#Complaints and Anger
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shrawfrog ¡ 1 year ago
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Not in My Back Yard...
My take on Parish Council Meetings and Village Development
Nothing like a parish council meeting to remind oneself how intolerant some people are and how some people must struggle to go about their daily lives before kicking off about something or other; angry people, usually older, usually right leaning and usually with a few quid in their pockets of which they will not be willing to share as to where it came from, apart from the “i worked bloody hard…
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elysiality ¡ 2 months ago
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mfs you're arguing with will fr be like "oh i hate when people bring up the fact that yellowjackets is a show about eating people, we all know, it's the premise of the show !!"
like...yes....but if what grinds on your morality gears the most is Shauna being a bad mother or Jackie being a 'mean girl' or even— basically anything to do with Misty....I think you do, in fact, need a reminder that this is the lesbian teenage cannibal show...
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zoneofsmites ¡ 8 months ago
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Still laughing about how they didn't want to "invalidate" anyone's worldstate. But that is exactly what they did.
Morrigan is the most obvious, I really cannot believe that a Morrigan who was a mother would have so willingly taken into her something like Mythal if she was a mother - of at this point - a 10 year old Kieran. Maybe she would, but it would be for different reasons.
Isabela is the most annoying to me. She's talking about how "Kirkwall taught her about family." as if she couldn't have been given up by Hawke to the Arishok. As if she couldn't have ran away from Kirkwall and never looked back. If I had met an Isabela from a world state like that, she would never have said that.
Harding talking about the Inquisition also feels like it misses some... extra flavour here and there based on actual choices. Like my Inquisitor didn't do well with Blackwall, and he didn't survive to see the end of the game. But Lace speaks about him fondly and in such a way that I don't think she should if the Inquisitor never 'redeemed' him.
Zevran is never mentioned by name, but what if a warden outright killed the assassin hunting them. Or he turned on them in Denerim and died later? Then explain to me that entire banter Lucanis has with Harding about why House Arainai messed up so bad they went trough several Talons about it. And now the Crows don't take contracts in Ferelden anymore.
At that point the reason that was given to us for the lack of worldbuild choices to prevent 'invalidating everyone's worldstate' feels null and void. Because you have. You have invalidated many worldstates already by bringing back these character or have people talk around them in such a way that doesn't make sense.
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evelynpr ¡ 3 months ago
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Genshin 5.6 spoilers for Paralogism
My interpretation right now is that Albedo giving Durin a human body is his greatest act of kindness and mercy to both Durin and all the failed subjects before him. He did not need to go through all that work to give them a human body (doing all the research, asking for help from the Hexenzirkel, massive alchemic rune and ritual in Mond, asking for Simulanka Durin), but he DID so they have a chance of human life.
It is honestly so beautiful so see how far his character has grown. Some people are saying that it's strange how unkind and cruel he is to describing During and Dorian/Subject 2, but I think it is because his ways of showing great kindness are just harder to explain, but his entire speech of what he thinks of Durin and becoming a gardener himself instead is how he wants to create life to contribute to the world- and extending that hand to Durin (including all the failed Albedos), who never got that chance.
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dallasgallant ¡ 4 months ago
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Hard out here to like Dally as a character as it seems most people either
Irredeemable monster (is a mean 17 year old boy) v. Desperately want him to be a booktok shadow daddy
Both are wrong he’s a bit of a loser lol
Feel like this meme constantly :
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Not to be like woe is me for liking a fictional character but it baffles me how ‘no nuance’ people are about him when almost everyone else doesn’t get that treatment (Rip Bob and every female character but Cherry - and Cherry is getting more of a pedestal than nuance)
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dunmeshistash ¡ 1 year ago
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I became disappointed with maizuru bc she is still having an affair with the father. Disrespectful towards the wife.
She is a servant to his father, he married someone else and still had an affair with Maizuru. Maizuru is currently 41 while Toshiro is 26 meaning she was 15 when he was born. How long has this affair been happening? Why does his dad always buy young girls and dress them in mini skirts? ����
And even if she's in her 40's now, he has power over her, she's his servant and he's her master, judge him not her if you're gonna judge someone.
I will not accept criticisms to any of the Nakamoto's slaves without acknowledgement to how mistreated they are 👍✌️
Judge Maizuru for mistreating Izutsumi but not for any of her relationships with the Nakamotos
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gomzdrawfr ¡ 3 months ago
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Im gonna kill the delivery guy
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saints-who-never-existed ¡ 8 months ago
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I've been thinking today about Jopson's anger or, rather, the lack thereof.
He has just as much right as anyone else - maybe even more - to feel anger and resentment in response to the hardships he's faced. But I don't know that we ever really get to see it all that much and I find that interesting yet strange?
It's not that we don't see strong emotion from Jopson.
We catch a glimpse of him scrapping with fellow seamen after Silna's kidnapping, share his exquisite pain as he recounts the tale of his mother, see him looking down his nose at Hickey and admonishing Little/Le Vesconte when they propose leaving the sick behind.
But I don't think any of those emotions can really be classed as anger and even if they could, it always seems to come in response to external stimuli, not necessarily from within?
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deeply frustrating to find out that the reason the main road in my town is getting pulled up and new asphalt laid, despite being in perfectly fine condition, meanwhile all the other roads in town are absolutely treacherous and filled with car-killer, motorcyclist-murdering potholes, is because the main road is a state road so they get to do it essentially on the government's dime but instead of using their own money to fix the other roads they spend it all on things like having a c-list musician come to play at the county fair every year
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mort-mouse-avi ¡ 6 months ago
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(it's written in Portuguese)
This is one of the things that happens a lot at school when I'm drawing and people say that Mortimer "is Mickey". It annoys me a little 😑
Oh, and to show something to someone who commented earlier:
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yes, @sleppyhazel12, markers do stain the back of the paper. Here's a photo of the back of the drawing I made:
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canines-crown ¡ 5 months ago
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If I have another kid running around with a real fur tail telling me that I'm a psychopath for owning taxidermy and that I just killed their theriotype I am going to FUCKING LOSE IT HOLY SHIT
Do your research on what you're wearing and treating like your common, every day accessory for dress-up games before you criticize me dear god I'm SEETHING
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kittygawa--jr ¡ 2 months ago
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girl who has so many thoughts and opinions about the new randy bullshit but is definitely not politically or socially read enough to make them
#my main thoughts are: in terms of capitalism yeah yku should be paying 80usd for games now#capitalism invites inflation and we are also coming into a recession. it makes sense for luxury or recrestional goods and services to go up#your anger should be directed at the capitalist system as opposed to the games industry this time.#adjusting for inflation AAA games should be around 80usd#(this is not bringing up how games cost more in non westerm countries and how the complaints of an 80usd price tag come from that of extreme#priviledge itself)#however this is all operating under the assumption that profits directly correllate to salary for the workers#(which is a foolish one)#generally the anger should be directed towards capitalism (if you would like to get more specific maybe xbox game studios as those profits#fund genocide anyway) and we should all be mad at randy for imying people are fake fans if they don't buy the games#asshole move randy! i understand the person was being a dick themselves but my god#benny yaps#<- sorry for saying all of it anyway. people are welcome to come correct me#i also would like to bring up the fact that the games industry is more than AAA games#AAA games are not indicative of the games industry as a whole and are a very narrow pool of them actually#there are still plenty of 5-30usd games out there! lots! more than ever before actually!#and plenty of them are still fun! and steam's refund policy is pretty forgiving!!!!!#you can try them for a couple hours and see if you like them!#and frankly if they hold you for more than two hours i'd say the game is worth it! frankly!#and i don't want anyone to make a case that AA or indie devs shouldn't charge 50+usd for their games either because frankly#they deserve it more than the company dedicated to churning out games
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wanderingmind867 ¡ 9 months ago
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Because I'm stressed out right now, and also because i'm a contrarian who hates new things and hates seeing something i don't understand get discussed constantly, i am going to just allow myself to pick some targets to be my punching bags. Better to yell at media than at my dad or at others, i suppose. Although knowing me, i could still end up yelling at my dad before the night's over. I'm not the most pleasant person. sigh...
Anyways, it's contrarian aggression time! My targets: stupid greek mythology musicals! Epic the musical and hadestown and anything that isn't Percy Jackson or Disney's Hercules, I'm going to be attacking you to release some aggression. I don't know why we need musicals about horribly depressing pieces of media made up by horrible people centuries ago, but get out of here! Screw you, Orpheus! Take your tragic harp and go hang yourself with it! Take it too, Odysseus! I can't understand your story because it's written in horrible ancient writing styles, so screw you!
Screw the Greek and Roman afterlife! Might actually be worse than the stupid Christian concept of heaven and hell, and i say that as someone who hates the abrahamic faiths! Screw the illiad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and all these other stupid ancient books! One ancient religious text is just as bad as another! It's incomprehensible nonsense, and most of the time it's so sad that I want to strangle the author for making me feel even more depressed than I usually do! Screw all of this nonsense! Burn it, bury it, start fresh with more optimistic myths! I said it! Mythology should be mostly hopeful, not tragic!
I hate tragedy! I hate horror! The only genre I really like is comedy, but heaven forbid we get any good clear, comprehensible ancient comedies! gods forbid! I hate it! And don't get me started on that idiot Shakespeare! If we switch from idiots like Homer and whoever the hell wrote the bible to shakespeare, then we'll be here for another five paragraphs. So I'm ending this here. But who knows? I might come back for Shakespeare later. I certainly hate him enough to do so.
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lucyvaleheart ¡ 3 days ago
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yourlocalxiaosimp ¡ 4 months ago
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GOD DAMMIT I JUST WANNA HAVE MY SS CARD HAVE MY ACTUAL NAME ON IT ARGH
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ollieofthebeholder ¡ 6 months ago
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And If Thou Wilt, Forget: a TMA fanfic
Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website
Chapter 37: Who has redeemed and not abhorred
“—one more time, I’m going to rip his intestines out and strangle him with them.”
It probably wasn’t a serious threat. As small and scrawny as Jon was, Sasha was even smaller, and she kept her nails extremely short and smooth, so she likely wouldn’t have what it took to scratch him enough to bleed, let alone do any serious damage. Still, the combination of words with the tone she said them in touched off the hair trigger on Tim’s increasingly irritating urge to protect Jon, and he bristled instinctively as he jerked his head around to find her.
As usual, she was not dressed for the weather; she must be part polar bear, or else she was just that stubborn. Her only concession to the near freezing temperatures was to switch out her sandals for penny loafers and throw a shawl over her shoulders. The bright red spots on her cheeks were probably from anger and not cold or fever, though. Martin, who was walking with her, was much more sensibly dressed in the cornflower blue jumper he’d taken to wearing more often in the last month and a pair of scuffed but sturdy Doc Martens he’d managed to score at a swap meet because his feet were smaller than most men’s and there hadn’t been much competition for them. His expression was somewhere between frustration and anxiety, which was more or less his default expression when thinking about Jon these days. The way his hands were jammed in his pockets told Tim that, whatever Sasha was saying, he didn’t want to agree with it, but he did.
“Look,” he said, obviously trying to sound reasonable, “he’s—i-it’s been hard on him, you know that, he—”
“It’s been months, Martin. Whatever…whatever trauma it is he’s trying to work through”—oh, the sarcasm she put on those two words—“it doesn’t give him the right to do what he’s been doing. You know I’m right. Didn’t Elias tell you the same thing?”
“What?” Tim’s tongue freed itself at that and flung out the word much more sharply than he meant to.
Sasha and Martin both looked up at him at that, Martin flinching backwards and Sasha with an expression that indicated she was thankful to have an ally in whatever it was. It was Martin who spoke, though. “It’s Jon. He’s…” His shoulders slumped, and he looked suddenly exhausted. “He’s getting worse, Tim. I, I mean, I think he’s as healed as he’s ever going to be physically, but…”
“He’s ridiculously paranoid,” Sasha said, gesticulating wildly. “I caught him going through my desk a couple weeks ago. And he lied about it, but I know he’s been following me, too. You weren’t here last week when he went after Martin, but—”
“Not like that,” Martin cut in swiftly. “Not—I, I mean, he didn’t attack me or anything, I…”
“Martin,” Sasha and Tim said in unison.
Martin, if anything, slumped even further. “He accused me of killing Gertrude.”
“He accused you?” Tim exclaimed. If he was trying to throw suspicion off of himself, Jon had picked the worst possible candidate for that. “Why, for God’s sake?”
“He found a letter…well, he found a statement. Remember Trevor Herbert, the vampire hunter? I told Jon he died after he gave his statement, but apparently there was more than the one he found, and, and maybe he didn’t actually die? I dunno.” Martin rubbed at his face for a moment. “But then he said he’d found a letter I wrote to my mum and…”
Tim sighed and shook his head. “Okay. So he’s paranoid. I get that. He was stalking me, too. What was that about Elias? Was he asking you about Jon?”
Martin winced. “I, I went to talk to him.”
“Martin!”
“I know! I know, it’s…I don’t want him to get fired or anything. But he’s not listening to us, Tim. Somebody’s got to do something.”
“Maybe he should get fired,” Sasha said, not quite under her breath. “If he’s going to keep going on like this.”
Tim ignored her. That could easily be spite on her part; despite her claims, and despite how long it had been, he didn’t think she was actually resigned to not having got the Archivist position. He also wouldn’t put it past her to knife him in order to get it. Martin, on the other hand, was genuine—and genuinely miserable about it. He wanted to help Jon. He’d just chosen the worst possible way of going about it.
Clearly it was going to be one of those days.
Focusing on Martin, Tim tried to keep his tone neutral. “What did you say to Elias?”
Martin looked miserable. “I just told him what’s been going on. And that maybe we should…I dunno, do something about it.”
“I talked to him, too,” Sasha interjected. “He agreed with me that Jon’s behavior is out of control and it needs to stop. He’s been doing it to you, too—don’t you agree?”
Tim ground his teeth. “Maybe, but—”
“Ah, Tim. May I have a word with you, please?”
Tim turned to see Elias standing a few feet away, hands folded in front of him and an expression of infinite patience on his insufferable face. He inclined his head towards a door to his left, which led to the small meeting room that got used for department head meetings rather than the more formal room to impress donors and trustees. “We needn’t go up to my office, we can just step in here.”
Since telling Elias where he could shove it would necessitate removing both his head and the stick already lodged in there, and saying that he would sooner chew off both hands at the wrists and wear them as earrings than lodge a formal complaint about Jon’s behavior with the head of the Institute would send Martin into a worse anxiety spiral than he was already in, Tim flashed Elias a huge, completely insincere grin and stepped into the meeting room as requested.
He waited until Elias actually came into the room and indicated that he should do so before he took a seat. The table was a long one that could easily seat a dozen people, set so that whoever was at the head of the table could see anyone entering; Tim, rather deliberately, selected a seat along one of the longer sides and pushed back from the table a bit, just to see what Elias would do.
Rather than sit at the head of the table with his hands folded formally on its top, Elias actually chose to sit in the chair next to Tim’s, which he also pushed back from the table. He propped one leg across the other knee, rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, and steepled his fingers. It was the most relaxed posture Tim had ever seen the man adopt, including when he’d come to Jon’s birthday surprise and very pointedly sung Happy birthday, dear Archivist directly in Tim’s ear—an open, casual, this is just an informal chat sort of posture.
Tim distrusted it instantly.
“I’m certain your colleagues have spoken to you about Jon’s behavior,” he said in an even, reasonable tone. “The paranoia, the constant suspicion of the three of you, the accusations, the surveillance, the…clandestine recording. Certainly I doubt Martin would have brought it to my attention except as a last resort, although, perhaps, I should have noticed sooner.”
“How?” Tim said pointedly. Not that he expected an honest answer out of him. “We’re in the basement. None of us come in the front door if we can help it. Nobody from up here comes down, and there’s no CCTV coverage in the Archives. I know you say nothing escapes your notice, but how exactly were you meant to notice Jon’s behavior if nobody came to complain?”
Elias gazed at him steadily. “Yes. Why have none of you come to me, by the way? If the situation is truly becoming…”
“Untenable?” Tim supplied, echoing Elias’s words from the discussion about his own behavior. He clenched his fist to keep from visibly working at the ring on his finger and stared Elias down, pressing against his mental barriers to keep them upright. “If you’re asking if I told them not to come to you, then no. We haven’t talked about it like that. Would I have encouraged them to talk to you? Absolutely not. If they’d told me they were planning to, I’d probably have tried to talk them out of it, because I am not sure anything you can do will help matters.”
“I do have the CCTV footage from the day of the murder,” Elias said thoughtfully. “The presumed day of the murder, anyway.”
That right there? That was bait. Elias definitely wanted Tim to ask about the footage, to hook him in and make him enter into whatever bullshit game he was playing. Tim crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re asking why I didn’t come to you about the way Jon was behaving towards Sasha and Martin? It’s because I was handling it. Or I thought I was. I didn’t know how bad it was affecting them because Martin was trying not to get him in trouble and Sasha was waiting for him to push things too far to walk back before she said anything, which tells me you spoke to her first.”
Elias’s eyebrows lifted, just slightly, and Tim immediately threw up a few extra wards to keep him from probing deeper. After a moment’s pause, Elias continued in the same reasonable tone. “All right. Why did you not come to me about the way he is behaving towards you? I presume there have been…incidents. Martin mentioned seeing pictures of your house on Jon’s desk.”
“Yeah, he was following me a couple weeks ago,” Tim said with a shrug. “Badly, might I add. I took care of it. And it didn’t happen on Institute property or company time, so really, it was none of your business.”
“Did you take care of it?” Elias asked pointedly. “Or do you just believe that whatever you said to Jon did the trick?”
“I haven’t seen him since I called him out, which means he’s either leaving me alone or he’s learned how to stalk people less conspicuously, so yeah, I’d say it did the trick,” Tim shot back.
“Or he’s simply decided you’re none of his concern.” Elias paused. “Yet.”
That was also bait, but it was bait Tim had to grind his teeth very hard to avoid chomping at. He knew damn well what Elias was implying, or trying to imply, in such a way that if Tim tried to use his words as justification for whatever he did he could plausibly deny he’d said anything of the sort. With anyone else it might have been something of the “you’re not important enough to matter to him in the grand scheme of things” variety, which could spur an impulsive hothead into action, but Tim heard the underlying concern loud and clear: Jon, if Jon had been the one to murder Gertrude Robinson, might be focusing on Martin and Sasha as his next victims to begin with. Tim might be too much for him to handle…yet. The subtle threat made him bristle a little, and he had to remind himself to settle down, to not jump down Elias’s throat. To not let him know how close he’d come to striking a nerve.
“Or,” he said instead, “you made a shitty choice for the replacement Archivist, and the combination of duties and responsibilities and…obligations…that comes with that position is eating away at his mind and slowly driving him insane.”
Elias’s expression never changed, but Tim knew the remark had struck home. Not the part where he was critical of Elias—Elias expected that, it would be suspicious if Tim wasn’t insolent and borderline subordinate at this point—but the part where he suggested that Jon’s mind wasn’t up to hosting the Archivist. There were dozens, possibly hundreds, of statements in the Archives from people who’d got too close or too deep too quickly and ended up losing their sanity, and ultimately their lives. Depending on how far and how fast Jon went down that route, it could be a disaster for just him, or for the entire staff.
Luckily, at least luckily for Tim, that wasn’t what was happening. Jon’s behavior came from him, not from the Archivist, and a big part of Tim’s job was keeping Jon from biting off more than he could swallow. Hell, he hadn’t even started compelling people properly. He was a lot more resilient than people, even Martin, gave him credit for. But Elias didn’t know that for certain and Tim had just introduced a healthy bit of doubt into his current world view. Whatever was going on, he hadn’t picked Jon out of desperation; he needed him, specifically. Tim didn’t know why and wasn’t going to ask, but he realized, as he waited for Elias to respond with a raised eyebrow and an insouciant posture, that he’d just bought them all a little time.
“I had intended to have a…disciplinary meeting with Jon,” Elias finally said slowly. “Similar to the one I had with you a few weeks back. But I think, in light of your…observations, perhaps it’s best if we do something a bit more informal.”
“We?” Tim repeated.
“How do you think Jon would respond to an intervention?”
Badly, was the answer. Exactly how badly would depend on how the intervention was staged, how they phrased it, what time of day they went for it, and whether or not Elias or Sasha or both goaded Martin into saying what he was actually thinking instead of being diplomatic. It didn’t take an expert to know that Martin’s opinion of him was the one Jon was most dependent on and keenest not to lose. And while Tim was…admittedly less certain than he previously had been that Jon had been the one to murder Gertrude, that was by no means certain, and if he had there was every risk he would take that as a sign to eliminate those who opposed him.
On the other hand, maybe they’d get lucky and he’d go for Elias first.
“Best get it over with now,” he said, putting his hands on his knees and making like he was going to stand. “He doesn’t usually go out for lunch, but maybe if we convince him he’s being an idiot first he’ll actually eat something.”
Elias actually looked momentarily startled at that, like he hadn’t expected Tim to actually agree, or maybe like he’d expected to have a little bit of time before they actually did it. Nevertheless, he rose to his feet. “An excellent point. Let’s see if Martin and Sasha are still outside the room.”
“They are. They think you’re going to fire me. Or at least Martin does.” Tim rose, too. “But we both know better, don’t we…sir?”
Elias stared at Tim for perhaps half a second longer than was strictly necessary. “Quite.”
At this point, Tim wasn’t even surprised to see that he was right. Martin and Sasha were indeed hovering a few feet away, one anxious and the other impatient, and both straightened when they Tim and Elias emerge. Tim ignored Elias, walked over to them, and clapped both on the shoulders. “It’s okay. We’re going to stage an intervention.”
Martin visibly relaxed, which told Tim he’d been right—he was genuinely afraid, especially after Tim had called him out for going to Elias, that Jon was going to be fired and it would somehow be his fault. Sasha, too, seemed to relax a little, probably because she took the it’s okay to be for them, not for Jon. Either way, they fell into step willingly behind Tim, who graciously allowed Elias to go first down the steps.
He only gave a tiny, fleeting thought to pushing him down them, which could probably be considered progress.
The door to the Archivist’s office, unsurprisingly, was shut. Elias raised his hand as he approached it, clearly preparing to knock, but Tim ducked under it and grabbed the knob. Jon’s paranoia about being discovered doing…whatever he was doing was one thing, but he genuinely hated it when people knocked on his door—especially twice—and the last thing they needed to do was set him on edge right from the get-go, even though something told him that had been exactly Elias’s intention for whatever fucking reason. He opened the door stepped into the office, and bowed theatrically, sweeping one arm forward in the most ostensible, dramatic fashion he could.
“Yes, thank you, Tim.” Elias sighed and strode into the office, Martin and Sasha in his wake. “Jon. We need to talk.”
Jon squared his shoulders almost defensively. As Tim shut the door, he reached over for the tape recorder and, without breaking eye contact with Elias, pressed the RECORD button.
“You don’t mind if I record this, I trust?” he said, a slight edge to his voice.
“Well, to be honest—” Elias began.
“That’s kind of one of the things we wanted to talk about,” Tim interrupted smoothly. When Jon’s eyes flicked over towards him, he quickly rolled his pointer finger over a couple of times in what he hoped would be interpreted as a keep going sort of gesture. Elias almost certainly wanted him to shut it off, and yeah, it was probably bothering Martin and Sasha—especially Sasha, for some reason—to have their every interaction recorded, but eventually they were going to start turning themselves on for Jon automatically the way they sometimes had for Gertrude, and sometimes did for Tim, which he hadn’t mentioned to anyone. One way or another, this was probably going on record, and it would make Jon feel better if it was voluntary for now, at least on his part.
“This is an intervention,” Martin said, in as gentle a voice as he could.
Not gentle enough. Jon rose to his feet, eyes blazing. “Excuse me.”
“If you’d rather this was an official disciplinary hearing, Jon, we can arrange it,” Elias said pointedly.
Jon looked momentarily like a scolded child, then seemed to visibly force himself to calm. “Fine. Say your piece.”
Martin licked his lips and glanced at Tim, then Elias, but Sasha beat him to the punch, her voice dripping with sincerity. Tim didn’t believe it for a second. “We care about you, Jon. And you’ve been rather erratic since the Prentiss incident.”
“And we’d, we’d really like…” Martin began, then stuttered, obviously not sure where he was going with it.
“To not have to fire you,” Elias put in.
The look of fear that flashed through Martin’s eyes made Tim want to punch Elias for that, but he recovered quickly and turned back to Jon. “To make sure you’re okay,” he said, emphatically.
“Look, I understand that I’ve been a bit distant lately,” Jon began.
Oh. Oh, no, that wasn’t going to work. Either Jon actually had no idea of what they all knew, or was hoping they wouldn’t say anything. Tim spoke up, pointedly. “You were watching my house.”
“You followed me on my lunch break, and searched my desk,” Sasha pointed out.
So she had known that; Gerry would be interested to know, Tim thought as Martin finally blurted, “You said I was lying about a murder!”
From the suddenly startled look on Jon’s face, Tim realized he was right—he hadn’t actually realized they all knew that. Or at least hadn’t realized they’d talked about it. “I, uh, uh, that is to say—” he stammered.
“You think we killed Gertrude,” Sasha broke in.
Martin genuinely flinched at that, and Tim put a supportive hand at his back as Jon sputtered, “No. It’s…I…” He swallowed, and then suddenly his chin came up in a determined, belligerent defiance. “Maybe. Maybe you did. I don’t know.”
Either Sasha had just given Jon a brilliant idea, or he really did believe that, and Tim genuinely wasn’t sure which. Elias shook his head, almost sadly. “Jon, this is absurd. This goes far beyond an unhealthy work environment. I'll admit it's partly my fault for letting it get this bad. I, I should have stepped in earlier.”
Jon puffed up slightly, and Tim decided, no. No, this was where he needed to step in, he needed to stop this now or someone—either Jon or Martin or both—was going to get hurt. “What’s your evidence? Or are you just going on gut feelings?” He gestured at Sasha, Martin, and himself. “You’ve done your research. What are the red flags? You can’t build a case on maybes.”
“It’s not right,” Martin insisted.
Jon’s eyes snapped to Martin, and there was a flicker of something in them that told Tim he badly wanted to agree, but couldn’t let himself. “We’ve gone a long way beyond right or wrong, Martin. There are monsters out there and I don’t know who or where they are or if any of you…” His hand went, almost unconsciously, to his upper arm, where the stab wound he’d refused to explain was giving him yet another scar. “If you want me to trust you, then I’m sorry, but I need evidence.”
Elias sighed heavily and handed Jon what he’d been holding. Not, Tim realized, a folder. A DVD case. “Here.”
“And this is?” Jon asked, but he took it.
“A copy of all the CCTV footage from the week Gertrude disappeared,” Elias replied. “The police finally finished cleaning it up and examining it, and returned a copy.”
Jon gave Elias a suspicious look. “There aren’t any cameras in the Archives.”
“But there are everywhere else, including all of the entrances into the Archives and across all the feeds,” Elias pointed out. “It provides a remarkably detailed account of all of our movements over that week, even yours.”
“And you think this gives everyone an alibi?” Jon demanded.
“The police certainly do. Everyone who was here, at any rate. But feel free to check it yourself.”
Jon pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, but all he said was, “Thank you. I will.”
Sasha stuck her hands on her hips. “And let’s have no more of this paranoia.”
Tim was pretty sure he was the only one that noticed the recorder shut itself off before Jon reached for it.
He followed the others out of Jon’s office, went over to his desk, and unlocked the top drawer—locking it was unnecessary, the same key worked on all the desks and honestly you could jar it loose with a good hefty shove of your hip, but he did it so nobody would suspect he kept the really important secret stuff he didn’t want anyone to know about in his bag—then rummaged around until he found what he was looking for. Ignoring Martin and Sasha, and not even caring if Elias was still there or not, he stalked back into the Archivist’s office and tossed a stack of papers on to Jon’s desk. “Here.”
Jon, who had been examining the DVD case, started and looked up at Tim, his expression somewhere between annoyance and suspicion. “What is this?”
“Receipts. Hotels, plane tickets, train tickets, round trip ferry ticket, meals and the occasional purchase receipt. Everything I expensed back to the Institute.” Tim cocked his head at Jon and indicated the DVD. “I won’t be on that recording. I told you a while ago, I was away when she was killed, on official Archive business. But, here, you can track my movements anyway. Maybe make a few phone calls, although I can’t tell you how many people I talked to will even remember me. I was trying to be careful.”
He’d either just made things better or made things a hell of a lot worse, he thought as he headed back into the Archives proper to try and get some more work done. Either way, it was done. The die was cast; let the chips fall where they may. Or as that old American television show had put it, the avalanche had begun—it was too late for the pebbles to vote. He was just going to have to keep his head down, keep doing his job, and hope he’d done the right thing.
It was all he could do for the moment.
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