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thatforgottenbasilisk · 9 months

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Jonathan Sims Is Dead In The End

Chapter 1: Prologue (AO3)

Summary:

Sasha James does not give up. She does not stop. Even when things seem hopeless, even when she is entirely alone in this apocalyptic wasteland of her own making, she does not lie down and take it. So when an opportunity presents itself to fix everything, take her all the way back to when she first got this promotion? She takes it by the throat and fucking throttles it.

Sasha doesn't know how long she's been walking. She's been alone here for as long as this world was reformed in Jonah Magnus' perfect image, all because she decided to read that one Statement-

She can't think about that right now. There's no point to it except to work herself up, and there's no one to calm her down anymore, no one to stand by her side and vent to, at the very least.

God, she misses Tim. She misses Martin. She misses Melanie and Georgie. She even misses Jon, for how little the real him was left by time he'd transferred to the Archives.

How many deaths could she have prevented? If she'd said the right thing here, stopped or even hesitated there, held off on bending to Elias' fucking whining about audio recording for the Archives- how much of this wouldn't have happened?

Sasha is only walking because of a pipe dream. She knows that this world probably can't go back to normal, not when it's been reformed like this, not when the fears have their tetherhooks so deeply inside. It won't let go, not now, not ever. The only hope is to beat it out, sever the connection, but she doesn't know if that could work. An Eye cannot look inside itself, and an Eye cannot See how it will fall.

But still she marches on. Hoping against hope that killing Jonah Magnus could do something to hurt the connection, enough to generate a moment of weakness, a chance to beat it out of her world, beat the fear back to the edges of reality where it belongs.

If there is still even the tiniest spark of hope left in a world like this, she will chase it. That's the way that she is, the way that she always has been, always will be. Sasha James does not give up. Sasha James does not give in. Sometimes she has to repeat this to herself like a mantra, but it holds true. She keeps going.

Through the fog, through the flames, through the rot and disease, through the dolls, through the blood, she keeps going at a steady pace. She walks and talks, making Statements into the ever-present tape recorder because that's the only company that she has anymore, pressing on because if she stops, she doesn't know if she can start again.

She Knows that she can. She Knows that she would, eventually, the only question is if her heart would still be in it, or if her movement would be dictated solely by the Beholding. She doesn't want to find out, so she won't.

She doesn't know how long she's walking when she comes across a familiar door. She kind of wants to open it, see what Helen wants from her. Helen now and Michael before- both of them were always pleasant, even if only to her.

But she doesn't need to touch the handle or even knock for the door to swing open on its own. Has she ever, really, or has it always opened itself to her? Instinctively, she tries to remember, go back over every interaction with a fine-toothed comb, anything to make this train of thought last as long as it can because it doesn't hurt as much as everything else, and anything that doesn't hurt has to be savored for as long as you can taste it- but she can't do that right now. The door is opening. She has to pay attention to what crawls out.

It is Helen, of course. Michael is still dead. The end of the world does not return anyone or anything to the land of the living, no matter what the new definition of "living" is.

"Hello again, Archivist! Isn't it a wonder to catch you here?"

Its grin is widening impossibly across its face, curling up and around its cheeks and very nearly cutting into its ears. Its fingers are still as sharp as shattered glass. It stares at her with impossible eyes, and she does not know where the real question lies in the greeting.

It is a strangely giddy feeling, that of not knowing something. Or Knowing it. Sasha never thought that she could miss it, but here she is.

"Maybe it is, but I think that it's not. What's your game today, Helen?"

She keeps the circular nature of the conversation going, fucking sue her. She hasn't gotten to chat with anyone or anything vaguely coherent in so long, not to mention something that at least pretends to be on friendly terms. Maybe Helen's dangerous, maybe it isn't, but she can't quite bring herself to care right now. She's catching up with an old friend. She's ignoring reality for just a moment, not even a fraction of a second in the grand scheme of things, and she is letting herself entertain and be entertained by one of the only things left that isn't horrifying right on the very surface.

"Wouldn't you like to know? Don't worry your pretty little head about it, you'll find out soon enough. In the meantime, I've got a question for you, Archivist. I know you're not used to being the one interrogated, so I'll try and be painless, alright?"

Sasha nods her consent. She wants to find out where this is going, learn it, not Know it. She has a feeling that it will lead somewhere interesting; the Spiral always ends in the most fascinating of places.

"Just how much of me do you See?"

Sasha opens her mouth to respond, takes a sharp breath, and then realizes that she has to think on the answer. At a glance, not much, Helen is as impervious to her Sight as Michael always was, but as she thinks on it, as she Looks, the pathways become clearer and clearer. Still, she cannot Know everything, and while she suspects that she could come close to that upon entry into Helen's Domain, that would also be... rude. To Know the Unknowable. To distinguish Truth and Lies in the Twisting Deceit.

Vaguely, she notices Helen's face has become twisted in a sort of discomfort, but as she mentally backs away from the hallways, the face morphs into that of contentment. It still looks rather violated, but there's an aura of victory in that expression. Has Helen felt the answer just as Sasha was finding it?

"I understand. I know that you don't like it here alone, Archivist, and quite frankly I feel that the world like this is going to become rather boring rather quickly. So I think that it would be in both of our best interests if you closed your Eyes and trusted me."

Sasha doesn't fucking trust that. She might have been dumb enough to start the apocalypse, but she still has enough self-preservation to keep herself from getting killed, no matter how friendly Helen is. It is still very much the human form of untrustworthiness.

"Oh, don't give me that look, and don't say anything, either. I can read your face plain as day. How about I tell you a little truth, hm? Satisfy your curiosity, just a tad. Time does not move only forwards. With as much power as I have now, I can move you to any time I please."

Sasha can taste the Truth in the air. She can see the pain on Helen's face as it spits the words like poison, and she knows that it is true. She sees the offer as what it is.

Helen has not betrayed her like this before. It has no reason to do so now, not when she could very easily kill it if she finds out about any attempt at deception for malicious ends. The only other option for fixing this mess is going where Beholding wants her to go, and Beholding doesn't want its newfound power to be usurped. A pipe dream or a possible trap, those are her only options. She knows where she is going in a heartbeat. It's not even a real choice.

Sasha closes her eyes, and steps inside the door.

#tma #tma fic #my writing #jonathan sims is dead in the end #jonathan sims is dead in the end fic

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thatforgottenbasilisk · 9 months

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Jonathan Sims Is Dead In The End

Chapter 2: Neisser and Harsch (1992) (AO3)

chapter summary:

Just after the Challenger Shuttle mission failed in 1986, the news spread across the US, and many found it to be such a tragic event that they vividly recalled where they were when they found out about it years later.

This phenomenon is called a flashbulb memory, which is a type of memory that is highly vivid, and is created during times of extreme emotion. Two psychologists, Neisser and Harsch, decided to test the reliability of these memories, using the recent Challenger Shuttle mission failure as an example of a flashbulb memory in their participants. The day after the mission, the experiment had been proposed and approved, and participants were brought in and asked a series of questions, in addition to being asked to write down a summary of where they were when they first heard the news.

Two years later, they brought the participants back to answer the same questions, and again give a summary on where they were when they first heard the news.

Most people had very high confidence in the accuracy of their answers; however, very few responses actually matched up between the 1986 interview and the 1988 interview. Many participants didn't even remember being given an interview in 1986 at all.

Sasha is walking down the hallway with her eyes closed. She Knows that Helen is walking in front of her, but she's making a concentrated effort in not Looking at anything else. That would hurt Helen. That could fuck everything up.

So instead, she's thinking about everyone that she needs to save.

Will she be able to look Jon or Martin in the eyes again, or will their future selves override her memory of them? Will she be able to hear Jon's voice without flinching, will she be able to accept anything from Martin without looking for callouses that shouldn't be there?

She misses them, but she doesn't know if she'll be able to stand seeing them again. Untainted. Still- marginally- human.

Can she even save Jon? Can she do anything for him but tell him to run?

And what about Martin? Was he human at all, or was he in its grasp even before they met?

Tim, she knows, is fully human. He remained that way through to the very end. Even if he'd done some inhuman things... he'd remained unaligned. Is that the line? Is that the difference between good and evil, now? It wasn't like that in the apocalypse, is it- was it ever like that in true reality, or is it all just people trying to survive? Some people are just willing to hurt more people than others, but that still doesn't make them monsters. Tim was a prime example of that.

And the other side of that coin. Jon was a monster who never hurt anyone, and yet he still got screwed over in a way so much worse than death. At least he has the mercy of not being Jon anymore, of not having any blood on his hands at all. Sasha can't say the same.

None of that even mentions everyone who hadn't shown up yet when she was first promoted. That begs the question, actually- when is she going? Is she going to be there in the time before Melanie died? Before Martin changed, or else revealed himself, or- whatever he did. Would she be there before the Unknowing? Before Jane Prentiss, maybe- but that feels like too much to hope for. Even in her head, that feels like a pipe dream.

She is stopped, suddenly, by a sharpened hand upon her shoulder, gripping tightly enough to warn. To be a threat, if necessary. Sasha doesn't need the reminder that Helen is dangerous. She also doesn't need the reminder that she needs to be threatened- the temptation to open her eyes has been awful, the need to Know and Understand has been driving her wild in the back of her mind. But she doesn't, or at least, she does her best to ignore her surroundings.

"Your stop! For the record, Archivist... it was nice knowing you."

Sasha knows that that was a lie. Still, she returns the words- "It was nice to know you too, Helen." Then she walks forward, out of the door that has just opened in front of her.

She doesn't open her eyes, no, she doesn't get the chance before she's assaulted by an intense sense of vertigo. She doesn't know which way is up, which way is down, she thinks she's fallen to the floor, or- no, she's on a bed? At least, this feels like a mattress, and a comforter, and is that sunlight that's hitting her eyelids or the fluorescent lighting of the breakroom that became more familiar to her than her own home?

Only one way to find out, really. Sasha opens her eyes to see her old bedsheets tangled around her, like she'd tossed and turned like everything that she had seen, experienced, lived and died through- like all of it was some nightmare. She's drenched in sweat, her heart is pounding, and she's got a little bit of a headache, but that's alright, because outside, there is no giant eye staring down at everything. There is only the sun, and the sky, and the constant cloud cover that couldn't possibly do anything to dampen her spirits. Not now, not after getting what she always wanted- a chance to fix things.

She doesn't think that she'll fix things very well when she's dripping with sweat, though, so she makes her way out of her bed and over to the shower. Before she gets to the bathroom, however, she decides to check her phone and see what kind of a timeframe she's working with. Maybe, if she's lucky, she'll be somewhere just before the Unknowing. She won't get her hopes up, though, and if Peter Lukas is the Head of the Institute it'll still be somewhat alright. She picks up her phone, and checks the date.

Sunday, March 20, 2016.

Sasha nearly drops the phone in shock. The day before her first day as the Archivist! This- this is better than anything she could have possibly anticipated. She can save everyone, at least, everyone who isn't Jon or one of his friends. She spares a quick thought to mourn them before she meets them again, mourn them before they die-and-live-but-not all over again, before refocusing on everyone that she can save.

Everything starts with Prentiss, she decides as she gets in the shower. She takes more than a moment, then, for her thoughts to derail as she finally sees her newly scarless skin, the way that she's got full dexterity in her hand again, the way that she doesn't feel a pulling at her throat if she turns her head just the wrong way. She'd forgotten how much she missed this.

Everything starts with Prentiss, so should she do everything that she can to prevent the attack in the first place? No, she dismisses that idea out of hand, because it would make Jonah suspicious, and besides, something else would just come in her place. She can't have that, she can't risk a casualty when there were none the first time around.

She just has to keep Jon from encountering the Not-Them again, but it's not like she can arrange it so that it won't kill whoever's sent in his place- the only reason that Jon didn't die then was because he was going to die later. Her best bet is keeping everyone from Artifact Storage, and if that doesn't work, then she's willing to take her chances with it.

That still doesn't cover what's going to be done about Gertrude's body, and the ensuing paranoia that had taken the entirety of the Archives hostage. Had that been because of her, though, or would everyone be alright if she just reassured them that she hadn't murdered her predecessor? She can find out later, and really, most of her later moves would be dependent on who does or does not encounter the Not-Them during Prentiss' attack.

So Sasha takes a breath, and decides to enjoy the first shower that she's gotten to have since the start of the apocalypse. By time she's done, steam has fogged up the mirror so much that she can barely see her reflection. That's fine, though, she doesn't know if seeing an unmarred face staring back would even register as her own, even with the Beholding-green eyes that she knows must still be there. She misses when they were brown, but what little of her face she can see betrays the single change in her appearance from this time period.

Sasha gets dressed, slowly, taking the time to appreciate the way that the colors don't warp under her eyes, the way that they don't have bloodstains on the edges, the way that they are nothing more than a hoodie and some fucking sweatpants. She's relaxing. She deserves it.

Sasha moves out of her bedroom, finally, and goes to her dining room table that she doesn't use for eating, instead, it's practically another shelf, and she clears all of the crap off of it. Paperwork, mostly, none of it important. She takes a notebook out from a bookshelf nearby, and gets to work drawing out a timeline of events from the original timeline.

She realizes very quickly that almost everything really is dependent on Jon's encounter with the Not-Them during Prentiss' attack. The whole thing with that officer, Basira was her name, though she isn't sure- that wouldn't have happened if not for Jon. Tim wouldn't have- he wouldn't have done anything drastic.

Speaking of Tim- he won't die this time around. Now that she knows that the Unknowing doesn't necessarily need to be stopped, only a passable enough attempt needs to be made for Jonah's sake, the explosives won't need to come into play. Tim's going to be fine.

Sasha spends most of the day mentally and physically going over every event in the original timeline- every death, every mark, every tragedy that can now be stopped. Even the smaller ones. Don't send Martin to investigate the Carlos Vittery Statement, that won't do much but introduce corkscrews and CO2, and, well, she knows about that already. All the other smaller things, they're also dependent on the Prentiss attack. That's going to be a hell of an operation, keeping the Not-Them from fucking everything else up.

All of a sudden, it's 6 in the evening and she hasn't eaten a thing. She's got a tidy little collection of takeout menus, and rolls a spare die to decide which one she wants. Sasha lands on a menu for a Greek pizza place that might have been open since before she was born and she's almost certain was still there in some fashion during the apocalypse, and orders her favorite personal pizza.

When it arrives, Sasha eats the whole thing on her couch and treats herself to a bit of ice cream right out of the tub- it's fine, it's not like she's going to invite anyone to her place anytime soon. Or ever, really, she's gotten a bit too vigilant for a non-apocalyptic London.

As she looks over at the timeline made of torn-out pieces of notebook paper that was painstakingly arranged on her table, she doesn't feel ready for her first day of work tomorrow. She feels prepared, certainly, but not ready to see faces that she thought that she would never see again.

Either way, she's going to have to deal with it. She can't miss her first day as Head Archivist tomorrow, and as she cleans her food waste up and gets ready for bed, she decides that acting like nothing has happened might be the greatest challenge that she's going to face in all of this.

#tma #tma fic #my writing #jonathan sims is dead in the end fic #jonathan sims is dead in the end

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