Chapter Text
Jon wakes to the sound of low murmuring and paper rustling. A chair scrapes across a wooden floor. Someone laughs nearby.
He jerks upright so fast his vision whites out. His lungs drag in air in ragged gasps, his vision swims. He grips the edge before him hard enough his knuckles ache.
For one sickening second, he thinks he is still dying, his insides stuffed full of knowledge he couldn’t contain. The sound of the Panopticon tearing itself apart still rings through him, that terrible grinding collapse, the world splitting, Martin screaming his name somewhere beyond the roar with anguish raw in his throat, the Eye shuttering closed above them with a deafening, screeching clamour. He remembers blood in his mouth, remembers holding Martin’s hand so tightly his fingers hurt while he waited for the world to die with him.
Martin.
“M-Martin!” Jon shouts instinctively, looking around.
A few heads turn in his direction from the hallway. A colleague from Research glances around the open door at him with visible irritation. “Who?” someone murmurs, frowning. Jon stares at them blankly. They share a look and pointedly go back to their work.
Hallway, the door ajar. His desk before him, his old desk back in the old office he shared with Tim in the research department.
The Institute.
Impossible. He died, he-
His pulse pounds painfully in his throat. Jon grips the desk harder once he leans against it so abruptly his chair crashes backward. He digs his fingers into the wood to stop the shaking that threatens to overtake his entire body and his gaze drifts downwards. They are not scarred and blood-soaked but instead normal, human hands, peeking out from his sleeves of the shirt he is wearing underneath his jumper.
A dream, it had to be…except his bones still ache where the Beholding had burned through him. Knowledge rushes against the inside of his skull, filling it to the brink, torrents of floodwater battering the barricades of an ivory dam. He can still remember every statement and every impossible horror.
His chest heaves as panic crashes into him all at once. He pushes himself to his feet too quickly and stumbles, catches himself on the wall, lets the rough wallpaper and the familiar scent of old carpets and stale coffee ground him. The office is exactly the same. Rows of filing cabinets, shelves swollen with mouldering books, his old coat over the back of the wobbly chair, the dark coffee stain near the door, the calendar Tim misuses to scribble personal events in. Jon’s eyes flick to the month. February 2015.
He knows this moment. This is before, before Gertrude Robinson dies, before Elias offers him the position of Head Archivist.
Then, the first thing beneath the panic: there is no horrible awareness pressing into his head, no cacophonous chorus of statements threatening to burst through him while the Eye consumes his thoughts. It is just him…he hasn’t been just himself in years.
“Oh God.” The words come out strangled in his desperate attempt to gasp for air.
“There you are!”
Jon nearly knocks a tower of precariously stacked books off the table. Amelia bursts through the office door holding a stack of files and looking mildly annoyed. “You were meant to bring these downstairs twenty minutes ago!”
Downstairs to the library. Because he is in Research right now.
Jon can’t stop staring at her. He feels like he is seeing a ghost. Because she is one, everyone here is. Tim dies, Sasha dies, Martin– His stomach twists so sharply he nearly retches.
She frowns. “Are you all right?”
No. No, he really isn’t.
Amelia’s expression shifts from annoyance to concern. “Jon? You look shaken.”
Shaken doesn’t even begin to cover it. He is standing at the beginning of the world with the memory of its end crammed inside his skull. He presses his hands to his temples. “I– uh…I need a moment. Please. I’ll be fine.”
The woman fumbles, startled. “Uh, yeah, sure.” She looks unconvinced but leaves anyway.
Jon waits until the door shuts before he drags both hands down his face and forces himself upright. His pulse hammers so violently he can feel it in his teeth. Think, think.
Could this be a domain, a trick of the Spiral? Some final punishment scraped together from the remains of the Eye? But it couldn’t be, he would have noticed. And Annabelle had said–
Despite the impossible odds and all that logic dictates, he is back here in the Institute, years ago. He must be, all signs point to it no matter how far-fetched it sounds in his mind. Maybe it really could be true. After all, that’s what the Web had planned, isn’t it? Pull them all into another dimension?
If that is true, what had happened to the version of him that had existed here? Had he simply replaced him?
The thought alone sends ice sluicing through his veins. And beneath the guilt, he suddenly feels horribly, impossibly alone.
He desperately, desperately needs a plan.
Jon presses the heels of his hands against his eyelids until stars burst behind them. “Right,” he whispers to nobody. “Right. Okay.”
While every fibre of his being screams with a violent yearning to find Martin and kiss him silly, he doesn’t even know where to go. Martin isn’t part of his team yet. He isn’t even part of his team yet, he is only a researcher. And under no circumstances can he risk tracking him down only to lose him with talk of the apocalypse when they haven’t even met yet. He can’t do that; the very thought turns his stomach. No. He needs a moment to figure this all out.
And with a perfect, aching clarity Jon realises that he has a responsibility to make things right. He hasn’t taken the job in the Archives yet, Elias hasn’t chosen him. And more importantly, the world hasn’t started ending. There’s still time. Some twist of fate, some benevolent deity has given him a second chance and he’d be damned if he doesn’t use it. He has to do this properly.
And yet: what do could he possibly do? Warn people? About what? Everything? Elias would see it immediately. The Eye would notice his paranoia. Destroy the Institute? Would he manage? He remembers what happened when destruction came too quickly, the way the Web moved pieces before anyone even noticed they were playing.
He cannot do this alone, a truth of terrible certainty. So find someone who might just believe you.
Gertrude comes to mind first. Jon has never met her but the possibility fills him with both endless curiosity and staggering dread. She had always been on top of things, had known what to do even when the odds had been stacked against her. His gaze darts toward the door that just conceals the stairs leading down to the lower floors. An icy spike of panic drives through him. Gertrude wouldn’t be there. He only knows some of her movements, from another timeline where he had tracked scraps of hidden information through records and coincidences until eventually they had led him to some understanding of the previous Archivist. February 2015. She won’t be here.
Before the panic can fully infect him, the next insight crashes into place with all the courtesy and gentleness of a sledgehammer. There’s one thing that doesn’t fit, one variable Elias never managed to account for.
You.
The taxi ride feels unreal as London slides past the window, all grey and damp. It looks offensively normal considering what he has just witnessed. Jon can still feel Martin sobbing into his shoulder while the world ended around them, can feel the knife piercing his skin. When he touches his sternum, there’s nothing there, but what should feel like relief is a scorching brand on his mind instead. The world is alive and it doesn’t know it almost died. Jon presses trembling fingers against his mouth. He doesn’t know whether to laugh or sob.
The taxi stops outside an old apartment building in Bloomsbury. He stares up at it through the rain-specked window.
This is insane. You don’t know him. To you he’s just…what exactly? Some stranger at your door, a frantic madman rambling about apocalypses and monsters. God, you’re going to think he’s completely mad. For all he knows you’ll slam the door in his face. Or worse–
The driver clears his throat impatiently and Jon startles and fumbles money at him before climbing out into cold drizzle. A cyclist nearly hits him and shouts something rude but he barely notices, eyes trained upwards on tall windows and dark brick.
He’s never actually been here and yet he remembers the address from memory, from another life.
There’s a light on upstairs. You’re home. Or at least he hopes so.
He reaches for the door as a young woman wrestling a suitcase tries to jam it open. He holds it for her while she gets her second bag and she nods her thanks to him with a brilliant smile. He slips in after, takes two stairs at a time.
You mentioned once off-handedly that you hated underground travel and preferred upper floors whenever possible. He remembers the little things about you, the human things. The way you smiled, the way you had traced his hand.
His throat tightens. By the time he reaches your door he’s breathing hard before freezing in place. What exactly is he supposed to say?
Sorry, I witnessed the death and rebirth of reality and my first thought was to meet up with the immortal half-dead, rule-defying anomaly my eldritch boss is obsessed with.
Or rather:
Hello, we met in another universe where the world ended and you sacrificed yourself to save me and my boyfriend who doesn’t even know me yet?
Excellent. Wonderful start.
Jon scrubs a hand over his face, then knocks anyway.
A few seconds pass before he can hear shuffling behind the door. It opens only a fraction, one sharp eye becoming visible through the gap, suspicious immediately.
You look exactly the same and yet younger somehow, lighter perhaps. This is you before…before he ruined everything. And for one terrible second he sees you the way you were at the edge of the world again: torn apart beneath a screaming sky, gasping for air on the ground, and then, exhausted and bloodied and smiling softly, as the End took your hand. His chest aches at the sight of you and he lifts his hand, rubbing it absentmindedly.
“Yes?”
Jon suddenly becomes acutely aware of how out of place he must look standing here on your doorstep, clothes slightly disheveled and sprinkled with rain, panic written all over his face.
“I–” His voice breaks. He clears his throat and tries again: “You don’t know me but I know you.”
Instantly your expression shutters colder. The door starts closing.
Jon reacts on instinct: “Wait!” The word comes out desperate enough that you pause just slightly. “I know about Gertrude,” he blurts.
That gets your attention. “What about her?”
“She’s alive,” Jon says quickly. “Right now. I know that. I know she’s away but– something is going to happen to her.”
Your expression changes and Jon recognises the look painfully well: you are deciding whether he is a threat. “Who are you?”
Jon opens his mouth only for nothing to come out. Who is he now? Not yet the Archivist, just a terrified man carrying memories that should not exist. “Jonathan Sims.”
Blank recognition, of course. He doubts he was important enough to catch your attention this early the first time round. He is nobody of interest, at least right now, and the irony almost makes him sick.
“And why exactly are you at my flat, Jonathan Sims?”
Jon chokes down a bitter laugh. How does he even begin answering that? The truthful answer is insane. The truthful answer is because the world ended; because you died; because he woke up and the first thing he thought was that maybe this time he could save everyone; because he truly, truly doesn’t know what else to do.
“Please, I didn’t know where else to go,” he says finally, voice frayed thin. “I need help.”
Your eyes narrow. “With?”
His throat closes painfully. “I think the world is going to end.”
You stare at him. Rain patters softly against the roof at the top of the stairwell.
“You’re trembling,” you remark after a moment.
Jon glances down and your words ring true. His hands are shaking uncontrollably, so he grips his fingers together hard enough to ache. “To be completely honest, I’m trying very hard not to panic.”
Your gaze shifts briefly down the empty hallway and in that instant Jon is convinced you are going to send him away, that this won’t work and he’ll be alone and the apocalypse is inevitable.
You shake your head and just when Jon tries to work up the courage to beg one last time, you slowly, cautiously, open the door another few inches. “Come inside before the neighbours think you’re stalking me.”
Jon nearly sags with relief and he stumbles forward on shaky knees, bracing himself on the doorframe. “Thank you.”
“You may regret that gratitude shortly,” you mutter but you let him pass.
The flat smells faintly of tea and old books and Jon stops dead just inside the hallway as his eyes take in every surface: tall windows, a neat kitchen with the light left on, too many bookshelves, a record player near the far wall, a desk so packed with papers it could rival his own. It feels so much like you that he can’t stop the way the corner of his mouth tugs upwards.
You notice him looking. “How do you know where I live?”
Right…that one’s difficult. “You told me,” he says sheepishly.
“I absolutely did not.”
“In fairness,” Jon mutters, exhausted already, “it was technically a different reality.”
You stare at him in silence. Jon stares back. Then, incredibly, you huff once in disbelief. “You’re insane.”
“Probably.”
You close the door carefully behind him and lock it. “You have,” you say slowly, “approximately five minutes before I decide whether to throw you back outside.”
Jon nods quickly. Entirely fair.
You gesture toward the dining table and Jon obeys immediately, sitting down on one of the chairs. His legs feel weak enough to collapse anyway. For a moment he simply stares at his lap trying to figure out where to begin to explain years of horror or that he knows the sound of your voice while dying. Finally he looks up at you and says the one thing he knows will make you listen.
“I watched the world end. I caused it. And I remember all of it.”
The heating clicks as it cools. You sit across from him with your arms crossed tightly over your chest, posture rigid in a way that makes it very clear the invitation inside can still be revoked at any moment. Jon realises all of a sudden how absurd this must sound. Still, you give him a chance: “Start from the beginning,” you say, eyes fixed on him, “and don’t leave anything out.”
The room is warm, but Jon suddenly feels freezing. Where would he even begin? His encounter with Mr. Spider? His promotion? The first statement in the Archives? His first meeting with you? Or does it begin centuries ago with Jonah Magnus clawing his way toward godhood?
So all he does is nod and start with the first thing that comes to mind. “They make me Head Archivist after Gertrude dies.”
You go still. “She dies?”
He nods, not trusting his voice. He sees the tiny tightening around your eyes, the careful blankness overtaking your face. It is grief anticipated before it has even happened. “You’re certain.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Elias kills her.”
“And you supposedly know that because of your mysterious future memories.”
“Yes.”
You take a deep breath. “Go ahead.”
And so he begins.
He tells you about the worms and Jane Prentiss, about the Eye forcing statements through him, about becoming something less human, about Michael and Sasha and the Unknowing and Daisy and the coffin and the Dark Sun over Ny-Ålesund and Martin in the Lonely.
At first, you interrupt constantly, stopping him every few sentences with sharp, precise questions of “How do you know that?” and “Wait. Clarify the timeline of how that happened.” Jon answers everything as best he can.
By the time he reaches the part about the Unknowing, you’ve stopped interrupting as often. By the time he describes the sky splitting open above London, you are very, very still, watching him with an expression he cannot read. Jon’s throat is raw. He keeps talking anyway, words pouring out too quickly now, about his assistants, Gertrude, Leitner, Elias and who he really is, and about how the world became fear made flesh.
You listen attentively until he arrives at the part he dreaded. He hesitates, for the first time since he began speaking.
“What?”
Jon swallows. “You died.”
The rain hasn’t let up and the sound of water battering the windows creates a rhythmic interlude to his words. Your expression does not change. “How?”
Jon looks down at his hands. “The Fears found you.”
You regard him with unveiled disbelief. “They shouldn’t have been able to.”
“I know.” Jon’s voice comes out quieter now. “But things changed.”
You say nothing. Jon remembers your voice trembling for the first time in centuries when you admitted you were afraid. “They tore into you because you let yourself care,” he adds softly before he can stop himself.
“You’re assuming quite a lot about me for someone I’ve never met.” Your voice is a careful mask of composure but Jon can hear the strain, the hoarseness behind it before it is gone almost immediately.
God, this is difficult. “I know how this sounds,” he replies tiredly.
“You know what it sounds like? You arrive at my flat claiming the world ends, claim to know impossible things, describe entities no sane person should know about, and now you’re telling me I die protecting people I haven’t even met yet.”
Jon rubs a hand over his face. “When you say it like that-”
“How else would I say it?”
Right.
You get up and begin pacing slowly now. Jon has seen you do that only twice in the entire time he has known you. You only pace when something genuinely unsettles you. Good, it should.
“So you somehow travelled backwards through time though there is nothing that could even remotely prove that what you say is true?”
He had almost forgotten this version of you, the careful, closed-off part of you that didn’t trust anyone except maybe Gertrude, to some degree. Strange how much it hurts. “I don’t know if or how I travelled,” Jon admits. “I just woke up here.”
You stop pacing just long enough to glare at him.
Jon lifts his hands slightly in surrender. “Look, I know you don’t trust me.”
“No,” you retort immediately, “I don’t.”
“But I know things I shouldn’t.”
“What things?”
He hesitates and then decides that honesty is the only chance he has. “I know what happened to you.”
Your eyes narrow instantly. “Excuse me?”
“The ritual. The End.”
He knows immediately he’s pushed too far. The air becomes as sharp as broken glass and you, you stare at him with genuine danger in your expression. His stomach plummets down all the stairs he’s just climbed but it is too late now.
“What ritual.”
Jon hesitates another time. Wrong answer. Your gaze hardens. “No, if you’re going to attempt this, you don’t get to be vague. What ritual?”
“You were born into a cult. You died young or…or you were supposed to but the ritual failed somehow and–”
“Enough.”
Your voice, razor-thin, cracks through the room in a way that makes Jon fall silent immediately. Controlled anger that becomes sharp enough to cut when pressed. “How…do you know that?”
“Because you told Elias.”
Silence, cold and terrible. You are staring at him now like you no longer know what he is. Your face is pale and Jon knows the feeling, sees it, the Eye taking things that should belong only to you. He can see your mind trying to connect the dots, trying to make sense of him. Then you laugh a single disbelieving sound. “Ah.” You step back slightly and suddenly everything about your posture closes off. “Of course.”
Jon frowns. “What?”
“You said you’re with the Institute.”
“No–”
“You expect me to believe there aren’t records somewhere?” you snap. “Gertrude keeps records. If you work there–”
“I don’t work in the Archives yet.”
One eyebrow rises. “Convenient.”
“It’s true.”
“You could have found statements.”
“There are no statements about you!” Jon realises immediately he said the right thing because it’s true. He knows because he has looked himself. There were records perhaps, fragments or mentions, but never statements, never anything complete. You both knew that the Eye couldn’t hold onto you properly.
“There could be.” You sound almost petulant, clinging to the chance that this isn’t the truth, merely a manipulation by the Web or a scheme of the Eye. He wouldn’t blame you for assuming it was.
So he rushes onward before he can lose momentum. “Anyone who knew about the ritual died with it. And you burned all evidence of the cult yourself in fourteen sixty-four.”
You look away sharply and Jon immediately regrets saying it. Of course you’re upset. He sounds exactly like the Eye, digging through old wounds and exhuming corpses buried for centuries.
“I’m sorry,” he apologises, watching the war happening behind your eyes, logic against instinct, suspicion against possibility.
“…I never told anyone that. Not even Gertrude.”
Jon exhales shakily. “No.”
“You understand why that’s concerning.”
“Yes.”
You stare at him for a very long time. Then you move toward the kitchen so abruptly that Jon startles. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, utterly out of place here in your sanctuary, in the silence and sanctity of your flat that feels so entirely unknown to him.
You return a few moments later with two mugs of tea. One you hand to him automatically before seeming to realise what you’ve done. You look annoyed with yourself immediately. Jon almost smiles despite everything.
You lean on the back of the chair. “You expect me to believe this.” Not a question.
Jon’s laugh this time is genuinely helpless. “No, not particularly. I’m not even sure I believe it myself.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because I don’t know what else to do. And you are the only person I can trust with this.” There it is, the truth in all its raw, terrifying glory. For the first time since waking up, Jon feels the exhaustion fully. “I can’t…” His voice catches. “I can’t watch them die another time.”
Another long silence before you sit down opposite him again and take a sip from your mug in contemplation. “You shouldn’t trust people so easily.”
Jon can’t help the tired smile that sneaks onto his face. “That’s what you said last time too.”
You sigh. “If you are lying,” you say at last, “this is an extraordinarily elaborate way to do it.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“And if you are not…” You trail off and your gaze drifts toward the rain-dark windows. Finally you exhale. “…then we may have very little time.”
You look back at him, focused, already thinking miles ahead. “Tell me exactly how and when Gertrude dies.”
He does and you nod once without any emotion visible on your face though he notices your fingers tightening around your mug.
“She won’t listen to me easily,” you murmur.
“She listened to you before.”
A moment passes.
“Well,” you say briskly, standing, “if the world is ending again, I suppose we ought to be proactive this time.”
Jon stares up at you. “You believe me?”
You grimace slightly. “I believe,” you say carefully, “that either you are telling the truth, attempting to manipulate me,” Jon winces at that, “or you are the most deranged lunatic I’ve encountered in at least a century. At present I’m undecided which.”
Jon fidgets with his sleeve, unsure on how to continue. “You asked me to explain.”
“Yes, and opening with apocalypse-induced temporal displacement was an interesting choice, though I must admit, it was not my first guess.”
Eventually you exhale slowly through your nose. “All right.”
Jon’s eyebrows draw together in confusion. “…all right?”
“If this is real – and I’m not saying it is – then the situation is catastrophic enough that ignoring you would be plain irresponsible.”
Relief hits so suddenly Jon sags forward against the table and buries his face in his hands. “Oh thank God.”
“Don’t thank me yet, you may still be hallucinating.”
“That’s fair.”
“You also might be lying.”
“I know.”
“And if Elias notices either of us–”
“I know.”
You study him for a moment. “You look very tired, Jonathan.”
His breath catches and he looks away before you can see it. He remembers caring for you, deeply, no matter all your differences. And now you look at him like he is a frightened stray animal that wandered too close. “I am,” he hears himself admit softly.
Neither of you speaks. Then you move to one of the bookshelves, pulling down old documents and notes.
Jon watches you with continued disbelief. This is happening. You’re helping him, again, despite everything it has cost you and might cost you yet.
“You came to me because you think we can change it this time.”
He nods.
“And Gertrude was already trying to stop Elias?”
“Yes.”
You look toward the darkened window again, thinking. Jon can practically see the calculations happening behind your eyes.
“We’ll compare notes.”
Jon blinks. “What?”
“We need her. She’ll know how to verify your story or at least parts of it. And if Elias truly intends what you claim, she’s the only person ruthless enough to move quickly.”
Jon stares. He hadn’t even let himself think that far.
“We meet with her the moment she returns,” you say. “All of us.”
Something cold enters your voice. “And then we put an end to this before it begins.”