Archive of Our Own

Saying the world went dark would do the void pressing in on all sides a disservice. 

If the dance was all, where nothing was anything and plastic glasgow smiles mocked truth, where contradiction could not exist, then here was not, where everything was nothing. Contradiction could not exist here either, but not because all untruths ceased to mean anything — contradiction could not exist because there was no thing to claim truth. 

It was not dark, because dark could only be when there was light to contrast it. It was not cold, because there was no such thing as warmth. It was not empty, because there was no space that could be filled. 

There was nothing, and the nothing hurt. 

He’d wanted this. At some point, somewhere in a timeline that couldn’t be, he wanted this. Whatever could exist outside the nothing, he was done with it. He wanted that nothingness with an intensity that escaped definition. 

There was a reason he’d wanted it, he was certain — when there was enough him to be certain of anything. Rest, yes, and a person. There was someone he’d wanted to find. When there was enough him to remember the axe in one hand and a plastic button under the opposite thumb, he was certain that he was looking for something. Someone. Somewhen, nowhere, all in the not-dark void.

Certainty did not come often, as much as frequency could exist in a place time did not. With certainty came pain of its own. Burning. Tearing across whatever form might remain. When he was enough to remember, he was enough to hurt. Part of him wanted to sink his teeth (teeth? yes, he had those at some point, somewhere nowhen outside nothing) into the pain to grasp (grasp, with hands he could almost recall, brown and broad with round white scars burrowed across the wrist from— from—) for that someone from the nowhere, but he was so tired. When he was anyone, the anyone came with exhaustion beyond measure; without compare beyond too much, too much, too much.  

He was, and wasn’t, and the void was absolute. 

It wasn’t touch, or sight, but he could feel both on him; the faintest brush of someone in the nowhen. If he existed he might have screamed at the pure shock of it. 

The someone didn’t speak, and in his long-absent certainty he understood. 

I’m sorry to disturb your rest, but… I don’t know why I’m here, not really. I was on the way to someone else when I was called here. Not sure if that was also the spiders, but I can see why Terminus might want someone Eye-touched. 

I saw the veins on you, of course. Long since stopped bothering to try and warn people. You were covered in them. Every part of your body was thick with the things. Explosions do that, I suppose. 

Explosions. Yes, burning-tearing from the smooth depress of plastic in his hand — it was and it wasn’t and it hurt.

You have your own choice. The End has already claimed you in one way, the way it claims everyone, but you can choose a different path. I can’t say I know exactly what it’s like on your side. I barely remember it myself, but something tells me a violent death wouldn’t allow for much peace. 

It hurts, I’m sure.

Yes. Yes, it did.

And if whatever afterlife you expected isn’t there… 

Not an afterlife, he didn’t think, but an aftersomeone. Warm black eyes, a blinding grin, pride that filled his chest until he thought he could burst with it. Someone he needed to apologize to. Not here. Here didn’t exist. 

You have another option.

Options. Choices, that was rich. Whatever of him wasn’t there filled with sardonic humor that settled in a familiar ache. He got a choice, for the first time in nowhen.

…Already coming back to yourself a little, then? I don’t know how long a process this is, and I really must be going to meet with your old boss, but I think you might be able to still feel me as a way back to this side. Feel the veins, maybe. 

Something tasted rancid, like metal and wax and fury. Something, something in the nothing.

If you fade again, well, I hope you find true rest.

If not, I’ll see you soon. The End works in the inevitable. You’ll know that better than anyone. 

A moment or an eternity later, Timothy Stoker gasped with lungs that did not exist, blinked against the light with eyes that were not there and, despite the refusal of contradiction in the not-place that killed him and the not-empty that held him, became his own not-living contradiction in the living world.

The edges between him and everything around him weren’t quite solid, though even as his skin went static when he stumbled into a rough brick wall he paid it no mind — relearning how to take more than two steps without crashing harsh and bloody to the ground required more focus than he had. Piercing cold wind ripped through him like shrapnel when he had the wherewithal to remember there was a him that could rip. Clouds hung thick in the sky like smoke, but the deadened sunlight still blinded him after who knew how long in not-dark not-light. 

The world shifted in streaks of agonizing technicolor. It was only after what had to be hours that he realized he was walking.

‘Walking’ was generous; he was sure he looked like an extra in a zombie movie. The comparison sent him pivoting to the rough asphalt beneath where he assumed he had feet, laughing hysterically all the while. 

Worms. Monsters. Corridors. Wasn’t that the list he rattled off to Martin so long ago? That it was their life now?

He could add zombies to the list, then. Ghosts. Whichever. That was his undeath now, and wasn’t that just so damn funny? 

The moon hung in the sky above, and he wondered what urban legend he’d long dismissed about it had been true this whole time. 

Lifetimes ago, Danny spent a few months diving head over heels into galaxies. Tim spent those same months waxing poetic over what cheese he thought might form the moon. Mozzarella was his guess, but there was an argument to be made for parmesan. After laying it on as thick as the best deep dish pizza money could buy, he’d gone to his room for a nap to find a short essay detailing exactly what the moon was made of, how it was formed, and a truly staggering number of astronomy or dairy related curses, all in grotesque neon green font and stapled to his pillow. 

His favorite was still, “you absolutely fucking moronic, lactose-intolerant excuse for a shithead brother.” 

If he found it, Tim could take whatever statement deep in the archives proved his own theory right and staple it to the ground Danny slept under. The thought made him laugh even harder. He still wasn’t sure if his eyes existed, the impossible impressionist blur around him no encouragement, so the choking sobs he heard couldn’t be his without a way to form tears. Maybe some other poor sod lay in this cracked, filthy car park, trying just as hard to remember what it meant to have limbs.

Danny was safe from retaliation, anyway. There was no body under his headstone. There might not be a body anywhere. The closest Tim could get to whatever was left of his brother would be at that fucking opera house, and the mere thought of going there battered his skull with harlequin laughter that skipped his ears and dug like icepicks into his throat. 

Tinny notes from a pipe organ scraped along the breeze. Tim played percussion with the mutters of, it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real as he knocked the back of his head against the pavement, over and over and over and over until the sun rose.

He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t thirsty. The closest he came to sleep was collapsing in unseen corners where any who saw him offered only a nod of commiseration as they too curled in the hidden places, or else did their best to pretend he and those others didn’t exist. By all rights his skin should have been riddled with frostbite considering his clothes were meant for the August heat when they weren’t busy being bloody tatters, but the pain that ripped through his flesh and gnawed on his bones came less from the ice and more from the presence of any sensation against long-unused nerves.  

If there was anything his walk was good for (and wasn’t it strange, that he never once thought about why he walked or to where), it was clearing the last of circus music and warped reality from his head. A dozen miles in, he managed to keep his footing enough to come across as drunk rather than dead. Thirty, he remembered his own name for longer than a handful of minutes at a time. By the time he reached Sudbury, he could focus long enough to both read the town’s name on signs he passed and actually comprehend what it meant. 

Something in the back of his head knew he was halfway there — wherever there was. He had a destination; he would reach that destination. There were still miles to go.

It was only when he crashed into a shallow ditch outside Chelmsford that Tim had both the awareness and reason to wonder what he looked like now. Rain fell in what was more sheet than drops, and he wished he was capable of getting pneumonia — if only so he had something normal to blame for his misery. 

The rising pain that caused his legs to give out from under him moments ago had yet to fade. It moved in tides, sometimes a mere hum under his skin and others so all-consuming that were it not for the lack of fire he would believe every part of him was burning with no trouble. 

He should take a leaf out of Jon’s book and get himself a cane. Ease some of the pressure on his spooky ghost legs. Maybe this wasn’t quite the same chronic pain that necessitated Jon’s, but Tim thought that supernatural pain should bloody well count. 

Thinking about Jon led to thinking about the archives, and to the anger, and to the circus, all around and around until he had to press his hands tight to his ears to block out organ whistles he knew couldn’t possibly exist. 

Logic said the circus was dead and gone. He destroyed it. He got his revenge. He saved the world. 

Instinct, the fear-driven animal living in the back of humanity’s collective minds, told logic it could fuck clean off. 

As always, thoughts of the circus focused his pain into distinct shapes. It wasn’t any greater or lesser, but it fell in a pattern across his body rather than in a smothering blanket. The clothes he barely registered anymore frayed in specific patches. Lifting his head to understand what changed seemed like far more trouble than it was worth, not when his feigned vertebrae and skull felt like they were a twitch from crumbling into agonizing dust.

The screech of brakes was nearly drowned out by rain and hissing calliope, but the shout of whoever left the car was not. Two people. There was something else in the car too, something smaller. A kid maybe, or a pet. It made no sense, not that anything did, but Tim swore he could hear their hearts beat.

“Holy shit, is he okay?” The first voice he truly processed since he died, and it had to be the most obnoxious one in the city. Nasal and a little too loud, it grated like steel wool on whatever ghostly bullshit let him hear. 

“Is he alive?”

Some part of Tim thought to be grateful, in a strange way, that there were still people who tried to help when someone looked as wrecked as he did. People who weren’t cynical, who didn’t assume anyone and anything that caught their attention was a secret paranormal nightmare waiting to drag them to hell. 

He was a paranormal nightmare, but he had no plans to drag anyone to hell. That probably counted for something. 

All the parts of Tim that weren’t busy being grateful instead occupied themselves with irritation. There was no logic behind his anger. Nothing righteous. These people wanted to help him, and he wanted to be left alone to try and force away the white-hot spasms in his limbs. 

“Should I— call an ambulance, or something?”

“Uh, y-yeah, I think. Or, let me see if he’s… alive, first.”

“What, and call a fucking hearse if not? Let Boomer out of the kennel and see if she can track down some crazy murderer?”

Knowing it wouldn’t kill him didn’t make the slide of rain in his nose and down his throat any less uncomfortable, and only lead-weight exhaustion kept him from following the natural urge to cough up the water slowly filling his chest. 

“Fuck off.” His voice sounded like he traded his vocal cords for sandpaper, but it was nice to know he could talk at all.

“Christ!” The nasal-voiced one stumbled back. “Shit, uh, he’s alive. You okay, mate?”

The second person came up behind the first in silhouette of headlights. Light wasn’t nearly as painful as it had been when Tim started his walk, but would it have killed them to turn off the brights before bothering him?

“You think he looks okay?!”

“Shut up!”

“I said…” Tim’s teeth ground together. Something about them didn’t move right. The clench of his fingers felt like he was twisting a handful of knives and razors, and the water still sickly pooling in his throat blazed into fire. He didn’t shove down his pain, well aware that was a mission doomed before it began, and instead forced it all to the surface with a snarl. “Fuck. Off.”

If either of them screamed, he couldn’t hear it past the deafening race of their hearts. Was a single moment of quiet so much to ask? The part of him that knew where and why he walked also knew he could shut them up. It would be easy. He just needed to reach out with bone-sharp fingers and pull. Get some peace so he could ride out this bout of agony, then stand and keep moving. 

Forcing himself to stay in the thick mud and keep his hands firmly where they were took an amount of willpower that scared him. Even as the two figures scrambled away, one insisting, “That’s not fucking human, no way in hell,” still he kept motionless, and only lifted those mental chains with the squeal of their tires as they sped off.

Maybe the Institute would get a statement or two about some monster luring them in with pretend injuries, only to show its true colors when they came too close. What a laugh. 

What exactly happened that sent them running? He wouldn’t complain, but that didn’t mean he understood. With no shortage of muffled cursing he rolled over to look into the ice cold water pooled in the ditch with him. Something about his appearance had changed when they turned tail, and with any luck it might have hung around. 

No reflection. Figured.

There was nothing else for it but to force himself to his feet and keep moving. Keep walking. He was getting close to when he needed to be. 

Tim wished he was surprised to find himself on the steps to the Magnus Institute.

He wished he was shocked when walking in the door made him feel more like himself than he had since waking up. The new clarity to his vision sure as hell didn’t keep him from wanting to throw things, but he kept that in check. Instead, he went to his default when at places he definitely shouldn’t be: pretend like he belonged. Act natural. Smile and nod at passersby, walk like he had somewhere to be. Wave at the receptionist. Just another day at the office.

“Hey, José.”

José barely glanced up from his computer. “Afternoon, Tim,” It was only when Tim turned the corner towards the stairs that he heard, “Wait, what—“

The lobby door shut behind him before José could finish whatever exclamation was sure to follow. 

José had a ring, which meant Charlie had finally proposed. It was a tiny blip in the grand scheme, sure, but Tim found he was happy for them, and the sudden positive emotion after so long of nothing but exhaustion and pain felt like getting kicked in the chest by a horse. His single-minded drive faltered as he froze where he stood, breathless. 

Everyone else’s lives had kept moving. They lived. That was what he’d died for. José and Charlie could get married. Hannah from the library staff had that many more months with her daughter — Penny, if he remembered right. Had William finished his masters yet? Did Ben finally complete the first draft of the novel they used to chatter on about in the break room? Tim gave them a list of pointers for how to present it to a publisher ages ago, plus a few names from the publishing house he once worked at to get their foot in the door. Lin, who used to have an office next to him a lifetime ago, had probably gotten the promotion she’d wanted by now. Hell, maybe she reached the top of the corporate ladder the two of them used to be neck and neck on, back when the scariest thing on his plate was the pile of first drafts in his inbox sent by those whose relationship with grammar was shoddy at best. 

Life went on. 

As Martin turned the corner just ahead, looking the exact same as when Tim left for the wax museum bar some new bags under his eyes, he brought the reminder that life went on unless one was unfortunate enough to work in the archives. 

This, Tim thought as he shoved a hand in his pocket and did his best to act like all was right in the world, was going to get weird. 

Martin kept his head very determinedly down as his focus flicked between the floor ahead of him and the folder in his hands, all the while never coming high enough to risk any eye contact. That… wasn’t ideal. He did the same thing when he and Tim first met, but after some encouragement from him, Sasha, and a few others around the Institute, he stopped standing in a way that looked like a preemptive apology for daring to take up space. 

Tim thought Sasha helped, anyway. Who knew? G-d, he didn’t have time for another breakdown over his unreliable memories. Table that for later.

“Hey.” 

Martin didn’t look up. He was nearly level with Tim now, and either hadn’t registered that he wasn’t alone or was determined to pretend he was. 

“Hey. Hey, Martin.”

The way Martin’s face tightened in resignation rather than surprise showed it was the latter. Not a great sign, not that Tim was in any place to judge others’ mental state.

“Sorry, I really need to—” The penny dropped alongside Martin’s jaw. “I… I have… I-I need to… Tim?!”

Maybe his small wave was awkward, but what the hell else could he do? “Last time I checked, yeah.” 

Martin gaped at him, silent. Tim figured giving him a moment to get his thoughts in order was only fair, especially considering he took the better part of the last week walking to London for the same thing.

“You— You died!”

“Yep.”

“And now you’re— I’m… I’m hallucinating, of course, wonderful…” With a shake of his head, Martin took a few steps only to double back and look Tim up and down. “You’re… dead, o-okay, and now you’re… here. Right. Alright.”

The hall went the sort of quiet that made everything feel hollow. A glance around showed still no other souls passing through, and Tim was certain the rooms lining it were just as lifeless.

“Where is everyone?”

Martin startled. “Not witnessing me have a breakdown, I guess!” he said with a nervous laugh. “Peter changed the schedules around some, so there’s not as many people around in the building at one time. It’s usually rather empty.”

“Peter?” 

“Y-yeah, um… Wow, okay. There’s a lot that’s changed around the Institute since you’ve been… gone.”

Tim studied his face. However long it’d been, it was long enough for Martin to get much better at hiding his thoughts. He had always been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. It didn’t matter that Tim was good at reading people — with Martin, you’d have to be as oblivious as a rock. As oblivious as Jon. 

Now, it was like trying to pick shapes out in a dense fog. Even the bits he did see, the apprehension and discomfort and disbelief, he couldn’t quite be sure of. 

“You should probably, um. Maybe head down to the archives? I think Jon is in, and he’ll want to know that all…” Martin gestured vaguely at him. “…this is happening.”

Tim’s jaw tightened on reflex, but he didn’t argue. “Yeah, that’s where I’m headed. I assume it’s still in the basement?”

“Yeah. Now, I really need to go—”

“You’re not coming?”

Martin's shoulders somehow rounded even further down as he pulled the files he carried close to his chest. “I’m— I’m really busy.”

“Too busy to see Jon?” Tim retorted, only half joking.

“Yes.” No stammering. No blush. No protests. Just a solid, cold refusal. 

“…Right.” Trouble in paradise, maybe, and if that was the case Tim sure as hell didn’t want to know. “I’ll see you later, then?”

Martin glanced over his shoulder, minute enough that Tim wouldn’t have caught it had he not been watching so closely. “Maybe. I need to go, before— I need to go. But…” Past the deep worry lines and dark purple smudges under his eyes, Martin pushed out a smile. “I’m really, really glad to see you. Unless you’re a hallucination.”

“I’ll get Jon’s spooky magic eyes on me and find out if I’m real, yeah? If I’m just your hallucination, I’ll be pissed.” A weak joke already, and mentioning Jon again made it fall even flatter. Whatever fraction of emotion Martin let show closed off again like a storm window behind a small, false smile.

“Sure.”

“So…” Tim glanced down the hall. “Is that weird murder cop still around, or—” 

By the time he turned back, Martin was gone. 

Some part of him knew Martin was still close, and was pretty sure he could find him if he made that his goal, but this wasn’t the time to press him for answers on why he was acting so weird. Tim could wait. He’d played the long game before. 

As he descended the stairs, the old feeling that he was being watched settled on his shoulders like a particularly shitty blanket. Elias must have been keeping a close eye on the archive’s new ghost from his office, all steepled fingers and that awful, smug smile. Hell, he probably watched Tim stumble and crawl his way here from Great Yarmouth. Prick. 

The archives were quiet. They were always quiet, but now it felt less like a basement and more like a mausoleum. Despite that, going in felt less like walking into his own grave than it ever had when he was alive. 

The door to Jon’s office was shut as usual, but Basira sat at the desk that used to be Sasha’s, reading a book. There was a new tension to her shoulders.

“Knock, knock?”

Normally it’d take calling her name two or three times to grab Basira’s attention when she read, but now her head snapped up and locked right on him. 

Unlike Martin, she didn’t take a moment to process. In less than a second she was on her feet with the book left forgotten on the floor. 

He took a step towards Jon’s door. “I know th—”

“Don’t move.” Her voice was as hard as steel.

“Right. Right, sure.” Hands raised in a show of trust, Tim did as she said. Basira didn’t sound in the mood to fuck around. “I just wanted to talk to the Archivist about, ah… The fact that I’m here at all, I guess.”

“What are you?”

What, not who. Ouch. “I’m Tim. Tim Stoker, I swear.”

“Sure.” 

Basira looked him up and down in a clear threat assessment. They hadn’t been bosom friends before, but this was another level entirely. 

“…I’m assuming you don’t want me talking to him.”

Her eyes narrowed. “No. I suggest you leave.”

“Well, unless you have any ghost-busting equipment, I’m not sure I can.”

Whatever reply she had was interrupted as Jon opened his office door. “Basira, who are you talking— Oh. Oh.” 

Jon was as readable as Basira was unreadable. Clear shock, disbelief, guilt, and curiosity played across his face one after the next, and it took him a moment to school his expression into the stern, no-nonsense look he tried to keep at all times in their first months working the archives. Without saying a word, he gestured the other two into his office.

Inside was as much a mess as ever, with boxes and files littered about like Jon was playing a scavenger hunt without any idea what it was he was supposed to find. His cane sat by the door rather than tucked against the file cabinet as usual, a telltale sign that he spent far more time than he should have sitting on the floor to root around in folders rather than at the desk proper.

Jon leaned against the front of his desk with a small wince. Neither Tim nor Basira took the available chair across from it. For a moment they all stood in silence, none sure how to approach the paranormal elephant in the room.

Tim cracked first. “So… I assume I’m out of sick leave.”

That startled a laugh out of Jon, and Tim couldn’t help but remember years ago when he saw each one he managed to coax out as an achievement.

Basira didn’t look at him, still watching Jon’s face. “Is it actually him?”

A pause. “Only one way to find out.” Jon stayed leaning against the desk, but his eyes locked onto Tim with an intensity that left him feeling raw and bare. “Who are you?”

Compulsion's near-inaudible tone made his lip curl. The years between coaxing laughter out of the man before him and avoiding the same man scouring his thoughts for any pertinent scraps of information felt more like eons. “I’m someone that you know hates when you do that creepy brain-magic shit.”

Jon said nothing, but his eyes sharpened with a decidedly inhuman glint. The compulsion grew from a tingle to a physical weight.

“I’m Tim Stoker, used to be an archival assistant, used to be dead. I’m still dead. My brother’s name is Danny, my mum’s is Farah binti Afan, my dad’s is David Stoker, I’m allergic to pineapple, and my favorite color is red. That enough for you?”

“Not really.” Basira’s expression was as flat as always, but doubt dripped from her voice. “That’s information anyone who puts their mind to it could find.”

“Well if you’re waiting for me to rattle off a list of all my deepest hopes and secrets, you can piss off.”

Jon shook his head. “It’s alright. Even if it was something pretending to be him, it wouldn’t be able to lie to me.” He looked back to Tim. “How did you… come back?”

“No idea.” Static compulsion hissed on his tongue, and he glared at Jon. “Would you cut that out? I’m not gonna lie to you, not when you’re the only one who might be able to figure out what the hell happened to me.”

Jon had the decency to look chagrined. “Sorry. I don’t always realize I’m doing it. …Do you remember anything from the, ah—“

“The afterlife?” Tim waved his hands sarcastically, like a camp counselor telling the night’s ghost story to terrified primary schoolers. “The veil?” 

“Quite.”

“Not really, no. There was the Unknowing, then the explosion, then nothing. It wasn’t the river Styx, or pearly gates, just… nothing.” 

True contemplation joined Basira's suspicion as she folded her arms. “What do you remember from the Unknowing? Maybe if we piece that together we can work out where it went from there.”

“It’s all kind of a mess. Lots of colors and shapes that I don’t think were real, but who knows.” Recollection made his head throb, which didn’t seem fair. Ghosts should be immune to migraines. “Then I had the detonator. Grimaldi was there. Nikola. Whichever. I pressed the button, and…” 

The world turned to liquid around him. His skin prickled, not quite pain; the first echo of burning-tearing just outside his memory. If the death of Jane Prentiss came with a thousandfold scream, then the death of Grimaldi brought a shattering beyond reality. His vision went brilliant white fractured by more colors than he could name. He clutched his disintegrating arms around himself as if he could hold that self together in preparation for the nothing he knew was seconds away. Whether the remaining scraps of him could survive that crash from all to none a second time wasn’t certain, but he had no choice. This was the hand he had been dealt. It was back to the nothing, back to the hurt and the no one, all the while praying for the voice to call him out again but when had he ever been that lucky— 

“Tim! What do you see?"

Jon’s voice sliced through the air and cut into the haze in Tim’s head. What did he see? Not whirlwind color or creatures with patchwork skin, but a rug. Green, threadbare. Some scattered pages next to it. A dark ring where a mug once sat. His focus snapped up from the hole he was staring into the floor to see Jon’s ashen face. Beside him, Basira looked faintly sick. 

It was a matter of moments to realize what distressed them. Glancing down, he saw the tatters left of his clothes were so soaked with blood they’d surpassed red and gone straight to black. Deep gashes latticed his skin with no shortage of holes where the flesh had ripped free. 

His left arm was simply gone, leaving nothing more than a bloody stump with splintered bone jutting free from the end. If he had a mind to, he could have counted his own ribs — with how little flesh still covered them, it would be easy. Every bit of remaining skin looked like the impressionist blur of the dance, great swathes of black-edged scarlet burns and bruises of every color.

Tim wasn’t sure when the agony started. He wasn’t sure it had ever stopped. 

He stumbled back as if that could distance him from his own lack of a body. There was no logic behind his nausea, not when he had no stomach, but there wasn’t any more logic in his new-old spontaneous injuries. It was impossible to tell if he could even throw up, but as he pressed his remaining hand tight over his mouth he decided he didn’t want to know. 

“Tim, I-I need you to breathe.” Jon kept his head ducked low with a scarred hand outstretched, doing everything he could to come across as no threat, but still Tim snarled at him.

“I don’t have fucking lungs!”

Basira cut off Jon’s stammers. “Try calming down differently, then. Pay attention to the room. Focus on what you can see and hear.” Her voice was steady and composed. Stable. “You’re in the archives, not at the Unknowing. That’s in the past. No one is here but me and Jon. It’s safe.”

It made sense, Tim thought, that her time as a cop would have taught her how to respond when someone else was in crisis mode — when it wasn’t teaching her how to help her partner hide from police brutality lawsuits, anyway. He used the rhythm of her speech to center himself without any breath to self-regulate.

Minutes passed at a crawl, but as they did the hurricane swirl of color and lights and that g-ddamn calliope organ faded to background noise. Blinding agony dulled to an ache. Basira kept her low murmur, the words ultimately meaningless but as something to lean on, and after what felt like hours Tim opened his eyes to watch the last of the bloodstains fade. 

He didn’t look up. In most cases he prided himself on his ability to handle any social situation, but there wasn’t exactly a step-by-step guide on how to respond when you come damn near a panic attack and show off your gruesome, fatal injuries like a quick change artist that watched too many slasher flicks. Besides, it wasn't like he bothered with that skill in the last year of his life.

“Tim?” Jon said, so careful that Tim wanted to hate him for it. “Is it alright if I touch you?”

He nodded. The last being to touch him was one of those demon mannequins — even his asshole boss was better than that. Something to ground him, something far, far removed from the circus. 

It was only when Jon’s fingers swept right through his shoulder that Tim remembered he was just as far removed from the living world. Jon made a valiant effort, reaching out a few more times and each time making no contact.

At least Jon had waited until Tim was calmer — had he tried the same thing moments earlier, it would have only sent Tim spiralling further into a truly ugly breakdown. Now, he just laughed. 

“Seems about right.”

Silence. There wasn’t even the tick of a clock to mock them with passing seconds. 

Basira broke it first, never one to linger. “Sorry for bringing up the— Sorry. Should’ve guessed talking about it would be a sore spot.”

“I didn’t know it would be any better than you,” Tim replied with a shrug. “Besides, I think it worked. It’s not actual memories, but just now there was something part of me expected when I thought I was back there.” He trailed off, grasping internally for that fragment of a scrap of whatever pulled him out of the nowhen. 

“What was—” Jon paused. “Do you feel able to put any of it together?” Rephrasing to avoid accidental compulsion — looked like old archivists could learn new tricks.

Working again through his upside-down unknowing memories was a recipe for disaster, so Tim jumped to the end. Dread, yes, plenty of that. Fear. Pain. The foreboding weight of the inevitable. 

The End works in the inevitable.

“A voice.” No other memories came rushing back with the conclusion, but it was better than nothing. “There was a person that talked to me, and it felt bad. Whatever that place is, voices aren’t meant for it. Nothing is, not voices or people or—“

“Stay with it, Tim.” Jon’s eyes went inhuman-sharp again, but he spoke just like the prickly man that used to be his friend.

“Right. …Right.”

“Can you remember what this voice said?”

Tim picked at the orange nail polish on his thumb as he thought, only stopping when he realized he had no idea if he would be able to paint them again. “Not much. Something about choices, and an end. The end.”

With a deep sigh, Jon traded his knifepoint focus for exhaustion and strange, quiet sadness. He didn’t say anything for a long moment.

“That mean something to you?” It was nice to know that Basira was just as lost as Tim, but at the same time he didn’t love knowing that the one he suspected might be the most capable person in this hellhole didn’t have all the information.

“I think— Yes. Yes, it does. Do you mind…?”

“Giving you two a moment? Two people back from the dead, and you think I’m going to go and let you both have a spooky ghost party? No way.”

“That’s fair, I suppose.”

“You’re damn right it’s fair.”

"Hold on," Tim interrupted. "Two people?"

Jon heaved himself up off the desk, circled it, and dropped back into his chair with a weary sigh. “Two people. Will you sit?”

Tim gestured for Basira to take the chair first. It wasn’t as if his muscles could tire. He walked well over a hundred miles without any pain from overexertion, he could stand for a while longer. 

In the end, it didn’t matter. She shook her head without a word and leaned against the door frame, keeping the other two well within her line of sight. In the moments it took for her and Tim’s quick exchange and him taking the seat, Jon had collected his thoughts. 

“Did you ever get a chance to read statement #0151403? From Antonio Blake, about dreams predicting the death of others.”

Discouraging start, but it wasn’t as if Tim expected this story to come anything close to normal. “I’m the one who did the followup. He have something to do with this?”

“His real name is Oliver Banks. He’s an avatar of the End. After the Unknowing, I was left in something like a coma, and—”

“Something like?"

“He was everything but braindead,” said Basira from behind Tim. “No heartbeat. No respiration. Only his brain and nerves had any activity, and I’m not a doctor, but I know that they were way more active than a normal person’s.”

Tim let out a low whistle. “Boss is a zombie, now?”

“As if you have room to talk.” Jon’s retort snapped out of him without any true heat, and it came damn near making Tim smile. “The day I woke up, Oliver visited me.”

“Gotta bring his avatar friend flowers, yeah? Did you get a get well card from Prentiss too?” It was like all these people knew each other. Make a blood sacrifice, join the group chat, and the pact was complete. Enjoy your brand new demon powers!

Jon’s mouth opened, irritation clear on his face, only to visibly reign himself in. The small, vindictive side of Tim that had so eagerly burned all his bridges rose up in his throat like bile. It wanted to needle Jon further, maybe get into a good, cathartic row, but his remaining sense knew this wasn't the time. 

“He came before I woke up to offer me a choice.” 

Something in Tim’s chest went cold, something he had no desire to examine. Jon’s usual unwavering eye contact pinned him to his chair. 

“It was a choice to stay in the death that had almost entirely taken me, or to live.”

Tim wanted to press his hands over his ears like a child. The words Jon said couldn’t be real, no chance in hell. They were as false as the calliope that followed him. They had to be. 

“I chose to live, and doing so is what made me a fully realized avatar of the Eye.”

“So?” The single word ground out of Tim with nowhere near the amount of confident dismissal he would have liked.

Jon’s face gained a flicker of pity, and it was only the knowledge that he wouldn’t make contact that kept Tim from lunging over the table to punch him in the teeth. “So, once I made the choice to live, that’s when I woke.”

“Meaning, he’s just as much Tim as you are Jon?” The distrust rolling off Basira was almost palpable. 

“Yes.” Weariness settled on Jon’s shoulders. “We’re both who we were before, just… different.” 

“Hm.”

Tim felt like everything inside him was scraped out and replaced with ice and obsidian. “No, no, this is insane. I’m a ghost, you’re— you’re whatever spooky shit you are!”

“The Eye and the End are very different. Besides, even when they’re from the same entity, I don't believe avatars always express that the same way.” 

Fuck Jon. Fuck his awful, sad eyes. Fuck what Tim was having a harder time convincing himself was pity rather than sympathy. Fuck his quiet honesty. Fuck. Jon.

Tim threw himself out of the chair to pace. Two sets of eyes followed him — one like he was some poor fool in hospice insisting he was the picture of health, the other like he was a caged animal that would lash out sooner rather than later. Both made him want to tear off his own skin and maybe scream until the building collapsed. 

“I-I can’t be a— I can’t. No way, no way in hell.” He scrubbed both hands over his face, then pushed them back into his hair as he scrambled for some scrap of proof that Jon was wrong. He had to be. Tim needed him to be wrong. “Shouldn’t I have— If the End decided it— it wanted me or something, shouldn’t I have felt that before I blew myself up?! You did all sorts of magical shit before you made your choice!”

Jon’s head tilted. “How certain were you that you’d die in the Unknowing? That you would be the only one to die?”

“I thought that was just your average suicidal tendencies." An overwhelmed choke that only the most generous would call laughter forced itself out of Tim. “This is insane.”

“I’m sorry.” Jon’s voice carried genuine grief that made Tim want to throw things and have a good, long cry.

Neither would help. Neither could save him from the inevitable. 

As he collapsed back into the seat across from Jon, he couldn’t even pretend to be surprised when it failed to creak under his weight. He was one of them now. Why would something as banal as physics apply?

Jon, for his part, finally seemed at a loss for words. He watched. He observed as was his role. Each avatar had their own little corner of terrible they ruled, and there was no telling what Tim’s would be. If he looked over at some point and saw a scythe, he’d lose it. 

No. No, he couldn’t entertain the thought that all this was true. There was no way. Denial was just a river in Egypt, and Tim could build himself a damn vacation home on the banks. 

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and face buried in his hands. The quiet did nothing to calm him, only made him that much more aware of how still his chest was without a need to breathe. He never paid attention to the beat of his own heart when he was alive, but now the frozen silence at his core ached. 

Behind him, he heard Basira say something about finding Melanie. Someone needed to warn her about the new danger in the archives; he didn’t begrudge her that. 

The door shut with a quiet, deafening click, and still Jon watched. 

“How long has it been?” Tim eventually croaked. 

“A little over six months.” When Tim let out a sharp breath, Jon continued. “It’s a lot of time to lose.”

As he shifted back upright, Tim shook his head. “You know what the funny thing is? That doesn’t feel like long at all. In the grand scheme it’s… nothing.” He gave another short laugh, more bitter than the shitty break room coffee. “Guess I should get used to thinking the way the End wants me to think. Christ, this is…” 

“It’s a lot, I know.” Jon looked a little out of his depth, not that Tim could blame him. He wanted to snap that no, he didn’t know, he couldn’t possibly, but that rang false even in his head. Jon knew. He was quite possibly one of the only people not trying to destroy the world who did. 

Jon was the only one who understood, and Tim spent the last year and change driving as deep a wedge between them as possible. Lucky him. Jon brought plenty of his own matches to burn that bridge, but mutual blame didn’t make the gulf between them feel any smaller. 

Before he died, he saw no reason to try and repair things. No point in trying to wade through Jon’s fumbling attempts at reparations. He was a dead man walking, ready (and more often than he was willing to admit, eager) to die if it meant taking that circus with him. Difficult conversations were a waste of time when he counted on having very little left. 

Jon took a sip of tea that had to be ice cold. No Martin around to refill it — not that Tim had any desire to touch that can of worms, not with a ten foot pole. 

“What have you noticed so far? About yourself, I mean.”

Tim raised a brow. “Trying to pull a statement out of me, boss?”

“I just want to get a baseline,” Jon countered with lips pursed. 

Neither he nor Tim commented on the tape recorder busily humming away on the desk. Jon must have been recording a statement before the interruption, and Tim was sure that this nightmare must be a wonderful treat for the Eye. It was difficult to care. 

He sighed. “You know those movies where someone comes back as a ghost, or spirit, or whatever, and they have no idea? They try to talk to people or touch objects, and eventually realize they’re dead?”

The Archivist nodded but otherwise remained silent — to keep the recording clear, Tim guessed.

“Yeah, well… This wasn’t that at all. Even when I still didn’t remember what happened, or hell, my own name, I knew I was a ghost. I knew I was undead, and I knew I had somewhere I needed to go. Here, as it turns out, but I didn’t know that until I arrived. Sometimes it was all I could do to just put one foot in front of the other.”

It wasn’t compelled, no, but the story unspooled without interruption nonetheless. He fell into the same trap so many others did, indulging in the attentive audience in hopes for answers or catharsis. Tim wasn’t even sure he wanted either. Why would he? Answers and catharsis both were temporary measures. He gave his statement because that was what happened at this point. It was inevitable. 

He wondered then how closely the End and the Web were linked. It was, he thought, like train tracks and their station — one, the means; the other, the destination. Neither possible without the other, and both unavoidable for every single person stuck in the passenger cars. 

When he finished, it was the Archivist who pressed stop on the recorder, and Jon who said a quiet, “Thank you,” and looked at him with those sad, sad eyes. Tim spared a moment to absently wonder if this meant he got a new, spooky title now, or if he just fell under the subheading of monster. 

“I…” Some part of him still expected his voice to be hoarse after talking so long, but no. Even that shred of normalcy was denied him. “I don’t give a damn what Oliver or whoever said. I didn’t choose this.”

“It’s like Elias told me when I said the same to him — we didn’t want this, but life always brings choices that we can’t know the outcome of. We still make them.”

“And, what, you believed him?” Tim snorted. “Was that before or after he confessed to two murders?”

Jon didn’t answer the question, which was answer enough. “I don’t like him any more than you, but it’s not as if there’s a vast roster of avatars willing to talk about what's happening to us. At the very least, I believe he genuinely wants the whole avatar… thing to work.” 

“Sure. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not so quick to trust our murderous, manipulative boss.”

It seemed like Jon had no argument for that. He pulled himself to his feet, circled the desk, and grabbed his cane. From where he sat, Tim could see the small bisexual pride flag sticker he personally stuck on just below the handle years ago, back when he’d just been hired on in research and made it his mission to break down a new coworker's prickly walls. He’d seen the mug Jon used, the black one with a thin stripe of blue, purple, and pink around the upper rim, and took the plunge with fingers crossed. The dry, unimpressed look he’d gotten when Jon saw it made him worry that perhaps he’d gone too far too fast, but later he saw Jon carefully smooth down one corner where it had started to peel up. His eyes carried that same intense focus as always, but his tiny smile once the sticker was back in place felt like an accomplishment. 

Quite literal lifetimes ago, now, but that didn’t keep down a spark of gratification at the sight. 

“I’m going to get some air,” Jon murmured. “Take as much time as you need to process.”

“I don’t need your permission,” Tim snapped in reply, more out of habit than any true irritation.

Jon didn’t rise to the bait. “I-I know. Sometimes it’s just… nice, to have things put in words.” His hand went still in the air halfway to Tim’s shoulder, hovering awkwardly between them before he dropped it and cleared his throat. “Right, well… I’ll be back in a bit.”

With that inglorious goodbye, Jon left. 

Eyes closed. Recorder off. No breathing, no draft. Everything was as quiet as — and here Tim huffed a laugh — the grave. Maybe not his finest work, but he’d need some time to acclimate before he came up with better puns. 

The same miserable uncertainty and denial that characterized his past week rose up like creeping ice, but over them was a cool numbness that Tim embraced. He was so tired of self-pity, and whether this new hell deserved it didn’t matter. He’d punched his card far more than he’d had right to in the last year of his life. 

No, what he needed now was some Stoker-brand respite: abusing whatever abilities the whole ghost thing gave for a truly insufferable amount of bad jokes.

Statement fucking ends.