#monster jonathan sims

[moominmammaonheroin]

Sooo who’s excited for the MAGP panel at MCM in October?

[therealdistortion]

I love moth Jon AUs mostly because I just really like seeing everyone’s designs but also because whenever people draw him bug like it fits how much he’s trapped in a Web

[teleheadhound]

Lonely! Martin

Moth Jon and Lonely Martin, I love them so much

[ladyyellow-thegremlin]

Season 4 Jon

Hopefully I managed to make the missing ribs apparent ha

[gobblewonking]

A Jon to go with my Martin design! They are a matched set, do not separate them.

Nothing in canon says that Jon couldn't have grown a pair of big eyeball wings during his coma, maybe he did and nobody ever mentioned it ever. It's my turn with the canon, I can give him wings if I want.

Some details: - His full avatar-smiting/nightmare walking doesn't have a mouth, as it's all just magnetic tape and eyeballs, so his voice sounds like it's coming out of a tape recorder embedded in his chest. Yes I know the tape recorders aren't technically Of The Eye but I get to do what I want. - I debated between Long Haired Jon and Short Haired Jon and decided that he wakes up from his coma with scraggly long hair and just doesn't bother to cut it again, he's got other things to worry about - While the ritual that brings in the apocalypse is called the Grand Ritual and not the Watcher's Crown, Jon still gets to wear the Watcher's Crown while wandering around all the fear domains because I think it's a neat visual

[late-to-the-magnus-archives]

And Eat It, Too - Chapter Twenty: Apotheosis (The End!)

Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims did not kill the world for love of Martin Blackwood.

Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims decided to have his cake and eat it, too.

>>> NOW ON AO3!

APOTHEOSIS:

1. the perfect form or example of something

2. the highest or best part of something

3. elevation to divine status: DEIFICATION

(Masterpost including playlist)

*

CHAPTER TWENTY

No one expected it.

He doesn’t know why. He’d been thinking of running for some time now, at this weird party in the middle of the night.

But no one thought he’d actually do it. They really do believe he owns you already, he thinks, and that just makes him run faster.

“Jon!” Elias shouts. Fairchild is laughing and someone is coming after him and—

Nope. Jon is through, slams it shut, and is very happy to see it disappear.

“Ha!” he says. Turns.

The Corridor is broken.

His heart stops, or feels like it does. One straight hall stretches before him, no turns in sight.

Most of the lights are gone. A few flicker at odd intervals, just enough to encourage movement.

There are no pictures. There are no mirrors.

The place smells like death. Jon would know; he’s breathing very fast.

“Michael!” he shouts, and begins to run.

There are no turns.

His feet sound wrong, every step weird, and he hopes that means the Distortion is still working, hopes that means—

Oh. He did not have a moment of disorientation upon arrival.

Is that because he’s grown? Or is it because…

“Michael!” he roars, pouring power into it, trying to will the knowledge to find it.

The Corridors shake.

Jon stumbles, almost loses his footing. Did he hurt it? Was that what that was?

The Corridor continues on, unending. Lights flicker in the distance.

Jon steels himself doubly, and runs.

#

This isn’t working.

This isn’t working.

It’s as impossible as the Corridors that can forever turn right, twisting into themselves without a terminus.

Panting, Jon stops.

This isn’t the way to find Michael.

See, damnit, he tells himself, and closes his eyes. Focuses.

Finds the Beholding, finds the thread, the flow inside him, the constant searching gaze that brings its own flood of power.

Grips it with both hands and pulls.

When Jon opens his eyes, he sees the place as if it’s fully lit.

Ahead of him is a loop. It goes straight, but it doesn’t; a trap, a trick, the Distortion playing games, the only one it has left.

It’s a weak game. It still plays it. That’s who it is.

What it is, Jon reminds himself, and turns around.

The Corridor loops in a straight line in both directions, unending.

Knowledge pours in, clear and cold: it wants me near as it dies, but doesn’t want me to watch it happen.

That hurts, so much, to realize.

No, he thinks, as static rises in his ears, you will not hide from me.

He looks down.

The carpet begins undulating slightly as if made of water in a light breeze, and Jon stares, and Jon does not blink, and then the damn rug parts like the Red Sea.

It’s not a door, exactly. It’s a door-shaped hole, leading into blackness.

Michael is down there, and Jon knows, and without thinking it through, he steps right in.

#

The regret is instant and brief.

He lands hard, jarring and clacking his teeth together.

This place is entirely lightless. Featureless.

The air isn’t air here. It’s thick. He can push it through, exhale and inhale, but it requires work.

The gravity isn’t right. It works; it’s consistent, but it’s too high.

He has no idea where he is, and does not give a damn about finding out.

Michael lies ahead of him, and Jon can see it, no matter the lack of light.

It looks pale. Draped there, its boneless self mimicking peace, but it seems to be breathing hard, and that can’t be right, and Jon wonders what other process is going on there that makes it… swell and shrink that way.

What it’s doing here, he has no idea. Its hair has gone straight. That scares Jon more than anything else he’s seen.

“Michael?” he asks, moving closer, and coughs; it’s hard to speak, his vocal chords not designed for this viscosity.

“Hello, Archivist,” it says, and its voice is just… there.

Not in his head. Not under the floor. Not from Mars at all.

Jon kneels beside it.

He doesn’t know what to do.

There’s a wail rising in him, bottlenecking alongside a growing rage, and both are making his throat feel weird and his eyes feel weird and his heart ring with pain as if made of bronze and battered.

“I don’t understand, Archivist,” says Michael, and its long, sharp fingers twitch against the unseen floor.

“What don’t you understand?”

“I should be happy,” it says. “Look—you are crying.”

Jon slides his hands under it, pulls its head into his lap. “Happy… because I’m crying?”

“My revenge,” says Michael.

Jon strokes its hair. He understands. “But it didn’t work that way, did it?”

“No.” Michael turns its head toward his touch. “I don’t understand.”

Tell me what to do, he keeps asking, pulling, commanding. Tell me how to fix this.

Silence.

Oh, the Eye is there. He’s not cut off—feels very connected to it, in fact. But it is devouring his misery, and seems uninclined to interfere.

The wail in Jon’s chest grows. It might just burst out of him, like shattered bone.

Michael sighs. The breath is cold on Jon’s hands.

“Why?” says Jon. His throat tightens. “Why is this happening?”

Michael laughs.

It doesn’t do anything. Go anywhere. It’s just a laugh. “Your predecessor did this. This was… never going to last.”

“But… you told me before. This happens, sometimes. People become you. It doesn’t just… go away.”

“I have been distracted, Archivist,” says Michael, shifting enough to rest its sharp fingers on his leg. “That is not good for what I am.” Its flickering, fading face turns toward him.

“Distracted,” says Jon, softly. “Of course. You were distracted during the Great Twisting, which is why Shelley’s map worked. And you were distracted… well, with me, and revenge, which is why Helen’s map nearly did.”

“Distracted,” says Michael. “I could not change.”

“You couldn’t let go,” whispers Jon, “and you’re meant to change. Of course you are. To fluctuate with fear and doubt, and… because of what Gertrude did, because you couldn’t let go of your anger. You…” He swallows.

“I care for you, Archivist,” Michael says.

Jon shudders. “And you wanted revenge and didn’t, at the same time. Conflict in yourself.”

“Now, you see.” Michael shudders; the human form fades, like frosted glass, showing something unspeakable beneath—something writhing and twisting as if in pain, though Michael lies still. “This was supposed to be glorious.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says softly. “I suppose I would’ve made a lot of people happy if I’d just died, wouldn’t I?” He strokes its weirdly straight hair; he can barely feel it now—it’s insubstantial. “I’m not that lucky, though.”

“Stubborn,” Michael says.

“Don’t die,” Jon says, his breath uneven.

Damn you! he thinks at the Eye, the bloody Beholding, the fucking Ceaseless, Useless Watcher. Tell me what to do!

Does it even hear him? Is it even paying attention? Or is it just licking up his trauma like salt on the edges of a glass?

The Web would answer me! he challenges, and wipes his face.

“I am not dying, Archivist,” says Michael. “I will still be me.”

“No, you won’t. This is…” He sees the twisting thing below, sees its seething joy, its vicious happiness, its sharp-edged, spiraling madness. “I’m losing you.” He takes a thick, awful breath. “I chose you, and I’m losing you.”

“How nice, Archivist,” says Michael. “To have chosen something.”

Jon doesn’t remember lifting Michael to his face. Doesn’t know how he got there, kissing it, getting it very wet.

It’s barely there, like a body made of air, dispersing if squeezed.

“Don’t go,” he whispers.

“Never,” Michael lies, and then it is gone.

Jon screams until his voice feels burned.

#

Whatever the Distortion truly is, it leaves Jon alone. A weird, limp, smear of a creature, abandoning him completely as it goes back to… torturing people, probably.

Jon felt it look at him. Felt it consider his distinctly un-good mental state.

Felt it recognize him in some strange way, an acknowledgement. Then it took off like a dove, and he cannot find it in himself to be grateful.

He doubts it ignored him out of kindness.

For that one second of attention, it tilted his thoughts, lurching him into fear of how long have I BEEN here and did it all really happen and did I just doom the world for a monster and maybe it was all lies every second and Michael never actually cared—

It would have surely been a feast. The thing left, anyway.

Jon is unsure he’s going to follow.

Can’t end the world if I’m stuck in here, can I? he thinks.

Assuming someone doesn’t just come and get him, like Fairchild did out of the coffin.

Except they can’t.

He knows.

Jon blinks, wipes at his tears, leans into that knowing.

He is in a place only he could find.

Good, he thinks, because he deserves to be abandoned.

What good was all of it? What good did he do anyone?

Well, he was fooled by a plot twist, so there’s that. “Jonah Magnus. Of all the…” Jon half-laughs. “If I’d met myself four years ago and tried to warn me, I’d never have believed any of this. It’s bad writing, I say.”

Except it isn’t, and he knows that, too.

It’s all so consistent that it drives him a little batty. Why, even Elias’s failed Watcher’s Crown ritual makes sense, as the reason Elias was basically two steps shy of omniscience.

Except… that didn’t really make sense, did it?

Failed rituals seem to normally end… very badly.

They ended in a loss of power, or mass destruction. They end in misery, in faith lost, in followers bereft and abandoned.

But not for Jonah Magnus. No, he somehow came out ahead of the curve.

And Jon can’t help but ask… why?

He knows the Eye didn’t come through. All the Fears would have had to, and this would be a very different world.

Jon rolls onto his back. His brain won’t stop, won’t shut up, won’t shut off.

It almost looks like a world with just the Eye in it, though, doesn’t it?

Everyone watching or being watched. Fearful of watching too much, fearful of being discovered. Hiding themselves, projecting themselves; appearing on social media the way they want to be watched, stalking supposedly private webcams to observe people who don’t want it at all.

Who fear it.

Jon shakes his head. The world isn’t broken enough for the Eye to have come through—and it would have come with all the others.

But Jonah’s powers only grew after the Watcher’s Crown failed. And it was funny, how so much technology seemed to be based on… watching or being watched.

Everything from porn to clickbait.

From filtered photos to paranoid security.

Masking tape over webcams and multiple VPNs.

Watching or watched.

“The revolution will be televised,” Jon mutters, and frowns.

He pictures the door again, in his mind.

He doesn't know what lies behind that door. It feels like… everything. It feels like if it opened, he would drown.

His brain won’t shut up. “Everyone else lost power when their ritual failed,” he says to no one, to where Michael ought to be and never will again.

Fairchild did.

Lukas did.

Rayner did.

But Jonah Magnus gained it.

It bothers Jon, niggles at his brain, won’t leave him alone.

“I am trying to writhe in my misery, if you don’t mind,” he mutters at himself, but as has always been the case his whole life, he doesn’t listen.

It’s not the only question rising now, either, because he believes Annabelle, but then what does that mean for him?

“Just how the hell did I, predisposed to the Eye from practically infancy, end the world for every other Fear everywhere else?” he says.

He knows the answer: the same way all the other Fears feed the Eye, whether they want to or not.

The Desolation—the Lightless Flame, the Torturing Flame, the Blackened Earth—only benefited from burning, loss, pain, destruction.

The Lonely—the Forsaken, the One Alone—only benefited from autophobia, abandonment.

Every single Fear benefits from itself; yes, they’re connected, but the Stranger couldn’t feed off the Eye, the Desolation couldn’t feed off the Buried, the Vast couldn’t feed off the Dark. Not exactly.

But the Eye could feed off all of them.

It never mattered what statement he read. It never mattered what trauma the statement-giver had been through; the Eye fed, and was sated.

“But that doesn’t make sense, does it?” mutters Jon. “Is it just unique? Is that it? Just is nature?”

No. Because the Eye was about paranoia, fear of being watched, fear of secrets revealed; it had jack-all to do with things like worms and purple mold.

But those things still fed it.

Why had the world turned so clearly into watcher and watched in nearly every facet of life, anyway, both sides laced with gut-wrenching fear? How could the Eye feed off every fear, not just its own?

Jon grips his hair, tries to shake this out of his scalp. It’s not adding up.

Jonah Magnus failed. He said so.

Surely he’d have known if he succeeded.

Does it have to be a binary? he asks himself, and goes very still.

The Fears change; the Dread Powers shift, adapt, to what human beings are afraid of, which is why the Extinction is on the horizon, why other fears had… faded, or transformed.

The Slaughter certainly wasn’t what it used to be. Hell, the Hunt started in animals, for crying out loud, moving to humans later in its own existence.

The Fears exist because humans do, he thinks, trying to make this all work, trying to make it fit. “They don’t feed on fear, they are fear,” Gerry had tried to explain to him, and Jon tried to get it, really did, but—

Maybe Jonah-Elias came much closer to success than he’d thought.

Maybe it came so close that it touched everything, everyone, before being rubber-banded back outside the gate.

Or maybe humans were just inclined toward the whole watching thing, and nothing had come through, and this was all ridiculous—

“Is that why the other avatars are always so angry when I compel them?” Jon asks the space where Michael left, where Michael should be, where only emptiness replies. “They’re already sharing with the Eye, whether they want to or not, because of the way humans fear. Is it… envy? Having to give up some of their fear, unwillingly? Something even more twisted?”

What could be more twisted than a world inbred with the Eye, altered by a Dread Power that hadn’t even come through but had come so close, touched so deep, that when Jonah was done, it changed the course of human history?

“It doesn’t matter if it did,” he says, because Michael is still gone, and he is still alone.

Jon curls on his side, fetal. He’s a mess; tears and snot just keep coming because he keeps crying. He wipes on his sleeve (at Elias), then recalls the napkin in his pocket.

Well. It wouldn’t last long, but it was something. Jon pulls it out and prepares to blow his nose.

And finally sees the block letters on it, written in a now-familiar hand:

ARCHIVE

“What the actual hell?” he says, and throws it from him.

It flutters down, just a napkin, impossibly visible here in this place of no light and emptiness.

The word is off-center.

Was that on purpose?

Jon sniffles, uses his sleeve again. “I don’t care if it was on purpose,” he informs the napkin. “I chose one thing in all of this, do you hear me? One. And it was taken from me.”

Because of Gertrude—whose action had both given Michael to him and taken it away. There was some irony in that, and he could see it.

He hates her more than a little, now.

“I lost Michael,” he tells the napkin, hating himself for being so desperate for communication and connection, but hey, at least he knows how he’s broken.

(It doesn’t really help.)

“I lost Michael,” he tells the napkin again, because of course the damned thing can’t hear him, but that’s not it, that’s not the issue, that doesn’t address the fact that he feels the Eye trying to communicate with him, clearer than it ever has.

It’s slow; glacial. Not really understandable, not for Jon’s mortal, human self.

But what comes through is so… unexpected: the Beholding, the Ceaseless Watcher, the It Knows You, is confused.

Jon feeling fear is one thing. That literally builds it, empowers it, and it responds with pleasure and knowledge and other things it knows Jon likes (though he hates himself because of it).

This is confusion because… it does not understand his grief.

“What’s not to understand?” he yells at it, bellows, wills himself to be heard, felt, even by this being so foreign from him that they could never (surely) talk to one another. “Michael is gone! The one thing I chose! And you took it away! Michael is mine, and it’s gone!”

He hadn’t even known he felt that possessive until he said the words.

His. Right. Like a part of the Spiral could belong to anybody. “Losing it, Sims,” he mutters, gripping his hair again, on the verge of sobbing again, because the point remains (did he love Michael? He doesn’t know. This doesn’t fall into any of his normal definitions) and Michael is gone.

But an answer… comes.

Slowly.

A behemoth, moving to address an ant.

There are no words, just a sense, a communication possible because even the Beholding is born of human fears, and without human understanding, would simply be nonsensical.

Y o u r s   S o   T a k e   I t   B a  c k .

“Huh?” says Jon, and though he doesn’t know why, looks at the napkin again.

There’s something else written there.

He can’t quite make it out. Something faint, vaguely reminiscent of the leftover imprint of Michael’s doors.

ARCHIVE

Curiosity spikes.

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” mutters Jon to Annabelle, the Eye, his spare, sad spark of common sense.

He peers.

What did Annabelle write on there?

Narrows his eyes, focuses.

He has to know.

It doesn’t matter, sure, he’s just going to stay in here forever and die, but the simple truth is that if he doesn’t get to know what’s on the rest of that napkin, he is going to explode.

Jon picks it up, and—reluctantly, not even on purpose—reaches for the power of the Eye.

And he is flooded.

It’s too much, all at once, an eagerness that overrides good sense, and Jon feels something tearing deep in his skull as he is drowned in the fears of  a billion people, of their nightmares and woeful anticipations and everyday, horrific terrors.

BECOME THE ARCHIVE

That’s what it says, and this isn’t just about knowing things, this is about housing, taking in, becoming more than.

And calling and kissing at the edges of his mind are the fears of the wide places, the Vast, the deep oceans, the impossibility of space, the smallness of self—

The fears of enclosed places, the Buried, the claustrophobia and suffocation and drowning—

The fears of the unknown, the Stranger, the almost-not-quite-human, the surety that something is not right with your world—

The fears of loss of accurate perception, the Spiral, the reliability of one’s own mind and senses, the inability to trust one’s own thoughts—

Jon is wracked as the whatever-it-is inside him that responded during the Stranger’s ritual does now.

He is made for this.

Wired, both nature and nurture—

But this does not hurt.

Glory comes alongside it, bliss along with all the fear and torment and imagination (all these fears are human fears, some god didn’t come up with scary-ass clowns, humans fucking did that), and Jon doesn’t even know if he has a body anymore or if he blasted it to smithereens.

(He knows he does, and it is dying, it cannot handle this, this is too big a thing to fit in a human body.)

(Though Simon Fairchild wondered if god would come into his body, and how about that?)

And with this invasion, this deluge, this complete violation and satisfaction of everything Jon wants to be, comes a clear, unworded, repeated thought:

Y o u r s   S o   T a k e   I t   B a  c k .

I DON’T KNOW HOW, he bellows back, as hard as he can.

And it’s maddening, because Michael is his.

He can see it, through the history of sentient beings, doubting their own senses; can see its change, how much it changes, even as its core fear remains the same.

And, now, Jon can see exactly what Michael Shelley did to the Distortion.

Had Gertrude planned this? No; he knows it hadn’t mattered who was with her that day, as long as they were willing to walk inside a madness monster, bearing the map she’d made, but who could have predicted how this had gone?

(And images of Helen-Distortion filter through, from Annabelle, from the Web, and Jon understands why he reacts the way he does to her, because with Helen, it would be so sly, breathing gaslighting, lies, and more lies.)

But Michael Shelley walked into that thing for an old woman who didn’t care, out of determination to do the right thing for someone he cared about very much.

Michael Shelley died for pure, non-romantic love, sacrificed on the altar of efficiency.

But he did die for love.

And it resonates with Jon, and it sings within Jon, and he suddenly sees why he and the Distortion (what it became after the change Michael Shelley wrought upon it) amplify one another like tuning forks.

And they are not alike, and one feeds on fear and the other does not like it—but in some key, core way, they are the same.

Love. Including a truly moronic level of self-sacrifice.

Annabelle was right, and it’s stupid, and insipid, and real.

Jon could laugh if he could breathe, but he can’t do that now, and he doesn’t want to because it will pull his vision (Real? Mental? Who knows?) away from what he sees.

Michael. The Distortion Michael, transformed by being lashed to a loving human being.

Who chose, Jon now knows, to forgive Getrude as he was destroyed, and that choice—as all human choices do—affected the Fear that ate him.

Because the Distortion wanted revenge, and Michael had not.

Because the Distortion wanted to kill him, and Michael had not.

Because Michael—

I care for you, Archivist.

Had torn itself apart.

But the knowledge isn’t stopping, the stories aren’t stopping, and it’s all too much, even for him, a circuit designed to house this power, this curiosity, this absolute malevolent innocence.

Fear. The Eye wants fear.

It wants to feel all the world’s fear through him.

Fond doesn’t cover it.

It loves me, Jon thinks with the barest bit of spare mind he has left, clinging to his own voice lest it all be swept away. It loves me.

And sends as hard as he can—

YOU ARE KILLING ME

It’s not in words.

And it’s slow, so slow to respond,

but Jon can do no more, Jon is at his limit, Jon is beyond it, Jon is dying.

But he holds on.

He sees Michael.

Mine.

And as that impossible flow, that current, that flood, changes, shifts, tries—slowly, but actively—not to kill him, he grips its electric impossible cosmic power and reaches.

Into the repository of knowledge, into That Which Never Forgets, into that which Sees All no matter if it wants to be seen.

His focus on Michael writhes in his grip like a snake.

The thrum of power through him, the fears of a billion billion memories processed through his own soul, are too much, too much, and all he can do is ride it downstream.

No, thinks Jon, like lifting his head from the wildest rapids. No.This is MINE.

And feels—glacial, slow, ponderous—an offer from the Beholding.

A gift?

A trade.

The door was not opened by Jonah Magnus—but it was cracked.

It wants Jon to stick his face in there and be swallowed.

Not just tasted.

To be consumed.

The Beholding wants a vessel.

You have avatars, Jon tries to answer, confused, thinking of Elias Magnus Whatever, of all the others.

This is different.

It wants him for its home.

Jon screams, though he doesn’t feel it.

It’s too much. Nobody can do this. It’ll destroy him.

But it offers Michael in trade.

And Jon laughs, because this is no fucking muscle spasm. This thing is slower than the Web, perhaps, not nearly as complicated, but it is alive, and has desires, and tastes, and preferences.

And it loves Jon.

And wants to be in him.

And it offers Michael back.

Michael as he was, as Jon fell in… whatever with it. Desire of the deepest, most naked, true kind.

It’s kind of simple, really, when he looks at it.

Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims did not kill the whole world for love of Martin Blackwood.

Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims decides to give himself for the monster he loves.

Jon looks the Beholding straight in its great, big, stupid eye, and says yes.

#

He’s talking.

He’s recording?

He’s telling, reciting, becoming.

Said, Statement begins, and now he’s giving it, voice sore but strong, resonant in this place with no echoes, describing Michael down to the finest fiber of its strange and smeary cells.

The Beholding is feeding on him and working through him, giving him what he wants.

Through his voice, through the statement he gives, which becomes real as he tells it.

This is not normal. This is not sane.

Neither is Michael, he thinks, and, Mine, he adds with every beat of his heart.

Don’t need revenge if you belong to me, he thinks, and continues to tell the story of Michael the Distortion that changed.

#

Jon didn't know he’d passed out until he wakes up, and absolute amazement hits him because he feels like himself.

He thought for sure he’d wake up… someone else. Something else.

He feels like him. His concerns, his grief, his little spots of irritation.

He tries to sit up and groans instead.

Everything hurts like it’s been chewed on.

His throat is raw. His entire torso feels like he’s been doing crunches for the last thousand years.

And he can’t open his eyes. They’re glued shut.

Blood, he thinks, reaching up to touch, and is right.

He has bled all over his face, from everywhere he could bleed.

And he has a beard. A decently thick one. His hair is long, too, matted and tacky.

How the hell long have I been down here? he thinks, and does his damndest to roll over.

—and touches Michael’s hand.

There is no mistaking it—the weirdness, the wrong-jointedness, the sharp angles where no sharp things should be. Even the way it feels warm and cold, hot and icy, impossible to pin down in any aspect except for that frightening sharpness.

It is Michael’s hand, and Jon makes a sound like a dying whale as he grabs it with both hands and pulls it to himself.

“If you wanted to be cut,” says Michael, gently removing its hand from his face and instead capturing Jon’s hands in its own, “there are more artful ways to accomplish this.”

Jon wants to say you’re alive, but he can’t, because his mouth feels half-full of cement, and it takes him a misphonia-inducing minute of furious working to loosen his tongue, to find his palate, to part his teeth. “Michael.”

“That is who I am,” it says, sounding so confused.

Jon laughs and hurls himself into it, writhing up against it, clutching, pressing his face to it and getting himself smeared all over everything.

He is weeping.

Michael says nothing, drawing the tips of its sharp fingers down his back, lying so very still. “Did your brain melt out, Archivist? I wouldn’t want to presume, but it seems to have made an escape from your skull and onto your face.”

Jon laughs shakily. His throat feels horrible, though it’s healing, it’s getting better, somehow.

The Eye is healing him.

“M…” Jon tries. “Mine.”

Michael inhales.

Then it picks him up.

They are leaving this place, then, and how Michael is doing it is beyond Jon’s concern, because Michael is alive and nothing else matters.

Worth it, he thinks, snuffling messily. Worth it. Whatever it is that it cost, which… he’s actually not sure, now.

Jon knows they are in the Corridors by how it all feels. For one thing, he feels like he’s upside down, even though he is clearly lying flat on the carpet.

Up and down are stupid concepts, anyway.

“Archivist,” says Michael softly. “I would like to clean you.”

“Please do. I… I need you to.” Jon’s tortured voice shatters. “You ground me. I need you.”

“And here I thought I was yours,” Michael says, lightly teasing as it applies something (Wet? Dry? Hot? Cold?) to Jon’s torso, and Jon feels like layers of… stuff... are coming off him. “Yet that sounds as though you are mine.”

“I am.” Jon can’t stop touching it, though he can’t see it; touching its long, weird curls, touching the skin that sometimes gives way like a dream and sometimes is solid, touching the backs of its hands as it removes his ruined clothes and peels awfulness from his skin.

“It is very strange,” says Michael, slowly cleaning Jon’s throat. “I was me, and then I was not me. Which cannot happen; I cannot die, and so I fought, because I forgot you, and that was not.”

It stops there, as if that made sense.

“Not?” prompts Jon.

“Not,” says Michael, as though speaking of permission not given.

“You…f…fought? Fought what?”

Michael is silent, now wiping the whatever it is against Jon’s face, gently. “I fought. I am not allowed to forget you. That is… not. I do not believe we had a good time.”

It was fighting for me at the same time I was fighting for it? “How?” Jon says, absolutely flabbergasted, then winces as Michael works on his eyes.

“There is much blood, Archivist. I will be gentle,” it says instead of answering, and for once, it does not lie.

It takes a while before Jon can open them. When he does, he gasps.

This is no apartment hallway, no weird hotel corridor. The colors are there, the swirls on the wallpaper, the lamps, the mirrors, the portraits, but the whole structure whirls away from him, stretching into impossible dimensions, into Mobius-strips of craziness that he knows he could walk on, doubt his orientation, and go completely mad just from trying to stay on his own two feet.

“Oh,” he breathes. “You’re incredible.”

“I,” says Michael, “am as I was before the Great Twisting failed.”

This was just like the clay structure Gabriel had built to honor it, to resemble it—but that made no sense. “Before Gertrude bound you?” says Jon, because this Michael is clearly the one who (Learned? Benefited?) ate Michael Shelley, and that happened after the worker-of-clay’s temple to it fell.

“Yes,” says Michael, studying him. Its eyes go wide. It is a look of actual surprise, and Jon almost laughs.

“What? What is it?’

“You, Archivist,” says Michael in wonder. “You have… changed.”

Jon’s heart clenches. “How?”

Michael looks around him, pulls back enough to look all over him, and then it cackles.

It’s a completely insane sound, impossible to hear without reality juddering like a ship hitting rocks, and Jon rolls in it, drowns in it, drinks it in and all the fear it can/will/does bring.

“Oh, Archivist,” says Michael, and it's kissing him, and Jon laughs against its changing face, because Michael is alive and he doesn’t care about anything else right now.

“I,” gasps Jon. “I appeal to you? Like this?”

“You,” breathes Michael, and is climbing all over him, and Jon is responding, Jon is arching up against it and moaning, and his voice feels much less burned than it did a half an hour ago.

“How do you feel so…” He gasps. “I’m… I’m a mess, Michael, I—”

These are the Corridors, not that junk-drawer, so Michael can clean him instantly, if it wishes, and—

(It wasn’t a junk-drawer there was a reason only Jon could go there a reason Michael had been brought there luring Jon in there was a reason Jon couldn’t see anything an eye cannot see into itself that was the Eye as close as he could ever come in this world it was the Eye’s own space within this world it was it was—)

Knowledge shocks Jon, the thickness of it, the full-dimensional clarity of it, as if he is the knowledge, not merely filtering it through him, and for a moment, he loses himself, thoughts, emotions, and all.

When his eyes flutter open, he finds Michael peering at him closely.

“You are very powerful,” whispers Michael.

Jon isn't sure what Michael saw, just then, what it experienced.

Jon decides he doesn’t want to know right now, and finds he has the choice.

The flow of knowledge is his own to control, to turn on and off, with caliper-like precision.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” says Jon.

Michael grins. And it is a horrifying grin, too many teeth, mouth just a little too wide, all of it just wrong, but Jon welcomes it and embraces it and needs its particular wrongness. “Never.” Its pointed fingertips rest against his ribs.

It’s not enough. “I want you,” Jon says, because these things should be made clear. “I don’t want to go anywhere for a while. I don’t want to remember I have anywhere to go for a while. You’re my anchor, Michael. I need you.”

Michael looks…

Fraught.

“I am no anchor,” it murmurs, touching Jon’s lips. “I am change. I am doubt. I am all the things that are not. How could I be an anchor to you?”

“Because I am knowledge,” Jon says. “I am facts, hard and unyielding. I am a thousand screaming minds all at the same damn time, and without you—my anchor—to help me doubt them, to pull me outside of them, I’ll be lost, be only the screams, and I won’t… there won’t be any me left at all.”

He had not planned to say any of that.

Michael kisses him, and Jon feels like something of the reverse is true, too.

He is a solidity that Michael (who swallowed that poor, good human and took on his heart) needs.

They are balanced.

They are a contradiction.

We are impossible, Jon thinks, wrapping his legs around his monster, holding on as tight as he can.

“I will help you forget everything, if that is your wish,” promises Michael, and it is frightening, and it is needful, and it is perfect.

“Make me scream,” says Jon.

Michael laughs. “That is the easy part, Archivist,” says Michael, already moving to press into him, watching as Jon’s eyes go wide, as Jon arches up, and makes a thousand tiny noises. “The challenge is to make you without sound.”

Jon laughs, breathy, his cock throbbing, his heart pounding.

He feels complete.

“I d… dare you,” he manages.

Michael responds with movement, with reversing gravity, with making time be not and reality go sulk in the corner.

And Jon screams, and clings, and claws at it as he is touched, and Michael does not stop until Jon can’t make another sound at all, barely even breathing.

#

The door is yellow, its handle black, and beyond it lies all the things Jon doesn’t want to face.

He has to. He knows.

The Beholding has waited for… a while, for him to enjoy the results of his deal before re-entering the world. For a being of cosmic horror and inconceivable fear, it’s been very patient.

Jon is terrified.

“I might lose myself,” he says, staring at the door handle. “I agreed to… I don’t know what, exactly, but I could… I could not be me, any more. Once we walk through.”

“If you lose yourself, Archivist, I will find you,” says Michael, simple. “After all, it is my job to make you forget who you are. No one else may try.”

Jon manages a weak smile.

Beyond that is everything, everyone. The monsters who planned to auction him like some kind of tool.

He knows, without knowing how, that almost no time has passed for them outside.

Wild.

In here, his hair is past his shoulders. He is surprised to find it wavy.

He’s shaved his beard, regrown it, several times. He wears it now, neat, trimmed, and it feels good, as streaked and scattered with white as the rest of his hair.

He hasn’t needed to eat.

It’s been… a while.

Rest, he thinks, which is the true gift, which is actual mercy from his horrifying fear god, and he is grateful.

It’s time to go back. He knows. He accepts it. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t afraid.

He leans back against Michael. “Anchor me, please,” he whispers.

It slides the tips of its fingers—so sharp, but not breaking skin—around the sides of his neck.

Jon exhales slowly.

And he reaches for the door.

#

There is no great fanfare from them as he opens the door and steps out, Michael at his back.

But Jon is overwhelmed with the whole world.

He sees Tim asleep in the hospital and sees Martin asleep at his side with his head on his arms, and knows that Martjn convinced the staff to let him stay after hours with the perfect combination of stammering and puppy-eyes, and—

Sees the fear, tastes the fear, Tim’s that he won’t recover or be ugly or alone, and Martin’s that Tim will die and Jon is lost and—

Sees Daisy with Melanie and Basira, sees them in their right minds and that’s almost all that matters—

But knows that they’re ill and weak thanks to absence from the Institute, that they fear they have to return, fear they won’t succeed in escaping or killing Elias or whatever they have to do, fear that he’ll separate them somehow and that is worse than anything else in their minds—

Sees Georgie and doctor Elliot and Trevor Herbert and Julia Montauk—

And Amy Patel and Dominic Swain and Kayleigh Grice and Naomi Hearne and—

Jon feels knows tastes people he’s never even read about, and it fills him, chokes him with fear and memory and marks and pain, and fear of pain and memory of marks sieves into him, and he can’t think and slips under and can’t breathe and—

Michael’s sharp fingers dig into his sides.

Jon comes back to himself, like surfacing from deep water.

Feels the Beholding pushing, excited, reaching for everything at once.

Woah, there, he thinks at it, like it’s an overeager colt at its first ever race. We do this at my pace.

It is not easy to funnel it down, to reign it in, to will miosis, but Jon manages to slow it to a flow he can handle without losing his mind.

He’s breathing hard, leaning into Michael, and so relieved to find that he can keep from drowning that his panic shrinks to a throbbing, ordinary anxiety.

Three people seem to have noticed what just occurred.

The rest don’t care. So the Spiral has joined them; so what? It is to be expected. Everyone wants a piece of this—

This ass? Jon thinks, and nearly loses it again.

But Jared is peering at him. Elias is staring at him. And Oliver looks concerned.

Jared frowns, brow heavy.

Something Jared sees—something about Jon’s body—seems to be his final straw. “Right,” Jared says, and just leaves, nopes right out the door without another word.

“What did he see?” whispers Jon.

“You are no longer human,” whispers Michael, far too happy about it.

Jon feels a little sick. He wants to know what Jared saw, but this power, this presence in him, is too new, and too hungry, and he doesn’t yet know how to focus it on one person (it’s open or closed, a sluice gate and not a laser). He thinks maybe it’s not a great idea to practice in a room full of his enemies.

Elias is staring like he’s never seen the sun, staring like Jon has walked through that door gleaming like some Medieval saint.

Elias looks… afraid. He takes a step back.

So does Jon, into Michael again. What he feels, looking at Elias is…

Undefined, for the moment. But it is a lot.

Peter Lukas looks back and forth. Looks at Jon. Looks at Elias. Whatever he sees in Elias sends his sense of self-preservation into high gear, and Peter takes two steps backwards, disappearing into fog, leaving the Institute behind.

Jon has seen himself in the mirrors in Michael’s Corridors. He didn’t seem any different; all the scars are there, the tiredness, the… small, brown nerdiness of him.

Jared’s reaction, Elias’ reaction, Peter’s reaction, shake him. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe he needed to stay longer, to find a way to practice, to appear somewhere else and hone things first. Afraid, Jon tries to open that pipeline just the tiniest bit, just enough to see what they’re—

Well, Elias sees eyes.

Eyes in the air all around Jon, eyes in Jon’s skin all over his body, somehow visible through his borrowed clothes, none of them matching, all of them looking everywhere, all at once. Jon is a walking Observer, a living conduit to seeing all, all the time. Jon has become a window in that cracked door, whether or not he’s choosing to look through.

Jon feels beautiful. He’s never felt that before. It’s amazing.

But opening this particular line to Elias has had another, deeply unexpected result.

Elias has no power over him at all, and Jon knows Elias belongs to him.

The amulet does not, apparently, have any effect on a god.

He sees the moment Elias feels that echo in Jon’s soul, maybe in his face. Sees Elias harden, withdraw, try to hide himself, and—

Elias cannot hide from Jon.

Not any more.

Never again, and without meaning to, without planning for it, Jon feasts.

The room seems to darken, and it’s just the two of them.

Elias’ fear is vintage, old, and gloriously refined.

Fears of death (that’s what drives him), fears of failure, fears of obscurity, but no, it’s death, more than weakness, more than blindness, death that leaves Jonah desperate and scrabbling and stealing people’s bodies and making bad deals and tripping other people in the dark so they are eaten and not him, and—

Jon wants more.

(Is aware now of a moldering corpse in the tunnels and isn’t that grand?)

He stares, unblinking, holding Elias’ gaze though the other man wants to turn away, and Jon could just crouch over him and devour him, hover there and dig his fear out of him, hold him tenderly and absorb every last tear, every single sob, every throat-tearing scream, until—

Michael’s sharp fingers scrape down his spine, and Jon gasps, and somehow, turns away.

Panting, Jon presses his face against Michael’s midsection and tries to get a hold of himself.

He’s aware that Elias—with absolutely all his willpower—is leaning, one hand lightly on the wall, as if casual, and is very close to passing out.

“I think I might be mad with power,” Jon whispers, tries to joke. He has frightened himself badly.

Michael laughs.

No one noticed what Jon was doing to Elias, but it’s impossible not to notice Michael. At Michael’s laugh, everyone in the room, without exception, wobbles.

My herald, Jon thinks, and then wonders where he got that idea.

They’re all mildly annoyed, not hugely scared yet; it’s the Spiral, and that’s par for the course.

Irritated, Jude Perry glances over. “Oh, look—the scared little lamb has returned, tail between its legs. There you are, little lamb. I didn’t think you’d come back while we were all here.”

Wow, Jon thinks. That didn’t scare me at all, and he and all his eyes look right her way.

She can’t see them— but she can feel them.

She freezes.

Something he does not know is rising up in him now. Jon has been angry, he has known impotent temper and grumpy scowls, but this is new, and all-consuming

This is rage.

Rage that she hurt him for no valid cause, rage that she boasted about it and rubbed it in his face, rage that she just doesn’t like him and intends to cause him suffering no matter who gets their hands on him in the end, and it’s not even his pain that she’s after—she wants to burn his flesh until his mind is gone, to see him utterly destroyed.

Maybe he should destroy her, instead.

“Jude Perry,” Jon begins, and the power of his own voice startles him silent.

All conversation stops, lacking only a record-screech for emphasis.

“They’re watching you now, Archivist,” says Michael, bending nearly double, murmuring in his ear.

“What?” snaps Jude, hiding her irrational fear under scowls and flame. “You said my name, Archivist, so I assume you want something.”

And there is war inside of Jon’s heart, and he is being watched and stared at and judged, and he suddenly is desperately afraid that he cannot hold on to himself after all, because he wants to kill her so much.

He could.

He sees how.

Jude takes one step forward—responding to fear with violence, as she does everything else—and Arthur Nolan grabs her arm (earning a truly shocked look), staring at Jon and shaking.

Jon knows. Sees the constant heat of the Desolation pouring through her being, sees how she is held together barely at all with wax and will, sees how easy it would be to make that will slip, to break her concentration.

To let her melt and die in screaming globs on the floor.

Oh, he thinks, and worries that he might not regret it afterward.

Jon exhales very slowly. “I think it might be wise if you all go home,” he finally says.

Jude laughs at him.

She’s not the only one putting up a front, and she’s not the only one whose instincts are screaming at her to be very, very afraid.

The atmosphere is changing, something in the whole Institute is changing, attuning itself to him, thrumming with the power he is bringing from the Ceaseless Watcher into its own temple. It’s a tightness, and a heat, and a penetration like radiation, changing and owning and burning.

(And he suddenly understands that they are all terrified of their patrons, every single one, and of course they are, they worship in fear and trembling, they love the perks but they are all horrified all the time, a living nightmare for everybody just dulled by will and pleasure and hedonism and sadism—)

Fairchild has made up his mind, and has every intention of hurling this weird, new, problematic Jon into the sky and keeping him there until a plan presents itself. “Ah… hm,” he says. “I believe I’ve seen enough for tonight—”

No, Jon isn’t going through this again, isn’t letting them do this, isn’t going to let them judge him and choose him and use him and hurt him and burn him and cut him and throw him into the sky or under the earth or tell worms to eat his flesh or stab his kidneys or any other damn thing. “No,” he says, pouring intent into it this time, welcoming the rush. “If you try, Pietro Aretino, I will unmake you so thoroughly that not even the Great Beast could find what remains.”

Jon’s mouth tingles. That was… power.

It’s probably been a long time since Fairchild heard his true name. He staggers backwards, as if punched.

And everyone’s rising, confused fear is like sweet sugar crystals on top of a perfect baked dessert, and he wants more.

He could have more.

It’s right there.

“What’s happening?” says Callum Brodie, his voice finally cracking.

Then Gordon Goodman, avatar of the Corruption, deeply afraid, suddenly squirts maggots like a cartoon character’s sweat.

It’s so gross. So ridiculous.

So unlikely.

Jon stares at him, startled off his slippery slope.

Jon laughs.

So does Michael, which is absolutely dizzying, and that almost hides what happens next.

Because Prentiss sent her worms into the Institute before, where they bred and grew until they could come like waves with intent to steal Jon’s life, and they were the reason that Sasha died, driven into the maw of the Not-Them.

He is never letting that happen again.

They’re not even real. They’re created from fear, made to frighten and disgust and terrorize. And they’re tiny stories, really, each one barely even a word, a syllable, a thought.

So he eats the fear away and lets them crumble to small, white piles of dust.

Everyone stares.

At the dust.

At him.

Back again.

“Oh,” says Gordon Goodman, sadly.

“Jon,” whispers Elias, who has no idea what Jon just did.

Michael drapes its long hands over Jon’s shoulders; the sharp tips poke around his hips—intimate, familiar.

Grounding.

Oliver Banks approaches. His eyes are wide, and he keeps looking at things no one else can see, all around him. “You could do it,” he says, softly. “You could end everybody.”

Of course he knows Jon wants to send them all to the End.

And Jon does, and they’re monsters, and would it be wrong? And—

The funniest thought flashes through his head: Martin wouldn’t want me to go Kill Bill on everyone. So I probably shouldn’t. Not that he’d seen that movie, but he knew the gist.

It wasn’t a conscience, maybe, but as a guidepost, it would do. He looks at Oliver. “I don’t want to, I think,” Jon says.

Oliver nods, like this was very wise. “Then don’t.”

“You can go. Thank you for staying as long as you did,” says Jon, like a benediction, like a blessing, like a gift.

Oliver gives him a small, weary smile, and goes.

Jon likes Oliver Banks.

And he doesn’t want to deal with any of these people any more tonight. “Go home,” he says.

“W—excuse me?” says Diego Molina.

He could compel them.

He could just make them obey.

He could be like Elias.

No, Jon thinks, because he does not want to be that. So he tries a different tack. “All of you need to leave. If you don’t… I’m going to do this.”

And like with the maggots, like with Elias, for just a moment, he eats at their fear.

It’s two seconds of chaos.

Of loss of control, of disconnection from the entities they know. Of pain and panic, of helplessness felt by those who excel in making other people helpless.

Everyone is yelling.

“Go home,” says Jon into the din. “I think I’ve made my point.”

He did.

And no; they’re not done, and no, this won’t be the end of it, but they’re all moving toward the door (some with more encouragement than others) and that’s all Jon really wanted to see.

Alfred Grifter tucking his flute into his coat, Goodman manifesting some kind of hideous skin-mold to keep the rest of his pets from escaping, Jude being escorted by her two fiery friends, Fairchild moving at a run, Callum Brodie trying to march off in a cool and collected way (and then Michael makes a short, sharp motion, and Brodie startles and bolts, and that shouldn’t be funny, but it is.)

And Jon wills them out, one by one, until they’re finally off his property.

He hopes they’ll take all this to heart and won’t try anything stupid.

He knows they’re all going to try something stupid. This is going to be a pain.

And turns to look at Elias.

Elias, who is, very subtly, shaking.

Elias, whose mind is open to Jon now, absolutely an open book, and who—Jon can tell—can no longer read him at all.

All of Jon’s eyes focus on him.

Oh, Jon thinks, because he wants to eat Elias right up.

Wants to crush him like a grape, make him so afraid.

“Don’t kill me,” whispers Elias, who doesn’t think Jon will, who is trying to find ways to use this, who is trying to read Jon and increasingly worried that he can’t.

He still thinks he can flood me, Jon thinks, run me over, eat me and digest me and make me his.

Jon almost laughs. He is breathing fast, eyes wide; he feels like a predator, ready to pounce.

Elias’ eyes widen. “Don’t kill me,” he says again, more afraid, but still so certain Jon would never dare.

Jon knows how to make him more afraid. Knows just how to frighten him, how to strip so much away in one simple move. “You’ve stolen so many faces, worn so many names. I don’t want you to do that anymore.”

The panic rising in Elias’ face is unfamiliar, weirdly appealing, and Jon has to fight not to make this worse than he already is.

“You’re Elias, now?” Jon says. “Then you’re Elias for good,” he says, and he ends Jonah Magnus’ corpse in the center of the tunnels.

It falls apart, into dust, and the threads between it and Elias that keep him alive no matter what snap, one by one, until they’re gone.

Elias screams. Screams again, crouches down. Clutches his head, howls.

Jon isn’t sure how long that lasts because he’s too busy drinking it in.

It tastes better than any fear he’s encountered yet in his nascent, numinous position.

Jon could feed off him for days.

The temptation is so strong.

The Beholding would just love it.

This isn’t who he wants to be.

Jon turns away, presses into Michael’s chest. Michael holds him, and that matters more than anything else. “This is so hard,” Jon whispers.

Michael runs its claws along his scalp. “You are the Archivist.”

Jon laughs weakly. “Faith in me? Not sure that’s a good idea,” he says, but he is encouraged, and turns to face Elias again.

Elias is gasping. Looks up, and (you’ve got to be kidding me) there are tears. “I can die. I could die. It would take nothing!” His voice breaks.

It took so little to reduce him to this. And he’s right. If any of those monsters who just left the place knew his condition, Elias wouldn’t even make it to his car.

Elias is mortal, and that fact alone is enough to undo him.

“Die? You mean like Sasha? Like Leitner? Like Gertrude?” says Jon, his volume rising.

“You’ve killed me,” Elias breathes, and he sobs.

“No, I made you mine,” Jon says without thinking, and blinks.

They stare at each other.

Jon doesn’t like the misery he sees in Elias’ face. His own heart tugs, bothers him, in spite of reason, sense, history—and Jon is glad it still can. He hasn’t lost his empathy. This is so important.

Elias deserves this, and worse. But this isn’t about him, Jon thinks. This is about me. “I won’t… let you die. All right? Stop… panicking. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You could,” whispers Elias, because hurt is alive and if that’s what Jon wants, it’s an easy decision. “And I would let you.”

Tempting. So tempting.

Also awkward, so awkward, and Jon embraces that. “Go home.”

“I can’t. I don’t dare. I… I…”

Elias is panicked. Zero to sixty, confidence gone.

Jon wanted that. Now he’s not sure he’s happy he has it. He sighs. “There’s a cot in the Archive. You know that—I spent loads of nights down there. Sleep there tonight, and we’ll deal with this in the morning. I promise nothing’s going to enter the tem… the Archive tonight.”

The temple, he almost said.

To me, he almost said.

Good lord, he almost said.

Something in his face must make it clear this is it, because Elias obeys. Gathers himself, tries and fails to calm his shaking, looks at Jon, absolutely pleading (For what? A bunk bed inside the Distortion?), and sort of wanders away.

His terror lingers like sweet perfume.

Jon licks his lips, and decides tomorrow will not be a work day for anyone. He concentrates; informs all the Institute employees that they are all on paid break until further notice.

It was easy. Better than text. Way better than phone calls.

Jon sighs and leans into Michael. Everything feels alive, amazing, thrumming; but all he wants is to hide under his monster again. “That could have gone a lot better.”

“I think you did well, Archivist.” Michael runs its fingers through his hair.

Jon smiles weakly. “You would think that.”

“You are learning. Archivist. You have two natures. You have power, true power. You have your human heart. It is not so… easy to balance.” And Michael isn’t smiling.

There is so much in those words.

“You would know, wouldn’t you?” whispers Jon, and pulls it down for a kiss.

“You could have killed him,” says Michael. “Or made him mad. Bored into him, eaten all that he is, leaving only your fingerprints behind.”

Jon shudders. “I know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want to. And he doesn’t… have any power over me, anymore. That changes it all.”

“That,” says Michael, “is as good a reason to do anything as there ever was. What will you do next?” it says, as though Jon is the absolute best source of entertainment that ever was.

Eat the world, Jon thinks, but that isn’t his plan. “Tim,” he says. “I can help him heal. I know how to do it.”

“Oh,” says Michael.

“Daisy,” says Jon. “She doesn’t want to be part of the Hunt. I’m going to see if she wants to be freed.”

“Admirable,” says Michael, sounding bored.

“Basira and Melanie… I’m going to help them, too. I can. I can. I actually can, now.”

“Do we get to scare some doctors?” says Michael.

And the moment Jon thinks of it, he can feel Tim’s doctors’ fear from here, like the scent of a meal cooked and ready for him, and thinks maybe—just maybe—he can do this without destroying anybody.

Or maybe not. But he’s hungry, now, and he can choose which of them deserve a good ego-rattle. “Yes, we get to scare some doctors.”

Michael beams at him and nuzzles the top of his head.

“After that, I…”

“Yes?” Michael peers over top of him, upside down.

Jon won’t say.

But he likes his new plan.

Maybe it’s a dumb plan. His seem to usually be. But it’s one he thinks he can make happen.

The Fears exist because humans made them; they can’t be blamed for it, for what they do (and what side of things that opinion puts Jon on, he’s not dealing with now), but… rituals, he decides, are outside that natural balance.

Is Jon a monster?

Yes. He feels it, and he’s sure he’s barely seen the manifestation of that play out.

Could he actually stop the rituals?

Maybe. “Going to need to monitor everything, anyway,” he murmurs. “Make sure they don’t all run around, trying to get some poor victim marked by everything, like me. It’s a horrible experience.”

“They wouldn’t survive,” says Annabelle, and Jon knew she was there or she would have made him jump.

“I still won’t let them try. It’s awful.”

Annabelle nods, acknowledging. “So how is your cake?”

Jon swallows. “A little hard to keep down.”

“It's very interesting to watch you try. We’d calculated an eighty-seven point nine percent chance you were going to kill Jude Perry.”

“I’ve been on the other end of… of murderous intent. I hated it. I don’t want to do that to people.” He leans into Michael, opens the pipeline a little, lets knowing wash over him, all his eyes, and feels connected to the whole world. So much fear—so often of things that aren’t even happening. It feels so good. “I guess I don’t have to kill her, is what I’m saying. I’m content.”

“So you’re enjoying your cake,” says Annabelle.

Jon snorts. “Having it is very different from eating. It’s… a little rich. And who knows? Maybe I’ll kill them all later, after all,” Jon adds, just to make Michael purr, and it does.

“Good luck, Archive,” Annabelle says, and turns to go.

“No,” says Jon, because even like this, he still can’t see what the Web is doing, because even like this, he still doesn’t know what the Web is planning, and that is an itch he cannot bear.

She stops.

“I’m coming to talk to you, too. Later.”

“What makes you think I’ll be available?” teases Annabelle.

“You will,” says Jon. All his eyes blink at her. “I’m sorry. I mean, please,” he adds, softer.

She smiles—looks terribly amused—and leaves.

Jon rests his face against Michael’s torso. “Could I trouble you for a door to Tim’s hospital room in Yarmouth?”

“Whatever you say, Archivist.”

It’s Archive, now, Jon thinks, but doesn’t ask Michael to use it.

Tomorrow, Elias will be very weird. His, though. Somehow, it’s going to work out.

Tonight… tonight, he gets to help his friend. If I’d lost me, I wouldn’t want to do that, he thinks, and is relieved.

“Are you happy?” says Michael.

Jon thinks. Around them, the Institute thrums softly, and he feels safe in the hands of his monster. “Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am. Everyone lived, Michael. I have you, and no one can hurt me anymore.” Apocalypse averted, he adds, but does not say, and then he laughs. “It’s a damn sight better than being lotioned by mannequins for a month.”

“Oh, Archivist,” says Michael with a smile. “The things you say.”

And they are through its door and gone.

-------------------

NOTES

So obviously, this whole story is actually AU. I sort of headcanon that all the amazing fic I’ve read on this site plays into it, because why not? The sandbox is big enough for everybody.

I wasn't kidding in the tag, btw: blame the Web. in MAG 197, Annabelle says, "We found the one we believed most likely to bring about their manifestation. We marked him young, guided his path as best we could."

Yep. Our boy Jon was doomed - and in spite of Jonah's cruel claim ("Just your own, rotten luck" in MAG 160), Jon was clearly some kind of chosen one. A really, really fucked one.

Notes, notes, notes: Tim lives. Fuck kayaking. 

And yes, he is going to be fine, and so is their friendship. It’s going to take time, though.

Oh, and not to stir the pot, Jon, but Martin WOULD want you to go Kill Bill. That’s all right. It worked out, anyway.

Trevor Herbert and Julia Montauk are still going to show up at the Archive, trying to get to Jon. It's... not gonna go down quite the way they think.

Yes, I google-mapped all known locations. Did I have to describe the door color in the Hainault storage facility? No, but I did it anyway!

The wax museum in Yarmouth is as I described, and you have GOT to see these absolutely messed-up waxworks. Nikola picked the right place.

Pietro Aretino was REAL and worked under Venetian painter Tintoretto and absolutely fits Simon Fairchild’s wild and crazy life?

I know it may seem like Basira, Daisy, and Melanie got shafted—but actually they did not. (A) If they’d been around, just like in the show, they’d have slowed Jon’s “growth”—and Annabelle couldn’t let that happen. (B) However, Annabelle is a thousand percent woman power and didn’t just screw them over. I’ll have you know that those three ladies will have themselves a private detective agency in future stories.

I mean, Hunter Daisy, Ms. Logic herself (Basira), and kick-ass investigator Melanie? They’re unstoppable.

Obviously, I had to write Helen out to make this work, but I can’t help pointing out that she, like Michael, was still obsessed with Jon. MAG 187, when she’d trapped him in her halls: “Hopefully I can stall long enough that any of your little gang that can die, have done so. By the time I let you out, you’ll have nobody else.”

What a thing to say. It’s almost like Jon has the attention of the Distortion itself, no matter who it’s recently eaten.

As for what Elias did after he felt his home had been invaded and he was furious, he called on a favor. Lightning took out one of the Web’s safehouses. It was nasty. Fire all over the place. An expensive and dramatic response.

Of course the Web had known he would. Not so big a deal as he’d hoped. Sorry, Magnus. Foiled again.

For the record, I am actually a HUGE JonMartin shipper, so this story was a challenge, because I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

And yes, I do like a little JonElias, once in a while. As a treat. (It’s such an incredibly fucked up relationship. How can I not?)

Jon is just a wonderful character to play with; he’s so smart and so stupid at the same time. No matter what’s happening, though, he always tries—and, as in the canon ending of MAG 200, will literally do anything for love.

Also because this is my fic, I tell you right now that OG Jon and Martin are VERY MUCH ALIVE Somewhere Else, and they are happy. 

There are many good cows.

[interdimensionalbugs]

monster jon concept

he’s essentially a living optic nerve. the tower is there to direct and stabilize the connection held in the pupil. when he’s in the panopticon he serves as both the center of the tether to reality and the closest thing the eye has to a mind.

he can fly, but as pupil, he isn’t affected by gravity so his wings and legs are vestigial. the furthest he can reach with his body is the floor of that room.

the archivists serve as a defense system because jon is basically a vital organ and fairly physically vulnerable. they’re very fast and can fly short distances but usually just cling to walls and crawl. they have about the same level of sentience as beholding itself (not much). jon can maneuver them as external limbs but when he isn’t, they kind of just run on eye-autopilot.

[lailas-in-space]

"I wanted to do it. It felt good. But at least I know I can stop, I just- don't know how. I... I don't want to stop."

[shyaringan]

in the eye of the beholder 💚

[pan0pticonn]

Jared being homophobic is so funny to me like out of all the reasons you could have had to make a mocking comment you choose homophobia and it didn’t work bc they were actually gay

"Whos this then? Your boyfriend?"

"Yes actually"

"Oh" mission failed successfully

[gollancz]

The synopsis says: “It’s the hottest summer on record and London is dying. Prices are high, pay is low, and stressed commuters are packed on to London Underground trains again like the pandemic never happened. To add to the misery, the temperatures underground just keep climbing and climbing, the heat trapped in the clay with nowhere to go. 

“Five travellers on an unlucky tube carriage find themselves bound together one morning as witnesses to a single horrific event – an event they can’t quite seem to remember. They make an unlikely team: weary tube driver, a disillusioned civil servant, an ambitious city trader, an overwhelmed hotel worker and an unhoused young man just trying to get by – but now they must come together to confront what they have seen and stop it in its tracks. Because there’s something lurking in the stifling darkness and labyrinthine tunnels that run below London… something old, something vicious, and something very, very hungry.” 

I couldn't be more excited to be working with @jonnywaistcoat on his next two novels! This is just more of what he does best - pulling apart the very seams of society and giving me very specific new sleep paralysis demons, and somehow getting me to say thank you afterwards.

And if you're near London next month, why not pop along to Gollanczfest to hear him chat all things horror with Joe Hill and V. V. James? Tickets are still available:

[dcartcorner]

Commissions for @chrisis-averted for the fic "Rewind. Reset. Rewrite." Thank you for the support!

[therealdistortion]

So if The Archivist needs glasses do you think he needs them for just his two original eyes or for ALL his Eyes?

[dekuboya]

Jon absolutely not beating the spooky town witch allegations 😏

[clairebearsparkles]

Idk how to explain this au lol, Martin is invisible and Jon has all of his eyes, and it’s adorable.

[late-to-the-magnus-archives]

And Eat It, Too: A Magnus Archives Fanfic Snippet

You need a guide, she'd said. There was no guide through the Dark. That was the entire point of it. What could she even mean?

Why would Annabelle offer this? Does she think he’s stupid? Does she think he’s that out of his mind, that he’d just plunge into the Dark without a plan, or hope, or any kind of exit? Surely there had to be easier ways to kill him off.

Jon squeezes the pillow around his head. Maybe he can suffocate himself, and sleep that way.

Something taps on the window.

He groans.

No. No, he doesn’t want to see whatever is floating out there, or tossing tiny skulls, or scratching with twenty-foot fingernails. He wants his body to shut up, and he wants to go to sleep, and he wants it all to be over, and to retire to Wales with a cat and maybe some fluffy Scottish cows.

Tap tap .

Why isn’t Elias stopping this?

Jon goes still. And slowly, very slowly, rolls over.

His entire room is filled with webs.

They’re more obvious, now. Wall to wall, corner to floor, the edges of the ceiling and wall completely hidden in woven, white strands, and as his breathing grows fast and short and sharp, they flutter in response.

The good news is he no longer feels remotely turned on.

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