Chapter Text
Jon was not having a good time in America. Between the general fatigue that came of lots of traveling on little sleep, the possibility that he was still being followed, and statement withdrawal apparently becoming the latest addition to his list of problems… He wasn’t even finding any solid answers, really, and he wanted to be done with it and go home. That was exactly what he was going to do, once he’d made one last stop at the Usher Foundation. Insofar as going home was even something he could do at this point, anyway.
The buses had stopped for a break, and he sat down with a mediocre cup of coffee to go over his notes yet again, as if new information would magically make itself known to him. …Which, on second thought, wasn’t too far out of the question. He’d just pressed play on the tape recorder- talking to it often helped him think, somehow- when a figure across the room caught his eye.
He was… well. First things first, he was unmistakably Gerard Keay. The exhausted way he sat, hunched over his own drink and a newspaper, meant his face was mostly obscured by his long hair, and he was wearing a thin turtleneck sweater despite the summer heat outside- but Jon could see his tattooed hands resting on the table, and that was enough to confirm his suspicions. Of course, the problem with this was that Gerard Keay was supposed to have died. It could be that everyone was mistaken, but… well, it all just felt a little too convenient. The universe was not in the habit of allowing Jonathan Sims to be this lucky. But he didn’t seem like anything… inhuman… and even if he was some kind of impostor, it wasn’t like Jon could slip out without him noticing, so maybe- maybe he would just watch a little longer, see if he could figure it out, and then--
Gerard frowned suddenly at his paper and then looked up, straight at Jon. His eyes were a striking deep blue, which was perhaps less important than the fact that he did not look happy to have caught Jon staring at him. He groaned and put his head in his hands, not looking up again until Jon had finished wincing at the situation, made his way over and sat down across from him.
“Are- are you Gerard Keay?” Jon asked after a deeply awkward moment of silence.
He looked even less happy at that, and sat up marginally straighter with a sigh. “Yeah, I am. Christ, thought I was done with this. Well, what’s it going to be this time? You after revenge for something Gertrude Robinson did, something my mother did, or something that was actually my fault, for a change?”
Jon blinked. “I, uh- n-none? I’m not- look, I, I think there’s- some misunderstanding here, I-I’m from the Magnus Institute.” He hesitated, then held out his hand. “Jonathan Sims. I’m the Archivist.”
Gerard relaxed, though never entirely, and leaned back. “Thought I was done with that, too,” he muttered, but he shook Jon’s hand nonetheless. “You’re Gertrude’s replacement, then?”
“Yes.” Jon shifted uncomfortably, wondering if he should say something along the lines of ‘sorry she’s dead,’ even though it had been long enough at this point that he was pretty sure condolences were no longer expected, but they did seem to have been fairly close from what he could tell, and did it change anything that he was replacing her-
“Never did find out how she died,” Gerard said almost idly, and all Jon’s attempts to formulate a script for a completely novel social situation went out the window.
“Oh. Um. She was shot. Several times.”
He nodded and said, rather nonsensically as far as Jon was concerned, “That’s good.” When he caught the odd look that got him, he added, “Don’t think she’d have been happy, dying in her sleep or something.”
“Ah. Yes, that’s… that’s the impression I’ve gotten. …Speaking of- of death, I suppose,” and wasn’t that a lovely segue, “aren’t… you supposed to be dead?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I’m not, obviously. Gertrude thought, when she left me over here, maybe I’d get less trouble if less people knew I was still alive.”
“Judging by your reaction before I introduced myself, I’d say it hasn’t worked?”
“Not really. Turns out most things that want to kill me don’t care if I’m already legally dead.”
“Right.”
There was a lull in the conversation, and Gerard exhaled and folded up his newspaper, preparing to stand up and leave.
“Wait,” Jon said in a rush, “I-I’ve been looking for you because I need your help.”
He settled back into his seat with a muttered, “Of course.”
“Gertrude, before she died, I think she’d found a way to stop the Unknowing, a-and she didn’t exactly… leave me any clear instructions on how to finish the job. If you know anything about-”
Suddenly, Gerard shushed him. Jon cut off, looking at him with a puzzled expression, but he was focused somewhere over Jon’s shoulder.
“Don’t look now, but I think you’ve been followed.”
Jon stiffened, and forced himself to not turn around. “Damn. It’s a- a policeman?” A nod. He swore again. “I thought I’d lost him…”
“Yeah, well, you thought wrong. You’ve been taking a bus, right? I wouldn’t get back on it, unless you want to drag all the other passengers into this.” He spoke quickly, his eyes not leaving their target. It was a completely different side of him from the tired-looking man Jon had first seen. This was the Gerard Keay people talked about in the statements, and even while knowing they were both in danger, Jon felt a little rush of excitement at the idea of seeing him in action. Gerard paused and then nodded to himself, as if making a decision. “I’ve got a car, follow me and don’t let on that you’ve noticed anything.”
He stood, unhurried, and gathered up his things, and Jon tried to follow suit, though he wasn’t very good at acting casual. The hardest part was not letting himself turn around as they walked out to see if the suspicious cop was following them. Gerard, at least, seemed certain he would. He refused to look as if they were rushing to leave, but he also didn’t pause for a moment in starting up the car and getting out of there.
It was, Jon couldn’t help but notice, almost exactly the sort of car he would have expected Gerard Keay to own, had he expected him to own a car of any description at all. Old and black and a little beat-up, the back seat a mess of vaguely supernatural junk mixed in with the more basic variety, and Jon couldn’t help but wince at the music that started blasting as soon as it was started. “Do you mind-”
“Sorry, it’s usually just me in here.” He turned the volume down to something only slightly painful for Jon’s ears and started driving.
“Thanks.” They sat for a while in- well, it definitely wasn’t silence, but neither of them was talking. “What, ah, what’s your plan, here?” Jon finally asked. He kept looking in the mirrors, and every time, he saw the same cop car trailing them.
Gerard shrugged. “Keep going ‘til we lose him and then find an airport.”
“Oh. Right.” He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. “And… if that doesn’t work, what are we going to do?”
He shrugged again. “There’s a knife or two in the back. Somewhere. Might not do any good, mind, depending what sort of thing he is.”
“Stranger,” Jon said without having to think. “Probably knows I’m trying to stop the ritual. I don’t think any of the organs he has are strictly required.”
“Eugh.” Gerard tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Still, could be worse. Seeing the uniform, I was afraid you had a hunter after you.”
Jon grimaced, unconsciously rubbing the mostly-healed mark on his throat. “Not… not this time, at least.”
He nodded and went back to focusing on the road, apparently happy to ignore each other for however long this drive took. Jon supposed he should probably go along with it, and he did try. For about fifteen minutes, before he’d thought of too many questions to be able to hold them all in anymore.
“So… as long as we’re here,” he began tentatively. Gerard glanced over at him, sighed, and turned the music down further so they could actually have a conversation, however reluctant he may have been about it. “I do still need to know, if there’s anything you can tell me about what Gertrude was doing?”
“Guess I’ve got nothing better to do for the next… several hours. Fine.” Jon had already dug a tape recorder out of his bag before he’d even registered himself looking for one. “But two things: one, you’ve got to tell me whatever you know that I’ve missed, too.”
Jon nodded; that was only fair.
“And two- promise you’re not going to get me killed once you’ve gotten what you need.” His voice was suddenly harsh, a startling contrast to the pleasant, if somewhat wary and reserved, attitude he’d had so far. Jon looked behind them and back over at him.
“I- I- I mean, I can’t really promise- that is, I- I’ll do my best?” Honestly, Jon thought he was the one much more likely to get killed in this situation, and what exactly was he supposed to do about it if the imitation of a man following them caught up?
“Hm. Good enough, I suppose.”
Jon clicked his tape recorder on, and Gerard began.
They ended up talking for nearly an hour before they’d both run out of questions for the time being. Gerard explained what he knew of Gertrude’s plans to stop the Unknowing, the fourteen entities as defined by Smirke, and a somewhat uncomfortable amount of his relationship with his late mother, which… Jon suspected may have been somewhat the fault of his Archivist abilities, not that he was going to say so. In return, he summarized what had happened at the Institute since Gertrude’s death as best he could. Since this included a good few near-death experiences for Jon personally, he felt they were now even, as far as knowing a little too much about each other’s trauma went.
“I haven’t seen that car for a while,” Gerard commented after a long period of quiet following their conversation. “What do you think?”
Jon rubbed a hand over his face, pulling himself up from where he’d slumped against the window. The talk they’d had left him tired in a comfortable sort of way- he tried not to compare it to the feeling of having just eaten a large meal- and it didn’t exactly help that it was so early in the morning. “I, uh…” He turned in his seat, looking around. They’d entered a city and he had barely even noticed. “I… yes, I suppose we must have lost him.” He wasn’t exactly sure how Gerard had managed that, traveling mostly on highways, and suspected there had been some minor disregard of traffic laws involved.
“Great. Where do you wanna stop?”
Jon blinked. “…Pardon?”
“For food, Jon. And coffee. Unless you’d like to take a turn driving.”
“Oh! No- I can’t really, uh…”
“Wouldn’t let you drive my car anyway,” he dismissed. “So…?”
“I-I don’t know?” Jon had been awake for five hours and it wasn’t even 10 AM yet, how was he supposed to make any decisions? Let alone ones about restaurants in a city he’d never been to before.
“Then we’re going to Denny’s.” He didn’t even ask whether there was a Denny’s in- Jon looked at the map on his phone- Hagerstown, Maryland. Just kept driving until one appeared, which it did, when they were almost out of the city on the other side. “There’s always a Denny’s,” he said triumphantly, and pulled into the parking lot.
Neither of them, it seemed, had eaten much of anything at the rest stop where they’d run into each other, and Gerard ordered a full breakfast and then regarded it with mild regret when it actually arrived. Yeah, that might also become his lunch. Jon, meanwhile, was still having trouble feeling hungry instead of nauseous after how early he’d woken up to catch his bus, and tried to make himself eat some toast with middling success. Both of them were drinking coffee as if their lives depended on it. Which, upon reflection, was probably not helping Jon feel any less sick- especially when he refused to add his usual amount of sugar and cream to make it less disgusting in front of Gerard Keay, who evidently liked black coffee somehow.
As Jon grew less and less interested in actually eating his food, he started to get lost in thought, staring straight ahead. Which… probably looked rather like he was just staring at Gerard, but, well. He was the one covered in eye tattoos. He ought to be used to that sort of thing. Anyway, Jon was thinking- at first about his next move, once he was back at the Institute, but gradually, his thoughts turned to how… unexpectedly nice this was.
Not the part about his life being in danger, obviously, that had been very stressful. But if he was going to be travelling all over the eastern states while trying to evade a creature of the Stranger… it was much better, it turned out, to not be doing it alone. And, he had to admit, particularly better that it was Gerard- someone who actually knew what he was doing, probably more than Jon himself did. Before he’d had Georgie for support, and Martin, and… well, not exactly Tim, at this point, and he didn’t know Melanie or Basira all that well, but they were there in some sense. But Jon couldn’t help worrying, when he went to any of them, that he was dragging them into danger along with him. Which couldn’t happen with someone who was already in just as deep, could it? So, yes, it was nice.
“So,” said Gerard, snapping Jon out of his thoughts. He tried not to look too much as though he had, in fact, been thinking about him. “It’s another hour and a half from here to DC, more or less. Do you still want me to drop you at the Usher Foundation, or would you rather just go straight to the airport?”
“Oh, uh…” Jon had nearly forgotten, somehow, that getting to the Usher Foundation had ever been his plan in the first place. “I… the airport, I suppose. You’ve already given me all the information I was hoping to find there.” He hesitated, taking another sip of his coffee, which was still horrible. “I- I was thinking, though- I don’t suppose you- I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you’re not opposed, I wondered if you might want to… come back with me and-”
Gerard shushed him very suddenly, and Jon was going to be a little offended until he realized he was staring at something out the window.
“Is it-?”
“He’s back.”
“How did he find us again?”
“I dunno, license plates? Apparently being a bloody cop?”
“R-right. What do we do?”
Gerard looked around the restaurant. At this time of day, it was fairly crowded. “Well, we aren’t going to let him catch us in here, that’s for sure.”
“Too many innocent people?”
He waggled a hand in an “eh” gesture. “Too many witnesses.”
Jon nodded awkwardly.
“Come on. If we get outside fast enough, we might be able to sneak around to the car and leave while he’s checking in here for us.”
He stood up and started for the door, slapping probably twice as much money as was actually necessary down on the table. Jon grabbed his bag- it contained absolutely nothing of value to anyone who wasn’t him, but he still couldn’t bring himself to leave it in the car- and followed. From within, he heard the by-now-familiar sound of a tape recorder turning itself on. So that was sure to be a good sign.
As it turned out, they barely even made it out of the building before being stopped. “Hold it,” the officer called, striding toward them. Jon froze and looked to Gerard, who was busy swearing to himself while glancing around for a nonexistent escape. “I’m going to need both of you to come with me.”
Gerard exhaled slowly and leaned back against the building, arms crossed, affecting disinterest. “Why’s that?”
“I don’t think any of us want to make a scene here, sir. Come on, get in the car.” He jerked his head in that direction impatiently.
“I know what you are,” Jon hissed. “You’re not a cop. I’m not going anywhere with you.” Gerard visibly winced.
The officer smiled. It was clear he hadn’t practiced that particular expression quite enough to get it right. “Oh, is that so? I’ll stop pretending I care about doing things legally, then.” He reached for his gun. Jon tried not to panic too obviously, while in the background Gerard muttered something about him clearly not having been an American cop for very long, if he thought that sort of thing actually mattered.
“Last chance to come quietly, Archivist.”
Jon didn’t move. He was, to be honest, still pretty fixated on the gun pointed at him.
“You’re not actually going to shoot him,” Gerard scoffed. “You want him alive.”
There was an incredibly worrying moment of silence. Then, the officer sighed and lowered his weapon. Jon braced himself against the wall behind him and tried to remember how to breathe properly again.
“Fine, you’re right, we need him.” He smiled again, wide, and this time, it must have been that terrifying on purpose. “…But we don’t need you.”
Jon’s head shot up, eyes wide, and Gerard cursed rather loudly. But before the officer could act on his threat, something else happened.
A car screeched into the parking lot, taking the turn off of the road without slowing down. It all happened too fast to see the driver’s face, but it would have been difficult not to notice the person leaning out of the back window, who yelled something incomprehensible and slammed a fucking baseball bat into the officer’s head. By some miracle and much abuse of the brakes, the car managed to stop without hitting anything, and Jon watched in shock as the two utterly insane people inside jumped out and high-fived triumphantly. It took them a while to even notice he was there- at first, they were busy examining the body, saying something about cutting the head off to be safe. He probably could have just quietly walked back into the restaurant, actually, if there had been a single bone in his body capable of leaving well enough alone- Gerard had already disappeared back inside.
“Uh- excuse me?” They looked at him in unsettling unison, and then looked at each other.
“Well, shit,” one of them sighed- a woman on the younger side, in stark contrast to her companion. “Uh, listen, this… isn’t what it looks like?”
“Oh, no, no, I- I know that,” Jon assured her hurriedly. “He, he wasn’t human. And was stalking and trying to kill me, which I appreciate you… preventing. No, I was just- who are you?”
“Oh? Good, then we won’t have to kill you.” She grinned, but Jon had absolutely no idea if she was joking or not. “I’m Julia, the old bastard’s Trevor.”
“I- sorry- not Trevor Herbert? The, the vampire hunter?”
Trevor gave him a suspicious look. “How’d you know-”
“I’m- I work at the Magnus Institute, in London? Head Archivist, actually. Uh- Jonathan Sims.” He nearly tried to shake Trevor’s hand before remembering about all the blood on it. “So, yes, I’ve… read your statement.”
“Sure.”
“Reckon you’ll have heard about me, too, then.” Julia had a quick look around- there was, luckily, no one in line of sight at the moment- and dragged the officer into the trunk of her car. “Went in myself a while ago, ended up spilling my guts to this old woman about my dad. More than I meant to, really, but.” She shrugged.
“Gertrude Robinson?”
“I dunno. Sure.”
“A-anyway. What are you doing here?”
“What’s it look like we’re doing?” Trevor laughed. “You’re the academic.”
“Aside from…” He winced. “That.”
Julia leaned back against the car with a sigh, wiping her hands off on a rag, and gave him a slightly better answer. “We’ve been tracking that thing for a while now- thanks, by the way, for making good enough bait to catch it sitting still. Now that’s done, we can focus on our other target.”
“And, and what’s that?” Jon knew this conversation should have been over a long time ago, and was very likely to get him arrested for real if he didn’t walk away soon, but- well. If he didn’t have a problem with curiosity, he wouldn’t be in any of this mess to begin with, would he?
“Some asshole, thinks he can get away with stealing from us,” Trevor said in a low growl. “And he must know what’s in that book- no thief in their right mind would bother with it otherwise. Either way, doubt he wants it more than he wants to live.”
Jon… did not have a good feeling about the direction this conversation was going.
Julia chimed in again: “Tall, goth and surly- don’t suppose you’ve seen him? Bunch of creepy tattoos, looks like he should be one of your lot?”
“N-no, I… I think I would have remembered seeing someone like that,” he managed. Could they- smell lies on people, or something? Probably not, right? He really hoped not.
“Right. Well, this has just been a lovely conversation, but we’ve got hunting to get back to.” Julia caught Trevor’s attention, and motioned toward the restaurant. “Have a quick look just to be sure, eh?”
“Wait!”
They both turned around and looked at him in that uncanny way again. Jon scrambled for something to say that would both make a decent distraction and not sound incredibly suspicious.
“Um. Would you… mind… telling me your story before you get back to all that? I mean- properly, recorded and all. Unless you’re worried about losing him, obviously, I wouldn’t want to… to get in the way of…”
“Don’t be stupid, we’re not going to lose him,” Julia scoffed. She glanced at Trevor. “What d’you think?”
He shrugged. “Can’t hurt. He did make very good bait.”
Jon tried not to mind being referred to as such. “Thank you. It shouldn’t take long.”
It was easy to lead them to an out-of-the-way booth with no clear view of the door, explaining he needed as little background noise on the tape as possible. It was even easier to keep the hunters’ full attention on him, once all three of them were deep in the statement. He didn’t exactly take his attention off them at any point either, of course, but surely that must have bought more than enough time for one man to exit a Denny’s. He didn’t try to follow after the hunters immediately when they left- it was going to take a few minutes to collect himself again, after taking his second live statement in one day. When his head was no longer muddled with bits of memory that weren’t his, he stood up and went to find out if he still had a ride.
It was something of a surprise to see Gerard waiting for him in the car, doing something on his phone. He looked up when Jon knocked on the window and unlocked the door to let him in.
“What were you doing in there?”
“Oh. I, ah. I took their statement?”
“Really? That’s the first thing you thought about, at a time like this?”
“They were looking for you,” Jon defended, “which you’re surely aware of. I was trying to keep them distracted.”
“…Oh.” He seemed not entirely sure what to do with that. “Well, it worked. When they finally came out they just left, didn’t look for me at all. So, thanks, I guess.”
Jon huffed softly. “There’s no need to sound surprised.”
“No, it’s just… Gertrude would’ve expected me to deal with that sort of thing myself. Kind of assumed you’d be the same.”
“Well. I’m not Gertrude, I suppose.”
“No.” A faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “No, you’re not.”
They lapsed into quiet. Gerard started the car, making sure his music was reasonably quiet this time. Before they actually started moving, though, a thought struck him.
“By the way, what were you going to say earlier? Before-” he waved a hand vaguely- “all that started happening. Sounded kind of important.”
Jon frowned, trying to remember what he was talking about. …Ah, right. Him sounding like an idiot. “Yes, I was… trying to ask if you would, ah. Be willing to come back to London with me. It’s not, I mean, I don’t expect you to, but-”
Gerard cut him off with a considering hum. “You know what- sure. Not like things were going much better for me over here... And I’m pretty sure if the Unknowing works, it’s not gonna matter which side of the Atlantic I’m on, so. Count me in.”
Jon exhaled, unable to hide his smile. “Thank you, Gerard.”
He hesitated. “…Gerry.”
“What?”
“Gerard was what my mum called me… I’ve always wanted my friends to call me Gerry.”
“Oh! Are we- I mean- okay. Then- thank you, Gerry.”
He smiled, a tiny bit pink and embarrassed. Jon thought it might have been the least composed he’d seen him, and that was including when they’d both been about to die. “Keay, actually, that’s her too- I’d rather take my dad’s last name. But nobody really asks you to introduce yourself when they already know who you are, so… hasn’t worked very well so far.”
“We could start over,” Jon said without really thinking.
It was his turn to be surprised. “What?”
“I mean- I can let you introduce yourself,” he explained, now trying not to think about the possibility that he was making a fool of himself again, “and you can… not assume I’m going to be just like Gertrude?”
He stared for a second, and then that little smile came back, and Jon decided it didn’t really matter how ridiculous he may have just sounded. “Yeah, okay.”
Jon cleared his throat and held out his hand, a little awkward in the cramped space of the car. “Um- hello, I’m the- the new Archivist. Jon Sims.”
Looking amused, he shook Jon’s hand. “Gerry Delano. Nice to meet you.”
They locked eyes for a second, and then Gerry lost his composure and started laughing. Jon only managed to look offended for a second before the absurdity of it all got to him, too. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so funny without the mild sleep deprivation and recent brush with death, but then again, maybe after all that they both needed something to laugh at.
“Alright,” Gerry finally said, sighing as he pulled himself together. “Let’s get to DC- we’ve got a plane to catch.”