of routine, and usefulness, and ran into the breakroom. Nobody else in the room had answered him, but he found that a negligible detail.

The others, unable to escape under tea-making pretenses, were significantly less forgiving. They watched, warily, in territory rapidly approaching 'staring', and still refused to say anything to the two men, generally being quite difficult to communicate with. Tim's jacket was still hanging haphazardly from his shoulder, and Sasha peered intently at the men, raking her gaze up and down their disheveled forms. Their decision to be quiet was a unanimous one, though for wildly different reasons: Tim's misplaced idea that simply talking to these things may hurt him at least was more sensible than Sasha mentally calculating how difficult it was going to be preventing anyone from telling Artifact Storage about this. Jon figured he was being clever, and waiting out an explanation, like he was in some sort of interrogation--mind you, he was not clever about this, and was growing obviously more uncomfortable by the second.

Jon Knew the other, younger Martin had just sat four mugs down on the counter, and was mildly panicking about what sort of tea he should prepare. He debated grabbing the old Oolong from the back and making it for the other man wearing his face. Maybe he shouldn't make the tea at all--What if that was somehow a huge mistake, and he ruined everything? What if, what if, what if--

Jon Blinked. 

He couldn't let these people, let Martin , fall to ruin as he had. He'd need to help, tp properly help, as unwelcome as he was beginning to suspect it may be. He opened his mouth, to explain this: The who's, the what's, the where's. Anything to get somewhere already.

"I thin--"

"Shut up," Other Jon interrupted.

"What?"

"Be quiet," He continued. "We have no reason to believe you do not wish us harm, and, and I don't trust you, or this, and you will be doing nothing until we come to a decision!"

"Jon," Tim tried to say, but went blatantly ignored.

"We will...We are going to hold a, a meeting, about this, and decide what to....what exactly will be done about this," Jon floundered, out of his element, and obviously so.

"A meeting ?" Sasha said, undercutting whatever pitiful united front Jon had been trying to establish.

Martin walked back into the room holding no less than four cups of tea, each balanced on thumbs or pinkies, but set them down on an unused desk. The tea was less a genuine offer, and more simply a task to do, and he found himself stuck in the awful state he was before: completely lost, more than afraid, and sort of taking half-steps in any direction, aborted ideas falling flat quickly. 

"Well," Jon said, pointedly, to Sasha. "We need to...Ah, make a plan. And it would be...better, to create one without them sitting right there ." 

"That's ridiculous," The unfortunately bloody Jon said.  "We aren't here to hurt you. Including us in your...plan, or, or idea , would be more beneficial than not. We can explain this, and, believe me, you'll be..." He paused. 

"Better off," Martin finished.

"Alright," Sasha said. "Explain, then. Who you are, what you are, and what the hell happened in Artifact Storage."

She had said this with an unwavering degree of confidence: all bold and competent, perhaps even fearless. It was with unfortunate candor that she was actually quite scared, and a touch concerned.

It was rare, even after Martin's run-in with Jane, that they should find anything with credible spookiness--even when she still worked in Artifact Storage, she felt a good portion of those objects to be simply that: objects, with nary a predisposition to hurting anyone. She could not say the same of the two men in front, sitting below her, now. They were something, for sure. 

Jon, the one covered in eyes, opened his mouth, and then closed it. He inhaled, and then let the breath go just as quickly, looking rather lost in thought.

"I think," He said. "We need to go to the tunnels. Now ." 

This gave the group pause, for a number of reasons; namely, the short-lived, but genuine fear that these tunnels, having been brought up without elaboration by the other man, was the sort of thing they should already be aware of. A prolonged look between the lot made it evident how frankly absurd this idea was, as nobody else gave any indication they knew what the hell this man was talking about. A good thing, the look. Jon was a half-second from tossing an 'Of course, the tunnels' into the mix, more afraid of appearing incompetent than blindly following along with this terror of a man. 

"I'm--sorry? The what?" Martin asked,

"The tunnels," The other Jon replied, still without elaboration. "Jon, we'll need to get into my--your office, and move that rug. Martin, will you help shift the desk over?"

Helpless, the four looked to one another for clarification; of course, there was little to be found, and so Jon slowly inched towards his office, with Martin awkwardly trailing behind him. Jon was under the impression that this was to go simply nowhere; there were to be no tunnels, and absolutely no intention of entering them if they were to exist. He was confident in this, he desperately tried to tell himself, so he took his fear and relabeled it exasperation.

Inside the office, Martin made quick work of moving Jon's desk. It was an old, oak thing, but slid easily enough off the plain rug and only scratched the floor slightly. Jon saw other scratches on the floorboards, and tried to ignore this. People moved desks all the time, and hardly for tunnel-related reasons, surely?

The other Jon--the thing wearing his face-- stepped behind the other two men, and flipped the corner of the rug over onto itself, forcing Jon to admit, sullenly, that the inset portion of the floor did look similar to a latch, terribly so.

Tim and Sasha were not too far behind, and stood, wide-eyed, before the utter cliche hole in the ground. 

"Okay, then," The other Jon said. "Erm. Follow me."

Jon hardly had the chance to move before the other Martin was grabbing at his sleeve, open-handed and quick. He froze like this for a moment, eyebrows pressed together hard enough to deeply crease his forehead.

"Wait, Jon," He spoke eventually. "Worms."

"What do--Oh. Right," He replied.  "Shit, hadn't thought of that."

"Worms?" The younger Martin spoke in a quiet, nearly inaudible voice. He dreaded any sort of answer, barring a cheerful 'Worms? Of Course Not!', but that was unlikely. In fact, he'd nearly taken to never even saying 'Worms', as a sort of half-baked superstition. So much for that, he thought miserably.

"Hold on, I--Maybe if I went down," Other Jon said. "Um, first, I mean. To make sure there aren't any... Any worms."

"Well hold on now," Martin said.  "If there are worms like... literally right there, that seems... stupid. Don't just--Listen, I'll go with you."

"Absolutely not," He replied instantly. "I know I can't See down there, but I'm not useless !"

"Never said you were! Just that--two heads are, um, better than one. And four feet."

"Hm?"

"For crushing the worms."

"Oh, right, yes," Jon replied. "...I suppose." He turned to the rest of the group, utterly appalled. "You wait here. We'll be right back."

And so the two of them went, after a brief secondary argument of just who was going to go first . It nearly seemed a thing to be resolved by a coin flip, or rock-paper-scissors, for how little either side was willing to give, but Jon won by default when he simply started down the ladder without waiting for an answer. The rest of the people in the room didn't do much in the meantime, besides staring wildly around, trying to catch a sympathetic eye, and wait.

It was less than five minutes when the ladder suggested someone was climbing up it again; Jon confirmed this by poking his head through the little door in the ground, and waving the others in.

"No worms," He said. "Let's go."

"This, uh," Tim paused. "I'm standing by on my idea that this is a terrible idea , but--Well. Tunnels, I guess."

"Should be neat."

Tim felt that describing the tunnels as 'Neat' was only applicable in the hypothetical, as the appeal wound up laying solely in the mystery of it all; once the group had descended, a bit clumsily on Jon's part, they had forgotten to be in awe, because the tunnels were quite disgusting. The air was dank, and far too still, and smelled exactly what you might expect from old dirt. He'd followed up on the tail end, and saw this other Jon visibly relax once his feet were planted firmly on the packed dirt. Sasha and Martin flanked him on either side, and he nearly elbowed Sasha in the ribs when he saw how excited she was. She threw him a dirty look, and gestured to the walls, as if to say 'Tunnels, tunnels, Tim!'.

"Okay," Sasha said, pointedly. She had an uncomfortably smug grin on her face, though there really was no reason for it. "We're in the... the tunnels now, so, we can talk. You can talk, I mean. Explain."

"Right," The other Jon said. "It's... It's quite the story, heh. Would you prefer to... No, this ground isn't suitable for... Sigh. We should have brought chairs."

"We can stand," Tim said, flatly.

"I'm sure it's fine, Jon," The other Martin said. He, oddly enough, was less jittery than this Jon, but his voice carried an uneven timber, like he'd gotten ready to stop talking less than halfway through any given sentence. 

Jon knew it wasn't the Lonely, but something damn near close to it. He felt guilty, for being there. For being another thing... wrong , in their lives. 

Jon looked at Tim, and saw fire. He saw Sasha, and kept having to remind himself that was her . And he didn't need the Eye to know Martin felt the same.

"Right," He said. "I suppose I should start by clarifying my, um, stance on Jo- Elias , from earlier.  He would kill you, at least the assistants. I don't know if he'd risk another Archivist right now, and don't particularly want to feel that one out. Hence...the tunnels."

"I...beg your pardon?" Sasha, bewildered, spoke.

"He can't See us down here, so we can... talk freely, in a way," Jon said.

"Okay, sure, I doubt there's cameras down here," Martin said. "But I thought there weren't any in the archives either? I, I mean, Jon checked...when it felt like...But why come down here ? It seems.. overkill? I guess?" 

"Oh! Oh, no not--I don't mean see ," Jon replied. "I mean that... He's not--Hell. This isn't... I haven't had to actually explain any of this before. We all sort of... learned it together, I suppose, the first time around."

"Actually, " Sasha said. "I think we should focus on that . The first... time around? You cannot seriously be implying...Well. You know! "

"The, the uhm," Jon said. "The time tr--"

"Absolutely not ," Tim cut in, loudly. "There's no fu...Just, no!"

"Yes!" Martin cried. "I know it's bloody ridiculous, but it's true , and we're, we're...Well, you! " He spun and pointed, a bit without tact, directly at the other man sharing his face.  The other Martin didn't take kindly to this, and flinched violently back.

"I...I know," Martin continued, gently. "It's weird , alright? Like, proper weird. I don't think either of us," He glared at the other Jon. "Would expect this to be... a, an easy transition. We are here to help. Just, give us a, a little time? Please?"

Jon let himself look at this strange, other Martin, and tried to remind himself that monsters were capable of lying. Of manipulation, of hiding, and waiting. He remembered all of this, and then remembered the last time he'd heard Martin sound so desperate. 

Martin, his Martin, could have easily lied about the worms. For what?--He couldn't guess; It was hardly in his nature to be so bold as to lie about evil, terrorizing worms , and so he believed him. And all those damn things around the institute and on his route home really only prove everything Martin had been claiming. 

Even so, Jon couldn't narrow anything down. Was this Martin telling the truth, because he sounded so much like his Martin had? Or had his Martin lied, inexplicably, about the worms? Or, due to the...doppelganger situation, could Jon simply forget what he thinks he knows about Martin, and start from scratch? Oh, it was havok, and was beginning to give him a headache. That, or these tunnels were doing something funny to his head.

He didn't trust this Martin. But he could give him a little leeway, and see where they went from there.

Jon, being the man that he was, ran out of monster-based compassion right around here, and turned to glare at the other man, of whom he could absolutely not trust, especially with those eyes . They were--

They were gone?

"They're gone?" He said, lamely. 

"What?" Martin responded, not really knowing what Jon meant, unfortunately, and entirely incapable of guessing one way or another.

"S... Sorry, I, it's just the .." Jon said. "Sigh. Um, your eyes?"

"Oh!" The other Jon startled, giving his arms a careful once-over. 

They were gone. Or, at least, appeared to be; Jon could tell that they didn't simply disappear, but lay only closed under his skin, pupils flitting back and forth. They were blinded.

"Oh," He said again, "Huh."

"The tunnels," Martin said. "Think they might, um, be a part of that?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," He elaborated. "It's still, um, you can't Know anything down here, right? Or, or, see?"

"Right, no," Jon said. "I've never been able to. Too close to the Panopticon."

"Okay, yeah, so," Martin waved a hand. "If the eyes were...um, a more literal visualization of your powers, and, and you can't See down here, maybe they just kinda...represent that?"

"Maybe?" Jon said, still running a hand over his other arm, feeling the phantom eyes, and pressing a hand to his neck. "I...I don't know. Obviously, I, I can't know, down here, but it doesn't... not make sense? But it feels stupid."

"I'm just guessing!" Martin sighed. "I'm certainly not going to know that for sure, I just thought maybe it--"

"No, no," Jon stepped closer to this other Martin, pressing a hand to his shoulder. "I don't--I know that. And it's...fine? Really. It seems inconsequential, considering."

A flash of anger pressed its way onto Martin's face, and schooled itself into passivity just as quick.  He opened and closed his mouth once before beginning to talk.

"You think that's not--" His voice was low, and rapid. "Right. Of course."

Having realized at least a portion of his mistake, Jon lifted his hand off Martin, and looked quite crestfallen. 

"Oh, that's not what I meant --"

"Not important," Martin cut him off. "You're, heh, right about that. More pressing things, right now." He waved a hand to the others.

The others, who were watching the conversation with a steadily rising level of discomfort. Not even necessarily because the correspondents happen to share the same face as two of them, but because the exchange felt rather like watching a fight in a foreign language--you could tell it was a fight, but nothing beyond that. It was a swirling mess of 'eyes' and 'powers' and 'panopticons', and none of the lot had a shot in hell to parse any sort of explanation. It was easiest enough to pin the blame on this other Jon and move on, which most of them did.

Stubbornly terrible, Jon sighed quite loudly to make his discomfort palpable. Tim cleared his throat at the same time, so its effect was instantaneous. The attention was shifted from the other two men's private conversation, and more to the assholery of Jon and Tim, without the decency to let them argue in peace.

"Right," Jon said, hollowly.  "I said we were going to... explain. So, uhm, let's.... do that?" 

"That.. would be nice," Sasha said. "I vote we start with the time travel?"

"Okay, see, that's probably an, I mean, it's not the best way to describe it," Jon replied.  "Don't get me wrong, we absolutely are from... a different time. But it's less time travel in the, um, conventional meaning, and more, an afterthought to... something else."

"An afterthought ?" Tim admonished.  "The time travel? Fucking hell, to what ?"

"That's," Martin said, having collected himself enough to speak evenly. "Where it gets complicated, I think. Um, maybe we should...Well, I mean, this whole thing started when..."

"Oh, from...Well, quite a ways back, now."

"Well, I mean," Martin said to Jon. "Yeah? This isn't going to make much sense if we start in the middle. But, yeah, it's um. A really long story, and not, heh, a happy one, at that."

"Nobody promised a happy story," Jon muttered, before straightening his shoulders, propping himself up another half inch.

"Right. From the beginning, then."

Chapter Text

They did not, in fact, start at the beginning.

Now, Jon and Martin certainly did try, and with decent fervency, but the feat of pinning down an actual beginning proved harder than either of them were willing to admit. It was, of course, hardly aided by the near endless interruptions, from either the two men ("No, that was before," "Hardly! We didn't know that until--" "Wait, wasn't that--?"), nor from the others, who metaphorically tossed their own hats into the ring, on occasion. None of the hats were particularly constructive; most were just plain wrong, really.

The beginning, eventually, was decided to be the beginning: Concerning, largely, the birth of the entities, what they were, and why they were. Of course, Jon and Martin did not know…any of that, not really, but then thought they’d done well enough with the information they could feasibly entertain, and started over with such– being the Magnus Institute, and its Founder:

"--Jonah Magnus," Jon said. He paused here, mostly to catch his breath, but also because he felt it was the sort of revelation that could use a theatrical break or two. The others, ungrateful to the arts, were silent. 

"Um," Jon tried again. "The...the founder? Jonah. He never died, in fact, he's here . As, um...Elias? Elias Bouchard."

Yet, silence.

"....Your boss?"

"I--Yes, Jon. We got that," Sasha said. "I think we're....well, processing? That is, quite frankly, a ridiculous amount of information."

"Quite," Other Jon cut in. "And you know this...How, exactly?"

"Well!" Martin, the older one, said. "Because he told us. And a, well, a lot of other things that sort of prove it, too."

"And do you have any of this proof with you, M...You. Why should we believe you ?" Jon mocked, ignorant of the group’s decision to shoot him triplet looks of exasperation.

"....I--We're literally standing right here?" Martin said. "It's not--You cannot be serious. How in the world can you seriously look at us , and, and not believe us? "

"Well, I am simply--"

"Actually!" Martin interrupted. "It isn't even that! You do believe in the supernatural, and the, the esoteric, and the spooky ! I know this! You know this. So why you have to be such a pompous ass --"

"Martin."

"--About this, is beyond me, actually. You aren't stupid , Jon. Stop acting like it," Martin finished, loudly, and with the misplaced confidence of a man who only sort of got used to telling people off. The air around him seemed to agree, having gone thematically still once more. It tended to do that, in subterranean tunnels with no circulation, but Martin quietly nodded to himself, anyway.

"Martin," Jon sighed again. "I don't think that's helping. Not for any of us."

"Right," He confessed. "Right. Because you know so much about what's helpf --"

"Are you kidding me? I explained, perfectly well, my decisions--"

"Yes! Your decisions!" Martin turned abruptly towards his Jon, who turned just as quickly. "We haven't... We didn't talk, Jon. Not really. Not about that."

"I know that, Martin, but when exactly did you want to stop and have a chat? Over a cup of tea? In the panopticon ?"

"No, Jon. When it would have mattered-- Before . Before you ran off and...left me."

"I didn't...I didn't leave you," Jon said, and was careless with it, because he had left Martin, towards the end, and felt the lie swell his tongue and close his throat. 

The tunnels were rather fond of compelling silence to fall upon groups of people, and reveled in how naturally it came to this lot.

The remaining four, not even to the time-travel bit, would have sooner preferred that the story continue, as they had not the context to this fight, and would find it valuable, so that they may at least pick a side and bring an end to it. Three of them decided Jon sounded more guilty, and hoped his counterpart would not find it too offensive, whilst the fourth in question decided that there must be nuance about, and he really shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

Jon’s apparent tongue swelling had gone down, and with it, any quarrel he might have tried to have. It was exhausting, having all these things they really ought to have a good row about, and none of the energy to do so. It would have been easier to simply move past the whole ordeal, and only concern themselves with the latest problems, that were equally terrible. Unfortunately, Martin quite thought the fight would be good for them, and he tried to convince himself that it was for growth, and closure, and not because he was quite bloody furious at Jon, and really wanted him to know it. 

“We can talk,” Jon said. “Later, I promi–. We’ll talk.”

“Alright,” Martin said, and hoped desperately that it would be.

—-------------------------

Jon and Martin explained the universe to the others and scrubbed the blood from their arms and hands, and realized at once that only one of those plans was working, and only marginally. After finding even more blood behind his ear, Jon helpfully suggested they table the back-and-forths of Everything, and move on to something smaller, like a shower, or, barring that, a sink and a cloth nobody was especially fond of.

This was initially met with some controversy, but most of those votes came from people not still coated in blood, so they hardly counted anyway; Sasha eventually caved, figuring that it wouldn't be terrible to get above ground once more. Also, she'd had to use the bathroom for the better part of an hour and hadn't wanted to say as such, so it was fine, actually.

They’d only gotten as far as a general synopsis of half the entities. They’d saved the more relevant for a better time–The Web, Eye, Stranger, and the Lonely were still tucked carefully into their heads and needed some more time to marinate before Jon could think of a half-decent way to explain their nuances. He hadn’t missed how Sasha blinked at the Spiral, though, and thought they may need to do some…brief recon work before moving on. 

“We really should not discuss too much outside the tunnels,” Jon swatted at another spot of blood on his sleeve and put one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. “I don’t know how much Jonah knows, now, but I certainly wouldn’t risk finding out. Too much of this time is…fragile.”

“I am reminding you to explain the time travel, by the way,” Tim said. “‘It’s complicated’ has done me no favors, telling you now.”

“We, ah, will,” Jon continues, wondering if the wood ladder had somehow weakened in the past hour. “It will just make no sense at the moment. I’d only have to explain it again, later, if we jumped the gun, as it were, and tried now.” 

“You said there are….What, fourteen of these ‘Entities’?” Tim said. “Is one of them…I don’t know, a timey-wimey one?”

“Firstly, depending on if you’re asking Robert Smirk or Adelard Dekker, there are either fourteen or fifteen entities. And, no, none of them are Doctor Who references , although I could see how The Spiral could work for what you’re getting at. Surely a logical jump, at the very least.”

“You’ve seen Doctor Who?”

“Wh–Yes, Tim,” Jon resolved that if the ladder got him down, it could carry him back up, and he put his full weight onto the step. “Why that’s important is beyond me, but I—AH!”

The ladder would soon prove to be quite vindictive, as the bottom rung sagged and then broke, not entirely snapping as the wood was simply too damp, but sort of squished downwards with little affair, though Jon flailed with enough gusto to make up for it. His Martin, close enough to catch him, did exactly that, so Jon was saved the humiliation of landing flat on his arse, and instead permitted the humiliation of being cradled close to his beloved’s chest so near the company of other people.

“Christ! I–ah. Good lord,” Jon swore. “Figures.”

“Oh,” Tim muttered, having come around to the ladder and kneeled to inspect the break. “Must be termites down here, this thing is full of holes.”

“Termites? No, there’s never been any–” Martin paused, letting Jon continue supporting his own weight. He joined Tim by the wood. “I think…We might need to worry about worms a little sooner than we hoped. Jon, these look like, heh, well, like you. Same diameter. Termite holes are smaller than these.”

“Wh– Like you?! ” Other Jon said. “Is that what those are? Worms ?”

“Yes,” Jon waved a demonstrably scarred hand. “We need to leave. I lived closest to the Institute, if memory serves.”

“You’re not going to my flat--”

“What, are you afraid I’m going to find out where we live, Jon?”

“....Well. Um.”

“Right,” Jon snapped. “Now, I can only hope the rest of the ladder is…intact. Otherwise, getting out of here might prove…not necessarily difficult, but certainly annoying.” 

As it turned out, ladders are only capable of so much vengeance; this one held grievances in a total of three rungs, but the fourth was in a merciful mood. The group was still quite slow to climb, especially the two Jons--Bad legs appeared a universal constant, unfortunately.

The sun alluded to its imminent fall as the lot of them shuffled the rug, then desk, back into their positions over the latch. From there, each gathered their things--Jon, with his laptop and a half-dozen statements he held the delusion of making headway on later. Martin and Sasha both held satchels with a few personal items, though Sasha stuck an extra notebook into hers after a moment of consideration. Tim, having come into work that day with nothing on him, left in much the same way. Of course, Jon and Martin only arrived with each other, and the blood, and would be taking both with them.

The six of them left the Institute (Without incident) and went to call a few cabs (With many shouted and, quite frankly, impolite incidents)--They were happy to drive visibly ill drunkards, but apparently, a little blood was a 'Concern', and they were 'Calling the police'.

The tube, however, was less likely to cause a fuss (This was Central London, after all), and so they boarded the next train in the general direction of Jon’s flat; Which, technically, was in walking distance, if you were the sort to appreciate it, but none of them were, so to the train they went.

Jon tried, on many unsuccessful, belated attempts, to sway the others into perhaps… not being in his flat. It wasn’t even necessarily the distrust at this point–Really, he was just thinking about the eight cat-themed mugs he’d owned, and thought that was simply too much information to offer up without first privately freaking out. Coupled with the notion that the world might be ending, and he’d accidentally acquired this freakish doppelganger–Well, the mugs were just the lowest-hanging fruit on the tree of wretched things. He would plot ways to squirrel them away the entire tube ride, if his brain found it agreeable. 

It did not. He thought about spiders.

The other version of him and Martin were shuffled close together in a seat that was really only meant to accommodate one, but they seemed glad enough. Their heads were pitched together, and they spoke in a whisper not audible to the others–This was unnecessary, as trains were generally loud, and most conspiracies could be discussed at standard volume without worry. Very rarely did this contradict itself, and a few snippets of conversation could be heard, though nothing substantial. Tim was not subtle in his ‘swaying’ to the train's movements, which, in an incredible feat, managed to deposit him directly next to the two men. 

“....But if you’re totally sure…you’d want..Um.” Martin paused. “Hi, Tim?”

Tim nodded, once. “Hi, Martin,” He said, with a flash of charm that really only meant he was being a bastard, but had fully come to terms with it.

“We’re busy,” Jon said, not looking up from the notepad in his lap.

“Wow, that’s crazy. I mean, you’re not gonna believe this, but–Me too!” Tim said. “Just, so incredibly busy. With, you know, trying not to die , but, I mean, if you’re also busy…I shouldn’t bother, yeah?”

“I–Sigh,” Jon did look up, here. “Listen. We are helping you. All of you. But we can’t just–Just do whatever we want, and damn the consequences. It doesn’t work like that.”

“We…We have to be careful,” He continued. “You don’t understand. This isn’t…we don’t know what happens next. Here, I mean. Our…worlds could be nothing alike, and we could inadvertently actually hurt your chances.”

“Maybe. But you do realize we don’t know what’s different about our worlds?” Tim said. “Aside from the…obvious.”

“Naturally.”

“So….Let’s talk,” Tim said. “I don’t see the point in hiding in those tunnels if you don’t actually know it’s necessary. Or, what the hell it even does? You can’t just,show up, spouting nonsense about fears, and Magnus, and, and whatever , and then cold-turkey us.”

“No, no you’re–”

“Oh, fuck off–”

“--Right. Oh,”

“Oh!”

“Um, well, I only mean,”

“Right, well, okay then!”

“We can talk,” Jon put a hand up. “I…suppose, if Jonah truly wanted to, he could just read your minds and then kill us all anyway. A fifty-fifty on….alerting him early isn’t so unmanageable. Nor would it hurt for you all to be in the loop. Could avoid a few nasty headaches, too, really.”

“Perfect!” Tim clapped a hand onto the rail. “I’m sure Jon has a whiteboard somewhere. I’ve been meaning to debut a new Murder Board for some time, wink-wink.”

“Did you just say w--? Never mind,” Jon muttered. “And I’ve always stored a roll-away board in the linen closet. Your Jon, however, found it more convenient to fold his down and shove it under the bed frame. He hadn’t touched the thing in years, nearly forgetting the damned thing existed, until Martin started calling out sick, and the worms showed up. Then, for the third time in his life, he went to that textiles shop on Camden to buy two skeins of cheap red yarn, and started bringing statements home. Photocopies only, of course, since he really couldn’t afford to dismantle whatever organization he’d just barely got…ten. Into, um, place.”

Tim had quite some trouble remembering he ought to breathe, and then how to breathe, once Jon began talking. He was staring, he knew, on some level he knew he was staring, open-mouthed and still, but he couldn’t….Well, he didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter. Jon spoke, and he stood very still, and tried to scream. 

“...He’d….He’d started to . To, um, He wasn’t–” Jon gasped. Tim could see, but not genuinely comprehend, how Jon bit his cheek and dug his nails into his trouser leg. “ Th….No. No. I, I can’t, I don’t–!”

With some effort, Tim was able to close his mouth after openly gaping for an unspecified amount of time–Whether that was for the entirety of Jon’s statement, or only to catch a few of the parting words, he could not tell. Martin would have been a good one to ask, if he had not been preoccupied with staring at Jon with some concern, and anger, and all the other sorts of things he was feeling that, honestly, would rather do well to remain unnamed. He’d eventually found that his hand had decided to land on Jon’s shoulder, where it sat stiffly, and still.

It would rest there for the remainder of the train ride.

—-------------------------

If either party disclosed what had occurred on the train to the others, they gave no indication either way, and allowed for one of the Jon's to cautiously lead them to the door of his flat, only two stories up. The door itself was unremarkable (And they checked, extensively, to this fact), painted the same chipped black as the surrounding. There was no doormat, nor any other embellishments that might lend itself to the character Jon was trying very hard to pretend did not exist.

He wished he was the type to fumble with keys, as that may have allowed him to stall a few blessed more seconds, but he wasn't, and the door fell open with ease. He did allow himself the small vindication of being the first through the entrance, however, and immediately darted to the living room, if only a tad too eager.

The others followed simply. Tim, still rattled by the Terrible Train Travel, could only pay meager attention to the little decoration in Jon's flat. He'd regret this later, when Sasha asked him if he'd seen the bass guitar displayed prominently on the wall, only to be chastised when he admitted that he hadn't really noticed. 

Sasha, however, did comment on the apartment, much to Jon's chagrin, and to his face. He'd only taken solace that she hadn't opened any cabinets or drawers, but really couldn't hold out on that one quite yet.

"I imagine you want to get….settled," He said, making the glance he shot at the doppelganger as unsubtle as possible. "Linen closet is here, bathroom’s the first door on the right. I do only have the one, so you'll need to take turns, unfortunately."

"Oh, that's fine," Martin said, and then gave everyone quite a shock when he simply followed the other Jon into the bathroom and closed the door.

Tim, remarkably, did not think much of this, as he was still in a different state of shock, but the others kept gaping at the door until they could hear the water turn on, and immediately turned on one another.

"Wow," Sasha said. "Wow! Um, heh. They’re….can't say I was expecting that one. Sorry, Martin.”

"Sorry?" He said, in an incriminating three octaves higher than his own. "Why, why would I take offense to–"

"We don't–That doesn't have to mean they're…" Jon trailed off. "Um. That."

"Really? Cause it sure seems it, Jon," Sasha replied, moving to lean against the ugly green couch in the center of the room. "I mean, maybe everyone showers together in the future…."

"They're not showering together ," He exclaimed, then thought about it, and blushed. "I'm sure there's a…perfectly reasonable explanation."

"Yeah," Sasha laughed. "They're showering together, like a couple! Who are together, and dating, and–”

"They're not a couple !" Jon tried again, and Martin begged for the ground to eat him. 

—-------------------------

Unbeknownst to the debacle happening in the room over, Jon and Martin were partaking in Dramatic Irony by not showering together. At least, not quite yet. Sure, the water was running, and Jon had taken off his shirt, but they’d actually been preoccupied with an equally scandalous task: shaving Jon’s head.

He’d asked Martin on the train if it was something he could help him with. Martin had agreed, only a bit mindful of the eye that had been staring at him as he said so. Between that, and the blood caking the ends together in a matted mess, Jon found that it wasn't a particularly harrowing decision to lop off the hair he’d been growing out for a half-decade. It was longer than it had been in Uni, even, and while he’d always been a bit proud of his hair, and quite liked the length, he was unwilling to allow the eye yet another peephole, so to the bathroom floor it must go.

This other Jon had a shaver in the bottom cabinet, just as he did, both equally unused. He thought maybe Georgie had bought it for him years ago, as a just-in-case, but the two had broken up before he ever got around to cutting his hair, and the recollection left a sour taste in his mouth anytime he had reached for the thing.

Martin made quick work of his hair; He’d used a pair of scissors (also found in the cabinet) to lop off most of the knotted hair, then took the razor (with the longest guard they could find) and methodically drove it in shaky lines over Jon’s head. Some of the blood was still caked to his skull, but Martin used his palm to scrub the hairs loose, and continued on. Both were silent.

Eventually, there was no more hair to cut, and Jon looked in the mirror he’d been steadfastly avoiding.

He looked….bizarre. Not--Not bad, necessarily, but it reminded him of the days in the Archives when he’d spent each day spiraling further into paranoia: Rough around the edges, and looking vaguely like a man who did many drugs. 

“Hm,” He said, unaware of the heart attack Martin was having next to him.

“Do you…um, like it?” He asked, gripping the razor with enough force to turn his knuckles white.

Jon blinked a few times in the mirror, and turned his head from side to side, slowly. 

“Yes,” He answered. “I think I do.”

“Good,” Martin breathed. “‘Cus you asked me to do this, and I—I’ve never cut hair before, Jon! I mean, my own, I guess, but that’s a bit different I think?”

“Actually, I think cutting one’s own hair is supposed to be much harder than someone else’s?” 

“Not when it’s the only way you’ve learned,” Martin said, and moved to check the water still spraying from the shower. Nodding once, he looked at Jon, who leaned away from the counter to join him. He’d clean the hair from the floor later.

They got undressed and stepped under the hot, virtually scalding water, and slowly scrubbed the grime away from their bodies. They weren’t doing any of the things the three people in the other room thought they were doing (Jon, knowing who he was, could only be about ninety-five percent they weren’t , and therefore was not counted), but still took a longer-than-normal amount of time in the bathroom together. The space was annoyingly small, so each had to suffer the indignity of shivering off to the side while the other lathered an expensive amount of shampoo and body wash onto their hair and skin. At some point, the many eyes spotting Jon’s body had reintroduced themselves, but would close when the water hit them, so he tried to steal as much time under the shower head as Martin would realistically allow--More than he deserved, certainly.

After another satisfactory once-over, the two stepped out and grabbed mismatched towels to dry themselves off. They’d been so desperate to get in the water, however, that they’d neglected to think about the steps they needed to take after; Namely, getting dressed. Neither wanted to put on the outfits they’d been wearing previously (I.e., Blood), so Jon wrapped a towel tight above his chest and made his way to the other Jon’s laundry room. 

He thought about his own flat, and the random things he would just shove wherever seemed convenient at the time–Including the sweatpants and jumper he’d held onto after Georgie left his place for the last time. They would fit Martin, so he grabbed them from the upper shelf and shoved them under his arm, grabbing an old What the Ghost! shirt for himself.

Jon re-opened the bathroom door after the two of them dressed to the sound of low murmuring. The murmuring, not wishing to be caught conspiring, died into an equally awkward silence when the two of them stepped through the hall and into the living room. This silence was accompanied by four individuals trying very hard to look ordinary; as none of them were very practiced in this, the resulting scene resembled a poorly written sitcom more than anything else. Tim leaned on the rolling board he'd pilfered from Jon's room and promptly collapsed the thing to the floor. Jon decided to stand absolutely still in the corner, while Martin pretended to wipe dust from the armrests. Sasha was whistling.

"Okay," Jon said, ignoring all that, as well as the wide-eyed look the group gave his hair (or lack thereof).

"You said you were gonna explain," Tim replied, and gestured to the board he was still lying next to. "So….Murder Board."

"Mur–"

"Oh!" Martin turned the corner. "Like the one our Tim had done in the breakroom?"

"What is a 'Murder Board' , and–Tim did what?" Jon asked, sounding perplexed, and a little put out about it.

"You never–? Oh, um, it was before we realized that, um, like things are actually bad? So Tim started taking the, the nonsensical statements and making, heh, nonsense connections between them," Martin explained. "It was this…huge board in the breakroom, Jon? I don't know how you never–How did you not see it?"

“Well–” Jon started. “I’m sure there were more pressing matters, that I–And, it’s not like I spent any considerable amount of time in the breakroom, anyhow.”

“Heh, yeah. No kidding,” Martin said. 

Both Jon and Martin thought about how they had yet to feel any sort of hunger pangs since they returned to this time. Jon assumed this meant he was a terrible monster and that he should lock himself in the basement he didn't have, and Martin also thought he was a sort of monster now, but really didn’t feel like worrying over it right now, so the issue remained unspoken.

“But–Uhm,” Martin said instead. “Yeah, so the board was sorta bullshit, but the idea’s, um, sound? For having a, a visual for all this?”

“Hm,” Jon said. “It’ll make the entities clearer, I suppose?”

“Right,” said Martin.

“Right,” said Jon, and grabbed the edge of the board from the floor, Tim notwithstanding.

It was quick work to un-collapse the board, having been designed to do exactly so. The other Jon went to retrieve the red yarn he’d kept, and tried not to think about the flinch Tim gave him when he set them on the glass table. Sasha had no such qualms with string, and started half-heartedly unspooling the smaller skein while looking for the magnets Jon swore he had somewhere.

They were found, but not before Sasha got to open three entire drawers in the kitchen. She found that Jon owned a whole lot of nothing, aside from a hoard of pens (two of which she knew for a fact were hers) and more sticky notes than she was bothered to count, abandoned carelessly in the mess. Neither of these things cared much about Jon’s embarrassment, especially since they were so ordinary, but they glared up at him from the drawers regardless.

The group scattered into the living room once more. Jon and Martin took the helm, and realized very quickly that they hadn’t minded the incidental stalling they’d been doing, and were now faced with the unfortunate predicament of having to follow through with their word. Jon cleared his throat, and grabbed the thin marker they’d rescued from the kitchen drawer.

“ Entities ,” He narrated as he wrote. He continued this with the fifteen added categories, leaving enough space under each to elaborate later. They branched off from the main title like the sort of diagram you’d see in primary school, or a particularly dull board meeting. 

“I know we went over–some, in the tunnels,” Jon said. “But we need to–You have to understand, these aren’t….hypothetical. They’re active, here and now, and you’ve all seen at least two or three for yourselves at this point.”

“Like Prentiss,” The other Martin said, quietly.

“Yes. The Corruption,” Jon replied, and circled the word for good measure. He wrote her name under the category as well. “Though, we tend to refer to the… people associated with the entities as avatars.”

Jon drew another line, diving the board into two halves. He wrote Avatars in large letters across the top, and then wrote a list of names directly below.

“Um,” Tim said. “You wrote Michael twi–Okay, three times?”

“We’ll get to that later. In the meantime just…Don’t trust any Michaels.”

“Alright, then,” Tim said, and turned his head to share a look with Sasha. He shared another look when Jon wrote his own name.

“I–” The other Jon said. “What do you mean, avatar? Why are we included on a list that includes–Prentiss! And, and, whoever these other things are!”

“Listen,” Jon said. “It’s hard to explain, but, I mean….Tim, you saw…me.”

“In, uhm, Artifact Storage, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Right,” Tim said, and kicked himself for forgetting that fear so easily. “Yeah, I wouldn’t exactly consider that….normal.”

“Because it isn’t,” Jon said. “That’s what I need you to understand. None of this is going to make any sense, and it’s going against everything you think you know, and I just need you to listen .”

“You…” He trailed off. “You need to full picture, first. Demands about my humanity second, okay?”

He turned back to the board, and held the marker to the plastic, but made no move to write. The other Jon muttered something about water, and disappeared into the hallway.

“Avatars are…”Jon said. “They aren’t quite–manifestations? But they’re going to be the easiest way for an entity to interact with our world.”

“Some are–people. As much as they can be. But there are a few out there who are so far removed from human, they may as well be indistinguishable from the entity itself. That’s how you get Prentiss, or the Distortion, or the Not-Them. Things beyond reason.”

“You can…usually tell fairly quickly if you’re dealing with one of them,” Jon continued, sorting the list of names into the entity categories. “Whether they’ve got…worms, or too many…bones. But those who are able to blend in, as it were, will, if it means they can lure you in.”

“Is this…a cult?” Sasha cut in.

“Not in the traditional sense,” Jon sighed. “There are religious aspects of some, like–The Dark, and their ‘People’s Church of the Divine Host’. And the Desolation is a close second, with the ‘Lightless Flame’, but it’s not…Religion requires structure, of a sort. This is simply…mutualism. You feed it and it…it feeds you.”

The other Jon reapproached the living room, but made no effort to cross the threshold; Sasha saw this, and did nothing more than observe as he visibly sagged against the door frame. 

“Feed it how?” Tim leaned forward from the couch. 

“Fear,” Jon answered, and waved a hand across the board as if to demonstrate. “It feeds on fear, of all those terrible and mundane things. Do you know how many people are simply afraid? ”

“Never enough of them,” Jon laughed, weakly. “So they have to get…creative. And that means avatars, and artifacts, and, and Leitners and rituals. Just to gorge themselves on the people unlucky enough to catch their notice.”

“So, no, Sasha,” He said. “It’s not a cult. Those, at least, have an end. A way to…stop them.”

“Wait,” The other Martin sat up. “I thought…isn’t that what you’re here to do? Stop this, this evil thing from the future? Are you saying you can’t?”

“Oh. No, Martin, it’s…”

“It isn’t something to be stopped,” Martin looked to the room. “I’m–We’re sorry. The entities themselves? Those are….well, they’re sort of, um, invincible?”

“And even then, ‘invincible’ implies that they’re these tangible things in the world,” Jon added. “They just are .”

“So–I’m sorry,” Jon finally spoke from his corner of the room. “What are you doing here, then? What’s your ’grand plan’ to–to stop this, or to help us!”

In every conversation of considerable merit, there is a silence; not the usual kind perpetuated by people simply not talking, or taking a moment to think, but that of such monumental weight that, quite frankly, you’d have to be a bit dull to confuse it with either other kind. It told the group that there was no plan, no saving grace coming to reveal some magical solution to the horrors they’d only just learned were being sinister off in the world. 

“I…” Jon’s voice caught. 

“You--You've got to be kidding," Tim laughed. "You have no idea what you're doing here, do you?"

"We--"

"Fuck!" Tim shouted. "You--You don't! You keep trying to convince us that your being here is good, and that you're helping, but so far all you've done is...terrorize us!"

"Tim, please," Martin tried. "You don't understand. Sure, we--we don't have a plan. Not for...but we never said us being here was good, Tim, it wasn't...planned, exactly...but...but we're here! And we...we want to help."

"So you're, what?" Sasha asked, incredulous. "Making the best of a bad situation?"

"Oh, good lord," Jon said. "Honestly? Yes. That is exactly what we're doing."

"We can't--we can't do that without your cooperation," He sighed. "There are simply too many...moving parts. Too many complications, and if we don't intervene..."

"We aren't sure what's going to happen," Martin concluded. "Even with our...knowing, of what's meant to come next."

This sat uncomfortably with the group, as opposed to Jon's couch, which was deceptively comfortable. They'd started to place a very fragile trust in these two interlopers, with their seemingly expansive bank of information, but now had to come to terms with their mutual confusion, and were rather nervous about it. It was simpler when they assumed the explanation would be a finality, and not merely the start of something quite taxing.

"So...we plan, then," Jon surprised the group by being cooperative. "Clearly you do still have some idea of what's to come."

"Yes, we do," The other Jon replied, adequately surprised. "And we need to make moves now if we're going to be of any help whatsoever."

"I think, Sasha ," He continued. "We need to start by talking about Michael."