erikshatredforknees

[snekberry]

AU where Jonah Magnus takes over Jon's body upon learning about Jon's plan to blind himself and run away with Martin. Not eager to reset his progress, Jonah decides to take matters into his own hands and steals the body of his Archivist so that he can end the world himself.

[haberdashing]

No Puppet Strings Can Hold Me Down (14/?)

The Magnus Archives fanfic. An AU that diverges from canon between episodes 159 and 160, in which Peter Lukas’ statement that “he got you” takes on a different meaning.

on AO3

Jon looked back up at Martin, whose eyes were wide and staring right back into his own. (A small part of him was reassured upon seeing that Martin’s eyes were the same as always, that they hadn’t been replaced by Jonah’s in turn.)

“J-Jon? Is it really you?”

Jon nodded, trying to ignore the lump in his throat as he spoke; he’d expected his voice to sound hoarse or raspy, but it wasn’t, presumably since it had in fact been used this whole time, just not by himself. “I-I’m not sure if I can prove it, or, or what I can say that he wouldn’t know, that would prove I’m myself again and not him-”

Jon’s mind swam with half-formed ideas about things Jonah Magnus would never say--not something he wouldn’t know, helpful though that might be if his possessor was anyone but the nigh-omniscient head of the Magnus Institute, because that was doomed to futility--or just ways to get the conversation started regardless, perhaps turn things away from the information he hadn’t meant to leak to his possessor, the confession he hadn’t meant to give secondhand...

“...I can sleep on the couch from now on, if you’d like.” The words escaped him before he could second-guess them any further, though Martin’s look of bafflement almost made him wish he could take them back.

Martin shook his head and blinked rapidly before eking out a “What?”

“I, I know that’s probably not- not the highest priority at the moment, but it’s been on my mind all this time. You deserve the bed, deserve to sleep somewhere where you actually fit--I’ve slept worse places than the couch here before, I, I used to sleep on that ratty old cot back in the Archives-”

“So did I!”

“You did it because you were afraid of being eaten by worms if you left. I did it because I couldn’t be bothered to take the bus back that late at night. It’s not the same.”

Martin looked like he was going to protest again, but before he could Jon took another deep breath and held up a finger before adding, “And you know Jonah Magnus is too egotistical to even think of offering something like that, so it must actually be me talking.”

Jon half-expected to hear Jonah Magnus’ voice echoing through his head in protest, had spoken the words as much for Jonah’s benefit as for Martin’s, but the only response Jon got was Martin looking at him as if he’d grown a second head for a long moment before letting out a short, shaky laugh.

“Well, you’re not wrong. I do believe you... though, uh, it helps that your eyes changed back too. Always did like how dark they are.”

Jon raised a hand up to his face as if to examine his eyes before remembering when Jonah had made a show of performing that same examination and returning his hand to his side with a shudder.

“Are... are you alright, Jon?”

“I mean, given the circumstances...” Jon tried to laugh, but the noise he actually made fell pretty far from the mark; a strand of hair fell onto his face, and Jon felt a strange, simple pleasure as he brushed it back out of the way with little effort. “Could be worse?”

“Right, right... stupid question, I suppose...”

Jon shook his head, stifling a laugh as much of his hair fell onto his face and he had to pull it away again. “No, no, it makes sense, I appreciate you asking...”

“Was- was Elias telling the truth?”

Jon blinked a few times. “Sorry?”

“Er, Jonah Magnus, really, I guess. What he said about you just now. Was he telling the truth?”

Jon could feel his face turn warm, wondered distantly if Jonah could still feel the heat of it from wherever he’d gone off to now. “I, uh, I mean... yes, it’s true, but I hadn’t meant for him to hear, I hadn’t- hadn’t intended my thoughts on the matter to be available for Jonah Magnus’ personal consumption... though I suppose there are, er, bigger issues at the moment..."

Martin blinked a few times before letting out a snort of laughter, the sound of it enough to make Jon’s heart race. “I understand, Jon, and we can talk about that too--though I assume we don’t have all day here?”

Jon hesitated, waiting for Jonah Magnus’ voice in his head to smugly inform him of how much longer he would allow this to go on, before giving a small shrug when no such voice came. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d imagine not.”

“Right. Well, I do want to have that conversation eventually, but I was actually talking about the whole you feeling everything even when he’s in control thing.”

“Oh.” Jon let out a low breath, felt his face heat up again for a different reason. “Right, that. He wasn’t lying about that either, no, I’m still along for the ride the whole time...”

Martin’s face fell as Jon spoke, and Jon rushed to do what he could to fix it, or at least to do damage control.

“But it hasn’t been too bad so far, and the one time it was was my own fault, so...”

“What d’you mean?”

“That time I passed out mid-statement? I tried to Know something and I knew that could happen, but I figured it was worth the risk. Didn’t help much, but I imagine Jonah felt as bad as I did at least.” Jon shrugged again--a small movement, but one he treasured now, enjoying his freedom of motion while it lasted.

“But if...” Martin bit his lip for a moment before continuing. “He’s right then. If I try to stop him, I’ll just be hurting you, won’t I?”

“You’ll be hurting both of us, and Martin, listen to me--I don’t know exactly what Jonah Magnus is planning, but...” Jon hesitated for a moment, all too aware that any word he spoke could be his last, that at any moment his freedom might be stripped away from him again if he dared go too far. “I think he’s trying to end the world, or, or change it at least. And if you’re going to stop that, you shouldn’t let one person’s feelings get in the way.”

Martin made a noise that was somewhere in between a huff and a sigh. “I’m not going to hurt you, Jon.”

“If it’s between that or the world ending, by all means, do whatever you need to do.”

“Jon-”

“I’m serious. If it means hurting me, or knocking me out, or... or whatever it takes, if it’ll stop his plans, just go for it when you have the chance. You have my permission--my blessing, even.”

Martin opened his mouth for a moment and then closed it again before speaking up. “...if you say so.”

Jon locked eyes with Martin, forcing what intensity he could into his gaze. “I do.”

Martin nodded, a strange solemnity in the gesture. “What do you know about what he’s planning, then? What should I be looking out for?”

“Well, from what he’s tried already, I believe it’s another r-”

And then Jon found himself cut off from speaking, from moving, felt that strange shift inside his mind once again before his own voice spoke up without his willing it.

“I think that’s quite enough of that. You wanted proof that Jon was still in here, that it’s not just his body you’d be preserving, and I daresay you’ve gotten it.”

Martin broke away from Jon’s gaze, still locked on Martin’s face as he looked back down at the floor. “Yes, I... I suppose I have.”

“I trust that’s enough to prevent you from doing anything stupid without my having to resort to more... drastic measures.”

“No, no... I don’t want to hurt Jon, even if it’d mean hurting you too. You’re both safe for now.”

Jon wanted to yell, to scream, to beg Martin to stop Jonah Magnus by whatever means necessary, to explain that he hadn’t valued his life much even before it’d been reduced to this sort of half-existence, to quote the old saying about the needs of the many trumping the needs of the few... but instead he felt himself just nod silently and turn away.

[sinnhelmingrmoved]

tma au rundown. warning. long with too many bullet points.

basics:

her name is leah lindqvist. no, this is not her birth name, not even a name in any official records, but it’s what she goes by and what the majority of characters will know her as. the only exceptions to this are those who knew her in her human life and those who have stumbled upon her in statements -- more on that later.

appears to be in her late 20s-early 30s, with an old world aristocracy look under her gothic leanings. has a propensity for elegant/historical looks in her day to day life, being rather more put together than the setting’s primary goth. notable for her bloodless complexion and bright green eyes. tall and thin.

has lived in london for the last three years, looking for an in to the institute to further her own research. changes living arrangements at around season 3 to better stalk keep an eye on our main protagonist.

originally scandinavian, specifically danish, though her accent seems strangely lax for someone who claims to have only left her motherland a few years before.

is an avatar, though her exact ‘patron’ is a question she’s been trying to answer for a long, long time. the circumstances of what she deems her ‘becoming’ seemed to involve at least 4 separate entities, only one of which could have won her.

backstory:

was born the youngest of three children in a happy copenhagen home, her father from good stock and her mother a force to be reckoned with in the community. at some point, the house of cards crumbled for the couple, and their children were shuffled off to what relatives would take them. leah, or whoever she was before, went to her father’s brother specifically.

said uncle was a proper gentleman, a pillar of the community, worldly and wealthy. he had a particular fondness for the macabre, and venerated a man known as jonah magnus and his various associates. this man about town had such dreams for his latest acquisition, for this bright and tender child who wanted the whole of the world in her hands.

leah was raised alongside but differently from odin’s four sons, groomed for something beyond her understanding. she was expected to read and recite, to observe others, and to mind her ps and qs more than her cousins ever would. as she grew towards adolescence, odin took to traveling the world with his ward, haunting locations of past or ongoing fear activity. leah was meant to observe, and to be seen.

that was a perilous thing, and got her on the wrong side of various avatars and monsters more often than she cares to remember. she has had confirmed run-ins with the spiral, the stranger, the desolation, and the dark through these ‘misadventures,’ and has had at least one brush with the lukas family in her youth that leaves open the possibility of later lonely interference.

it should be noted, however, that leah’s moments of what her uncle would dub martyrdom -- that is, to be made to witness the influence of fears on the world -- were almost invariably fatal for the subject of observation. while odin perceived her as witnessing the world and following the path of the eye, leah herself was chasing death.

the dawning realization that her life was to be given solely in service to this all-seeing eye led to brief fits of rebellion or anxiety that her uncle worked to curtail. her panic at the situation came to a head at some point in her twenties when, according to all involved, leah attacked odin’s favored son. immediately afterwards, leah was ousted from the family, abandoned to a distant property. the outside world, however, would receive the fiction that she had gone missing and would never be recovered.

left to a rarely-traveled island on the norwegian sea, stripped of the protections her uncle offered under the sheltering eye, those entities who marked her soon came begging their pound of flesh. locking herself into a small cabin on the property, she endured bouts of darkness and mist rolling over the outside world, a constant knocking or clawing at the cabin door, and an apparent loss of self. after some perceived months of this isolation, some hallucination or dream came to her in which she perceived her patron reaching out and taking all of the fear away.

once awakened, she was discovered by a passing ship and returned to the mainland, walking and hitchhiking her way back to the main family estate. she found her uncle badly aged in the months of her absence, striking when he was alone and demanding answers from him : what was her intended purpose? what did the eye have to do with this? what had she become? why did he choose her? at some point, her interrogation became too much for the old man, and he passed before she received the answers she sought. after disposing of his body, odin became another missing person’s case in the family, and leah made her way across europe for the next few years seeking the answers she had not received from the source.

has had a past attempt to breach the institute and lasted a good few days hidden among the archives. was eventually found out, however, and was made to escape. all the way to the mainland, in fact, due to whatever she uncovered about the place rattling her deeply enough to keep away from england for some years.

eventually, with all other avenues of knowledge running dry, leah was forced to return and consider that the answers she sought lie in the institute itself. to that end, she had taken up residence in a london apartment complex and tried to get in several times.

recent events: 

has been an accomplice in several fear-motivated disappearances of young men in the london area. it’s an open secret among those who know her status as avatar that she makes offerings for her ‘partner’ out of human sacrifices.

tried to infiltrate the institute and got far enough to nearly get eaten by worms in season one, saved only by the timely intervention of her partner. none of the actual archival staff are aware of said event until she actively brings it up.

has developed a growing fascination with the latest archivist, including reaching out to him in season 3 once he’s on the run.

eventually offers him her statement in exchange for a chance to delve the archives resources for the explanations she’s been without. becomes an occasional feature from there on until she once again flees into the night after a brush with its master.

spoilers:

has been completely divorced from the concept of time as it flows for others. many of the discrepancies about her story as she tells it can be explained through this: her months abandoned on the island actually took place over a number of years, her time spent combing through the european continent took more than a decade, and she can no longer remember her birth year because it does not align to her perceptions of self. even those she knew in humanity, such as gerry or peter, register as oddities for having aged in accordance with real time rather than her own.

her patron is the end, who had indelibly marked her at some point in her youth and seems to have intervened and claimed her once she was in serious danger. her exact role as an avatar of this fear is muddled by her decades of self-serving pursuit of knowledge rather than living up to whatever she was meant to do.

odin really stumbled into getting an intended avatar of the eye marked by different fears. it was not his intention, but rather a result of caretaker negligence in trying to make a witness of the girl. he never expected that it would have meant something in the grand scheme of things.

despite appearing all of 32 at most, leah was already in her twenties by the 90s. she’s actually in her 50s though her general issues with time mean she has not realized this fact and her status as an avatar has left her pretty ageless.

relationships:

alliance/partnership/friendship with sittimoranimiinterfectorem‘s michael. michael was the first of her kind leah met, and one she looked up to as a potential font of answers. instead, michael has been toying with her for years, as a liar ought to. outsiders can infer a variety of potential takes on the relationship, as outlined here.

alliance/mentorship/unrequited feelings with sittimoranimiinterfectorem’s jon. leah’s initial trepidation in approaching the new archivist soon turned to a soft spot for this man the world was going to eat alive. she realizes he is walking down the same path her uncle forced her down, and has taken on a slightly protective and wise elder role over him. that said, she has also has a fancy for him, attracted to his dark eyes and devotion to his humanity.

former companion/occasional ally of bookburnt‘s gerry. the two crossed paths every once in a blue moon during the years, given odin and mary were associated with one another in their travels and overlapping ideals. leah tried to take on a supportive role for the teen, sometimes sending gifts, while gerry in turn tended to cut loose with someone who got it. in adulthood, the two sometimes ran into one another in the weird world in which they inhabited, though leah had no idea this man was the same boy she had tried to bond with years before.

potential acolyte/student of medisinals‘s blackwell. we’re still plotting it out but the two have each other’s acquaintance as avatars of the end.

relevant statements:

statement of frida hoarr, concerning the disappearance and life of her husband odin. first mention of the hoarr family and leah’s original identity. (2001)

statement of olaf agner, concerning his time working for the hoarr family in north zealand. a less rose colored view of odin’s ‘visionary’ work and his 'creepy’ niece. (1987)

miscellany statements referencing a one eyed man and dark-haired girl/young woman at or around the scene of various incidents involving the fears across europe. sometimes references the girl in question reaching out to those that are marked. (80s-90s)

statement of torsten hoarr, concerning the personal records of his father and the disappearance of his cousin. (2007)

reference to leah’s invasion of the institute archives in an incidental discussion with michael shelley about his having been deceived into allowing a certain young woman into the archives (2009)

miscellany statements establishing odin as a sort of chessmaster invariably working with the eye before, during, and after leah’s part in his life. (60s-2001)

statement of james berger on the subject of his friend ethan hamilton going missing. first clear picture of leah and michael working in tandem. (2014)

statement of leah lindqvist concerning her personal history and... ‘becoming.’ statement recorded direct from subject. (2017)

[haberdashing]

No Puppet Strings Can Hold Me Down (5/?)

The Magnus Archives fanfic. An AU that diverges from canon between episodes 159 and 160, in which Peter Lukas’ statement that “he got you” takes on a different meaning.

on AO3

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7

Jon wasn’t sure how much time passed there as the car kept speeding down the road, nobody saying a word the whole time, though Martin hummed along to a few bars of that song every now and then. Eventually Jonah made him uncurl, made him look up and out the window, but the unremarkable and indistinguishable bits of field that dominated the landscape didn’t actually help Jon get a sense of where exactly they were or how much longer it would be any more than staring at the car seat fabric.

At some point, though, a point that had to be several hours after their departure from London, Martin turned off of the main road.

“Running low on petrol.” Martin explained as the car turned into a little town that could be anywhere, as far as Jon could tell. Not that it really mattered where they were right this minute, he supposed--this trip was very much about the destination, not about the journey to it. Safety, or some vague semblance thereof, awaited them in the far reaches of the Scottish highlands, and unless Jonah Magnus had something to say about it, that was all that mattered.

“Think I’ll grab a few things in the station while we’re at it. D’you want to join me?”

And Jon found himself replying, “Sounds good. I could use to grab a snack.”

Did Martin’s expression tighten a little there, or was that just Jon’s imagination?

The inside of the petrol station was almost exactly how Jon would have imagined it at a guess: a few aisles of unhealthy portable foodstuffs, a bored-looking cashier, grimy floors, and an unpleasant smell that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Martin went down one of the station’s handful of aisles, Jon down another, and soon Martin was out of sight.

What do you want to eat?

It took Jon a minute to register the question and all that it implied: that Jonah was speaking to him first rather than vice versa, seeking out his input, and on a subject as trivial as food, no less.

Can’t you just Know?

It was half a knee-jerk reaction to avoid giving Jonah any information and half an actual question. Jon knew from experience that Jonah wasn’t entirely omniscient, but he’d only been caught off-guard before when he was distracted, and here, in the middle of an unexceptional petrol station in the middle of an unexceptional small town, there was precious little in the way of distractions.

I thought you might like to have some input.

Jon began pacing up and down the aisle, the constant movement oddly soothing even though he wasn’t the one in control of it.

I’m not going to help you with... convincing Martin you’re me, or, or whatever this is.

Fine. Just thought I’d ask first.

Jon slowed to a halt near the front of the aisle, not far from where that still bored-looking cashier stood at their station, and started to scratch his arm.

He didn’t think anything of it at first, but the scratching just grew stronger over time, until it was painful, until it would probably leave red marks for some time, and when he focused on the area he realized he wasn’t even itchy there-

Is this that big plan you alluded to earlier? Your trump card for getting me to cooperate? Because if so-

Jonah Magnus laughed, then, and Jon hated the sound of it as it echoed through his mind.

Hardly.

Martin caught his eye as he, too, headed towards the front, a handful of snack foods in his arms. “You... you alright there, Jon?”

Jon’s eyes drifted down to his arm, and then the scratching finally stopped as he looked back up at Martin. “It’s nothing, really. Just the worm scars. Every now and then, I swear I can feel them itching...”

“Oh... I’m sorry.” Martin’s eyes looked so sad, there, and weirdly... guilty? Was he still blaming himself for losing track of them when they’d been under attack in the tunnels? That was ridiculous, all Martin staying with them would have meant was that three of them would’ve been covered in worm scars instead of two, and they probably wouldn’t have found Gertrude’s body until even later...

Jon wanted to say something, to reassure Martin, but he couldn’t and Jonah made him just stand there and...

“Did you find something to eat?”

Oh. Right. Food. The whole reason they’d gone inside the petrol station in the first place. Jon had almost forgotten about it--and, given that his arms were still empty, evidently so had Jonah.

“One second.”

Jon would put money on the fact that Jonah’s choice of food for him was simply the first thing that caught his eye within arm’s reach.

“Oh, good. I’ll buy that for you then.”

“Th-thank you.” Did he really sound like that when he stuttered?

“Don’t thank me, thank Peter Lukas.” Martin grinned as Jon turned to him with what must be a look of confusion on his face. (A feeling both Jon and Jonah shared, presumably, then.) “It’s his money I’m buying all this with.”

“Ah.”

As the cashier started scanning items, with no change to their dead-eyed expression, Martin said conversationally, “Didn’t know you liked salt and vinegar crisps.”

Jon did not like salt and vinegar crisps.

Jon had, in fact, gotten in arguments on multiple occasions due to that fact, and he still stood by his usual explanation that in nature, when food tasted like that, it meant that it was poisonous or rotten or both, and who was he to decide that he knew better than his own taste buds what was or wasn’t good for him?

But as Martin’s car drove away from the petrol station and trudged closer and closer to whatever lay in store in Scotland, Jon had to stomach an entire bag of the things, bitter and rancid and awful with every bite, and he didn’t dare lodge a complaint with the only person who could hear him.