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remsbeans · 2 years ago

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I haven’t read a whole lot of TMA fic, so I’m sure this already exists somewhere, but I really want a time travel fic where Jon goes back to Gertrude’s era.

So it’s 2007-ish, before his younger counterpart has started working at the Institute, but years into Elias and Gertrude’s tenure. They’re having a normal day serving the semi-omniscient fear god when a fucking full-fledged avatar of the Beholding - complete with a small mountain of tapes - falls through a rift in space-time and crash lands on Gertrude’s desk.

(Season 5 Jon might have decided not to kill Helen and instead used her to get here. If he ever sees her again they’re going to have A Talk™ about her choice of transportation.)

For the record, a hot mess of a man falling from the sky indoors is only like... the eighth most interesting thing to happen to Gertrude this week. Still, it’s clear he’s not entirely human - one gets a sense for these things, even without a giant eyeball’s help - and she’s got a knife on him faster than you can say “Statement.” This doesn’t seem to faze the man.

That annoys the fuck out of Gertrude.

Meanwhile, Elias has nearly passed out from the supernatural alarm bells going off in his head because the Ceaseless Watcher’s special little boy is here!!! What does that mean? Hell if he knows, but this man is ALIGHT with the Entities’ marks, just dripping with the power of the Eye, and Elias finds he has the sudden urge to drop to his knees before this stranger, something he’s only ever done post-Watcher’s Crown.

(This might be a Jonlias fic, whoops.)

Elias, seeing The Archivist for the first time: 😍😍😍😍😍

Gertrude, seeing The Archivist for the first time: 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪

So after introductions Jon is all, “Yes, I’m an eldritch monster that’s forced to feed off the trauma of others, but I’m your eldritch monster. Please, Gertrude, I’d like nothing more than to carve out Magnus’ heart with you so he can’t destroy the whole fucking world.”

Elias, suddenly experiencing true fear for the first time in decades, feeding the Eye and being fed in turn and basically entering a feedback loop where this powerful stranger threatening to murder him is the hottest thing he’s ever Seen: !!!!! 💖💞😱!!!!!🤩😊💚!!!!!

And at first Gertrude’s like hell no, not having any more goddamn avatars in my archives thank you, but then the trio passes young intern Sasha James (shhh don’t worry if that fits the timeline) and Jon looses it. The hold that the Stranger had on him in his original timeline has broken and he’s able to recognize this as the real Sasha - her face, her voice, her very panicked looks towards her bosses as this random man sobs into her shoulder. And Gertrude’s like dammit, clearly The Archivist still has some of his humanity left. No true Fear monster would ever willingly be that embarrassing.

After prying Jon away from Sasha and promising her a raise to avoid any HR reports, they get the whole long, traumatic story out of him, but any plans to just permanently kill Elias kinda... sputter out. It’s a little bit of a Web thing, a little bit of a time travel thing, and a little bit of Jon just feeling... wrong when he considers it, no matter what he’s told Gertrude. It’s similar to when he let Annabelle live, though Elias has done absolutely fuck-all to earn his mercy. This confuses Jon, though it’s pretty far down on his list of worries.

The good news is that Jon’s mere presence puts a permanent wrench in Elias’ plans. He’s never going to repeat the ritual to open the door, obviously, and good fucking luck marking another archivist while he’s Watching. Given Jon’s suspicions that he became semi-immortal after waking from his coma, he’ll be Watching a damn long time, you megalomaniacal bastard.

The bad news is that since Elias can no longer plot an intricate manipulation, he’s decided that the next best thing is to just convince Jon to bring about the end of the world willingly.

By wooing him.

Elias: “We can be Kings of a ruined world together, Jon~”

Gertrude: “I am not paid enough for this.”

So begins the office romance comedy of Jon’s nightmares, where instead of hating him for ruining his world domination plans, Elias is smitten - in a suave, very creepy kinda way - and has decided that he’ll simply wait Jon out, wearing him down until the inevitable day when he realizes that they were meant to be. A full-fledged Archivist was dropped into his lap, ranting about how he out-foxed a future version of Elias, tormented by his own monstrosity, and people expected his narcissistic ass to not fall head over heels with his own creation?? As if.

Jon is Not Having A Good Time.

Originally when he landed here he was all, “Where is my Martin whom I love so dearly? Where is the support and companionship that I crave?” But after ‘bumping into’ him a few times outside the Institute, Jon comes to the bitter conclusion that whatever connection they had is gone. He recalls Martin’s firm belief that they never would have become a couple without all the trauma they’d been through and though this time around Jon definitely doesn’t hate him... he doesn’t love him either. Oh, he loves that he exists, seeing Martin whole and blissfully ignorant of the Fears helps heal something in Jon, but it takes him a very long time to admit that he’s too nice. Too caring. Too tentative in his insecurity. Jon grinds his teeth and admits in the privacy of his own thoughts that he was attracted to a bastard version of Martin, one who showed off a little bit of his own monstrosity, was connected to his own domain, could cut just as cruelly with his words as Jon could with his powers... Meeting with him now over coffee, inches away, Jon has never felt farther from him. This Martin simply isn’t a part of the world that created Jon.

Good, he decides and firmly steers Martin away from the Institute. Thanks to some blackmail and Peter Lukas’s money, Martin finds himself with a caretaker for his mom and the promise of a full ride through whatever creative writing program he can get into.

Meanwhile, Elias is of course stalking and spying on Jon whenever he can, doing the metaphorical equivalent of doodling hearts in his notebook whenever he catches a glimpse of why Jon no longer connects with Martin. He’s a bastard avatar with shitty morals and, frankly, far better taste in poetry. Open your third eyes, Jon!!

Gertrude, who avoided sacrificing Michael after a stern talking to from Jon: “You sure you don’t want the Spiral to eat you, kid? Anything’s better than watching this clusterfuck.”

Michael: 🙃🙃🙃

After a while the Institute settles into a new kind of normal. Jon, Gertrude, and Michael defend the archives from the slew of enemies they’ve both amassed, stopping the occasional ritual in their free time. Jon has long come to the conclusion that the Fears couldn’t have originated here - not with the Eye being unable to see its own creation - so starving them in this reality at the expense of their world wouldn’t serve the greater good. The best they can do is continually contain them - which they’ve gotten real good at. Elias continues to bother Jon with a fervor that’s almost admirable (he can see how this guy managed plans for upwards of 200 years) and waffles between playing the Mysterious Boss archetype that he’d used on Jon the first time around, and just giving in to the utter adoration he feels whenever Jon is in the room. It’s clear he’s long since started worshiping Jon rather than the Eye and the Eye is... totally fine with that?

Gertrude: “How did you get the Ceaseless Watcher to treat you like a favored child?”

Jon: Trauma?? 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

After seeing how much happier Martin is, Jon guides the rest of his former assistants away from the Institute, Sasha included. It helps, a little, but it also makes him even more isolated than he was the first time around.

Gertrude realizes this, so when Elias’ flirting - “I’ve found a fresh statement for you, Jon. Oh do stop glaring, it’s just a bit of chloroform. She’ll wake up soon. You can’t be satisfied with stale writings for forever” - starts inducing more fond annoyance than fear or horror, she becomes #Concerned.

Gertrude: “You realize that desensitizing you to his actions was the point all along, right?”

Jon: “Mmhm. But is it still manipulation if I know it’s manipulation?”

Gertrude: “You cannot possibly be considering this.”

Jon: “Would it help if I admitted that dating Elias wouldn’t be the worst decision I’ve ever made?”

Gertrude: “NO.”

The thing is, Jon liked Elias before he revealed himself to be an immortal body-snatcher hell-bent on creating... well, hell on Earth. He liked the soft academic exterior, his careful words, love of organization and attention to detail, the dry humor, cutting intellect, those suits that likely cost more than three months of his salary combined... In fact, Jon is now in a place to vividly remember the embarrassment he felt while interviewing for the archivist’s position, too busy avoiding looking at Elias’ lips to catch the hungry glint in his eye.

Of course, that Elias only exists as a veneer... though what was Jon’s “I’m just a normal man going grocery shopping, please ignore my scars and aborted grab as I resist demanding a statement from you” if not a veneer of its own? Where did their ‘real’ selves begin and their conscious choices end? The most awful thing about all this is that Elias is right. Oh, not about them being Kings of a ruined world, but about how no one but another avatar can truly understand an avatar. By this point Jon is years past his coma, fully at peace - or at least, as at peace as he’ll ever get - with the fact that he chose to live as a monster rather than die as a human. That means Knowing things at his leisure... though he tries not to catch anything private. It means Compelling others to provide him with more knowledge... though he’s careful with his questions around friends. It means Feeding off of others’ worst moments in life... though Jon restricts himself to statements that Gertrude has collected first, so that he never haunts anyone’s dreams. And it means spending the majority of his time with other monsters and monster-aligned allies... though Jon plants his feet firmly in his human morals and refuses to budge.

If he can navigate all that, why not this too?

Elias has said more than once that he would make Jon the worst version of himself - said with such glee and promise as to almost, almost sound like something Jon wants. Jon figures that the worst version of Elias, from his perspective, would be to look a bit more human.

“We can bring out the worst in each other,” he agrees one day, followed by a shark-like grin.

Elias hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s just gotten himself into.

And that feels wonderful. Manipulating him into being a marginally better person who doesn’t bring about the apocalypse might actually be more satisfying than stabbing him. The Elias of Jon's original timeline would have HATED this and that makes Jon do a happy little wiggle whenever he thinks about it.

Gertrude: “You’re leashing a fucking dragon, Sims.”

Jon: “Better than letting it roam free.”

Gertrude: “Just so long as he doesn’t chew through the reins.”

Jon: “Yeah well, I’ll be the first one burned if that happens” and he holds up his charred hand with a shrug.

So begins the most messed up courting ritual the world has ever seen. Do they work as a couple? Oddly enough, yes. Amazingly well, in fact. Is it a healthy relationship? LOL yeah right. But then that’s rather the point. Jon gave up on that the day he acknowledged that, yes, a part of him liked being the most powerful being roaming a hellish landscape - liked not being vulnerable for once. Back when he’d first joined the Institute, post-breakup with Georgie, Jon couldn’t even imagine someone liking him enough to grab a drink after work. He’s past pretending that having the cult-like devotion of a lover, the favor of a Fear god, and the grudging respect of everything else that goes bump in the night isn’t really fucking nice.

Sometimes Elias plays the part of a compassionate human for Jon, as a treat. Sometimes Jon let’s Elias bask in another’s terror, as a treat. Sometimes Jon is Jonathan Sims and sometimes he’s The Archivist. “Let’s rule a burned-out world together” becomes a staple request in their relationship, with Jon always giving Elias the equivalent of a pat on the head and a, “Sure, honey. Maybe next week.” They find something like balance that way.

Plus there’s Gertrude, perpetually in the shadows with an arsenal of weaponry and the promise to obliterate them both if they ever go too far. She reminds Jon of his grandmother when she threatens to fuck them up in the afterlife if they ever make her kill them.

Something, something, dysfunctional eldritch found families are beautiful?

Jon and Elias have achieved something akin to an uncanny, domestic bliss when Elias points out that this body won’t last forever...

Jon Does Not Like the idea of Elias kidnapping another innocent.

However...

Jon: “You know Jurgen Leitner is living in the Institute’s tunnels, right?”

And they lived ever after. The “happily” is highly subjective.

Bonus:

Post-apocalypse!Jon meeting with Original!Jon to warn him away from the Institute, painfully thin ever since his coma, hip-length hair streaked unnaturally white, a slew of scars covering every available bit of skin, the slightest green glow behind his eyes, somehow looking supremely confident and powerful while also embodying the most Awkward Academic you’ve ever seen: Hey.

Og!Jon: G-good lord!

Jon: It’s okay. You can say ‘fuck.’ Please say ‘fuck,’ Jon. We deserve it.

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