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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 1 year

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you might have been asked this question before but ive been curious for a while about what would have happened when gertrude was there when jon originally gave his statement? would anything change ?

Honestly she probably would have killed him.

Like, it feels mean to say? It would have been more out of mercy than anything.

If Jon had come to her with only a Leitner, she would have taken care of the Leitner and sent him home. She doesn't normally intervene on behalf of the Statement givers, but they also aren't usually eight, and it isn't unheard of for Gertrude to intervene for the random unlucky souls who cross her path. She intervened on behalf of Jack Barnabas, and she told the monster pig dude how to handle his problem. It's selective when she intervenes, but I think if it's just a little boy scared by a book, she would help.

The thing about Gertrude is that I don’t I think she is or ever has been heartless; I just think she’s brutally practical.

One of the most interesting tidbits about her is that she looked for Eric Delano for months after he went missing, but wasn’t close enough to know that he had quit ages before he actually died. She avenged Sarah’s death by seeking out someone she had never, ever let herself meet before that moment, but she did this right after sacrificing Michael without hesitation. She seemed genuinely fond of Gerry, but she still bound him to a book.

I think that, at the end of the day, it wouldn’t be that she wouldn’t want to save Jon. It would just be that she would realize that she couldn’t.

If he had just arrived with a Guest for Mr. Spider, I think Jon would have walked away remembering her fondly as the brusk but ultimately nice old lady who had her assistant make him a cup of tea and taught him how to burn a Leitner. But he didn’t just come because of A Guest for Mr. Spider. He came because of Tommy Bradstaff.

Gertrude’s shown to be more wary of the Web than pretty much any other entity. She got tricked by them way back when she defeated her first ritual, and I don’t think she forgets. I also don’t think she would have thought it was ever a good idea to voluntarily set herself in a competition with the Mother of Puppets. Jon's eight and scared and she'd want to help him, but she also would have immediately recognized that saving him comes with a very high price tag and a very low chance of success.

I do think Gertrude would have at least tried to think of a way to save him. I just think she would have ultimately come to the conclusion that there wasn’t one.

And it’s just practicality, right? That’s the big difference between her and Jon in nhthcth. It doesn’t matter how badly she wishes she could help; she’ll accept when she can’t. But when she can, she usually racks up a very big win. Jon will wildly intervene without even considering his chances. Like, there's a reason why the Eye led him to Danny Stoker that night--it's not conscious the way humans are or the spiders are, but even pavlov's dogs learned association, and the Eye seems to be capable of that kind of low-level consciousness. When Jon finds Eric Delano's statement in canon, it's because he listened to the tapes the Eye didn't want him to hear. That implies the Eye is at least partially able to make connections based on its own impulses and desires.

Jon's its special little boy who has been resolutely fucking starving himself for almost two decades. He went and joined the eldritch version of AA with Daisy in an attempt not to feed the Eye other than when absolutely strictly necessary, and the Eye's never been happy with his starvation diet. But the one sure-fire way to get Jon to forget his sense and start ripping statements out of avatars is to shove some poor schmuck being eaten in his line of sight.

It’s pretty directly stated in nhthcth that danny isn’t the first victim of another entity he’s tried to snatch, even if he’s never gotten as involved with a pair of victims as the stoker brothers. And honestly—he almost didn’t get super involved with them either. Like, when he was trying to duck out after the initial fight at the theatre, long term involvement would have only made it worse for them. Most of the time, the absolute best chances come from "hope that they've forgotten you existed and won't come back for round two. if that fails maybe just hop continents and it will be too inconvenient for them to track you down again. buy guns." There's a pretty high mortality rate with people who hang around him, and he's not exactly expecting these random male model brothers to manage this world long-term.

If Jon’s hadn’t straight up passed out, he would have called Daisy to come pick him up and bitched to her about fucked up clowns being a problem now. He’d feel vaguely mad at himself when nikola skinned both Danny and Tim, because it’d be just another case of him trying to help and just increasing the body count, which is what happens most of the time.

I think Mike described him like someone who kept putting half dead birds in boxes and feeling disappointed when he opened the lid and saw they’d croaked. It's not unheard of for the people he helps to make it, but it's also not exactly often either. And that’s not even really to say he’s any less powerful or capable than gertrude was—honestly, between him and Daisy? They’re sort of a powerhouse duo. Like, people are afraid of hunters. At one point Dekker says that he was going up against something that would require a hunter to kill, and that while he knew a few, he would never actually risk consulting one. Amateur lobotomy it is. And Daisy is the sort of hunter that can kill other hunters. Jon’s this absolute muppet of a human being rolling up to soul-rending horror like “this is Daisy :) she is my best friend :)” and then they turn around and the Avatar of Fucking Them Up is standing there breathing too heavy and blatantly fucking insane. It’s like if kermit the frog kept bringing the fucking terminator to social events.

And Jon isn’t exactly a slouch either. Like, he’s keeping himself as weak as he can, and he’s still strolling into other entities' domains, feeding on them, and just... walking away again. These are people who are extremely used to being the human equivalent of a great white shark, more powerful and deadly than anyone else in any room they're in, but they've got this extremely distressed looking twink curb stomping them when he has reached the absolute breaking point of his Victorian Fatigue. this man keeps coming into their homes and one-shotting them after weakening himself to the point of being on death's door. jon on his own makes other avatars twitchy, but the Jon and Daisy Buddy Cop is honestly kind of one that the other avatars are somewhat actively afraid of.

Like, they'll dunk on Jon (where daisy can't see), because he's jon and he's ridiculous and pathetic at all times, but people are secretly pretty careful to toe the line of shit jon will put up with. Mike will be smarmy with Jon because he knows Jon will let him get away with it, but he also knows that if he fucks around too hard jon will put him through a psychic paper shredder and daisy will bury his corpse in the woods. It's not a secret that Daisy and Jon are strolling around feeding on and blatantly fucking murdering things like them, but none of these self-serving assholes have managed to handle a pretty active threat to their longevity. that's more because they can't than because they won't.

And still, Gertrude is pretty universally regarded as a force of nature, but Jon's still getting told that a seven percent success rate is a bit generous.

Gertrude is Gertrude Robinson, and she's the baddest bitch around, and that has a huge bit to do with her success rate. But it would be a mistake to say that the number of battles she picked didn't have something to do with why she's more successful. Like--Gertrude's going for quantity over sentiment. She'll save the world, but the individual people in it? Those aren't the fights she has ever prioritized, at the end of the day.

Almost all of the statements Jon in canon recorded were from her tenure, and Jon's follow ups usually concluded with "and then they horribly died." Gertrude was casually eating a fucking sandwich in her office and watching while Jane Prentiss decided that she couldn't be saved and went off to cram her forearm in a spooky wasp nest. She didn't help Jane. She didn't explain what was happening. She didn't try to intervene. She ate her sandwich, and she let Jane leave, and I think that at least in part she would have agreed with Jane's assessment. There wasn't any saving her, and that's a judgment that always precludes Gertrude's help.

Gertrude wins as often as she does because she picks her battles carefully. She delivers maximum damage to maximum effect, and she doesn't spin her wheels on things she knows are a waste of resources. She came right on the heels of an archivist who died because he burned through his resources and his luck, and her tenure has been marked by her being smart enough to be cautious.

I think Jon would have given her his statement. I think she would have been nice to him. I think she would have allowed herself to feel sorry for him, and sorry that he was so young, and sorry that it was too late.

I think that she would have considered what the web could have planned for him, and she would have considered how painful a fate was waiting for him if he met the End the Spider probably had planned for him. And I think she would have decided it would be crueler to let him meet it.

Gertrude in nhthcth specifically has always had a weird, twisted mercy when it came to Jon. She never manipulated him, is the thing. Elias made sure that what he did to Jon had long past the point of no return by the time Gertrude ever caught wind of his existence. As far as she was ever concerned, Jon was beyond saving from the day they met, which meant there was no point in trying. She was never going to offer him the mercy of trying to help him.

But she could have played him and she didn't. And I think that's about the most merciful action that Gertrude Robinson would have been capable of.

She knows about Agnes, okay? better than anyone. she's been bodily hauling the world as they know it through a decade of apocalypse attempts. She took one look at Jon and realized that elias had made him to wear the watcher's crown, but also that she couldn't kill him without completely alienating her resources to stop much sooner apocalypses.

But she sort of knew from the day they met that she may have to one day kill him, if only to stop him from wearing the crown. It wasn't set in stone, but it was a very significant possibility.

In chapter 24, Jon reached out to gertrude for absolutely any comfort possible, and she actually could have given it to him. She could have strung him along with false hope, or just given him a shoulder to cry on. Someone other than elias to love.

And she would have done that knowing that she was actively planning how to kill him when the time came. And she's definitely not above that kind of manipulation. Jon's extremely vulnerable when he comes to her, and he already thinks of her as a source of hope. Stringing him along and being his only source of comfort and support would give her an enormous advantage over him that she normally wouldn't ignore. But if he did die by her hands one day, as she knows he probably will, he'd finally go to his end after a very painful life being murdered by the only person that he thought loved him after he lost Gerry. Gertrude sort of uncharacteristically gave up that advantage to spare him from that final betrayal. She'd never sacrifice the world for him, she could have loved him like her own son and she would still kill him without hesitation, and she won't lie to herself about that fact either. It's a weird, twisted act of mercy to have it be turning the cold shoulder to a little boy begging for help, but in her mind, it was the most merciful option open to her.

And I kind of like the idea of Jonathan Sims in nhthcth always demanding the most painful acts of mercy of Gertrude that she's ever contemplated. Because the thing is, if she had been the one to take his Statement that day, she's almost definitely would have decided that Jon couldn't be saved. Not when the thing after him was the Web. And once she decides that, she has two options: let him meet the End waiting outside of those doors, or handle it herself.

And the thing is, her MO is to go for the former. It's not like she's mercy killing everyone who shows up and tells her of the fate worse than death that's most likely to befall them--hell, to take the risk of mercy killing is borderline out of character to her. If it were anyone else, she wouldn't have done it.

But Jon was eight. He was begging her for help that she couldn't give. And the Web has never been merciful. Either it was lying about wanting him for itself and he was going to be killed in the most slow, horrifying way possible, or it wasn't and he wasn't even going to get the mercy of death. Like, if a horrible, tragic fate is inevitable for him, Gertrude has to at least contemplate if there's an option that's more merciful than the rest.

Even giving him a less painful death is dangerous for Gertrude, but I think that's more of a price she'd be willing to contemplate. Like, killing another entity's victim is another way of snatching a meal from them. She had to at least entertain the risk that the Web would have some kind of retribution for it. But she would also entertain the fact that Jon's only sitting in the Archives because the Web let him get that far, that it wanted him to give its Statement to her, and ultimately decide that the risk is one she's willing to shoulder.

I think she would have made sure it didn't hurt. I think she would have made it quick, and made sure he didn't know it was happening. but I don't think she would have ever saved Jon the way he wanted to be saved.

If I’m being extremely generous (and self indulgent) and trying to come up with a world where she would go on a crusade to save him, and probably assuming some kind of off screen character arc that’s completely made her change her entire approach to life, I think she’d bring him to Agnes Montague.

If Jon could ever have a chance way back when he was eight, I think it would have been Agnes. Agnes is the direct opposite of the Web. She's the demigod messiah of the entity of Fucking Up All Your Life Plans. In canon, she's the one that Gertrude went to when she did need to go after the Web. If she had decided to try for him and needed to come up with an option to save him, she'd go to Agnes.

That being said, getting to that decision is just still really unlikely. For all of the above reasons and because of the difficulties Agnes poses. Even if they're in like, lesbian soul love, they've never met in person, and she doesn't really know if Agnes will help. It may attract the Lightless Flame's attention, and Jon may just end up burnt to death instead of filled with spiders. A lot of ways it could go wrong and give Jon a worse fate. It's the sort of Hail Mary play Gertrude never really did.

That line is in the summary because I thought it said everything about what the reader needed to know for Jon in nhthcth. (Also, I just thought it sounded nice.)

Jon in nhthcth is sort of defined by the fact that he has never gotten past who he was in the moment that James Wright locked him in Gertrude's office. It's one of the two cornerstones of everything he became.

The other cornerstone, of course, is Gerry.

Jon has spent his entire life trying to figure out a way that he could have been anything but what he is. It's been a decade and change, but he's never, ever been able to let go of what happened to him. And that feels at least a little off.

Maybe it's the idea that time heals all wounds, maybe it's the idea that Stockholm Syndrome should have kicked in eventually, maybe it's the evil god eating parts of his personality, maybe it's the idea that it's probably exhausting to eternally be struggling against a fate that you met when you were fucking eight. Even if he never becomes okay with what happened to him, he probably should have at least accepted it and moved on to some measure. Like, this has been his reality for almost his entire life. No matter how terrible it was, people usually adapt and acclimate to what happens to him.

One of the core traits of Jon in nhthcth was always supposed to be that Jon just didn't for some reason.

Like, Jon has not even passed the threshold of accepting what happened to him. It's all these years later, and he's desperately replaying what happened and trying to come up with the version that has him going home at the end. Even if you don't accept your current situation, you probably should have stopped trying to figure out what you could have done differently when you were eight, no matter how terrible what happened is.

At the end of the day, even with all he knows, Jon just has never understood why he couldn't have been saved.

He knows there's no Light Side at the end of the day. This isn't some big battle of Good Against Evil--it's just a series of Bad inconveniencing Other Bad because what Other Bad wants is not in the interest of what Bad wants. There's no ancient secret order battling the dark--there's just a lot of people stopping each other from ending the world because they want to be the ones to do it, and also like, Gertrude Robinson and her good-time buddy That One Random Priest. If you're looking for someone to save you in the TMA world, there just isn't really anyone.

And that's part of why Jon goes in after Danny Stoker. It's part of why he keeps undertaking the world's most half-assed rescue attempts. Trying to save Danny when his entire life has indicated that's impossible and probably going to make things worse is a deeply irrational thing to do. He probably should have learned when to walk away by now.

But a part of him is still eight, and a part of him has spent his entire life going over the worst thing that ever happened to him and trying to figure out the way to make it different.

It takes a specific sort of person to keep undertaking herculean efforts in a desperate, wild attempt to save people that he knows are as good as dead. And I think that sort of person once was someone who was as good as dead. He saves Danny Stoker because a part of him is still desperately trying to find the person who could have done the same for him.

In the end, he became the thing he once needed most in the world, which was a chance. I don't think he's realized that fact. And I don't know if he'd find it comforting if he did.

The other thing about that sentence is that it's completely and utterly pointless.

Like. It's been eighteen fucking years. At a certain point, you have to decide it doesn't matter anymore, and clinging to the question of whether someone could have saved you just doesn't help anything. But one of the other core traits of Jon in nhthcth was that he was someone who just simply did not care if what he was doing was practical or had any chances of succeeding.

He's designed to be so stubborn in it that it's almost ridiculous, and more than a little comical but it's honestly borderline sad to me. Here Jon is, making it his life's fucking mission to hold the title of World's Shittiest Employee. He is going to make his hostage situation inconvenient for everyone. He's not doing fucking paperwork; he's only here because elias kidnapped him. He can't get away, but he's going to be the absolute most unmanageable nightmare alive.

It does absolutely nothing to help him.

He doesn't think anyone in the Institute is ever going to help him. He doesn't think he's going to force Elias's hand into letting him go by racking up the most HR complaints in Institute history. It doesn't actually help him in any way to do the vast majority of what he does--it actively hurts him, actually. There's no one in the Institute who wants to help him, because they see him as a nuisance. When he causes Elias too much trouble, Elias punishes him for it. It'd be better from a consequentialist perspective to have settled into some kind of facade of normalcy, but he hasn't. Because playing along, going along with the facade as an Institute employee--he'd have to at least implicitly admit that what happened to him isn't relevant anymore. Sure, Elias kidnapped him and fed him to an ancient, primordial hunger from the dawn of civilization, but by god, he has his monthly staff meeting to get to, and that's too important to make a fuss about the first thing.

It's kind of sad, because while the Institute didn't know the entire picture, nineteen-year old Martin almost immediately said "wow, that blatantly unstable child sure does act like he's being severely abused." Elias had to feed him a story about an entirely different abuser to dodge the world's most needed CPS visit, and Martin still almost turned around and reported Elias literally the same afternoon. Yeah, Elias had a story for the institute to explain jon's Everything, but they really didn't have to buy it.

Like, willful ignorance absolutely played a role in it. Part of it was Elias was their boss and nobody wanted to be the one to accuse him of child abuse. It was easier to accept his lies at face value and not stick their neck out for him. Part of it was just that Jon's never been a very likable victim for them. He wasn't some tearful damsel they could swoop in and save--he smoked too much and was angry and loud about it. And once they made that initial decision to ignore their misgivings, the chances of anyone breaking that pattern got extremely low. No one wants to admit to themselves that they ignored a little kid in an extremely abusive household just because his abuser was their boss and they didn't like the kid all that much. Martin kind of hit Jon like a grenade when he first joined up and actually gave a shit if he was okay.

Of course, this all means that Jon's spent the past decade or so being told by everyone who could see him hurting that his upset at the soul-crushing pain he was in was inconvenient to them and it's rude of him to be so loud about it, could he do that somewhere else, because it really doesn't matter. and he's still there saying "it does matter. it matters to me."

Just--doing pointless things because if he doesn't then they stop mattering and they have to matter somehow defines so much of what he does.

When he was a little boy, Gerry told him that the clothes you wore were meant to be things that make you feel like you, that were who you were or wanted to be, and Jon decided that the parts of him that he loved were made up of other people. It's been fourteen years since he told him that, and out of all the people he's tried to make himself with, Daisy is the only one he still has in his life. He wears the secondhand clothes of people who he lost without anyone else caring to preserve a self that people are actively trying to kill. The fact that he feels more like him when he wears Gerry's coat only matters to the extent that he lets it. He makes pointless interventions on behalf of people he knows he probably can't save, because if he doesn't, then he fact that they needed help to begin with didn't matter. It only mattered whether they could have been saved; needing to be saved doesn't factor in.

I basically wanted him to be the opposite of Basira. Basira was the world's most polite hostage in Season 3. Martin had to actually ask her if she was aware she was in a hostage situation. Her entire thing was that there was no point in getting upset at something you couldn't change--you either got on as best you could or you found a way to change it anyway. That's the exact opposite to nhthcth Jon's approach to life--the Web even pokes fun at him for it in chapter 9. A spider's prey thrashes itself to death trying to get out of its web. Jon's just--flailing like a fly struggling against a web. Gertrude always conserved her resources and energy for where it would matter most, but he exhausts himself on things he knows wouldn't succeed. It doesn't make any practical sense, but there's something viscerally human about it still.

And the last thing that sentence tells you about Jon is that he is someone who has to believe in the lightning strike.

The thing is? Jon knows about pretty much everything this post discussed. No one really knew Gertrude, but if there was someone who did, it was him. He's been hanging around her since he was a little kid. It's been stated that she personally tried to teach him to some degree, though, and we've seen that she's stated to his face that she would not have tried to save him if she had been the one to take his statement. She never really represented a chance at things having gone differently to begin with.

But he still thinks of her specifically when he tries to find the version of himself that isn't this. Because even if she was never really a chance, she was still the biggest chance he had.

Jon was eight. He knew jack all when this started, and he was going up against the most dangerous entity there was. He was never going to come up with a place to go to that wasn't the Magnus Institute, and he was never going to outsmart the Web on his own. Gertrude Robinson was the only one who he ever had a snowball's chance of crossing paths with who wasn't like, actively evil.

There's basically nil chance of her having had some kind of midlife crisis right before he showed up and deciding that this is the one she must save and damn the consequences. There's an even smaller chance of her actually pulling it off and saving him from the Web. But that was the biggest chance he had, and he can't help but cling to it.

Sometimes, you have to beat the odds. Sometimes, lightning strikes.

If you believe in the idea of the multiverse, and that everything that can happen will happen, there is a Jon out there in some far-off universe who walked into the Magnus Institute and met Gertrude Robinson instead of James Wright. There is a Gertrude Robinson who, against all odds, decided that Jon was worth the costs of saving him, who fought tooth and nail to save him and won. It's a fairytale he tells himself, but the idea of someone kind enough to put him in a car so they could drive all about, go on adventures, and find places with rain was also a fairytale he once heard, and it still happened. Gerry was his lightning strike.

And that's really the crux of it. In order for Jon to have loved Gerry the way he did, he had to be someone who would bank everything on odds that were a lot smaller than being struck by lightning. Jon needs to be the type of person who will believe in chances that barely exist, because if he doesn't, he could have never made he decisions he had to make to stay by Gerry's side.

Gerry Keay was not Gertrude Robinson, and he definitely was not anywhere near her caliber when he was the little boy who tried to take Jon and run. They live in a world that tears into your soul, that Marks you in a way that cannot be removed and that never, ever lets you go. It's monsters eating other monsters, and they were both very small and very damned from the get-out. The chances of Jon Sims and Gerry Keay saving each other were always so much smaller than the chances of Gertrude Robinson saving him, and he knew it. If he couldn't believe that there was at least a chance that Gertrude would have saved him, then he couldn't believe that he and Gerry ever had a chance of finding their way home.

We still don't know where Gerry is in 2013, why he isn't there, but we know that Daisy saw him with Jon in 2011, kicking each other under the table for making ill-timed jokes to a monster who wanted to kill them. They first ran in 1999. That's twelve years of betting everything on odds south of a lightning strike. It takes specific kinds of people to do that. It takes people who will take the worst odds possible because they're the only ones they have.

There's no power of love or friendship or hope in that universe, but I think Jon and Gerry wanted to believe that they could love each other to the point of survival. They were looking at a world where, in the whole span of human history, love had not made a lick of difference to the things they faced, and they were asking to be the exception. Wondering if Gertrude Robinson would have saved him... it's hardly the most improbable thing Jon's ever let himself believe.

#nhthcth #tma #the magnus archives #jon sims #gertrude robinson #gerry keay #the continuing adventures of me answering asks after my adhd meds have worn off #babygirl i will answer questions no one even asked #me answering asks when unmedicated is just me reaching the end and realizing i went off on every tangent known to man #i will forge bold new paths into terrains no one ever fucking asked about #i already typed it it's too late now here have my info dump #i want you all to know that there's a half answered ask in my drafts and i found a way to have tangents about death note the iconic anime #and plato's republic the classic of greek philosophical thought #did the ask have absolutely anything to do with either of those things #no #i'm like this in real life too you could not plot a conversation with me on a map

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shriekthemighty · 7 months

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Predictions/theories for The Magnus Protocol:

Alex will probably be playing Martin, but Jonny will probably not be playing Jon, at least not as we knew him. It was outright stated that without the Eye's influence, there might be little of Jon left, and when he took over as Pupil of the Eye he was clearly struggling to retain his personhood, so I can see Martin pulling some Last Centurion shit over the babbling body that used to be his boyfriend. Maybe we get Jon back, maybe Martin will be forced to let him go to save the world, but I doubt it will be just Martin and Jon right from the start.

The most obvious answer to the other redacted name would be Jonah Magnus, but I feel like that's too obvious? It's definitely got to be someone we know, but since this is an alternate universe, the options are huge. I'm not sure how it would work with the timeline, but I think Raymond Fielding is a good possibility. If something happened so Agnes didn't kill him, a major Web avatar being on the board just makes sense. (I might double check the timeline on this and come back to it, but that's my thought for now. It honestly could be anyone. I saw someone half jokingly say Leitner, which would be HILARIOUS, but unlikely.)

I really hope I'm wrong, but I doubt Bonzo/Bonzoland will have as much plot significance as the ARG made it seem. I think that was just a fun spooky thing for people to discover.

I think Gwendolyn Bouchard is probably a cousin of Elias, and I also think she's probably not a bad guy? That feels too obvious, plus, we don't actually have any reason to think the Bouchards are like the Lukas family or anything. The only one of them who might have had a tie to the Eye before Elias joined the Institute is his father. I think she's probably trying to figure out what happened to Elias, or maybe she even knows and is trying to stop it from happening to anyone else. I think she'll be an ally to the main characters, and a way to get to know more of the real Elias.

This is more of something I think would be interesting than something I think there's a strong chance of, but assuming we're correct about the spreadsheet with the children's names on it being from the Institute, and assuming 'Gerard Kaey' from the spreadsheet is Gerard Keay from TMA, I think it would be deliciously tragic if Gerry was taken from Mary (or she died, or was otherwise not the person raising him) and he was raised by Eric instead. We know he worked for the Institute, and honestly, the idea that Gerry got to be raised by the parent fandom has widely agreed was better, only to have a life that is just as bad or worse, really intrigues me.

#the magnus protocol

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teamfortresstwo · 7 months

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Please. PLEASE. Share the promised Jonahkola thoughts.

+ The devious little freaks. For motivation

Okay so this is less talking about how Jonah and Nikola blend into eachother’s powers and more just Jonahkola propoganda because I’m doing this in the middle of class and a lot of it is just me throwing my Jonahkola thoughts at the wall but!! I hope you enjoy anyway-

•Nikola is one of the only early avatars to show any kind of respect towards Jon- “You’re pretty powerful yourself!” While most other avatars act hostile and belittling towards him. This also reflects Elias’s own feelings towards Jon, ultimately empowering him but also patronizing in a similar way to Nikola. (They actually act weirdly similar in a lot of regards to Jon, but that’s a different story)

•Both Elias and Nikola have this specific way of acting in which they are constantly unaffected up until the moment things get off track. Elias immediately jumping to murdering leitner instead of going for anything less drastic, Nikola dropping her happy facade when Tim is the one with the lighter.

•Literally the only relevant corpses in the unknowing are the ones Elias himself killed, coincidence? I think not.

•Elias doesn’t want Tim to go to the unknowing. Yes, this is perhaps because he’s worried about how it might stunt Jon’s progress, but as we see with leitner, if that was a concern then he’d probably just take up Tim’s offer of killing him. And, if it isn’t the concern, then what is??

•Well, I mean, Jon certainly wasn’t the one to kill Nikola. Just saying. I think elias wanted Nikola to live, but ultimately was unwilling to make any compromises about serving the eye (allowing the unknowing to happen so he could watch and not telling her that it wouldn’t work as that would interfere with his own ritual) (God I love when a TMA ship has tragedy caused by the fear powers, favorite kind of TMA yuri.)

•Both Nikola and Elias have strange connections to the web too?? The web has a lot of theatre implications, like in mag 172 “strung out”, plus Nikola’s whole thing as the angler fish which includes addiction in the form of cigars and strings. Elias meanwhile is a master manipulator (see: Jonathan Sims, Peter Lukas, Basira Hussain, and most of the other members of archival staff) and a lot of people speculate -from what I’ve seen - that if he wasn’t so absolutely of the eye, he might’ve been of the web instead.

•Okay I genuinely don’t recall, what was the point of distracting elias during the ritual?? Like, were they afraid he’d interfere? He’d have no reason to, right?? So like, IDK Tim walking in on her and Nikola going at it yuri style theory feeling less farfetched 😳😳

•Elias is sooooo theatric. Literally every part of him is a performance until you can no longer comprehend which parts are truly him and which parts are the mask he puts on, and I think that’s very stranger of him <33

•Okay I was looking at mag 44, “tight rope” and the statement givers name is Yuri let’s go ❗️❗️

•Okay but actually, Ivan-Yuri’s brother-has dreams of being put tied up in a rough sack despite having little to no memories of the whole ordeal. Y’know who else makes people live through awful things in their dreams? Thas right baby, the archivist ‼️‼️Which, Nikola takes the role of as Gertrude, connecting her to the most prominent figure of the eye and also in Elias’s life.

•The circus of the other also puts him (Ivan) in the role of tight rope walker-which btw I think elias totally would be but that’s a different thing- and it follows around the eye, Jon being put into the situations of every statement giver, endlessly becoming and cataloging the experiences of people who he is not. (Writing this, I’m realizing that the fact that for the duration of a statement Jon “becomes” the statement giver is a little stranger core.)

•Weird relations to humanity and personhood. Nikola can still die, but they cannot bleed. It’s interesting, I wouldn’t say bleeding is at all as necessary to a person’s idea of a human as dying-especially if that person is the mortality fearing jonah magnus-and yet he frames that in a way that would exclude Nikola from being a person, something she’d never want to be. I like to believe this is out of a fondness for her.

•I don’t think Elias ever speaks bad of Nikola? Which, he seems dismissive of Prentiss and basically pretends to not believe she exists, so there’s a reason not to speak bad of her. And he displays distaste for Michael and the spiral is pretty damn close to the stranger. But nope, no shade towards the clown lady…for some reason.

#jonahkola

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karuvapatta · 11 months

Text

Here we goooooooo

***

Come Monday, there is a noticeable improvement in the atmosphere down in the Archives. Maybe it’s the illusion of a common goal to work towards, or just an after-effect of a moderately pleasant evening at the pub. Either way, it probably says something worrying about each and every one of them, but Jon can’t bring himself to care.

On a different note, his copy of House of Leaves is already lying on the desk in his office, with a short note written in Elias’s elegant handwriting.

You were right, the note says. I did like it.

Jon re-reads it obsessively before he finally caves and shoves it somewhere into the depths of his desk, along with the book. What does it mean? Did Elias mean it sincerely, or was he being sarcastic? Is he toying with Jon again? Why didn’t he hand it over in person, and share some of his thoughts? Is Jon severely misinterpreting the nature of their relationship? Because it’s not all that strange to exchange book recommendations with your professional acquaintances, isn’t it? And then discuss them?

The most probable answer is that Elias is avoiding him. Which shouldn’t hurt, because Jon has been avoiding Elias, but it still does. A bit.

That is, until they can avoid each other no longer. One of the dreaded interdepartmental meetings is coming up, and Jon doesn’t think he can weasel his way out of it, unless he gets himself sick or injured. And Elias will of course be there, given that he is organizing the damn thing.

Jon gets up earlier on Thursday and puts a bit more effort into his appearance, even going so far as to hanging his mirror back on the bathroom wall. He really needs a haircut at this point, but as he doesn’t trust himself with scissors, he tries to pin back his hair into a somewhat-professional looking bun. It does make him look too much like a hipster, unfortunately, but it’s better than letting it hang loose in front of his face, or pilling it up into a messy ponytail he usually ends up with.

The outcome is—honestly the best he could have hoped for. At least he ironed his shirt properly, and it almost fits him. He almost doesn’t look like an awkward teenager, dressing up for his first real date, or a job interview. Almost.

The meeting begins at 9 a.m. sharp. Jon already feels horribly underdressed – not to mention underqualified, as he is one of the youngest people here. And it’s not at all helped when Elias makes his entrance, looking perfectly stylish, from the subtle pattern on his tie, to the tips of his polished shoes. Jon doesn’t look up as Elias makes his way through the room, pretending to read the papers stacked before him on the table, and praying that no-one hears the frantic pounding of his heart.

“Good morning,” Elias says genially. The pleasant lilt of his voice does something utterly embarrassing to Jon’s insides. “I trust you are all having a productive week. Now, if you please—”

It’s just reports. Jon needs to deliver a report, assert that the Archives are operating without any problems, that he needs no additional funding, has no issues with the other departments. Nothing actually important. In truth, this entire meeting could have been an email, but Elias insists on bringing them all here. Possibly because the forced eye-contact enables him to read everyone’s mind in search of anything unorthodox.

Come to think of it, this is very probably the reason.

The Head Librarian is going through the usual: new acquisitions, outsiders requesting access to the Library, and an unpleasant incident involving a strange book that may or may not have been a Leitner. Jon spaces out, trying to rehearse what he’s about to say, and barely even notices when the man finishes speaking.

“Thank you, Salim,” Elias nods. “Jon?”

Good lord. He shouldn’t have been avoiding Elias. He shouldn’t have waited until now to face him, because his head is empty, his thoughts swirling in unhelpful patterns. Is Elias wearing the same cologne? There is the faintest trace of it in the air. And—and he’s waiting for Jon to speak, probably with that calm, expectant look on his face, distant and professional, while Jon sits frozen, unable to speak.

He looks up, and meets Elias’s eyes.

It’s—he’s seen them before, hundreds of times. There’s no reason for his pulse to speed up. He has seen Elias’s lips, the finely sculpted bones of his face, the delicate web of crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes. He has kissed those very same lips, the memory so strong it’s almost a tangible thing, so soft against his own mouth, gentle at first, and then more pressing, insistent, moving deeper, taking everything Jon didn’t even know he had to give—

Elias looks away and clears his throat.

“Jon? The report?”

Oh fuck. Elias can read his mind. And here Jon is, fantasizing about the man sitting three feet away from him, his boss, during a business meeting, surrounded by his co-workers—

“Right,” Jon hurries to say, nearly scattering the papers he had folded so carefully in front of him. “Excuse me. Right—”

He doesn’t look up again, pretending to check the notes he has already memorized, and lets his voice carry on while the rest of him curls in shame. Thank God no-one comments or asks him any questions.

“Thank you,” Elias says curtly. “Ingrid?”

It goes on like this. By the time Keith finishes arguing with Elias about the security measures and rapid personnel turnover in the Artefact Storage, Jon can almost breathe normally.

Of course he nearly misses his name being said again, this time by Ingrid, Head of Research, and his former boss.

“Jon?” she repeats, clear disapproval in her tone. “I was requesting access to the Archives.”

Access? To his Archives?

“What for?” Jon asks.

Too late, he notices the strange quality of his voice, a buzz of static; Ingrid frowns but she opens her mouth nonetheless, about to give him the answers he seeks. Compelled to.

“That is—” Jon hurries to say. “The Archives are still in a state of disarray. We are not nearly done cataloguing everything. If you let me know what exactly you’re looking for, I’ll be able to find it for you.”

Ingrid scowls. “Not done cataloguing? What, pray tell, have you been doing these past months then?”

It doesn’t seem like she noticed Jon’s question, or understood its significance. Does she even know what he is? Do any of them know? Do they also possess strange powers? Are they even aware of what it is they all serve? Is Jon being kept out of the loop, or is Elias keeping them all within their own little corners, feeding everyone bits of information, and then forcing them here, so that they can regard each other suspiciously above the unassuming conference table?

Because there is the faint undercurrent of fear in the air. He hasn’t noticed it before, too preoccupied with Elias, but it’s most definitely present. Every person has their own secrets to protect, and they sit here, afraid of those secrets being exposed in front of their co-workers, while the Eye already sees through them all and feasts on their fear.

He shakes away these thoughts and tries to compose himself.

“I believe I’ve already given my report on the state of the Archives,” he says. “I can repeat it, if you’d like.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Elias interjects. “Ingrid, if you require anything from the Archives, I’m sure Jon will be more than happy to assist you. I’m assuming you can sort it out between yourselves?”

“Yes,” says Jon.

“Of course,” says Ingrid.

The rest of the meeting is blissfully uneventful. Jon takes meticulous notes he isn’t planning on reading, just to keep his focus where it should be, and to hold his thoughts in check. Not an easy task once Elias leans back in his chair, his long, elegant fingers steepled together, observing the proceedings with rapt attention. There is a weight to his steely gaze that feels almost physical. Jon finds himself caught in it once Elias turns to him, and it takes conscious effort not to shudder. Good lord, if that’s what’s going to happen every time Elias looks at him…

He breathes a relieved sigh as soon as Elias dismisses them. That is, until Elias says:

“Jon. A word, please?”

Rosie gives him a warm, sympathetic smile as she picks up her laptop and a stack of reports. But she still leaves the room and closes the door behind her.

It’s just the two of them. Jon, half-standing, awkwardly trying to sort through his notes. Elias, sitting back in his swivel chair, perfectly poised and professional.

“Lock the door,” Elias says.

Jon swallows; his throat is dry as sawdust. But he moves, automatically, takes the several steps around the table, reaches the door, and the key in the lock. Turns it. Swallows again, with little success.

Elias is waiting, silent, his silhouette outlined against the windows behind his back. It’s a bright, sunny day. Almost too bright to look at.

Why isn’t he saying anything? Is he waiting for Jon to speak? To apologize? For what, his errant thoughts? The reckless use of his powers? His inability to concentrate? Or is he simply waiting for Jon to implode under the weight of his own anxieties? Because he’s fairly sure it wouldn’t take long.

What Elias says, however, is: “You look nice.”

Jon startles, then begins to laugh. “What?”

Elias tips his head to the side and frowns. “Although the suit is abysmal. I should introduce you to my tailor. We may then find something that will actually fit you.”

“I can’t afford your tailor, Elias,” Jon says, exasperated.

“Oh, I would be more than happy to pay for it,” Elias says. “Besides, you’ll need it for the next fundraiser.”

“What fundraiser?” Jon is starting to panic.

“I’m sure Rosie keeps you informed about upcoming events,” Elias says. “Have you checked your email?” At Jon’s blank expression, Elias sighs. “You do have assistants, do you not?”

“They’re not in charge of my schedule,” Jon protests. “Or sorting through my emails.”

The corner of Elias’s lip is twitching. He is enjoying this: flustered, wrong-footed Jon, fumbling through his answers.

“I assume you didn’t keep me here to insult my appearance?” Jon asks, trying to wrestle back some control over the flow of this bizarre conversation.

“I complimented your appearance,” Elias says. “It’s just your wardrobe I take issue with.”

“I see,” Jon says. “So, what is it? You want to dress me up in fancy clothes and have me dangle on your arm during the next posh event for all your rich friends?”

“Pretty much.”

It’s just a game, Jon thinks to himself, gritting his teeth. It’s Elias. Everything is a game to him. If Jon lets it get under his skin, he’s already lost.

Elias stands up, every move practiced, elegant. He reaches Jon in a few easy strides. Without the table separating them, Jon feels exposed and helpless. He’s sure Elias knows this.

“This is what I’m talking about,” Elias says, casually smoothing the creases of Jon’s damn suit. The touch of his hands is electric, even through the layers of fabric; it has Jon shivering, his breath catching in his throat. Worse, still, when Elias’s fingers slip upwards, to adjust the collar of his shirt, just shy of brushing the skin of his throat. “It’s too big on you. Or have you lost weight again?”

“My weight is none of your business.”

“Your health is very much my concern.”

“Why?”

“I told you. You’re my Archivist.” Elias’s voice drops into a whisper, warm and possessive. Jon’s indignation is feeble, melts away quickly, too quickly, with every frantic beat of his pulse against Elias’s fingers. “Do you know how damn hard it is to concentrate on my job with you there? When you look at me, when you think about me?”

“Then stop reading my mind,” Jon says. Elias is so close; if he lowered his head, if Jon stood on his tip-toes…

“I can’t,” Elias says. “I need to know, Jon. I need to know everything about you. I’m sure I don’t have to explain what it feels like.”

He’s smiling as he says it, huffing out a breath of not-quite laughter. But there’s an edge of frustration to his tone that Jon doesn’t know how to cope with. And he’s looking at him this entire time, his grey eyes pinning Jon in place, not even searching for anything. As if the sight of him was enough to satisfy whatever urges coursed through Elias’s veins.

“It’s hard to imagine the Beholding cares about this,” Jon says.

Even so, he cannot resist pressing his fingers to Elias’s cheek, just to feel it again; to see Elias’s pupils widen, watch the curve of his mouth as he smiles with wry amusement.

“I assure you, it craves the fear of its servants’ as much as anyone else’s,” Elias says. “More, perhaps.”

Is the Eye watching them now? It’s hard to tell. It’s hard to think.

“What are you afraid of?” Jon asks.

The compulsion rolls of his tongue, easily, as easy as breathing. And Elias shivers when he feels the pull of it, closes his eyes, and leans down, to close the last few inches separating them. To kiss Jon, hungry, drinking in the power he had bestowed upon him. He struggles to resist it, his lips forming words he refuses to voice, in between the frantic kisses he presses to Jon’s mouth.

He loves the struggle. Jon knows this instinctively. He loves it, and it’s exhilarating.

They part, breathless. Jon smiles, Elias’s warm breath tickling his skin, and presses another quick kiss to the corner of his mouth before pulling away.

“You never answered my question,” Jon points out.

“Right now? I’m mostly afraid Rosie will figure out what happened and report me to HR,” Elias is joking, but only just.

“Yes, that would be dreadful,” Jon says.

“Get back to work,” Elias says.

“Yes,” Jon nods. “I should probably do that.”

He doesn’t fully process it until he’s back in his office, staring at the wall while the events of this morning play themselves out in his head, in full, loving detail. Everything he said and did. Everything Elias said and did. Everything it could potentially mean.

Oh, this is bad. This is very bad.

#jonelias #jonathan sims #elias bouchard #let's continue to put Jon in Situations #for our collective amusement #the magnus archives

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jonahfagnus · 5 months

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i dont think you ever posted about your "jon sees elias as jonah when he takes the archivist job" au but please start with that immediately 👀👀👀👀👀👀

so i dont think theres very much that i didnt say in the tags of the post i made about it (unless tumblr ate those for some reason)

but basically. yeah after jon takes the archivist position he starts seeing elias as jonah (at elias' age, not as like. a corpse in the panopticon). obviously he immediately realises that its jonah bcs, yknow, the guys paintings are everywhere.

i imagine jon's train of thought is something like this:

did my boss get possessed by jonah magnus -> no thats dumb ghosts arent real -> im having a psychotic episode -> surely id be seeing other symptoms -> what the FUCK is happening

so a huge amount of jon's desire to find the truth about the supernatural ends up focused on jonah. initially he's just doing research into the actual guy jonah magnus himself but that doesnt really get him anywhere because its not like jonah was like "dear diary im an eye avatar and im going to start putting my eyes into other people so i can be immortal" so he starts doing research into elias instead. which also turns out to be quite difficult just doing normal research.

luckily, jon and elias are decently friendly with each other (at least in early s1, which this would still be). so surely its not weird to try and make sure your relationship with your boss is positive. thats just common sense thats just cultivating a welcoming workplace environment or whatever. and ofc elias is like

bcs this is objectively great! jons leaning into the eye hes considering breaching elias' privacy to learn more about him and ofc hes flattered that jon is so focused on him in particular. so he allows jon to break into his office and look through his things and he pretends he isnt watching the entire time, and he casually mentions some flaws in his home security to try and spur jon into breaking into his house (which he doesnt. yet.)

they're sort of not-quite-dating - tim might joke about jon going on dates with elias and jon gets very flustered and denies it and elias is a little over affectionate in public just to see how jon reacts, but neither of them have any idea that jon's doing all of this just so he can figure out why his boss is (apparently) the founder of the institute.

then prentiss happens. then they find gertrude's body.

i dont think jon gets as paranoid as he does in canon - hes been less of an asshole since all of his focus has gone into researching elias and trying to figure out what the fuck happened. so while i think he does do some research into the archival crew, its mainly research into gertrude herself, and continuing his research into elias. now with added stalking!

and of course elias still doesnt care about the stalking because hes still 1. very happy jon is taking to the eye so well and 2. flattered that jon is so focused on him to the point of stalking him. in my heart i know elias considers stalking to be a form of flirting

s2 goes generally the same but i want jon to find out about the not-them just a little sooner so i can make him go "holy shit! elias got not-them'd! what the fuck!" of course this is completely incorrect if you know anything about how the not-them works but jon. doesnt.

jon, of course, breaks the table. then he finds out that sasha got not-them'd. then he finds out leitner is alive. then he finds out leitner is dead.

who else does he have to go to? he shows up at elias' home, maybe just minutes after elias finishes cleaning up, because a man has been killed in his office and he didnt do it.

because i am a soft elias truther s3 isnt just manipulation and horrible things happening for jon. horrible things still do happen (elias very much doesnt discourage him from talking to jude perry, or mike crew, for example) and elias is still a bastard but its probably not any significant amount more horrible than canon s3 was.

jon probably spends amounts of time talking to elias about what leitner told him (which is hilarious to elias) and elias (against his better judgement) doesnt tell jon that leitner was lying, but instead asks him questions that may or may not lead him to figuring out the entities. he's curious as to what's going to happen, and he's sure jon likes him enough that showing just a little of what he knows wont tarnish their relationship

i dont have many thoughts beyond that - the confrontation probably goes differently, for example, and maybe jon permanently moves in with elias. i cant decide how much of a corruption arc i should give jon (obviously he ends up much more content with the eye than in canon bcs the eye is sexy but i cant decide if hes pro apocalypse or not) but when jon finds out that elias is jonah hes like "oh i know" and jonah is like what the fuck do you mean

#the reason elias never realises that jon sees him as jonah is bcs. i decided he doesnt LOL #he just never reads jons mind when jons thinking about why his boss is jonah magnus #also gertrude definitely had the same thing. jon finds that out but its unhelpful to his own research aside from 'something is wrong with #the archivist position' but he already knew that #👁️ | jon sees elias as jonah au

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suspiciousasphalt · 6 months

Text

first post here 🤪

jongerry wip

i’ll probably post on ao3 once i’ve got more written.

There’s something wrong.

They can tell as soon as they wake up.

The blanket over them is too thick, thicker than any that they own and musty with disuse. They open their eyes slowly, taking stock of their surroundings. There is a coffee table in front of them. (Are they on a couch?) The table is clean, except for several stains, tea maybe? Or coffee? Their eyes flick up and they jump back, shoving into the back of the couch.

“AHhhh” Whoever is in front of them also jumps back a bit, tripping on the coffee table, and stumbling to catch his balance. “Ah, um, sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I-I’m Jon.”

“Right, and where am I?”

“Uh, the breakroom? The Archives breakroom? In the Magnus Institute, that is. I, uh, I was leaving for the day, and I saw you in here?” Right- Gerry remembers, now. Gertrude had them hunting down a Leitner. Except it hadn’t just been a Leitner, whoever came across it had it for too long, and had fully Become by then. It was so far gone that it’d begun growing patchy fur, and its ears were sharp. Gerry’d spent hours running through London, weaving through alleyways until they'd finally gotten a jump on it. Gertrude demanded an update, and as soon as they finished, they crashed on the break room couch.

“And who are you?”

“Right, Gerard, they/them for now. I… freelance, for Gertrude.” Gerry popped their neck, and watched Jon. Instead of the usual confusion that they’d come to expect from the stuffy academic types that seemed drawn to the Magnus Institute, Jon just nodded and stuck out his hand.

“Jonathan Sims, he/they. Just call me Jon, though.” Gerry smirked in amusement.

“Well Jon, nice to meet you, but I doubt I’ll be seeing you with enough frequency to call you anything.” Jon sputters a bit, and grows red in the face (In a way that is totally not cute, shut up brain) and occurs to Gerry that maybe that was a bit rude. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that. I just don't tend to stick around the Institute longer than I have to.”

Jon just raises an eyebrow and looks at Gerry's current tangled-in-a-blanket state. Now it’s Gerry’s turn to blush.

“Well, usually. In my defense, it’s been a long bloody day, and I needed to crash.” Jon looks curious at that, but decides not to ask. A wise decision- Jon would get no answers from them. “Anyway, I better be off.”

Gerry gets up and pulls on their jacket, but pauses when they see the clock.

“Wait, why are you just leaving? It’s like 7:00? And what are you doing in the archives? Nobody ever really comes down here.”

“You’re down here.” Ah so Jon’s a prickly one. Gerry just gives him a Look, and Jon blushes again.

“Mr. Bouchard told me that I’m transferring to the Archives tomorrow, as an assistant. And that was at 5:00, and then I tried to finish up my work so no one in research would be stuck with what I didn’t get done. Then I was about to leave and realized I should probably go meet my new boss… So then I came down here and Gertrude just glared at me a bit before stomping off upstairs. I waited around for a bit, because I thought it might be rude if she came back down like only a few minutes later and I was already gone? But it doesn’t seem like she’s coming back anytime soon. And then I, ah saw you in here? And I didn’t think anybody else was down here, um, ever? So I just came in to look, and now we’re… here?”

Okay, so the rambling is a bit cute, and Gerry has half a mind to be amused, but there are more pressing concerns.

“Sorry, did you just say you’re going to be an archival assistant?”

“Um, yes?”

“Have you signed any papers yet?” Gerry’s properly concerned now, and Jon seems to be getting agitated.

“Yes? I signed the transfer papers?”

“Damn, Gertrude’s not going to be happy with that.”

“Excuse you, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh Gertrude has been absolutely refusing to get new assistants for years. I would have thought Elias would have wanted to avoid pissing her off. No wonder she hasn’t been back yet. She’s probably ripping him a new one” Jon visibly bristles.

“Well excuse me, but I hardly see how having an assistant would be a bad thing. I mean, if the state of this place is anything to go by, then she certainly needs one.”

“Oh try telling her that. Or don’t,” Gerry gives a cynical snort, “she’s going to be right pissed no matter what anyone says.”

“Whatever,” Jon scoffs, “Too late now. She’ll either have to deal with me or take it up with Mr. Bouchard.”

“Oh I imagine she is.”

It isn’t until Jon is storming away, and stomping up the stairs that Gerry realizes that they were probably being rude.

“Well Shit”

#jongerry #tma #tma podcast #tma au #tma-typical meet-ugly #not sure where i’m going with this tbh #current wip #wip wednesday #gender-fluid Gerry #gender-queer Jon #jonder-queer if you will

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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 8 months

Text

Two Eyes - a Magnus Archives fic

“Can I have a cigarette?”

No. No, this… couldn’t happen.

One moment of fear gripped me, memories of stories, and of the thing I’d seen in the Unknowing, shucking people out of their skin like corn. But I wasn’t the same; the world wasn’t the same. Even if this was happening, I was not some weak human anymore.

Part of the Magnus Monsterverse.

AO3

--------

Martin and I spent the rest of the day celebrating my new job and pretending we didn’t feel like there was a threat to the whole world possibly looming over our heads.

Was something going on? Absolutely. Did we have further means to figure it out right now? We did not! Did we need stress relief? Yes.

And… well. We hadn’t really gotten the chance to be… goofy together. Silly.

Dating.

Flirting. (As absolutely poor as mine was, he received it with grace.)

Eating each other’s ice cream, and… all those things.

Here we were, giggling over dropped whipped cream on a cafe table, leaning in, and being ridiculous.

I only saw him. I only wanted to see him.

He took my hand and brought it to his lips, smiling at me over my knuckles. “I’m dating a hot librarian, did you know?”

“Not a librarian,” I said. “Only a temporary worker. Shelver.”

“Bringing down hot librarian money ,” he said.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Right. Flush.”

“Absolutely rich,” he murmured, absolutely not meaning money, looking at me through his lashes.

Oh, Martin…

I’m sure, statistically, I must have been happier in my life, but at that moment, I could not think of one such time.

“I have to admit it,” I murmured, my head on his shoulder. “Quiet London is nice.”

“Right?” said Martin, his head resting on mine. We sat on a bench in a park called Hadrian’s Folly. (Not the Roman general, but an architect born eight hundred years later, who’d tried to turn this park into a palace and discovered it to be all but swamp, sinking his creation. You could still tour the upper rooms.) “Honestly, it… it’s nice. When I need to be alone, I can be. Truly. Or at least, according to my five senses.”

I knew what he meant. It was quiet, but oh… I still knew. Knew every mind that passed, knew the fleeting hearts that beat with such concerns all around, knew the weight upon them to be silent and show nothing and stay calm.

I did not yet know why they felt those things. Which was curious. I’d have to push to learn more, and I didn’t want to do that. I exhaled. “I just wish we had more time like this.”

“Maybe we will. We don’t actually know what’s happening. What the danger is. If there is any.”

“I think the Gerrys are right,” I murmured. “And I think that… possibly not-evil Jonah was genuinely trying to warn me of something.”

“So let’s go eat Leitner and cut it off at the pass,” Martin said, mostly joking. He threaded his fingers between mine.

“Ha,” I said. “If he’s cagey enough to make Jonah Magnus nervous, he’s probably even worse than a pair of haunted eyeballs.”

Martin laughed and began naming other potentially haunted body parts.

We grew quite ribald, and had anyone come near, I suspect we would have embarrassed them.

But no one did. In Quiet London terms, we were loud, but we were also left alone.

That night, tucked into his too-small bed, we slept. Or really, Martin slept, and I lay awake, trying to ignore the next logical step staring me in the face.

I wanted to learn more without losing myself. I knew I hadn’t exhausted my fellow Eye-based resources yet. Not at all. However, I didn’t want to see him.

I didn’t want to! But there weren’t a lot of us Eye-type folk here, curiously enough. I wasn’t sure why that was, and the Eye wasn’t telling me (tonight’s topic was the history of Nesalogus netscheri , the world’s rarest breed of rabbit). I’d exhausted the Gerrys; I already knew that even if I visited the other two, they would basically say, We already talked about this? And then maybe go make out with Michael, or whatever.

But Jonah was new, I told myself. He wouldn’t know anything, I told myself. It would be a waste of time, I told myself.

The Eye wanted me to talk to him.

The Eye still wanted us to… get along.

I fidgeted. Rolled over. Flopped over Martin, spooning him from behind like some weird ocular backpack.

“You good?” he murmured.

“No,” I moaned. “It wants me to talk to Jonah.”

“You’re probably going to have to, anyway,” he said.

“He’s not asleep.” I knew . “He’s waiting for me.”

“What… now?” Martin half sat up and checked his phone. “Jon, it’s two in the morning.”

“I’m sorry,” I said pitiably.

He rolled over.

This bed really was too small for us. Even on our sides, we were face to face, or pressed up close; and neither of us wanted anything else. (Which amazed me, because shouldn’t he want space from me?) “Do you need to go, Jon?” he whispered.

“It’s not exactly visiting hours.”

“Sasha doesn’t sleep. She’ll let you in.”

“You’re awfully calm about this,” I said.

“I’ve been over there this late.”

He said it so casually, so… so throwaway. But I knew, suddenly, why. Panic attacks; feeling the world go vague; terror that he’d just… lose himself, and wander Quiet London in a state of emptiness, or an empty city, or maybe that he’d make it empty, and wouldn’t even know, and—

“Martin,” I breathed. “How… how long have you been here?”

His eyes tightened. “A while.”

“How long has all this been going on?”

“A while.”

“Martin…”

He touched my cheek. “You don’t know how long I waited. How long I had to wait. I gave up, Jon.”

Here we were, lovers, together in a way we’d wanted to be in the non-apocalyptic world, and never had the chance… and I hadn’t known this about him. “I’m so selfish,” I whispered. “I should have asked.”

“If I’d wanted to talk about it, I would have,” said Martin. “If you need to go see her tonight, go on. You’ll be fine.”

“Hunters?” I suggested.

“They’re rare,” he said. “And you’ll be careful.”

“And we’re currently suspecting Leitner and have probably got on somebody’s radar,” I said.

He kissed my forehead. “And you can stop them. Which nobody else is able to do.”

He really had changed.

I mean. I knew that. Of course he had. So had I. But he… he was so much quieter. Solemn. The nervous fidgeting was just… gone; his caution, too, seemed to be largely lost, in odd ways.

His focus on me was so very steady. Like I was the only light he could see. And I was missing something else. Something…

Forgive him , the Eye encouraged, but I had nothing to forgive. Martin had never wronged me. “You’re really encouraging me to go out in the middle of the night and see the younger version of a man I hated so much I ate .”

“Admit it,” he said. “You’ve done far weirder.”

I laughed. “I get it now. You’ve become the mad old wise man who lives in a cave.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “With a baking show. Also a blazing social life.”

“Blazing, you say.” Did I really have to leave?

“Absolutely hedonistic,” he said with a small smile, and kissed me.

We were busy for a little while. I no longer felt nearly as anxious, and that truly helped.

He exhaled slowly, forehead against mine. “I choose to believe you’re going to be fine. That you can handle whatever comes at you. That we will be fine.”

This sounded like a mantra. “I can get behind that.”

He looked at me again. “I waited so long. I don’t think I can do it again.”

“I love you,” I whispered. “I…” We weren’t each other’s… us. But we were. Weren’t we? “This is confusing,” I added.

“Yeah,” he said, not asking for clarification, and kissed me again.

“You sure I should go tonight?”

“Will you sleep if you don’t?”

I made a face. “Probably not.”

“You have to go sign paperwork and all of that tomorrow. Go see him. Might as well get it out of the way.”

“You really think this isn’t dangerous.”

“What I think,” said Martin, unblinking, “is that if I don’t choose to trust you now, and get all possessive and weird, I will be feeding the worst parts of myself. So I choose to trust you’ll be safe.”

He wasn’t okay, was he?

The Eye was silent; It didn’t know. This was Martin. It saw Martin. It didn’t analyze Martin. It saw him. Not helpful.

Maybe Martin had just… figured it out. Maybe he really was older and wiser, and I was worried over nothing.

He laughed suddenly. “Your face is a journey right now.”

“Caught me.” It didn’t matter if he wasn’t the one I’d known before. I knew I wanted him now. I knew I loved him now. At this point, I think we both would have known if we didn't fit. “All right. I’ll go.”

“I probably won’t sleep until you get back,” he said, watching me dress in the dark.

“Bribery,” I pronounced, and kissed him again. “I’ll be back.”

“Jokes aside.. If you do somehow run into trouble, please just run.”

I looked down at him, sprawled in his bed, watching me unblinking. “I will. I promise.”

He touched my hand, and I left.

Quiet London was, big shock, even quieter at night.

Not much was open. Lights kept things feeling safe, but there just… wasn’t anyone. No music. No late-night plays letting out. People were awake; I felt them—more pf them lived in London than had in my time, because here, somehow, rent prices had stayed within the grasp of the common man.

It wasn’t really a comforting quiet, though. There was something abjectly miserable about it, though I couldn’t say what. Anticipation? No; a sourness, familiar enough to leave me almost knowing what it was, and yet just altered so that I could not immediately put my finger on it.

I could know.

“Yes, Jon, let’s do that, risking losing myself on a public street, alone and without help. Brilliant,” I muttered.

“Can I have a cigarette?” someone said.

I froze.

To my right was an alley. A shape stood there, human, swaying almost hypnotically, rhythmically, over and over, left and right.

Had I stroked out? “What?”

“Can I have a cigarette?”

No. No, this… couldn’t happen.

“Can I have a cigarette?” said the shape, swaying.

“Listen,” I said, taking a step closer. “I may be new, but I damn well know you’re not supposed to be hunting on your own.”

It swayed, mesmeric. Echoes wafted around it, things I heard not with my ears—cries, screams, the loss of life thanks to this horrifying creation. It had been hunting for a very long time.

Oh, I was getting angry. “Last chance. I will react with prejudice.”

“Can I have a cigarette?” said the shape.

I opened all my eyes and saw .

The angler fish was no solid thing, no proper, unified construct, and it began to peel, shreds of skin and the barest shape of a person beneath cracking and dropping away. The horrifying blob beneath that shape shuddered as if in pain (but it felt none, because it was not real), slivering and melting and falling apart in globs of stolen fat until all was gone.

Behind it stood the puppetmaster.

How could I be surprised, and yet not surprised at all? How could I even have missed the fact that I had met only one Stranger here in our entire group? Stranger-survivors were even rarer than the Eye's, and we were opposites, opposed, enemies.

Especially this one. “Hello, Nikola,” I said.

“Archivist,” said Nikola, her borrowed voice box just as twistedly bright as her old one had been. “Funny meeting you here in the middle of the night! I suppose you want to have a little chat. It does seem your style.”

And she—

This wasn’t the Nikola who’d been locked up. I knew that. So how the hell was she here?

I knew something else, too, as I stared at her, as she stepped out into the light of the street lamps, her hideously malformed plastic smeared with blood and gore, her ringmaster’s uniform shredded and faded: she was old . Very old. Much older than the Nikola I’d known. Impossibly so. She was far, far older than the portal Manuela had made to get to this place.

It was so funny, not being afraid of her anymore. Absolutely bizarre. “How did you even get here?” I started.

“Are you going to turn me in, Archivist?” she said. “I suppose they might believe you, though I don’t think you could actually force me to go with you. A manhunt, I think! How fun! Well, they wouldn’t find me. Not like that other .”

“The other you,” I said.

“Oh, yes! She’s a copy, you know.”

She…

I almost understood that. She was Stranger, and… well, that was the whole thing, wasn’t it? None of them were real . So a copy of a copy may not make a difference to the rest of us, but it did to them, for some reason.

But hadn’t they gotten that Nikola in the usual way? Scooped out of another world? How could that one be a copy of this one? This one… who had been feeding on people for so many years .

She wasn’t building toward the Unknowing. This was just for her. Taking children, taking people, keeping them in an impossible grip of terror and confusion until their bodies simply gave out. Torturing them and enjoying the absolute nightmare she put them through as they screamed, louder than they had ever been in their entire lives.

She’d been doing it for so long. “How dare you hurt people,” I hissed. “You could’ve gone any other way, could’ve joined us, could’ve been helped , and instead, you’re doing this? How dare you!”

“Funny words from a funny man,” said Nikola, clacking her filthy hands at me (one with eight fingers, the other with three). “You feed all the time… do you feel guilty? Oh, I’m sure you do . I’m sure it just eats at you, makes you question everything. I don’t, little Archivist! Isn’t that lovely? You could join me, instead, and avoid their gaze. You could be free of the worst wickedness!”

What the hell was she talking about? “I’m… I… I do not feed all the time, and you are changing the subject,” I snapped, ignoring her accusations of guilt, because of course I felt that, we all felt that, how could we not?

“Funny, funny man,” said Nikola. “I must go rebuild my prop, though, so if you’re all done being scary …”

“I am not done being scary!” I blurted like an idiot. “I can’t leave you out here. Come with me, turn yourself in, or I swear to hell, I will destroy you.”

She stared at me, or I thought she did—whatever paint her face had once had was gone, burned away, leaving patches not quite in the right places for face, nose, eyes—and then, she laughed. Because of course she did.

“I mean it, Nikola.”

“I know ! That’s why it’s delightful. Do you think I’m going to… oh, what is that phrase? Come quietly?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you have any sense of self-preservation?”

“You are far more confident than my last Archivist,” she said, and (predictably) revealed a morbid history. “Chomp, chomp! He was quite gamy. And he cried.”

Yes, yes, she’d killed me, whatever . She was covered in the blood of innocents here . Why was I even fooling around with this? “We are not far from Sasha’s. You’re coming. Or you’re dying. Now. ”

The Eye was eager for both. Either. Whichever one didn’t matter.

She sighed. “Oh, very well.”

She didn’t want to die. I had that to leverage over her. “Do you know where the hospital is? For our kind.”

“I do.” She sounded so bored.

“Lead the way. I am not taking my damned eyes off you.”

“As if you’d take them off me no matter where I walked,” she said, but began lurching up the street at speed.

“Nikola!” I snapped, and ran after her like an idiot. This was not what I’d promised Martin I would do. Oh, well! I was in it now, wasn’t I?

Sbe surged up the hill, her limbs moving slowly but covering great and terrible ground, and I knew I was going to lose her.

Idiot! I thought to myself, and taking out my phone, sent Sasha a message without taking my eyes off Nikola. Incoming Via Sacra going north passing Branzen’s pub right now Help Help

Right, that would tip her off, but the activity of running as fast as I could while watching Nikola and also looking at my phone was… dizzying.

Straining? No, not exactly, but this was splitting attention in a way I hadn’t done before. I was amazed I could, and sort of proud of myself, but also running out of mental space very damn quickly.

“Stop!” I called after her. “You’re making things worse!”

“I think not, Archivist!” Nikola called back at me from near the top of the hill. “I think the next meeting will be on my terms, don’t you?”

How dare she threaten me. How dare she threaten those I love, because if she was coming after me, then Martin was not safe—

Which was when Sasha hit her from the side like a wolf, or a truck, or a saber-toothed lion.

Hit her so hard that they both flew through the glass of a shop, and the sounds were nightmare—screeching and yowling, weird plastic torque and a howl that could have come from any damn thing, Stranger or Flesh alike.

No siren sang in response to that destruction, which in itself was bizarre, but I had no time to consider. I ran up, gasping, feeling the limitations of a body I did not understand at all, and found—

The Sasha-mass of flesh boiling and bubbling like smoke, battling some unspeakable thing in a shape I could almost identify, a creature I almost knew, which filled me with instinctive fear because, whatever it was, it was just a little wrong, and within it, Nikola wielded her disconnected limbs like clubs.

She hit, and the mountain of flesh that was Sasha bled, and though it did not seem to slow her down, it hurt .

She’d hurt her , hurt Sasha , and did it with joy.

I would not permit. “Stop!” I roared, command in my voice, a weird echo I couldn’t explain and felt vibrating through my entire form, and the word cast forth from me with physical effect and swept before me like a wave.

Pieces of glass and carnage whipped up as if in a gust of tornadic wind, violent and concentrated. Nikola recoiled from my cry as if I’d somehow smacked her with an enormous glove.

Sasha shuddered, her form not quite returning to familiar and beloved woman.

Nikola fixed her gaze on me, and I knew. We both knew. She hated me, on a level I couldn’t begin to comprehend, and I knew she’d decided this was it. I wouldn’t let her leave. She wouldn’t let me. She would die here, or I would.

She lunged.

Sasha tackled her from behind (neither of them had mass in the way understood, both a surging bulge of fear converging in will, affecting the physical world, but not of it), and slowed her enough for me to… react.

To…

Do something.

To fill with a thing I did not understand, to channel the helplessness and rage and other feelings I’d ignored and pushed down and denied, to feel the truth of what I spoke even as I spoke it, and I said these words with full knowledge of what they would do, and at the same time, absolute and puerile ignorance: “No.”

And with this word, I denied her.

Denied her right, denied her future. Denied her further chances to change her ways, to alter paths, to do anything other than shatter on the limit of my anger.

Nikola blew apart. Exploded. Slammed into me and the streetlights and the goods in this electronics shop and Sasha, and knocked me over and cracked the street and sent the fire hydrants shrieking water into the sky, and made the city shake and the earth sing and caught the attention of

Caught the

Caught the attention

Something looking at me, something seeing me , something I’d disrupted, something too big to understand that turned toward me at the speed of galaxies, and I—

Sasha stood over me, looking normal, though her hair was a mess and had bits of glass in it. “Jon?” she said softly. “Hey. Hey, there you are. Look at me, Jon. Come on.”

Oh. I was on the ground.

Still no sirens, but for this place, it was awfully noisy: there were voices, and the sound of water being pumped over crackling fire.

I hurt. So much. “What…”

“Martin’s on his way,” said Sasha softly. “Talk to me.”

“About what?” I said like an idiot.

“Maybe what just happened?” she suggested.

A debrief. She desperately needed one, not just for her own sake. Terrible things had happened here, and she needed to know I was innocent. “Saw her,” I managed. “Offered a cigarette. Like the… the… angler fish.”

“I remember the angler fish,” she said, soothing. “What happened?”

“Confronted. She ran. I texted you, tried to keep up.”

“And what happened then, Jon?” she said evenly. “What happened while we were fighting?”

Something absolutely terrifying that no one else in this world could do and I did not at all understand.

Fuck.

Lie?

I felt the lack of that ability right now. I couldn't lie, not seeing like this. I saw her, saw the fire, saw the people fighting the fire. Saw the reporters, saw the news, saw distant people lighting up as if touched with some current as they learned of the weird incident here.

I saw too much, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t turn it off . “I…”

“Just try,” she said softly.

Too many people. Too many emotions. Dreams and hopes and fears, lusts and disgusts and rages. Too many, flooding me, turning my tongue back into to eyes.

My own fears joined the world's. What would happen if I told her I didn’t know? Was I about to be locked up like the other Nikola? Would Sasha try to kill me? To help me? Was I going to lose my freedom? Would Manuela dissect me like a bug? I couldn’t make my tongue work.

“Let me help,” said Jonah Magnus, kneeling beside her. “He’s overwhelmed. Seeing too much. We called it inebrians cernentia—intoxicating visions.”

The children of parents who heard the news and feared some political rebellion and how it could affect their jobs and their lives, the police who suspected supernatural bullshit but had no way to verify or defend and had to pretend it wasn't weird, the—

She gave him a stern look. “Jonah, if you mess this up, you ruin all the progress you’ve made. You know that, don’t you?”

The conspiracy theorists who wondered if this was tied to Them, the foreign spies who parsed the official report of a gas leak and refrained from opinion until they knew more, the—

“Oh, of course,” said Jonah happily. “I would never harm him. You ought to know that.”

“Well, fine,” said Sasha. “Give it a try, then.”

Wait, what was happening?

Jonah smiled down at me, absolutely beatific; though clean-shaven, he’d kept his hair long enough to fall in those loose, golden curls. In a simple white t-shirt and jeans, he looked so damn normal . He’d catch a glance, perhaps, for being pretty, for being mildly cherubic in spite of a torso now revealed to be suspiciously wiry with muscle, but one would never know, looking at him, that he was one of the wickedest humans who had ever lived.

My own fear spiked.

“Oh, no, not that,” he said, his eyes widening. “No, no—don’t be afraid of me. Never of me. I adore you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I slurred.

“This will,” he promised, and—

We saw?

My vision, in my mind, briefly split, all those lives and people and homes, all those opinions and broadcasts and feelings, the murmur of conversations and spike of emotional concern, all of it split , came apart neatly as if the glue had failed, and…

Relief.

I made a small sound, feeling as though I swam up from the bottom of a well. Getting better, feeling lighter, less overwhelmed.

Feeling… more me.

I stared at him.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” he said softly, eyes lidded, unblinking.

BROTHERS , the Eye chirped at me wordlessly.

Dear lord, get me out of here. I tried to sit up and groaned; my side felt… really awful. Burning and sharp and terrible.

“Easy,” said Sasha. “You’ve been impaled.”

“I what?” I blurted, looking down. Oh. Oh, I… lay on some kind of rubble with rebar sticking out of it? Out of me? Right through my side? Oh, I… oh. “That’s not good,” I said in a high, weak voice.

“Shhh. You’re all right. You don’t even have organs , Jon.”

“It hurts!” I said, because it should hurt, shouldn’t it, because I’d done something awful , and I didn’t even know what, and it was frightening, and—

“It’s all right, Jon,” Jonah purred. “Breathe—not that you need to, of course, but psychologically, it helps. You’re all right.”

“But it hurts,” I said like a stupid child.

“So see it,” he said. “See yourself free of it. See it gone, dissolved, turned to something so sweetly organic it cannot hurt you or the environment. See yourself free, Jon, because you can. ”

What was—

Why—

Why did his words matter?

I was angry over it, offended, even as what he said came true, because I understood (in a vague way I doubted I’d be able to repeat with ease) what he was saying, and freed myself from the horrible thing in my side.

It melted into sugar, into water, into nothing that mattered at all. Some laser-like awareness I hadn’t even noticed eased. Relief. Like stepping into shade, after standing in hot sun.

But I couldn’t quite envision being healed. I couldn’t see this body, couldn’t see myself, and so could not see the hole in my side closing. Now, it just hurt. I cried out.

“Jon!” Martin cried, running toward us, and anyone in his way was moved aside as if some unseen wave carried them. He fell to his knees beside us, practically showing Sasha away, and pulled me into his arms.

It hurt. It really hurt. I tried not to cry out.

“He’s wounded, Martin,” said Sasha. “But I think he’ll be all right.”

“This is my fault,” said Martin, and pressed his face to my head. “Oh, gods. Jon. I’m so sorry. I did this.”

“You didn’t do this,” I mumbled, and clutched his shirt. My hands shook. “I did this. Broke my promise to run.”

“I’m fairly sure the weird thing I just fought did this?” said Sasha. “No blame here.”

“No,” purred Jonah, who was watching me, who had not blinked, whose gaze held a sweetness I could not ignore, and it made me want to cry and I didn’t even know why. “No blame.”

Martin did a double-take. “What the hell are you doing out?”

“Therapy!” said Jonah with a bright smile.

“I think I’m passing out,” I told Martin, because these things should be communicated.

“Fascinating,” murmured Jonah.

“Sasha,” said Martin evenly. “I need a reason, right now, not to fucking drown something.”

“Let’s talk about it at the clinic, all right?” she said cheerfully, and stood.

Martin stood as well, holding me.

I felt drugged. Sluggish. Safe, with him. “Love you.”

Martin’s eyes filled. “I love you. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“This wasn’t you.” He needed to know. He shouldn’t feel guilty for this. “Broke my promise. I chased her.”

“I shouldn't have… what was I even thinking? What did I do?” he murmured. “Oh, gods. Jon, I’m so sorry.” Tears slid down his face now, dripping on to me, and his heart ached, pounded , and I could feel it, because I knew him.

No. No, I… I didn’t want him to feel this way. He shouldn’t be squashed with guilt, weighed down, his heart aching in his chest. Not my Martin. I couldn’t quite lift my hand to touch his face. “Not your fault.”

Sasha was talking to someone (police, I knew ), getting us out of here without having to make a report or anything, and they knew who she was, and she had power over them somehow (What? How?), and they were going to let her go, and I didn’t care.

Martin. Martin ached.

I couldn’t let Martin ache.

The Eye whispered, and I knew what to do. “All is forgiven, my love,” I whispered, too.

And the world

Changed.

The tiniest tremor, the shiver of reality shaking snow off its shoulders.

Jonah gasped.

“Oh,” said Martin, and stared at me. His eyes grew wide. “Oh,” he said again, more firmly, and frowned.

He looked toward Sasha, and I didn’t understand. It was not a good look. It was… angry.

Then he shook his head as though discarding whatever that had been, and looked back at me. “You’re going to be all right. I’m carrying you to her hospital.”

“All right.” As if I had any problems with this. The pain was terrible; but the relief…

Jonah had… shuttered it all, somehow. Done, really, what I’d hoped Gerry would do: he’d shared the load.

I hadn’t even realized how much I was carrying. “I’m going to sleep now,” I murmured, because Martin had me, and I was safe.

“Incredible,” Jonah whispered. “Beautiful.”

Then Martin began to describe some truly inventive ways for him to violate members of his own family, and I let myself drift to sleep.

#tma #tma fic #tma au #tma spoilers #magnus monsterverse #jonathan sims #nikola orsinov #jonah magnus #sasha james #martin blackwod #jmart #jonmartin #teaholding

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somanyfuckedupiftruebooks · 1 year

Text

Mag 62

Mary Mary quite cuntrary.

Confirmation that Gertrude stopped recording statments to tape, other than the occasional live statement. Must have been one of many ways she kept herself as free from Beholding's grip as possible.

Mary's relationship with the Institute is interesting. It seems like it's been on the periphery of her entire life, but never something she was directly involved in. Maybe that's supposed to parallel her relationship with the Eye? It's something she interacts with regularly, but doesn't directly serve.

Also very amused by her claim that 'big things are coming'. She's about to skin herself alive so she can become a ghost that haunts a book. Revolutionary.

Confirmation that Leitner had nothing to do with the creation of the books! They pre-date him and people who know what they are doing were aware of them; he just collected them all. Feels like this should be news to Jon, but he doesn't comment on it.

Get rekt Leitner. Crusty old man.

Gertrude (lying about the man she is keeping hidden in her basement of many tunnels): ~I~ ~can't~ ~say~ ~we~ ~ever~ ~crossed~ ~paths~

Cool that she can also outright lie in statments. So far I think we only know for sure that Elias and the NotThem have been able to do this.

Love Mary and Gertrude subtly dragging each other.

Mary: All you do is sit here and take statements.

Gertrude: Only when idiots like you show up.

Desspite her open disdain for the Institute, Mary views them as being on the same side. I guess I interpret this as Mary considering herself allied to the Eye? But of course Elias would look down on that. He probably discounts everyone who even interacts with the Eye without being entirely under his thumb.

Here Mary says her father got himself killed, later she says he killed himself. I wonder what happened to him; I'm betting the full story is complicated.

I've always assumed the Institute paid their workers a decent wage. Mostly because Martin is able to afford to support his mother and also rent an apartment without a roommate. In fact, everyone in the Archives seems to be living alone, which I figure would be expensive in London?

Interesting that Mary was brought up with an education about the Entites and managed to spend her entire life without committing to any of them as a clear patron. She obviously favours the Eye, but she never truly dedicated herself to serving it (she has more in common with Gertrude than she thinks). Seems like she chose this path in spite of her mother's teachings, but Gerry probably followed in her footsteps.

Haha, get fucked. The spooky stuff in Aretefact Storage must be true crap if Mary thinks it's mediocre compared to her terrible skin and bone books. Also, when did she get into Artefact Storage? Shouldn't that be a restricted area? Did Eric let her in?

Cannot stress enough that the super cool and special dark arefact she eventually found was a disgusting skin book full of ghosts. Mary is insane, and she has terrible taste.

#mag 62 #a mag a day #reeah reacts to tma #gertrude robinson #mary keay #library of jurgen lietner

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inklingofadream · 11 months

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Question about the cult au: I feel like I remember Gerry saying that if he'd found jon before Jonah, he would have tried to convince the eye that it would be better to leave Jon alone so he could "observe him in the wild" or something like that. Not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but what would have happened if Gerry had found jon first do you think?

Sorry for not answering yesterday, our internet was out! You're absolutely remembering correctly!

Very long post, but not putting in a cut because I don't feel like it

So Gerry finding Jon first is totally plausible because when Jonah has speaking engagements whoever comes with- usually Gerry and Michael- hangs around on campus chatting and trying to start developing people into prospective future members or meals. The speaking engagements are recurring, usually a couple times a year at any given institution, so they often have the opportunity to talk to people several times over the course of a year or two to convince them gradually to join

This has varying success; Actual Golden Retriever Michael Shelley is pretty good at this! Gerry doesn't believe in subtlety/doesn't like tricking people, significantly lowering their success rate via "this is actually, openly a cult. do you want to join our cult?"

So I think that's how they would run into Jon. Crucially, I don't think that this scenario is less morally suspect and invasive. It's more a difference in how much it influences Jon's life. Stalking is technically probably less bad than kidnapping, but it's not great. A fair few people from the Institute end up suddenly spending a lot of time in Oxford. Potentially, someone gets some personal details shifted around/forged and Jonah pulls some strings to get someone like Gerry and/or Michael enrolled. They do that occasionally, because a wide knowledge base keeps the Institute fairly self-sufficient and a good job on the outside brings in money. Probably Gerry, because he can like... function in human society better and has a tiny bit of existing rapport with Jon from their first encounter.

But I don't think Jonah and maybe Gertrude stop pushing for the relocate-Jon plan. I feel like as part of the "see but not understand" thing the Eye latches on when someone first has an idea, so having Jon In The Wild is more appealing the same way having him in the Institute was more appealing in the fic. It isn't choosing strategically, it's picking the first answer presented to it. If other avatars find out about Jon it's game over, he's going to the Institute.

So I think it's less he never gets kidnapped than it is just a VASTLY more disturbing and upsetting lead up. Instead of having 5 seconds of being accosted at his front door, it's months and months getting to know Gerry, and to a lesser extent Michael or one of the Stokers who sans the insta-friends chemistry with Jon, being friends with Gerry, inviting Gerry to his and Georgie's movie nights. Maybe there are even some dates, feeling out the do-we-want-to-be-just-friends vs actually we're an awesome couple. For both of them, maybe, the same one night stand and teasing flirting as with canon Sasha but with Georgie if it's Tim, or Michael or Danny doing a couple dates because Georgie's trying a bunch of things out in the wake of the breakup (Sasha can't be the partner, because her family only joined when she was 14 and non-Gerry members with experience as outsiders don't get to leave the Institute)

Gerry, for the first time in his life, has a social circle of people more or less his own age without any baggage from who his parents were. It's all very real for him, but he can't ignore or forget why he's here, how close both him and Jon are to losing that at any given moment. Maybe he even lets on a little bit of The Spookiness somehow and they have a little sharing circle about Mr. Spider and the dead body and Mary's Leitner collection. It's all very real for him, it's very precious, it's very easy to forget why he's here even with Beholding giving him butterflies every time Jon looks at him. It's an inevitable betrayal that he does not want to do but must

I think maybe, when something happens- maybe something spooky that makes it feel like being free is Not Safe for Jon, maybe someone has some loose lips and lets on to someone at the Usher Foundation or Pu Songling Reseach Centre or worse, someone not directly allied with the Institute- things go very differently.

Gerry isn't just in love-by-proxy with Jon, he knows him. He knows how terrible it is to be sucked into the Institute- he only chose to do so because he was very young and didn't have a single other option, no support system, nothing. Just Mary getting worse and worse, increasingly clear that she was working up to something dangerous and that she did not care if Gerry got hurt in the process. Gerry joined the institute after much thought and negotiation- not usually part of the proceedings but Gerry was someone they wanted more than usual, Eric leaving made them look weak and having Gerry back, even in a situation that sets him apart from everyone else in terms of privileges and allowances, alleviated that "failure". If Gerry had another option he would not have done it- thus the tattoos, ensuring that even more than the contract, Gerry is stuck with them. Jon has options, Gerry knows he has options, he has so much potential and has hopes and dreams and could live a long, happy life never setting foot in the Institute. He has everything Gerry wished he had when he had to choose between signing over his soul or letting Mary wear him down and down and down, carving away bits to test a Leitner, to gain access to things, trying out things that she doesn't want to test on herself, being a regular abusive parent in addition to the spooky stuff

And Gerry has been giving updates on Jon, talking about him and his life. Other cult members are intermittently watching from afar or constructing accidental encounters with him. Gerry knows, the cult knows, that Jon isn't close to many people, but he is close to Georgie. (Behind the scenes, much drama about Being Friends With Your Ex, debating if Georgie is something like a saint due to proximity and friendliness with Jon or the worst because she blasphemously broke up with him (it was a mutually decided breakup, but they sooo don't care.)) I think when they take Jon, they take all Jon accoutrements: if he's been there long enough that they got the planned cat, the cat comes with; Jon's books? coming with; Jon's clothes? favorite pieces come with, because Jonah has decided to be Weird about Jon's clothing and doesn't want too many Frightfully Normal clothes competing; Jon's bedding? he mentioned the Sensory Nightmare of finding replacement sheets that don't Cause Problems because of Texture to Gerry, so the bedding comes but is turned over to Jonah and Gertrude so they can determine what makes a good texture to Jon, RIP the kitty cat flannel sheets Georgie gave him as a half-joke birthday gift.

Georgie is the accessory that comes with your Jon doll. Georgie is coming to the cult. Georgie is having a Really Weird Time, because like... they don't have an endgame. People want to get close to her because of Jon- she doesn't blame Jon, but a lot of that S4 energy is coming out in reaction to other people, and probably results in one or two blowups at Jon rather than anyone else (escalating into a two-way shouting match because Jon is also having Big Emotions). Gerry's name is mud. Jonah, Regency weirdo extraordinaire, is Even Weirder about clothes for her. Jonah's kept up with The Fashion for men, because he needs to fit in on the outside. But a LOT of the time women raised in the cult spend on the outside is if someone is getting a degree to help the cult somehow, and like... you can just Do Whatever on a college campus. There was a guy at mine who wore a Union Soldier reproduction Civil War uniform all the time. It's fine if they look a bit odd, because they have the full time they're studying to figure out what professional attire etc look like.

When Jonah is weird about Jon's clothes, it's very deliberate; know the rules before you break them and such. Georgie gets fancied up for stuff like presenting them to the cult, but it's a hapless sort of weird. Her everyday cult wardrobe was picked out by a combination of Gerry and Gertrude, but Jonah's a control freak about the semi-regular Looking At Jon events. It's a mix of Back In My Day leftovers and whatever random bits of women's fashion he absorbed over the last 200 years. Like as far as underpinnings, we are absolutely not talking about anything more modern than a girdle. Creeper measurements gained while they're drugged or the Eye being able/deciding to share when Jonah wants them have not been used responsibly. Probably there is someone in London still making corsets for sale, if you look. Georgie is allowed to complain about a properly fitted corset, it's not stereotyping the past or being ignorant of how they work, it is actually a coercive and at least half-sexist situation for her. The only good news is that Jonah wants to focus on the event and Jon, so he just sics Sasha on her to play lady in waiting instead of becoming part of that process himself.

I don't think Georgie ever really forgives Gerry and co. All the S4 stuff with not acknowledging the intractability of the situation bc it's never spelled out in so many words and it's easier to be angry, it's safer to detach herself, it's frightening to think about how permanent this is, she doesn't have space to give grace to these people or read into the subtext of how little choice they have. Jon is kept separate from Georgie except for Good Behavior, he's in the thick of it and does not have a support system to be picky about. Georgie isn't operating in a place of fear, she can't, but Jon is. They end up being very careful about that conversation, because they're afraid of what'll happen to Georgie if she and Jon have a friendship breakup, they know and trust each other to be ride or die (if out of touch Georgie lets Jon be a fugitive at her place current daily presence Georgie is not going to let something she knows is not at ALL Jon's fault change that) but having an audience means walking on eggshells. So I think Jon does his best to get over the betrayal and ends up sliding back into friendliness because it's the best of a bad lot, he will actually go insane otherwise. Georgie I don't think ends up at more than a stalemate with Sasha (who she sees a lot bc of the Jon inner circle she's The Girl and, again, Jonah's an old-fashioned weirdo). Jon agitates for more freedom for Georgie, but they're still trapped.

The other bright spot is that I don't think they lose the Stokers. Escape means getting BOTH of them out. Gerry lets on how futile getting in touch with the cops is in a Super Normal Non=Suspicious Way. Even if the cops were helpful, TARDIS bigger-on-the-inside secret building addition is not the kind of place you can get a search warrant for. If Georgie gets out on her own, no one is coming back for Jon (Jon tries to convince her to do it anyway), and if Jon escapes alone... he just can't. What would they do to Georgie? He knows, experiences and is increasingly aware, that Jonah can be vicious and petty. Georgie is not valuable on her own. Maybe she'd be fine, because they need bait to get Jon back, but "alive" is an awfully low bar when Jonah could use anything in Artefact Storage on her, can whittle ties to life down to the tiniest thread if he wants. The logistics are too complicated. If Danny breaks Jon out, he insists they go for Georgie and they don't make it out. They trip something, Jonah shows up, and the Stokers are saved by a) plausible deniability, Jon is cut off from everyone because of things like this, giving him things Jonah doesn't want him to have and b) Jon just like. hanging off the Stokers. All misgivings abandoned, Stokers is my best friend now.

So all in all I don't think it's better for Jon, it's just different.

#writing #tma #cult au #ink post #ink writing #ink fic #the whole thing is high key tragedy for gerry #he's as doomed as any hamlet or othello. he doesn't want this end but he isnt built to be able to do anything else #someone else might have connections or power or anything but he doesn't. he has himself and can trust no one else with his misgivings

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