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Chapters: 18/22 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks, Original Elias Bouchard, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane, Melanie King, Georgie Barker, Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Basira Hussain, Allan Schrieber Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares, Fighting, Spiders

Summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.

Chapter summary: Spiders. Also some unexpected information gives *some* of the archive staff renewed hope.

Chapter 18 of my post-canon fix-it is up! Read above at AO3 or read here below!

Tumblr master post with links to previous chapters is here.

***

“Martin.”

Martin lay in the bed, bleary eyed. Despite how early it had been, he’d fallen asleep almost as soon as he’d laid down after his conversation with Melanie in the hallway bath; he hadn’t even gotten undressed, just crawled under the covers in his clothes. He stayed still, not sure if he’d actually heard Jon say his name or if he had imagined it.

“Martin,” Jon said again, and this time he knew it was real.

“Jon?”

“I need you to listen to me.”

“What are you doing? Why are you—” Jon sounded like he was somewhere near the bedroom door, and Martin couldn’t see a thing. “Turn on the light.” He started to sit up.

“Wait.” Martin froze. Jon had an edge of concern in his voice that made Martin much more nervous than if he were yelling. “Don’t—don’t move. Just listen.”

“Jon, what’s going on?”

“I—I’d rather not say just yet. It’s probably fine.”

“Oh, god damn it. Can you—can you at least—” He sputtered out. Arguing would make this take longer, and that didn’t seem like a good idea.

“You’ll—you’ll be fine. I’m being cautious. Will you trust me?”

“I—do I have a choice?”

Do I ever have a choice?, he thought, but didn’t say out loud.

Jon sighed. “Yes. If you need me to tell you, I will, but—yes.”

Oh. Martin hadn’t expected that answer, and somehow it made not knowing easier. “It’s fine. I trust you.” He knew it came out sulky, like a child agreeing to a chore, but that was the best he could do in the moment.

“All right. Move to my side of the bed, but—stay under the covers.”

“Jesus.” Martin slowly and cautiously did as Jon said, half expecting to make contact with something in the dark, or to feel a weight on the bed, but there was nothing.

“Now—put your feet on the floor. Try not to move the covers too much.”

He swung his feet around under the blankets, slipping them out until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He kept his hands in the air, not wanting to touch the quilt.

“You’re doing—you’re doing great, Martin. Now stand up. Slowly.”

The drop in his blood pressure reminded him that he had just been woken from a deep sleep; despite standing slowly as Jon asked, he had to concentrate to make sure he stayed steady.

“Now walk toward me—normal, but—slow.”

Martin sighed.

“Please,” Jon said.

“All right, all right.” Martin walked slowly toward the doorway; his eyes were starting to adjust, and he could see the outline of Jon in the dim light from the hallway.

“Stop.” He was probably about five feet from Jon.

“Jon—what is—" Despite the darkness, he was pretty sure he would have been physically aware of anything between him and Jon at this point.

“One big step. One big step, and then—”

Only partially conscious that he was doing it, he looked down.

“Oh shit.” Although he couldn’t see the floor directly in front of him, the hallway light was just bright enough to see a thin, broken line that cut across the floor near the corner of the door frame.

That line was moving. Crawling, in fact.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.” Martin cleared the remaining distance between himself and Jon in a single leap, heart suddenly pounding. “It’s spiders, isn’t it—shit, shit—”

“Martin, my—”

“Oh. God.” He hadn’t realized how hard he had grabbed for Jon, and he immediately loosened his grip; Jon, still facing the bedroom, continued to hold Martin. “Is that it? Just that? Or is it—”

“I think—I think that’s it. If she were going to do worse, I think she would have done it already.”

“That’s not actually all that comforting.” Martin took a moment to breathe in Jon’s arms and let his heart slow before he looked down at the floor again. Now that he was in the hallway and could see better, he realized the line of spiders was moving away from their room, not into it. He couldn’t help himself; he turned back to the room and flipped on the light.

“Oh.” There were at least a dozen crisscrossing lines of small black spiders moving back and forth across the room; they were on the floor, the walls, the bed. They were walking right over where Martin’s sleeping body had been lying until just now. After a moment he was able to trace their origin to a single spot, a corner of the room where the ceiling and the walls met. They appeared to be coming down from the room above them, although the crack they entered through must have been very tiny.

“Come on.” Jon put his arms around Martin’s waist again, gently pulling him back from the door. He hadn’t quite turned away when they heard a voice down the hall.

“Jon? Martin? Are you all right?” He looked to find Sasha in the hallway, with Georgie not far behind. “We heard shouting and thought we’d—Wait, what is that? Is that—ants?”

Martin noticed that as the line of spiders drew away from their door, they broke off in two directions—one line went into Sasha’s room, and the other went into Melanie and Georgie’s room.

“It’s spiders,” Jon said, in the same calm voice he’d used when waking Martin. “Get everyone else from the—”

“The Admiral,” Georgie said, panicked, and ran to the door of their bedroom. Martin started to shout at her to wait, but Jon put a hand on his chest.

“It’s all right.”

Georgie screamed from inside the room.

“Jon, she doesn’t sound—”

“Georgie?” Melanie burst into the hallway. “Geo—”

“He was eating them.” Georgie came back out, cat tucked under one arm while she brushed furiously at various parts of him with her available hand. “That’s disgusting.”

Martin exhaled, relieved.

“What is going on?” Melanie looked into the room Georgie had just left. “Oh my god. Spiders aren’t supposed to do that.”

“No,” Jon said, continuing to move Martin back toward everyone else. “No, they’re not.”

Elias and Tim had joined the group by the time Jon and Martin reached the middle of the hallway.

“What the hell.” Elias walked past Georgie and Melanie’s room, peering in as he did; he threw open Sasha’s door when he reached it and did the same. He looked back at everyone else as he reached Jon and Martin’s door. “That—that is weird, right?”

“Yes, that’s fucking weird,” Melanie answered. “Jon, this is—this is her, right? The woman that—”

“Annabelle.” He merely acknowledged her name, carefully lending no weight to it. “Yes. Well—I can only assume. She’s—she’s good at concealing herself, but—this seems like a clear message.”

“What’s the message? That she doesn’t like us?” Melanie asked, having turned to swipe at Georgie’s arms as she continued fussing with the Admiral. “Too bad. Let her show her face instead of this nonsense, and we’ll see how she likes us with my boot up her ass.”

Martin stifled an incredulous laugh; the thought was ridiculous. He was reminded that Melanie knew virtually nothing about Annabelle.

“What?” Melanie asked, annoyed. “Did you ever try it?”

“I—I can’t say that I did.”

“Hm. Maybe you should have.”

“Elias.” Everyone looked up when Jon said his name; Elias was walking toward the stairs that went up from the foyer.

“I’m going up to get rid of them.”

“Is that safe?” Sasha asked.

“Well—” Elias spoke more quietly this time. “Allan’s up there too, and since we haven't heard anything from him—I figured it was ok.”

“Yes,” Jon said. “It’s ok.”

“I’ll go with him,” Tim said. They watched as the two of them disappeared up the steps.

“Back to the sitting room then?” Sasha asked. “Until, um—that’s done?”

Martin walked slowly, letting everyone else go ahead so he could have a private moment with Jon. “They really don’t get it.”

“No.” Jon shook his head. “Are you surprised?”

“No,” Martin said, “and I’m glad they don’t. I’m just thinking—that means that message was for you. Us.”

“Yes.”

“Ok, so then—why? What is she telling us?”

Jon shrugged. “That she’s aware of what we’re doing. That she knows where we are, and that we haven’t accepted her—truce.”

“OK, but—” Martin swallowed. He still hadn’t bought into her offer, but Jon’s interpretation seemed otherwise valid. “Why didn’t she do worse? That was—that was almost nothing. From her, that was a joke.”

“I’m not sure she could do worse, actually. Not here. Not without me knowing, and possibly exposing herself. She’s likely still recovering.”

“So you think she’s letting us know that she’s still weak? Why would she do that?”

“Who knows. It’s not like it’s made her vulnerable.”

Martin frowned. “That’s not like her, Jon. She’s nothing if not deliberate—she’s always had a reason for everything. If that’s true—if that’s the best she can do, or even if she just wants us to think that—she’s let us know on purpose.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying—I still think she’s trying to push you.” He rushed ahead, trying to get the words out before Jon could tell him he was wrong. “If you know that she’s still getting stronger, that it will get worse, that might push you to act too soon and—”

“Martin,” Jon said, taking him by the hand. “If that is the case—if she’s pushing me—what would you have me do?”

“I’d have you wait,” Martin said. “Just wait. Don’t do what she wants. Whatever comes out of this—give it time.”

“Wait?” Jon repeated. “Give it time, while she gets stronger and murders all our friends? Or worse?”

“No.” Martin tried to sound confident, although he could feel his argument slipping. “No. We’d protect them. You’d protect them.”

“How?” Jon asked. “I can’t. Not after a certain point.”

“But—”

“Never mind. Let’s say we could protect them,” Jon continued. “What about everyone who isn’t them? Everyone she can already reach? Well, her and the Web and the other fears. What about Carlos Vittery and Oliver Banks and—”

“Bad things happen,” Martin said. He knew now that he had lost, but he kept talking. “No, it’s not good. It’s wrong. It’s still terrible. But bad things happen even in a world with no entities, with nothing to live off the fear, with just—”

“Not these things.” Jon turned Martin’s hand over, enveloping it on both sides with his own. “These things—they’re my fault.”

Martin lowered his head. There it was—the conviction he could never shake.

“Martin, look. I don’t know that we have an option other than waiting. I have no intention of—of ending things, not right now. It doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t stop anything. It doesn’t save our friends, not in the end. It doesn’t save you.” Jon traced the tendons on the back of Martin’s hand lightly with his fingers. “But I will never—never—let them out again. And when it comes to that—when it’s time to choose—”

Martin nodded, but did not look up again.

***

As it turned out, it was incredibly easy to destroy the spiders. Tim and Elias had discovered a massive nest in the room above the one Jon and Martin were staying in. Elias had grabbed a supply of insecticide from the attic and they had started to spray, prepared to run when spiders inevitably scattered, but that didn’t happen; they hadn’t diverged from their path at all. That was when Tim and Elias had realized the spiders weren’t just walking out of the nest, but also into it. They were coming back to the second-floor room from one of the bedrooms below, re-entering the nest, and waiting until they received some silent cue that it was time to leave again. The two of them had then stopped and watched as every single spider, without fail, returned to the nest to die in its turn.

“Fucking creepy,” Tim said, after he had recounted it, “but it did make things pretty easy.”

“So,” Sasha said, as they once again found themselves on the floor of the great room. “I take it no one wants to go to bed just yet.”

“Not anymore,” Melanie said. She leaned over Georgie’s shoulder to rub the Admiral’s ears as he sat contentedly in her lap.

“Martin, are you ok?” Sasha asked. His face reddened as everyone turned to him.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think so.” He’d almost forgotten about the way he’d left the group earlier that evening.

“Do you mind if I ask some more questions, since we’re here?”

“We’re fine,” Jon said, and she redirected her attention to him. Martin was grateful.

“All right. Let’s start with Annabelle. She came here from the other dimension, right?”

“Yes.”

“And so did you—part of you, and Martin, also.”

“Yes. That’s—yes.” Close enough.

“And that’s it? Other than the entities?”

“Yes. I—I believe so. Well, also the—the body.”

“Right. Do you know how that all worked?”

Martin recognized Jon’s expression; it was the one he made while trying to simplify something complicated that already made complete sense to him. “We were connected to them—the entities—us to the Eye, Annabelle to the Web—in such a way that when they were expelled, we were too. Or really, they were expelled, we were dragged along with them.”

“Just the three of you were connected like that?”

“Yes. Our connections were—very strong.”

Sasha nodded. “What about the dimensions themselves? What do you know about them?”

“Not much. I only—saw them, for lack of a better word—for a moment. Or—the equivalent of a moment. Time doesn’t really—never mind. It was—it was a lot. Even for the Eye.”

“So there were very many of them. Dimensions, I mean.”

“Yes. More than I can attempt to describe. Infinite doesn’t—it’s too simple.”

“Are they all like this one? With versions of us, I mean, and—”

“No.” Jon clearly found the idea absurd. “Well—some of them are. But so many more are—different. I think. Different people. And—not people. And then—”

“You know who loves this shit?” Elias sat back on his hands, oblivious to his interruption.

“Um—who?” Sasha asked, after realizing he was waiting for an answer.

“Allan. Allan loves this. He can talk about it all day.”

“Talk about what exactly?”

“You know, alternate universes, wormholes, interdimensional travel—I mean, this is pretty much his thing.”

“Oh my god.” Tim smacked his own forehead with an open palm. “Go get him.”

“Right now?” Elias grew hesitant. “It’s pretty late. Maybe we could—”

“We both know what kind of hours he keeps, and anyway, his light was on when we were upstairs. He’s awake. Just—go get him.”

Elias looked at Jon, who shrugged. “It’s entirely up to you,” Jon said.

Elias hesitated a little longer, then stood up. “All right. Ok.” He disappeared up the stairs.

Sasha turned to Tim. “Care to explain?”

“Allan’s a physics professor. Theoretical physics. And he’s brilliant, and he does love this shit. I mean, he doesn’t really do it at work, it’s not the sort of thing that gets funding unless you’re Stephen Hawking, but—anyway, he’s obsessed with it. Manages to bring it up every time I’m around him. I can’t believe I didn’t think about it.”

“Oh. I suppose maybe he could tell us something helpful. That is, if he doesn’t think we’ve collectively gone mad.”

“Oh, he absolutely will, but he’ll pretend he doesn’t,” Tim reassured her.

Several minutes later, Allan was there. He fit a certain academic stereotype almost perfectly, at least in appearance; roughly the same age as Elias, he was completely grey, and had several days’ worth of beard growth that would have driven Martin crazy. Although barefoot, he was still dressed from the day in a pair of khakis and a rumpled polo shirt, and Martin suspected he might end up wearing them the next day as well if nothing interfered.

“Hello, everyone.” He stood outside the group, awkward but cheerful enough, given the time and circumstances.

Elias stood next to him and pointed out each of them in turn. “So this is Jon, Martin, Georgie, Melanie, Sasha, and—you know Tim.”

“Wonderful,” Allan said, following Elias’s lead in stepping carefully between Jon and Martin to join the semi-circle they had formed on the floor.

“So what has Elias told you?” Sasha asked.

“Not much, only that you are all engaged in a deep conversation regarding the nature of the universe itself, and I thought, it’s only 12:30 in the morning.” He smiled, but the expression quickly faded as he looked around again at the group. “I see we’re tackling the easy questions tonight.”

“Here’s the thing,” Sasha said. “We’re dealing with something that—well, frankly, isn’t all that believable, unless—unless you’ve experienced some part of it.”

“I’ll play along.”

Sasha took a few seconds to gather her thoughts. “All right, here goes. Several months ago, a number of very powerful entities from another dimension entered ours, and—they live off our fear. And Jon and Martin sort of—well—versions of them came here, too, and now they’re both of themselves, and they experienced all of this in that other dimension and—well, if we don’t find a solution, then—um—humanity is doomed.”

Allan looked around at the group again; he had a very different look on his face this time. “I’ll admit that’s not exactly what I was expecting—” He looked at Elias, who nodded slowly and then shrugged. “All right. Let’s start with these entities. Tell me about them.”

“Jon, you’re probably the best one to—”

“Yes, all right.” Jon cleared his throat. “Like Sasha said, they are extremely powerful. Just to give you an idea—some people in the other dimension thought of them as gods. They aren’t, of course, but—they aren’t exactly part of our reality, either.”

“So—they had their own dimension as well?”

“No. They were from our dimension—the other one. They were born there, and they co-evolved with us, I suppose. But not really with us, it was—it’s hard to describe. They weren’t—physical, maybe that’s the way to say it. Not in any sense I’m aware of.”

“Hmm.” Allan furrowed his brow. “I assume you mean you couldn’t see them, or touch them. In that case, how did you—well—know about them?”

“We didn’t, for a long time. Most people never did. They acted through things—people, animals, objects—and then, later, I—”

“Jon communicates with them,” Tim interjected.

“One of them,” Jon corrected him. “Insofar as they are separate. And—sort of.”

“Really?” Allan asked. “What’s that like?”

“It’s, um—” For a moment, Martin really understood what Jon had to accomplish when asked to explain things; he could not imagine any single way to sum up Jon’s relationship to the Eye. “Well, for one, I can—I can know things. Things I couldn’t know otherwise.”

“Really?”

“Ask him something,” Elias said.

“All right. Is my research assistant going to show up in the morning?”

“Oh—well—that’s the future. I can’t know that because—well, I assume because it hasn’t happened, and therefore doesn’t actually exist. But”—he thought for a moment— "she didn’t show up today. In fact, the last time she came in was Monday.”

“Ok. From the past, then—what street did I grow up on?”

Jon paused, concentrating. “Technically there were several, but you’re thinking of Church Street. You stayed there a bit longer than the others, and it was the one you liked best. There was a park nearby where you learned to ride a bike.”

“And what was the name of our dog when we lived there?”

Jon concentrated again, a little longer this time. “There wasn’t one. But you had—rabbits. Hm.”

Martin decided to intervene, as he was pretty sure Jon would keep going until he hurt himself. “Ok, look, this does take a toll on him, and tonight’s already been hard enough.”

“I’m fine.” Jon looked at Allan, who was regarding him with renewed interest. “Anything else?”

“That’s more than enough. I’m—I’m quite impressed.”

“Oh,” Elias said, “also we found my body in the tunnels under the Institute the other day. Well, not my body, but—you know, my body from the other dimension.”

Allan looked at Elias with concern. “Ok, I’m—I’m not sure what to do with that, but—ok. We’ll come back to it. So these beings, they’re not from another dimension, and you can’t physically interact with them—not directly. But you—and maybe others—can interact with them, say, mentally, and they can influence the physical world.”

“Yes,” Jon said. “Yes, I think that’s fair.”

“What I’m getting at is that everything that makes up the universe—everything we are aware of—is classified as either matter or energy, and the two are equivalent in a sense. Well, there’s also evidence of dark matter and dark energy, but—never mind about that for now. And although there’s been no evidence of it, it isn’t impossible that there could exist some sort of life form that, rather than being made up of physical matter, is made primarily of energy.”

“Oh. That’s what a lot of people think ghosts are,” Melanie said.

Allan nodded. “Of course, there are some problems with the idea of energy beings. For one thing, energy, as we define it, is always associated with motion and change. Light, for example, which has no mass, transmits energy as a function of its momentum alone—but it must always be moving. Or we can define potential energy, which does not require momentum, but is always associated with a physical body. And for energy itself to be sentient in any way—well, it’s not clear how that would work. If there were sentient energy beings, they would be so different from us that it’s unlikely we would recognize them at all, except through the ways in which they interacted with the physical world. That sort of goes along with what you’ve said so far, as I think about it, but—tell me, when they left the other dimension and traveled here, was there any sort of medium involved? Some sort of physical matter?”

“Yes,” Martin said, surprised that he knew an answer. “The tape.”

“The tape?” Tim asked. “What tape? Like—sellotape?”

“No, like cassette tapes. The actual tape inside them. There was—”

“You didn’t mention that before.”

“Well look Tim, there was a lot to explain, ok? And that was—”

“It’s fine,” Tim said. “Go on.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Allan said.

“Yes. Tape. Um, so—there was a crack, a gap, in our reality that led to the—the space between the dimensions, so to speak. That seems to have been a natural occurrence—”

“It’s possible,” Allan said.

“—but the tape, that was—that was something Annabelle did. The recordings on the tape were—relevant to the entities. It allowed them to bridge the gap without destroying themselves. It was—I honestly don’t know how she—”

“Annabelle put spiders in our upstairs guest room, by the way,” Elias said. “That’s why Tim and I were up there earlier.”

Again, Allan looked at Elias with concern. “You’ve been having a time of it, haven’t you?”

“Pretty much,” Elias said. “Sorry for not mentioning it sooner.”

“Quite all right,” Allan said. “This does explain some things. Just so long as you know you could have told me.” He looked at Elias a little longer before turning back to Jon. “Annabelle, she’s—one of them?”

“No, but she—she serves one of them.”

“So she is a physical being that they act through.”

“That’s—yes.”

“All right. So let’s see—this gap existed, the physical medium of the tape was placed there—how did they get to it?”

“Well—I suppose—we destroyed their other physical means of attachment to our world, and they were forced out the only way they could go. Into the gap.”

“How did all of that happen, exactly?”

“Well—you have to understand, there was an apocalypse, things had shifted, time and space didn’t necessarily—” Jon sighed. “Gas main. We blew up a gas main.”

“Oh.” He now gave Jon the same look of concern he had given Elias earlier, and the conversation momentarily quieted.

“This is—this is good,” Sasha said. “I mean—it’s good to have another perspective on this. Thank you.”

“Well, quite honestly, I’m not sure what to make of it, but—” He stopped. “You all really believe this, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Sasha said. “And if you don’t mind humoring us a bit longer—well, the reason we’re all in your house, and perhaps this is obvious, but—given that we do believe these entities are here, we’d like them not to be here.”

“Understandable. It would be bad for us, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes. So let’s say that we were able to—push them back toward this gap again, somehow. Would there be a way to—direct them? Make them go somewhere specific?”

“Hm.” Allan rubbed his hand over the stubble on his face. “Without really knowing more about them, but assuming we’re on the right track—I’m guessing we’d need access to the tape. Think of the way a wire conducts electricity. If they are sentient in some way, maybe they could choose their path along it, but—”

“I see.” Sasha frowned. “Jon, is that—is that even a possibility? Getting to the tape?”

“No,” Jon said. “I don’t—I don’t think so. Not for us.”

“Right.” Sasha, who had been crossing her legs, moved to stick one of them out in front of her. She took a moment to flex her foot, and then straighten it again. “Ok, what about this? And please understand, I have no idea how any of this works and I’m only throwing out ideas—could we move everything else? Like us? And leave them here? I mean—Jon and Martin came here, and Annabelle came here, and—the body.”

“Maybe,” Allan said.

“What—really?”

“Well—assuming this is all true, then it’s already been proven that physical matter can be transported from one dimension to another, because—like you said, it’s been done. Of course, the situation would be reversed from what we were just talking about. If energy requires matter to move across dimensions, matter most likely requires energy. In fact, I’m certain it would. Moving across dimensions is not the same as moving across space, of course—but the principle would be the same.”

“How much energy?”

“I can only assume enormous amounts.”

“Like—I don’t know, a nuclear bomb?”

“Well, how much mass are you talking about?”

“Humanity. The world.”

“A nuclear bomb would be a mere drop in the bucket. It would barely register.”

“Hm.”

The group fell silent again. Martin didn’t really know how to feel about any of this; he imagined the others were feeling the same. Allan’s thoughts on all of it made sense, at least as far as he understood them. In the end, though, it didn’t really present any new options, did it? Messing with the tape was almost certainly impossible given that Jon, even when his power had been at its height, was lost within seconds of trying to know its path. And the way Allan had described the amount of energy required to move everything else and leave the entities behind—even if they had some idea of how to do it, that was just too much, right? Could that much energy even exist?

“I might have a way,” Jon said quietly.

It only took Martin a moment to understand what Jon was suggesting.

“No,” he said firmly. “No. Absolutely not.”

“What just happened?” Tim asked.

Neither of them responded.

“Please,” Sasha said. “If there’s something—obviously we need to consider anything very carefully, but—if there’s a possibility—any possibility—”

“I could start another apocalypse.” He met Martin’s eyes; Martin looked back at him in disbelief.

“Ok,” Sasha said. “I have to say, I’m not sure how that helps.”

“When I—started it, before—when I said the words, and they—” Martin could see how hard Jon was working to hold back the misery of it, to hide the guilt and the torment he’d carried with him since that day. Martin’s instinct was to reach for him, to stop him before he crumpled under the weight of it, but at the same time he wanted it all to come out. It wasn’t that he wanted Jon to hurt; it was that he wanted them to see it, to understand how stupid this was. He wanted Jon to break now, just a little, so he wouldn’t destroy himself later. “When they entered our world, in that moment, the sheer amount of power they brought with them—it was—”

Martin lost it. “And what, you’re going to control it? Jon, that’s insane. Even the idea is—”

“Jonah did,” Jon answered. “Jonah controlled it, before he—where do you think that ridiculous tower came from? Jonah Magnus, king of a ruined world. Do you think the Eye gave a shit about his ego? Jonah made that world, Martin. He laid out the domains, preserved his own place in them just so he could—”

“Jon—"

“—and if I take his place in the ritual and retain the role of the Archivist, I believe I could—”

“No. Don’t even say it. It is way, way too—”

“All right,” Sasha broke in. “Stop. I’m sure I’m not following all of this, but you are talking about deliberately starting an apocalypse and—somehow using it? I take it the apocalypse wouldn’t actually take place, then?”

Jon considered. “Well, it would, but everyone would be—somewhere else. If I succeeded, no one would ever know it happened. And the entities would be left here to burn themselves out.”

“And if it failed?”

“If I failed, then that would be it,” Jon said. “There would be no going back. The opportunity would only exist for a moment.”

“That does sound incredibly risky.” Martin was briefly relieved; surely that would be the end of it. “But on the other hand—”

“What?” Martin’s desperation tumbled out of him. “You can’t be serious. It’s too much. It’s too dangerous.”

“Just—listen, Martin. Please. No, actually—all of you, listen. We are making no decisions tonight. We don’t understand this well enough. But if this is even a possibility, I think we have to consider it. It’s the only option we’ve come up with so far that doesn’t end with spreading the fears or sacrificing literally everything in our world. Everyone else—what are your thoughts?”

Uncomfortable silence pervaded the group; Melanie was the first person to speak. “I don’t know. It sounds like a lot could go wrong. And don’t take this the wrong way, but—it puts an awful lot of— pressure on Jon.”

“Yeah,” Georgie said. “I agree. I’d want to be a little more certain about—well, a lot of things, but like— what does that even look like, moving everything to another dimension? I mean, given what happened with Martin and Jon—well, if we didn’t just blow ourselves up or something, we wouldn’t want to crash land on top of a world filled with our own doubles, for example. Or end up somewhere worse.”

“Yes,” Sasha said. “We’d need to know a lot more—as much as we can. Allan, is there—is there any way to—I don’t know, check on any of this?”

Allan looked like he had been run over. “Keeping in mind, of course, that this is all very—um—”

“Yes. We know.”

“—I’m willing to do what I can. It sounds like the place to start would be wherever this supposed gap is. Do you happen to—”

“Yes,” Jon answered. “Hilltop Road. In Oxford.”

“All right. I’ll go in the morning. I’ll cancel my classes for tomorrow. I’ll take anyone else with me who wants to go. We’ll stop by the university and pick up some equipment on the way out. Let’s say 8 am.”

“Thank you. That’s—that’s very helpful. Anyone else? Any thoughts?”

Elias shook his head.

“Tim?”

“Well, just that—” He looked around at everyone, then shook his head once. “Never mind. It will wait.”

“Fair enough. All right. I know tonight has been a lot for everyone. Too much, really. We should sleep. Is everyone comfortable going back to their rooms?”

There was another bout of silence, and again Melanie was the first to speak. “I am if Georgie is.”

“Why not,” Georgie said, standing as she carefully balanced the Admiral in her arms. “I sort of doubt this one would let us sleep through another midnight buffet. Ugh.”

“Jon? Martin? What about the two of you?”

Jon reached for Martin’s hand; he didn’t pull it away. “We’ll be all right.”

“Martin, I’m sorry for—”

Martin turned away, and Sasha let her apology drop off. He heard Jon say something quietly to her, then accepted Jon’s encouragement to get to his feet. Sasha would have to forgive him later. He could tell they were still talking, although their words had become indistinguishable to Martin. He could hear Tim’s voice; somewhere behind him, Allan and Elias were having an exchange.

“Come on.” Jon’s voice, close to him. Martin’s body ached as if from a low-grade fever as they walked. It was a relief when Jon shut the door of the bedroom behind them, turning off the light that had been left on earlier. They faced each other in the dark.

“Martin—"

“No.”

“I know how you feel about this.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you do. It just doesn’t matter.”

“Please.” Jon reached for him; Martin allowed him to turn his head, but would not let his eyes follow even though neither of them could see. “What if this—”

“Don’t. Don’t you dare. Not you.”

“All right.” Jon kissed him. Martin responded simply because he needed it; he needed the comfort. He wanted Jon close to him, and always would. He was too exhausted to fight it.

“Can you sleep?” Jon asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Just lie with me, then?”

He nodded, his forehead pressing against Jon’s in the dark.

Jon held him, and Martin lay awake for a long time.

#the magnus archives #tma #mag pod #tma spoilers #jonmartin #tma fanfic #my writing

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localswordlesbian · 4 years

Text

sweet talk

this is my submission for @martimweek for the prompt “club/pub/bar”! I’ve been wanting to write a martim one shot fic for a while and this gave me the inspiration to actually do it

read it on ao3 or below the cut

“I’m sick of this. I’m dropping out.”

“You say that every single time you leave an assignment to the last minute, Tim. You’d think you’d have learned by now.”

Tim glared at Martin from where he was dangling upside down off his bed. “I mean it this time. This paper is due tomorrow and it sounds like hot garbage. I’m probably just better off not handing anything in.”

Martin rolled his eyes, putting his own book in his lap. “You’re so dramatic, I’m surprised you’re not a drama major.”

“Why study for something I’m naturally good at?”

Martin groaned while Tim laughed. “You’re insufferable.”

“And you love it.” Martin grumbled. “Screw this paper.”

“Oh, hand it over, you oaf. You’re not submitting nothing, especially after writing ten bloody pages.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a saint, Marto?”

“Literally only you.”

“You’re a saint.”

Martin skimmed over the paper, a historical analysis of the Cold War and its more violent clashes. Martin was no history buff, but this paper was far from, as Tim put it, hot garbage . It was actually pretty good.

He told his flatmate as much, but Tim just scoffed. “You’re just being nice.” Despite his dismissive words, a glow of pride lit up his face.

“Just hand it in, you insufferable twat. You already knew that, you just wanted affirmation.”

Tim clicked his tongue. “Is that so wrong?”

“No, not really.”

Tim leaned back against the wall as Martin picked up his book again. “We should go to the pub tonight, you and me. To celebrate.”

Martin laughed. “To celebrate you turning in a paper? We do this every semester, Tim. Multiple times.”

Tim threw an eraser at his head, and Martin squeaked indignantly. “Fine, then you come up with a reason. I want to go to the pub, and I want to go with you.”

Martin looked up at his flatmate, leaning casually against the wall with his laptop perched precariously on one knee. His black hair was sticking upright from the amount of times he’d run his hands through it in the past few hours, and his tanned and chiseled face looked tired. Despite that, his lips were curled upwards in his telltale smirk.

Martin sighed. “Yeah, alright. Wanna invite the others?”

Tim shook his head. “Sasha’s busy, Daisy and Basira scare me, and Melanie has a date with her new girlfriend.” Tim raised his eyebrows. “Unless there’s someone you’d like to bring along?”

Martin’s face instantly heated up. “Uh, nope. Just the two of us is good.”

Tim chuckled. “I’m sure Jon would love to have a night off from studying, head to the pub with some friends –”

“Tim, I swear to god–”

Tim put his hands up in mock defeat, his grin more infuriating than ever. Martin knew perfectly well that his face was an alarming shade of red, bright enough to put firetrucks to shame, and he also knew that this amused his friend greatly. “Alright, just the two of us then.”

Night fell while Martin finished up his reading for his English class – The Yellow Wallpaper, a story about a woman who spent so long trapped in a room that she began hallucinating a woman living in the walls and trying to rescue her. The ending of the story gave Martin chills, and he quickly scribbled some notes into the margins before closing the book and putting it back on his shelf. Stretching his arms over his head, he winced as several of his bones cracked and his muscles strained from being stuck in the same position for hours on end.

Tim wanted to go to the pub in a few minutes, so Martin pulled a white turtleneck jumper from his closet, throwing it over his shirt. When Tim knocked, he didn’t wait for a reply – simply opened the door and stuck his head in.

“Ready?”

“Christ, Tim! Normal people knock! I could have been changing or something.”

“Which you clearly should be. You’re not going in those jeans.”

“My jeans are fine!”

“Nope. I’ll be in the foyer.”

Martin groaned as Tim shut the door, rolling his eyes as he turned back to his closet. He didn’t want to wear his nice trousers to the pub, but his jeans were old and worn and a little bit gross. Making a split second decision, Martin pulled a galaxy-patterned skirt on and grabbed his wallet and phone on the way out the door.

Tim was waiting by the door, one of his signature hawaiian shirts unbuttoned over a plain black tee. Martin’s heart skipped a little – there was a reason Martin had had a sexuality crisis when he’d come to university, and that reason was standing in front of him.

Tim raised his eyebrows approvingly. “Much better.”

“Bossy arse.”

“Come on, you love it,” Tim teased as they headed out of the flat and into the dark London street. “Your type is clearly bossy.”

Martin sputtered. “My type is not –

“Oh, come off it, Martin. Sims?”

“You don’t need to call him by his last name, he’s not a professor.”

“Alright, Jonathan, the librarian’s special little boy.”

“I don’t get why you don’t like them.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “Do you really think I don’t like them?”

Martin shrugged. “Well, yeah. You’re always so… snide and sarcastic whenever he’s brought up. Like now,” he added pointedly, raising his eyebrows at his friend.

Tim sighed. “Okay, fair. But I like them perfectly fine, I’ll have you know. He seems like a nice guy, if a little, what’s the word? Married to their work.” Tim threw his arm over Martin’s shoulders. “Look, Martin, I wouldn’t say anything if I didn’t know how you get, especially when it comes to people you fancy.”

“How do you mean?” Martin asked slowly.

“You have a tendency to give yourself away, until there’s nothing left of you to love. I don’t want you to pursue this guy and have your heart broken cause he’s got his nose too glued in a book to notice you. Or your tea,” he added lightheartedly.

They reached the pub, and Martin sighed as they walked inside and made a beeline for a booth in the back. “Tim, I’m not dumb.”

“No, you’re crushing on a guy. And those two things are sometimes interchangeable – trust me, I’d know.”

Martin sighed, gathering his skirt into the booth. “Yes, Tim, you’re a dating expert.”

Tim flashed a grin as he ordered a drink for each of them. “I should write a romance advice column in the school paper. ‘Timothy Stoker’s Guide to Love.’”

Martin snorted. “If you want to increase the number of breakups, maybe.”

Tim punched his shoulder, and Martin yelped. “Rude! I give amazing dating advice.”

Their drinks arrived, and the beer mixed with lighthearted banter was giving Martin a happy buzz. He loved all of his friends, of course he did, but there was something different about having a night out just with Tim. They had an easy rhythm, the two of them, bouncing conversations and teasing and laughter back and forth like a beach ball, pausing to sip their drinks and order more, and soon enough Martin was feeling properly tipsy, and a look over at Tim’s flushed face told him he was faring about the same.

After downing his last drink, Tim turned in the booth to face Martin, one leg crossed under his other knee. “Why don’t you just ask out Jon?”

“Because I can’t,” Martin shrugged.

Tim scoffed, his eyes slightly unfocused. “Seriously? Why not? You’re way out of their league, if you don’t mind me saying, and he clearly likes you back. So what’s there to lose?”

Martin sighed. “Come on, Tim. I’d have no idea where or how to even start. Between my mum, and then my transition and anxiety fucking everything up, I never let anyone get too close. It feels too late now.”

Tim rolled his eyes, but they were fond. “Martin, I mean this in the most loving way possible, but you’re a dolt. It’s not too late, you’re only bloody twenty-one! So what if you haven’t had a relationship before? It’s not like he’s got anything to say about you being trans or having anxiety, and if he does I have a crowbar I keep in my closet for that exact situation.”

“Yeah, I know he won’t.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“God, Tim!” Martin threw his hands up in exasperation. He wasn’t annoyed at Tim, and Tim knew that; he was annoyed at himself, and the alcohol made everything just spill out without a second thought. “I’ve never done this before, I don’t know how to ask someone out without making a blubbering fool of myself, it was hard enough even becoming friends with them because, what are coherent sentences, even, when someone you fancy is talking to you? I’ve never even kissed anyone!” His voice quieted at the last sentence.

“Oh, well if that’s all, that’s easily remedied.” At Martin’s confused tilt of the head, Tim leaned in slowly, slowly enough that Martin could have easily pulled away, easily declined.

Perhaps a sober Martin would have hesitated, would have considered the aftermath, had overthought every aspect of what he was about to do obsessively until Tim pulled away, regretting having made the offer.

Instead, he closed the gap, and then Tim’s lips were on his, soft and tasting of beer. His hands were in Tim’s hair, the curls soft and welcoming against his fingers, Tim’s breath hot on Martin’s face as he parted his lips, pulling Martin’s lower lip into his mouth. He gasped, dimly aware that this was a terrible idea, he was kissing his best friend in the back booth of a student pub that stank of beer and sweat, and Tim’s hands were gripping his shoulders and his lips were soft on his. Tim kissed like he was drowning, and Martin’s lips were air.

Tim pulled away first, and Martin slowly opened his eyes, the dim lights in the pub suddenly too bright. Tim’s hair was still bunched in Martin’s hand, and he slowly disentangled his fingers while Tim released his shoulders, never taking his eyes off Martin’s face. His lips were swollen and red, and he was grinning. “That, my friend, is how you kiss. You’re a natural, nothing to worry about.”

Martin exhaled a shaky breath, causing Tim to chuckle. “Nothing to worry about, yeah?”

Tim grinned lopsidedly, pushing a strand of hair behind Martin’s ear. “Nothing at all.”

Martin nodded. “Cool.” That made Tim laugh. “What now?”

Tim tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re best friends, and we just, well, made out in the back of a pub. Isn’t this supposed to make things awkward?”

“Does it need to?”

“Hm. I guess it doesn’t.”

Tim scooted, bumping his hip against Martin’s, and it took Martin a second to realize he was trying to urge him out of the booth. They stood, swaying and leaning against each other for support. They left the pub and emerged into the chilly London night, arms around each other, concentrating on not walking into the street. “I’ll tell you what now.”

“Hm?”

“We’re going to get food on our way home, then we’re going to fight over who gets to use the shower first, and I’m going to win with my devilish charm. Then we’re going to go to bed, and wake up tomorrow with horrible hangovers and more schoolwork. Deal?”

Martin smiled. “Deal.”

#martimweek2021 #martim #martin blackwood #tim stoker #the magnus archives #tma #tma fic

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ieattaperecorders · 4 years

Text

Something’s Different About You Lately - Chapter 3: Crawling and Many-Legged

Martin gets a song stuck in his head.

Read on Ao3

It galled Jon how at home he was in the institute. How right he felt among the stacks of folders and files, the detritus of academia. He should have taken more pleasure in returning to his flat each evening, a comfort he hadn’t had since the coma. But it always felt like retreating, an unfortunate if necessary pause. Put a simple meal together, do the dishes, shower, sleep a few hours, anxiously kill time until he could return. The archive was where he belonged, and he hated it.

It wasn’t safe there. But it wasn’t safe anywhere - this world had no sanctuary from the forces that gathered at the edges of Jon’s nightmares. In the archive he could still find the people he cared about most, and if he could see them, he could keep them safe.

He was in what Tim called the ‘bullpen,’ where the others had their desks. The ceilings were high there, filled with nooks and crannies where shadows pooled and made you wonder, idly, if something could be hidden up there and spying on you. Sasha was at her desk, posed like an ancient statue, leaning forward on her elbows and reading from a file. Her long black hair was pulled into a messy bun and stuck through with pencils, which seemed unnecessary given she had two at her desk already, and another behind her ear. She seemed intently focused and Jon didn't wish to disturb her, but he had a question to ask.

"Have you seen Martin?"

"Nnnm-nnuh." Sasha muttered. It was either a no, or a meaningless sound she made while hoping he'd stop talking and leave her to read.

"I haven't seen him all day," Jon continued. "I'd wonder if he even came in, except he lives here now."

"Wouldn't know." Sasha looked up, meeting his eyes. She ran a hand through her close-cropped, auburn hair. "The archive is a big place, Jon. Maybe he got lost."

Jon frowned, unhappy at the thought, and turned back towards the stairs.

He found Tim at the bottom of the stairway, leaning against the wall and shuffling papers between his hands. Jon saw glimpses as he moved - lurid reds, yellows and pinks advertising circus acts, the writing all in Russian.

"Have you seen Martin, Tim?" Jon asked. "I need to talk to him about something. It's important."

"Can't help you, boss." Tim shrugged. "You can't keep an eye on everyone, you know?"

Jon might have replied to that, but he heard footsteps coming from further up the stairs, and all the thoughts went out of his head. The footfalls had a cadence that he recognized - the shy, careful tread of a heavy man used to stepping lightly, afraid he might make too much noise. Jon ran towards the stairs, but in his hurry he knocked Tim's hands and all the papers went scattering.

Several steps up already, Jon turned and winced. "Sorry."

Tim smiled, but his eyes were burning and there was smoke in his hair. Blood dripped from where his jaw was broken.

"I don't forgive you," he said.

Jon nodded. He understood. But he still had to find Martin, so he turned and went up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Martin's footsteps were distant and mist-muffled, and Jon had to strain to hear them. As he reached the top of the landing he was certain he saw him - just a silhouetted, but there was no mistaking it. The silhouette vanished around the corner and Jon broke into a run again, following with the relentlessness of gravity. He ran through the hallways, taking turns and looking through doorways, but the fog kept collecting between them. Every time he caught a hint of direction - a shape in the distance, a shadow, a breath - it dissolved just as soon as he came closer.

At one point Jon was certain he could see Martin clearly, sharp and certain as he ducked into a room. Jon reached the door just as it was closing, but when he pulled it open Martin wasn't there. Instead, Jon saw two other figures, quietly speaking to one another.

"Basira? Melanie . . ." Jon looked around the room. "Did Martin come through here? I . . . I thought I just saw him."

Melanie turned, blood trailing down from where her eyes used to be. Her expression was solemn and composed.

"I need to speak to him." Jon continued. "I have something to tell him. There are so many things I have to tell him . . . ."

Melanie shook her head. "He doesn't want to see you."

"You shouldn't be here." Basira came to stand beside Melanie. Her voice was the temperature of white hospital linen, of ice water brought begrudgingly. "You shouldn't have come back."

"I . . . I had to." Jon said quietly.

Basira shrugged, as if it wasn't worth arguing. "We can deal with it later."

A hand fell heavy on Jon's shoulder, and when he turned Georgie was there. Her eyes were just as he remembered them from a hundred terrible dreams, quiet, gray, and disappointed. The woman who wrapped her possessive arms around Georgie was quiet and gray as well, her head was shaved and a section of skull had been removed to expose the brain. She stared at him with eyes like a coroner's report.

"It was never a second chance." Georgie said with finality. "This isn't either."

Jon backed away, uncomfortable with the dead woman's eyes but even more so with Georgie's. Daisy said nothing from the corner where she crouched, jaw dripping, claws kneading the floor. Her gaze spoke clearly without any words, it fell on Jon and shouted, run.

He did run, back into the hallway and as fast as he could. The floor twisted under him, the fog gathered, his scars bled. He ran in any and every direction until he'd lost all sense of where he was or what he was fleeing.

Only then did he finally stop. The hall ahead of him was a dead end - no doors, turns or exits, nowhere to leave to, and at the end of it was Martin. Jon could have wept. He hurried to the end of the hall.

"Martin . . . I have so much I need to tell you," he exhaled, dizzy with adrenaline, with running and relief. "Terrible things are going to happen here . . . ."

"I know, Jon." Martin said.

"No, you don't. You can't possibly." Jon stammered, breathless. "There - - there are people out there, trying to change the world in horrible ways. The Unknowing, and Elias, and - - and Peter Lukas, he's going to hurt you . . . ."

"I know, Jon." Martin's voice was patient, weary. As if he'd explained all this so many times. "I know it all. The Lonely, and the coma, and what you did to the world."

That . . . that was impossible. Martin couldn't know about any of that, could he? It didn't matter. None of it mattered, because none of it was asa important as what he still had to say.

"I love you, Martin," he reached to touch the side of his face. "You mean the world to me. You were the reason I kept fighting, even after all was lost . . . ."

"Yes, Jon." Martin sighed heavily, removing Jon's hand from his cheek. "I know about everything. I lived through it all with you, remember?"

Jon couldn't see properly, and Martin's form kept shifting. His hair was longer, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His clothes were dirty, torn, and stained with blood that wasn't his. He carried a backpack that Jon recognized.

"But . . . you can't." Jon frowned. "None of that has happened yet."

Martin shook his head, a humorless smile on his face. The look he gave Jon lay somewhere between pity and contempt.

"Come on, Jon." He placed a hand against the wall, his fingers curled like knives. "Did you think any of this was real?"

Like a cheap backdrop, the wall came away in Martin's hand, and with it came the rest of the world. Jon saw the awful truth that had been hidden behind the theatrics. Of course . . . of course. How could he have forgotten? He and Martin had never left the tower.

From where he stood Jon saw himself in the center of the Panopticon, right where he belonged. The Archive of the Ceaseless Watcher, forever witnessing, forever recording, a mindless and infinite repository of terror. Beside him was Martin, curled against the warped shell of Jon's body, knees tucked under his chin. Unwilling to leave, unable to die, eyes dim and without any hope.

With despair he beheld the only fate there could ever be for the two of them, and he saw his own mouth forming words. And the words his mouth formed were, "with despair he beheld the only fate there could ever be for the two of them, and he saw his own mouth forming - - "

Jon bolted upright, blinking in the dark of his bedroom. His phone was ringing.

* * *

Cross-legged, Martin sat on middle of the camp bed and checked the time again. He really needed to sleep. Each minute that passed just added to how tired he'd be in the morning. For a while now he'd been relying on black tea and nerves to keep him awake during the day, occasionally supplemented by a sneaky nap when there were still other people in the building. It got him through each week, but he knew he couldn't keep it up forever. What he needed was a solid eight hours. But that chance was gone for the night, so he ought to have been making the most of what time there was.

Instead he set his phone on the stack of boxes that served as a bedside table and picked up a well-worn pocket notebook. There was a writing exercise he'd been working on, one he'd seen online somewhere. You were supposed to put down whatever words popped into your head - not thinking or editing at all. Then, after filling a page, you picked out a dozen or so and tried to make a poem out of them. Martin didn't really expect to produce anything worth looking at even by his own standards. All he wanted was to occupy his mind, focus on something that might settle his thoughts to the point where he could sleep. He looked back over the page he'd been writing on:

walls. door. closed. stuck. trapped. trap. pit. pitted. eaten. perforate. pick. dig. bore. burrow. squirm. scream. wring. writhe. anxious. panic. escape. run. hate. hate this. i hate this so much. so much so much so much.

Lovely. All it needed was an artful splatter of blood and it would be the perfect prop to leave behind after he mysteriously disappeared one of these nights. He flipped the notebook closed.

Laying down was out of the question. Every time he tried, he'd feel something crawling over every inch of his body. No matter how firmly he told himself there would be nothing there, that there was never anything there, it was no use. He'd last maybe a minute or so before leaping up, flipping on the lights and checking himself over for invaders.

No. He would just have to sit up and occupy himself until he dropped off from sheer exhaustion. It would happen eventually, hopefully soon. Meanwhile, he just had to turn his mind towards something calming. Something other than how tired he'd be in the morning. Or how vulnerable he was while he slept. Or how something might stand over him while his eyes were closed without him ever knowing. He just had to stop thinking about the sounds coming through the walls, or what had been in the hollows of Jane Prentiss's eyes. About how that basement had smelled, or how quickly those things had moved, or about wet, writhing segmented bodies crawling over one another, pressing up against this room from the outside until - -

Martin gripped his chest and counted in his head, trying to slow his breathing. This was a really bad night.

He checked the time again to find that less than fifteen minutes had passed, and a frustrated whine slipped out of him. He stared at the phone in his hand and thought about what Jon had said a few weeks ago.

This place is unsettling at night. A second perspective can be a breath of fresh air.

He had told Martin to call him. Jon couldn't get mad at him for calling if he'd told him to, could he? Or, well, he could, but it wouldn't be very fair of him. Really, the way the past month had gone, Martin found he was less concerned about sparking Jon's ire than he used to be. Mostly he was embarrassed at the thought of phoning him up to explain that he couldn't sleep because of phantom worms. What exactly did Martin expect him to do about that, anyway? Check under the bed for Jane Prentiss? Read him a bedtime story?

The image of himself curled up in bed while Jon read Tolkien to him was both ridiculous and embarrassingly appealing. He'd heard Jon do recordings before, once even overheard him singing to himself, and he did have a good voice. In fact, having Jon read something out loud to him, even just over the phone, would probably be really, really nice, whether it helped him sleep or not. Martin would definitely rather be eaten by worms than suggest it.

If Martin did call, Jon would probably say he was being irrational. And maybe he was?

Well. Not too irrational. Everyone had spotted worms chewing and crawling around the institute's baseboards. They probably followed him here, which was great, just a wonderful possibility to consider. What was it that people said about infestations? For every one you see, there's a hundred more you don't see? So actually, yes, he was being extremely rational in general and if anything he should be more concerned that --

something was crawling on the back of his neck down his back crawling squirming wriggling

Martin bolted away from the bed, yanked off his nightshirt and reached frantically around himself. His hands couldn't cover the full expanse of his back, so he grabbed a metal-edged ruler from nearby, swiping between his shoulder blades where he could still feel the slow, slick, trailing something . . . .

By the time he made it to the bathroom, the sensation had faded. He still took the time to examine his back in the mirror, craning his neck to see. No worms. No holes. A few long, red scratches he'd given himself with the corner of the ruler, trailing wide over his shoulders. The florescent light shone off a sheen of sweat between his shoulder blades, and as he watched a drop of it creep down his spine that crawling feeling zipped through him again. That was it. That was all. Just his own sweat and nerves.

He splashed some water on his face before pulling his shirt back on and trudging morosely to the cot, face burning, glad that at least there had been no one around to see. He picked his phone up from where he had dropped it, relieved that the screen wasn't cracked. Looked at the time again. 1:43.

Just someone to talk to, he thought as he opened his contacts. Just a few minutes of another human voice, even if it only told him to stop imagining things and go to sleep. He pressed the call button and the phone rang.

"Yes? Hello?" Jon's voice was groggy, with a sharp edge of irritation to it. "What is it?"

Martin winced. Of course he'd woken him up. He'd said that he kept odd hours, that meant it was all right to call him after ten, not after one. He briefly considered hanging up and pretending that this hadn't happened.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" The edge in Jon's voice increased, dipping into anger. Martin heard him mutter something about automated calls.

"Hi. Sorry." Martin said. "I know it's late . . ."

"Oh. No, no, it's fine." Jon's voice changed immediately, dropping to a gentler tone. "What is it? Is everything all right?"

"I'm not sure." Martin swallowed, mouth dry. "It's probably all in my head, but, well, what you said about another perspective . . . ."

"Of course. What - -" Jon stifled a yawn. "What's troubling you?"

Martin was hit then by just how little had actually happened. A few odd noises and his mind conjuring danger from sweat. Trying to explain the last few hours in a way that didn't sound completely stupid felt impossible.

There was silence on the line for much too long, and then, "Martin? Are you still there?"

"Yeah, sorry. Just hit me how underwhelming this is going to sound," he said apologetically. "Probably wasn't worth waking you over."

Again there was silence. Martin found himself thinking if the worms had been waiting for a particular moment to fall on him, bore through his flesh and eat whatever part of his brain thought phoning Jon at two am was a good idea, he'd be up for it right about then.

"It's fine, Martin. Really." Jon said. "I'm glad you called. I . . . appreciate that you would reach out to me. Obviously I asked you to, but, still."

Martin blinked, surprised at the sincerity in Jon's tone. It was reassuring, and it tied itself up around a handful of other things he'd been feeling lately, enough that he felt able to talk.

"All right, well . . . I think there might be something in the walls."

There was a heavy pause before Jon spoke. "In the walls."

"Yes, in the walls!" The tension that had been winding in Martin for hours hadn't left, and something in Jon's tone made him defensive. "Is that really hard to believe? Infestations usually start in walls, don't they? If those things are, making, I don't know, nests. . . ."

Against his will, Martin found himself imagining what those things would make nests out of. The visual of half a dozen hole-shot bodies entered his mind, curled like mummies between the rooms, mouths writing with larvae and opened as if to scream. He shuddered.

"No, no, it's - - it's a logical concern." Jon said. "But you're not thinking of - - that is, you're not cutting holes in them, are you?"

"Oh." Martin flushed. "No, no. I'm not going to start knocking down walls or anything, if that's what you're worried about. I just hear things through them sometimes. Especially at night."

"What sort of things?" Jon asked. "Er . . . worm noises?"

"Sort of. Well, no. I mean. Maybe?" Martin sighed, "okay, the thing is . . . there's the usual old building sounds. And I know that probably most of what I'm hearing is the pipes, right? But there's other sounds underneath that and - - yeah," he started to pick up speed, talking faster and thinking less about it "- - sometimes it does sound a lot like something's crawling around in there, and that's not even getting into the voices - -"

"Wait, voices?" Jon cut in sharply.

Martin winced. He hadn't meant to mention that part, but he was tired and anxious and couldn't keep a lid on things. It had just slipped out.

"Um. Yes. Sort of," he said quietly. "Sometimes."

"Are they saying anything specific?"

"Not really? Just sort of indistinct, maybe not even words. It's more like. There's a melody to it? Not something you could hum, but . . . it sort of sticks in your head. Sometimes I get it running through my mind during the day, you know, but I only actually hear it at night, so . . . ." Martin trailed off, keenly aware of how insane he sounded.

There was a very long pause on the other end. When Jon spoke again, his voice was slow and careful. "You haven't been sitting up and listening to it , have you?"

Internally, Martin groaned. "Look, I know how it sounds, Jon, I just- -"

"Martin. Martin." Jon raised his voice, covering Martin's protest. "I believe you."

"I - what?"

"I promise, I believe you." Jon said. "Please, just . . . have you been listening to it? The . . . the singing."

It was the fear in Jon's voice more than his actual words that made Martin pause and consider his answer.

"Not on purpose, I guess. I still hear it of course. Sometimes I try to cover it with music or, uh, forest noises, but that never really works. But it's not as if I'm trying to listen."

"Does it . . . ." Jon laughed weakly, "this is probably going to sound like an absolutely deranged question but, does it sound like it's for you?"

Martin couldn't explain the sudden lunge of fear in his gut when Jon asked him that.

"Wh-what?"

"Does it sound like something is singing to you? You specifically?"

The question was strange, but it resonated. There was a feeling he got sometimes sitting up in bed, half-dazed with exhaustion. It was hard to put a name to, but it felt familiar.

Come to think of it, he knew what that feeling reminded him of. It was a boy named Colin from his first year of secondary school. That was back before the growth spurts had turned Martin into the too-big, too-obvious teen he'd eventually become, when he was still a high-voiced fat little boy. Colin had been bigger and older, and he would insert himself into Martin's life at random, meeting him at the corner on his walk to school or sidling up to him in the lunchroom. Hitting him up for any money he might have, which was never very much, or making jokes that Martin felt obliged to laugh along with even though they were at his expense. Sometimes he'd muss Martin's hair in a manner that felt almost friendly, or pinch and poke at his chubby sides in a way that decidedly wasn't.

Martin was fairly sure Colin hadn't had any friends either, and maybe in some other world they could have bonded over that, but Colin didn't want a friend in Martin. He'd marked him as a pushover who would put up with him for the poor excuse for companionship that he sometimes provided. And he'd been right. Colin had been better than nothing.

"It sounds . . . friendly." Martin said after a pause. "But . . . not a nice sort of friendly. More cruel. If that makes sense."

Jon muttered something to himself that Martin couldn't hear, then spoke again into the phone.

"Are you dressed?" He asked.

"I - - What?"

"Are you dressed?" Jon repeated. "Have you got shoes on? Are you wearing clothes that you can go outside in?"

"Um." Martin glanced towards the suitcase where he kept most of his clothing. "I could be in a moment?"

"Good. Get on what you need, then get outdoors as quickly as possible. Take anything essential that you can easily grab. Wallet, phone, keys, that sort of thing. Wait for me just outside the Institute." There was more shifting and dragging, the sounds of him moving things around. "I can get there in about half an hour, depending on the trains."

"Why? What's this about?"

"Just wait for me there." Jon's voice was sharp, but there was an audible current of fear running through it. "And - and don't listen to any singing. I'll be there as quickly as I can."

Before Martin could ask anything further, the call ended.

#tma fanfic #time travel au #tma #the magnus archives #tired of tinkering with this #here internet have it

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soveryanon · 5 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG140! … abridged version because I want to be Caught Up with these before this week’s release and Time Is An Enemy and so is my ability to do things without a deadline.

- I have not much to say about the statement itself except that:

(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “You are familiar of course with my persecutor and tormentor Edmond Halley. The one so oft descending upon me as Nemesis with her sword to avenge upon my hubris. […] I will admit that in my heart, I nurtured such dreams of revenge that when they came to me the name of God felt hollow upon my lips. Another dignity stripped from me by mine enemy. […] No. If there was to be a confrontation or action taken against Raymer, it would be I, and I alone, that would have to take it. […] Again he traced his path under that dark and hidden wood, and again I followed, quiet in my manner, keen in my observance. […] It was that in his visit, he was accompanied by Edmond Halley. My dear Raymer, whose body had gone cold and still in my own cruel hands. […] they were the eyes of my Raymer, the one I couldn’t destroy.”

… insert here Kate Beaton’s “MY NEMESIS” comic, holy Mew John Flamsteed. In the same vain (warning for description of murder by drowning):

(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “I wasted no time, and drew my smallsword, and praised to God, who gifted me foresight to carry it. I struck Raymer a fierce blow to the leg. He fell, still clutching at me, and in a moment, cast my sword away into the trees and grabbed at my coat. With a fierce strength never before awakened within me, I gripped the head of my foul adversary, and forced it down, into the dark pool before us. There I held it, the water so cold upon my skin the marks have yet to fade. And Raymer trashed, and kicked, and made such sounds as I have never before heard of the dying. And he was still. I drew him up with the black water still thickly flowing from him. He was dead at my hand, and though I well knew it to be an act of defence and retribution, I felt within me a sudden terror of discovery.”

I wonder what Flamsteed would have said, if he had been discovered spontaneously stalking and stabbing and drowning Halley – wait, no, I know, he would have muttered “Self-defence”, probably. It just escalated so quickly, as a natural progression in the way that he told the story… but seriously. You were so very chill with murder, dude. (That was a strong grudge, wasn’t it.)

- Alright, so; the events were precisely dated:

(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “I know it was the second of May [1715] when this took place, for it was no doubt the crowning glory that he had stolen from me that occupied his mind that eve, and caused his steps to quicken and grow careless.”

He is referring to the date of ~Halley’s Eclipse~, which Halley correctly predicted would take place on May 3rd 1715 – except “Note: Great Britain did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752, so the date was at the time considered 22 April 1715.” (I know Nothing about dates of eclipses and Britain’s own calendars so I have to trust Wiki on this x”)), so oops, Jonny…? Flamsteed should not have referred to it as being in May...

So The Dark is once against tied to solar eclipses; Oliver had first seen Gertrude’s death as happening around the day of an eclipse in Ny-Ålesund in March 2015 (MAG011, MAG025), and Basira had pointed out the relation between Halley’s Comet and The Dark’s activities in MAG108. If so, that would give Jon&Basira some time to operate in the North pole, given that the next (partial) solar eclipse planned in Ny-Ålesund on August 11st. Given, however, that season 4 has constantly reminded us of the subjectivity of symbols appropriated by Fear cultists and all… I don’t think the dates will actually matter all that much, at the end of the day, and they’ll be screwed anyway.

- The way I understood it: Edmond Halley had discovered Dark cultists and was joining them, was meant to do… something, but got killed by Flamsteed before that could happen and something different happened? Did the cultists have no idea about how to free the being-that-became-Maxwell-Rayner in the water, and whatever they wanted to do around the time of the eclipse wouldn’t have worked because the thing trapped in there needed a corpse to get out?

(MAG140, John Flamsteed) “a strange and shrouded wood not a league from what might draw the interests of the pompous fool with whose whims I was now so well-acquainted. And in that quiet seclusion, while I looked on in silence and astonishment, he would meet with figures both man and woman alike, with dull clothing, and eyes that in the darkness of that wooded place seemed wholly black, and empty. Their words were soft and impenetrable to me from the spot wherein I was concealed, but they had much impact upon Raymer – who oft would stagger backwards as though struck. […] And as I waited there, the enormity of my actions settled upon me like lead, and Raymer’s dark-eyed compatriots arrived to attend him. Seeing him prostrate and lifeless upon the ground was clearly a shock, and their distress was marked upon them. And yet there seemed no sadness or horror within their passion, but surprise and confusion, and the question they cast between them was that of what was to be done, for it seemed Raymer was vital to a task as yet unfinished. […] he began to thank me. His gratitude was so plain and sincere that I could scarce understand it as he spoke, but he repeated it again and again, thanking me for his life. For his freedom. I stared into his eyes, and though they met mine, I saw spreading inside them the darkness, and mist.”

And what had trapped the creature in the water? Trapping is usually Web’s favourite activity but… here, in water…?

I was super-cautious about the idea that Rayner was body-hopping, but it seems I was wrong to be, that is what he was doing! Though I think it might not be a human-who-became-an-avatar but a full monster emanating from the power, if he was the water all along? (Aaaand it fits the fact that so many Dark-related activities involved that brackish water. We already had the connection to Svalbard, though, but it’s fitting that Rayner had been sealed in a lake or something.) Or was Rayner even older than the XVIIIth century and had been sealed in the forest for a long time, and only began to body-hop when it first came in contact with a corpse? Even Jon was unsure about a few bits:

(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: So Edmond Halley was… Rayner. Or, at least… whatever was inside him. You said he was dead, though. BASIRA: I thought he was. We shot him to hell before he could, uh… “pour himself” into that kid. ARCHIVIST: Mm. BASIRA: But I mean, didn’t you say he got blown off in World War One as well? ARCHIVIST: Ah– uh, p–possibly, the, the details are, hum… It’s not exactly clear.

And indeed, back in MAG007 Jon had noticed the name “Rayner” rang some bells (that he later identified as Maxwell Rayner’s cult when it came up in MAG009), though according to Smirke’s categorisation… “Joseph Rayner” didn’t seem be related to The Dark after all, but rather to The Slaughter (potentially with a bit of The End)?

(MAG007, Clarence Berry) “The only thing they’d found nearby were the tags of the dead man among his remains. A man named Joseph Rayner. […] You know the phrase “to pay the piper”. I thought on it a lot through those many months – the debt of Hamelin, who for their greed had their children taken from them, never to be returned. […] It was a month later that I woke up to find [Wilfred Owen] sitting next to my bed. He stared at me, not unkindly, though there was something in his eye that put my ill at ease. “Almost over now, Clarence,” he said to me. I said yes, it did seem to be all coming to an end. He smiled and shook his head.”

I had understood it as… Wilfred Owen exchanging places with “Joseph Rayner” in order to not die, until he had paid his due, and/or the fact that he was allowed to live leading to the continuation of WW1 (as Clarence was hypothesising)? I’m surprised that Jon and Basira brought this up again as potentially being the same being as “Raymer” and “Maxwell Rayner”. What would have caused it to change names, from being called “Maxwell” during Smirke’s time, then “Joseph”, then going back to “Maxwell”?

And how come it took the name “Raymer” in the first place, given how it was John Flamsteed’s nickname to designate him? Unless Abraham Sharp betrayed Flasmsteed and told “Edmond Halley” everything he knew?

What about the thing about dark water pouring out of the mouths of avatars of The Dark, since we know it wasn’t just a Rayner thing – there had been the victim taken by Darvish, too, and we know that Darvish used to be… pretty high in the hierarchy apparently (MAG135, Manuela Dominguez: “I suppose there is also an element of provocation here as well; even with the loss of Darvish, we will still be victorious.”) before Trevor and Julia stabbed him and other followers to death, as they recalled in MAG109. The homeless man (Morris? Maurice?), who was already dead, had water pouring out from his mouth – was he meant to be a host for one of the cultists too…? Is that a regular thing some Dark avatars do, not only Rayner…?

- I’m still not sold on the Elias=Jonah Magnus theory (mostly because I don’t really feel like the way people have been describing Jonah so far… matches how people talk about Elias overall?), though I admit that it could make sense given that Smirke mentioned Jonah’s fear of dying, the fact that Rayner and Elias have ~history~ (and Rayner was around during Jonah’s time), and we now we have a Precedent of body-hopping confirmed – and not just Spooks serving a god to sustain themselves into old age like Simon Fairchild or the Lightless Flame.

(Not believing in what follows, but it did cross my mind that… in a way, Isaac Newton, as described in this statement, could kind of fit, given how he was getting closer to now-possessed-Halley at the end of the story…? (MAG140: “He is a blockish creature of vanity, concerned with his appearance only, and likely to fly into an indecent heat and knavish talk at any dispute. He has no reverence for God, and I pity him the fire that awaits. […] I was… astonished at how cordial his conduct seemed, his temper even and his head steady. But it was not the attitude of the president, that robbed my tongue of speech. It was that in his visit, he was accompanied by Edmond Halley.”))

But whatever Elias is or is not, we might get a few more things about that history between them at the North Pole… ;;

- I wonder how Martin will take the news of Basira&Jon leaving for the North Pole. Will he know before they leave? Or will he notice they’re… not around anymore and Peter will shrug it off because THEY decided to leave on a trip, it’s not his responsibility if they decide to go get butchered in a dangerous place! (Martin’s Life Is Hard and no one understands, especially not Peter.)

Will Basira&Jon keep their receipts to claim their expenses at the Institute. Will Martin process the reimbursement.

- Basira mentioned a boat:

(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: […] So what’s the plan? BASIRA: I’m getting us passage on a boat heading up there. ARCHIVIST: … Right.

And I think she would have mentioned the Tundra if it was it, at least to prepare Jon psychologically? So it’s probably not it? But maybe Peter will be the one to take them back, given how his ship had a Precedent of travelling into very cold waters (Sannikov Land, described by “Michael” in MAG101). Well. “Them” if both Basira and Jon make it.

- It makes sense, and feels satisfying, that Basira is indeed heading towards Ny-Ålesund and was the one to gather clues about The Dark: as mentioned, her encounter “kinda stayed” with her.

(MAG140) BASIRA: You remember Maxwell Rayner? ARCHIVIST: Yes, of course, your… warehouse showdown? BASIRA: Yeah, well. The whole thing kinda stayed with me. ARCHIVIST: Mm, I can imagine.

Her encounter with Rayner between MAG072 and MAG073 was not another spooky story in her Section 31 career: it’s something that led to drastic changes in her life. It’s because she witnessed the cover-up of her colleague’s death, and his defaming, that she got pissed enough with the police and decided to quit (MAG075). And because she had given that statement to Jon, she was apparently pursued by the dreams until she signed her contract with the Institute in MAG092 (MAG120, Elias: “The Archivist wanders. He is searching, though, for what he does not know. He passes those places he can no longer watch: […] the empty warehouse of thick darkness and frightened children”). When she joined the Institute, her research brought her towards The Dark again:

(MAG108) BASIRA: I was reading through a bunch of stuff about the Church of the Divine Host. Did you look into that statement about the chapel in Hither Green? Because apparently, right around that time, there was a full solar eclipse going on in, guess where? MARTIN: I don’t know. BASIRA: Ny-Ålesund! And when Natalie Ennis talked about it being 300 years ago, well. How much do you know about the relationship between Edmond Halley and John Flamsteed? MARTIN: What, Halley like the comet? BASIRA: Exactly.

It’s her thing. Part of her story. So it feels satisfying that she would be the one to end up piecing things together, even without apparently consulting Manuela Dominguez’s statement from MAG135 (though Jon was thinking about sharing it with her), and to organise the journey:

(MAG140) BASIRA: You don’t know what the ritual for The Dark is, right? ARCHIVIST: Not really, no. Hum, based on this and everythi– Er, something to do with the Sun, I would guess? I– An eclipse, maybe. BASIRA: I don’t think so. ARCHIVIST: Mm. BASIRA: There’s not one due for a while, and I’ve been wondering for ages: why Ny-Ålesund? I mean, sure, that far North, it gets dark for a long time, but… there’s also really long days in the summer. […] I don’t think Ny-Ålesund is the ritual location. ARCHIVIST: Right. BASIRA: I think it’s a, er… a staging ground. ARCHIVIST: For what? BASIRA: The darkest place on the surface of the Earth: the North Pole, during the Winter Solstice. ARCHIVIST: They have an Eldritch ball of some sort of manifested dark matter, that’s going to be the focus of the ritual. BASIRA: … I thought you said you couldn’t know things about them! ARCHIVIST: I can still read. Actually, you should… probably see that sta– You know what, no. Later. [INHALE, EXHALE] So what’s the plan? BASIRA: I’m getting us passage on a boat heading up there. ARCHIVIST: … Right. BASIRA: I bring all the guns from Daisy’s old stash, you bring the spook you used to mess up that delivery guy. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: Wh… at? That’s it? [PAUSE] Christ, I thought my plans were half-arsed. BASIRA: It’s all about when we go. ARCHIVIST: … I don’t follow. BASIRA: Summer solstice is the 21st of June. So we leave in a fortnight. […] And should arrive about a week before. No danger of sunset or darkness for a long time. Stands to reason that they will be at their weakest.

… Though it’s coming with its fair lot of Worrisome Things:

1°) Basira still hasn’t told Jon that her intel source is Elias which… would probably make Jon way more cautious about the whole thing. If Elias read her right, Basira’s weakness is her “pride” and if he knows it, he is already using it. Elias did say that he needed Jon to be more powerful, and if he wasn’t bullshitting about that, he had a hand in Breekon’s visit at the Institute (or at least knew it would happen soon); he knows how to use Jon’s concern for people to push him further and to get him in direct contact with more Spooks. Jon is still missing a Dark scar/direct experience… and then last one of the list would be The Lonely, if it’s not already happening with Martin – he completed The Buried and The Flesh in season 4 already.

2°) Basira, stern and unimpressed but hovering, giving Jon a drink, organising the trip to Svalbard, including him in, complaining that Jon doesn’t share enough information with her, concerns me a bit. The parallel with Gertrude taking Michael as a sacrifice to stop The Spiral (by boat, even!) is a bit too obvious, especially given how Jon had called her out about how “You’re starting to sound like Gertrude.” (MAG133) recently. I’m… not sure that’s she’s not planning to try and use Jon to stop The Dark and The Beholding at the same time – since she knew The Eye still “had a chance” at its ritual at this time, and she knows that Elias has been watching and scheming. I have no idea about what Basira is thinking, but more about that later.

3°) Having BASIRA head into THE DARK’s turf is an extremely bad idea, even worse than Jon, given how… she was There when Maxwell Rayner was officially killed. If he’s still around, he will remember her. If he’s not, then the surviving members of the cult (we know there were some survivors) will identify her as responsible for his death (and I REALLY wouldn’t put it past Elias to have leaked that information to them, possibly even making it sound like she was the one to pull the trigger).

4°) If… if that Section 31 operation didn’t manage to get rid of Rayner, that means we know which body he managed to parasite. Until now, I had assumed that whatever Rayner had been trying to do, he had been stopped and killed while accidentally vulnerable, back in the warehouse, and that Leo Altman had been collateral, since he was… dead – I thought that Natalie Ennis had probably killed him thoughtlessly, in revenge?

(MAG075) BASIRA: [Maxwell Rayner’s] robe twitched violently as he staggered backwards, and all the dark liquid suddenly washed down onto the floor in a single movement, leaving Callum untouched. It still gushed from his mouth, though, and as the shots tore through him he spun about and an arc of the dark substance flew through the air. Altman had started running towards them as soon as he had seen the kid, and was almost at the chair when the wave of it spewed out. A few droplets hit him on the cheek and he started to howl and claw at his face. Goodman fired again at Rayner, dropping him to the ground, and the horrendous noise stopped suddenly, leaving only Leo’s cries of pain. The lights came on all at once, and in the sudden painful brightness none of us had time to do anything as a woman who hadn’t been there a moment ago ran up to Leo. She wore a robe similar to the old man’s, and by the time any of us had seen the knife in her hand she had buried it in Altman’s throat. […] It was too late, of course, but as I looked at his still, cold face, I saw his eyes were a milky white.”

… but MAG140 showed that the thing taking the name of Rayner had managed to get free by invading Edmond Halley’s dead body, and that his eyes were becoming white when Flamsteed met him again (matching MAG098’s bit of Rayner having “white eyes”). So: did Natalie Ennis kill Leo because he had killed Rayner for good… or did she do it in order to allow Rayner to use his corpse? Was Rayner really killed-killed back then, or did he parasitise Leo Altman’s body – which was apparently dead, back then, but… could have come back alive. Because if so: then, Basira is going to see Leo Altman again, moving and seemingly alive, and it won’t be him, and it probably will be worse than The Unknowing for her, on the scale of emotional torture.

- I worry about Basira but, at the same time, I don’t think she’ll get killed soon-ish. The thing is: Basira is still… a plain mystery, for us listeners. We know what she did in the police but we barely know anything about her personal life or thoughts, or what drives her, or… things she likes (except for reading). And she’s been a recurring character for longer than Melanie and Daisy! She has been there a lot, she has been amazing and funny and deadpan, but… I still feel like it’s hard to understand her, because she tends to hide in plain sight. She snaps and makes dry comments and talks about the others, but rarely about herself outside of what she does?

And Jonny has proven that he’s aware of such things: Melanie and Daisy both revealed themselves in MAG131 and MAG133, and these episodes were necessary pieces to understand their current-day behaviour. But Basira is still… concealing and hiding herself. The only glint of her perspective was when she snapped about trusting:

(MAG128) BASIRA: Do you know how I survived the… The Unknowing? ARCHIVIST: I… No. No, I don’t. BASIRA: No powers, no… magic or… help. I was trapped in that place, and so I tried to figure it out. And I did. A little. So I kept doing it. I kept going through until I got out. I… reasoned my way out of that nightmare. ARCHIVIST: Good lord… BASIRA: Then everything ended, and Daisy was gone. And you were gone. And Tim. And then I got back to the Institute, and Martin sent me to meet the new boss. Then I stood alone in an empty office for more than one hour. I can trust me, Jon. That’s it.

(Honestly, on the list of people likely to die soon… I would bet more on Daisy. Because we know her more, she has a drive, she has people she wants to protect. Melanie is still in a vulnerable place and it would feel too much like kicking the puppy – I’m expecting her to get something around John Amherst before she can kick the bucket. Martin is… a likely contender, too, but MAG138 gave me the impression that no, he needs Something more for a potential death to feel satisfying: he needs his story without involving Jon, or not as a constant helper/sacrifice. Basira is facing Her story right now, but, as mentioned, her feelings are still a mystery to us.

Doesn’t mean that Jon&Basira will be safe in Svalbard, I’m fully expecting them to get hit very hard but… we would need Basira’s words and perspective and feelings, I feel, before she could die.)

- On the subject of Basira being secretive… it seems like Jon’s powers get out of control around her the most? He only slipped in front of Melanie when she was heading out to see her therapist (Melanie going out was an odd thing, he was curious and accidentally compelled her) but he… tends to Know a LOT around Basira, in a way that never happens with Daisy for instance. Is it because Basira is hiding herself too much, which kicks his Beholding side into relying on his powers to dig out truths about her? Because he doesn’t understand her and wants to know her, while Daisy just spontaneously agrees to talk and… Melanie has already poured her heart out? He managed to refrain from Knowing about Martin, though, until he consciously tried to use his powers.

I’m in the minority here, but I don’t feel like Basira has been… A New Beholding Avatar in the making overall. She makes me think more about what Gertrude was trying to achieve, actually – staying outside of the box, trying to not get used by the powers and to use them instead, intervening and doing things rather than contemplating and feeding from other people’s misery? She had managed to stay out of The Hunt despite signing a few Section 31 forms (and getting in contact with various spooks: The Desolation, The End, the aftereffects of The Corruption, The Dark…); we know that, unlike Jon, she had been able to stop and quit instead of trying to dig further into the events surrounding Leo Altman’s death: it’s exactly the opposite of what Michael Shelley and Tim did (joining the Institute in order to understand what had happened to a close one who was killed by the powers) and of how Jon himself had behaved back in season 2 and 3 (pushing for knowledge at all costs, including shaking Jude’s hand because it was the only way to get more information about what was happening around him and to him). Comparatively, I tend to see Basira more as unaligned – on a very fine and dangerous line, but… not Beholding yet? She has stopped recording statements and even refuses to witness Jon doing so (“You’re not staying?” “Watching you do your thing? No.”); she constantly scolds Jon for using his powers; she followed Elias’s leads to try and do something to rescue Daisy from the coffin…

(- Aaaaand the answer to “What happened at the end of MAG139?” was that Jon both succeeded and failed to Know at the same time, because he couldn’t process everything!

(MAG140) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Yesterday, I tried something I… [INHALE] I–I deliberately tried to… Know something, like I did in the coffin, but… there was a lot. Too much [SIGH], and I… BASIRA: What did you find out? ARCHIVIST: [SNORT] Nothing. There was “too much”. BASIRA: You don’t remember any of it? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] You drink the whole contents of a bar in three seconds, you don’t remember what the merlot tasted like. [SIGH] It just… hurt.

Sounds a lot like Jon personally knows about the feeling one gets when trying to “drink the whole contents of a bar in three seconds”.

Is all this information within him now, though, and will he be getting a few more coherent pieces later, or was it just a plain failure…?)

(- Even if Rayner turned out to be dead-dead, even if Manuela turned out to have been offed by Gertrude since her statement, you know what’s presumably still around and unkillable? THE DARK’S CREATURE.

I’m not super confident about Jon coming back from this with his two Actual Eyes. Not sure he would still need them to see anyway. But yeah, hum. If he needs a scar, there is a creature that is known for coming back again and again.)

(- I’m not holding out much hope but guuuuh, I wish Julia&Trevor could pop up to fight against The Dark too… given how it was Julia’s story… but she specifically said she wasn’t keen on a long boat trip (after her experience with Darvish&co told in MAG109), and their illegal status makes it hard to fly, so they’re stuck in America…

Wonder, though, if Jon will learn more things about what happened to Julia’s mother, and what Robert Montauk was trying to achieve…)

- Super small tipbits:

* Jon is a Disaster and I love him.

* I’m still Hysterical over Jon&Basira’s interactions, they’re just too damn funny… and heartbreaking at the same time. Because Basira used to find Jon funny! And it sounds like dry scolding, nowadays, with Jon being a bit more biting than joking with her.

* I friggin’ love Basira, holy heck. (“You know, we’ve actually got a group chat going, called “British Cops Who Love To Do Extrajudicial Spook-Killings On Foreign Soil”. I’ll just see if they’re free this Saturday.”)

* I also can’t believe that Jon is slowly filling up a Spook drawer next to his stationery drawer. He’s been hoarding the pens after his inability to find one in MAG123, uh? (AND HE’S KEEPING HIS RIB… I wonder if it will become useful as an anchor at some point, or never, and just be the joke that oh yeah, Jon has a rib hanging around, he has to find somewhere to store it.)

* MmMMMMMMMM, did Jon’s powers TMI about Daisy&Basira?

(MAG140) BASIRA: Coffee. Drink it. ARCHIVIST: I don’t really, er… [INHALE] Fine. [TAKING THE GLASS] BASIRA: You look awful. You tried drinking with Daisy again last night? ARCHIVIST: [CUTTING] She was here last night, as you know.

That final line sounded like JON knew too much about it.

* … That small moment of vulnerability when Basira mentioned that no, Daisy is not coming because they fear that it could make her join The Hunt again…………………. ;_;

* SVALBARD TRIP SVALBARD TRIP SVALBARD TRIP!!

Title for MAG141 is… absolutely NOT ominous at all, I can’t believe nothing bad will happen ahahahah (sob). It… really doesn’t bode well for Basira&Jon, uh… No clue about the entity involved statement-wise, though… Could it be about another journey of the Tundra? John Franklin’s expedition on the H.M.S. Terror – Rayner had been interested in that one back in MAG098, possibly because of Arctic Explorations (though according to MAG133, the crew ended up with The Hunt)?

Anyway: “Nice Boat.” I guess………………………………

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