#the way you can hear maryam saying he’s struggling and me replying back i know then me laughing multiple times ?;:?/?:?/?:?

[bibliocratic]

‘this is the trouble, even now, with being an archive’

or: Martin’s not the only one overly susceptible to the Lonely 

nebulous post-160 domestic future, hurt/comfort and softness, jonmartin and the cottagecore life they deserve

Jon loses himself in the odds-and-sods shop.

The sign on the door makes promises of it being a cosy bookshop. And there are books, certainly, stalagmites of tomes and paperbacks and collections teetering graspingly up towards the ceiling.

The books are absent flatmates however compared to the boisterous gaggle of stuff that takes up room everywhere else. Teacup candles balanced on Norton Anthologies. A wooden rocking horse keeping the dusty Faber and Faber poetry company. It's bizarre flotsam of the most incomprehensible comforting sort, and it sometimes bustles its way to star in the shop's equally manic window display.

Which is why Jon first came in. He'd told himself that this trip into town was an in-and-out only affair; pick up the spices he couldn't get at the small-stocked village shop, buy more firelighters and return some of Martin's horde to the library from whence it came. He's entertaining some thoughts of making a start on pruning back some of the more frivolous bushes in the garden if the weather holds, though he knows his knees won't credit the idea by the evening if he does so.

But then he saw the pen in the window. Silver filigree engraved at the end like frost spiralling up a window, the base colour deep and blue. 

And it's not anywhere near Christmas, and there's no birthdays for another few months, but Jon looks at it and he can see Martin sat in the two-seater in their living room,  holding the pen, tongue between his teeth as he worries at words, scratching and rewriting and humming when he's caught upon a phrase he feels sits well.

He goes inside with all the furtiveness of a guilty cat. Maryam is at the counter today, and she beams to see him. And he intends – completely – to pick out the pen and be done with it. But Maryam gets talking even once he's pointed out and paid for the pen, and he's twisted up in the soft and easy twirl of her conversation. The pen does come with a box, a regular black affair, but she mentions that they've got in a few antique pen cases down at the back of the non-fiction isle – covering P for Persian Empire to T for Travelogues – and Jon fancifully commits to having a leisurely look because he's going to have to wait for the next bus back anyway, quite taken by the idea of being able to leave such a distinguished looking surprise on the side-table near Martin's armchair for him to find when he comes in from work.

He considers the cases with a furrowing frown, as though weighing up some great decision. For so long in fact, he doesn't notice the shop dip quiet, the muffled steps and page-flicking of other patrons muted to silent.

He glances up, around. Puts back the supple brown leather case he was thinking over, stepping out of his isolated row.

There is no one at the front desk. No one in the other shelves. Through the clogged-up and slapdash window display, he sees no one on the street outside and a sky starting to grey with the threat of rain.

He notices – far away, like glancing through the wrong end of a telescope – that his breathing is getting faster.

“Maryam?” he says, but his voice croaks heatless. He tells himself that he's too old for this now, to be taken in by such worn-down ghosts, that she's gone in the back, that it's just gone quiet, that's all. But the silence is a terror that begets greater, stronger strains, a cycling distress of pin-balling fears and memories, and there is no one around, no one coming, and the panting of his own body is so loud in such an empty space.

And he has always been more easily enveloped by some fears than by others.

He hears the wash of mile-distant waves, as though behind the shelves to the front of the shop, and thinks not here, not here.

He tries to shake his head loose of the fog beginning to bind it like cobwebbing wisps. But the world has such terrors in it, and the Archive keeps record of them all. And that's what Jon is, in the end. A dutiful collection of horror, cruelly moulded into such service by a long dead man. He's long since unshouldered the mantle of Archivist, yet Archive has proven to be such a long-lived, enduring post.

Behind his eyes, he plays out the washed-out retellings of all those almost lost to the Lonely.

He's the statement of Zoe Aristidou, who moved to a beam-bright city but brought her fog along with her, who lost her face amongst the impartial crowds, sanded away like a wind-abused statue.

The statement of Keira Hurley, who struggled to make friends, who drank thinking it might stuff up the gaping absence inside her where the fog was beginning to spark up like struck flint, who would lose her keys, and her wallet and whole days to unremembrance.

There is the echo of beachland nearby and Jon's lost sight of the shelves. The layering cares and carefully tended wards that make him up are starting to peel away.

He rubs at his hands and the colour wipes off like highlighter on whiteboard, smearing before vanishing, his skin blotching with an absent glass-colour of nothing at all. And it's not real, it can't be, it's years since he sighted this muted, mist-encrusted shoreline, the way it gnawed at and  sapped Martin's skin translucent, younger then, his hair still unpicked by white.

But it's so easy to return here even after all that time. Like tripping over your own feet.

It is peaceful here. It always is.

Jon grips the pen, feeling the drunken choke of the statement of Keira Hurley, how it makes his legs unmoored and unbalanced, and he thinks no, no, I'm going to give this to him, I'll surprise him, I'll leave it on his side table to find when he gets home. And the statement is thick on his tongue, as he recalls how she woke up, head woozy, and she had not known where she was, had forgotten her address, her name, and the muted panic of her fear sleeked her face with tears, and Jon shakes his head fervently to try and clear it.

He thinks of how Martin will glow, pleased, will say something like you shouldn't have, or even, you know I don't need any more, and Jon will say, I know but I wanted to, I know but I thought of you, I know but I wanted to make you happy.

There is sand crunching underfoot as he walks, and he's getting lost.

He is the statement of Agneta Blom regarding her grandmother Ebba Blom, swallowed by the fog in her later years at a nursing home; the statement of Lakshman Hamal, the last member of his regiment far from home; the statement of Finlay Erskine, a lone lighthouse keeper midst a terrible storm.

And Jon is one man but he is also all these stories – he breathes in salt-damp from a wave spray that leaves freckles of water struck across his face, he feels the knotted ache in his legs from where he's crouched, tense and gripping his kukri for hours, the over-softness of blankets and pillows and the faded mist of lavender down an empty hallway.

He feels his fingers cramping around the sides of the pen, and he wants to think of Martin, to fill up with recollections of him,  but Martin is someone Jon knows, someone Jon loves, and it is so very hard to remember he is Jon at the moment.  

The fog that subsumes him like a dust cloud, it's muffling. Quiet. He who is Agneta Blom and Lakshman Hamal and Finlay Erskine and so many other names that are layering palimpsest over Jonathan Blackwood, he wanders the beach to the shoreline, letting the sea lap over his shoes. The sky is expectant with dour rainclouds, and his jean cuffs are getting wet, and he hears a distant tumult of voices ever so far off. Like a muttered conversation in another room, a tune playing in a building he is walking past.

“...call the school.... It's Mr Blackwood, Conor... one of his turns.... don't crowd the poor man, let him be...”

The Archive drinks in the flat, null landscape with interest and lets the fog bury into the soft spaces of him. It wants to walk out into the shallow waters and see what swims there.

There's a pen in his hand, and it's heavy, and it weighs him down shore-bound.

“Jon? Hey, hey, Jon. Don't go out so far, yeah?”

The Archive sucks in a breath. It is not salted with a harsh coastal grind, it does not bite at his throat. The air is warm, dry with indoor heating, and the people he is not, Agneta and Lakshman and Finlay and Mairead and Pavo and so many more witness to Forsaken, begin to slough off him like autumnal leaves.

There is a hand on his arm, someone being shushed, a breathing like someone's been running.

“That's it, you're doing so well, you can do it.”

He is Jonathan again. He blinks loose the crisping grains of salt that have begun to sediment in his lashes. There are tears streaming down his face, he realises belatedly, and he is trembling like he's freezing.

He looks at Martin who makes up such a happy horizon to be greeted by, looking down. His tie become loose, who has come from work, sweat-patches at the front of his chest, his throat and face reddened with exertion, who is still wearing his navy lanyard, has board pens clunking in his pocket. Martin who is grounding him.

“I...” he says, clearing his throat feeling stupid, and then he is thrusting out the pen almost bullishly. “I got you a pen.”

Maybe Martin doesn't understand how important it is for him to see. But he nods delicately, and carefully nods, takes it from Jon's shaking fingers – You shouldn't have, you know, he says like Jon's foolish, but fondly, ever so, just like Jon thought he would, and Jon almost sobs to be granted such a small victory.  

“You wanting me to call Doctor Varma, Mr B?” comes the tentative, worried voice of Conor at Martin's elbows – sixteen, his voice breaking awkwardly, helping out in the shop after school; Jon remembers lending him books when he was a precocious, demanding child, voracious for knowing.

“We should be ok,” Martin replies kindly. To Jon, he says:

“Julienne's car's out front.”

Jon frowns, confused, before remembering – theirs is in for its MOT, Martin must have borrowed it to cross the three miles between the villages. There is something heavy around his shoulders, warm and scratchy, and he wants to wonder but the questions are sunken in the softness still lingering in his head.

“Do you need...?” Jon starts, and the words are thick and phlegmy in his throat. “The school...?”

“Julienne's covering my last class,” Martin says soothingly. “They understand.”

Jon nods. Years ago, he might have apologised, stewed in how much he needed Martin today, but time has wasted away those anxieties.

“Thank you for coming for me,” he replies instead, his voice still sea-bitten and hoarse, and lets Martin lead him wobbly-legged out of the door so they can drive home.

[crescendo-system]

Did a memory walk as Eridan Captor.

-the memory opened up with me in my room I think, I was pacing nervously while talking to fef, who was sitting nearby. I was trying to amp myself up to confess to Karkat Maryam I guess, who was my biggest flush crush.

“I’m worried Fef, what if he says no?” I was pretty anxious, my voice wavered a lot even at this point.

“Eridan it’s ok, you know he likes you,” Feferi reassured me fairly confidently, listening to me pace (she couldn’t see me, she was blinded by this point.)

“yeah as a friend, but what if he doesn’t like me like that?” I countered, stopping to turn and face her. She just sort of frowned and sighed - she wasn’t mad or annoyed, but I think she wished I could learn how to relax for just once in my life.

“Eridan he’s not gonna hate you if you tell him. You know him well enough to know that.” Which, was also true. Karkat Maryam was one of the nicest trolls around aside from Fef, and he was not the type to get mad or hold grudges over things like that. 

“yeah ii- i know fef,” I started, feeling emotionally overwhelmed. Almost instinctively, I dropped into a crouching position and held my head under my hands. I felt my eyes spark for a moment, like my psionics were about to go off, and I waited until I was sure it was done.

 “I’m just… scared,” I admitted to her, still looking at the floor. I heard her say hey or something, to grab my attention so she could reassure me, but when I looked up at her my eyes just... focused on her own scarred and blinded ones, behind her red glasses. I felt a terrible pang of guilt looking her in the eyes like that, and despite myself I couldn’t help mumbling an apology to her in regards to her blindness.

 “…… im sorry.”

(I’m pretty sure I inadvertently blinded her with my powers, which would explain my sudden stop and drop as well.)

-my memory switched around then to a karkat maryam conversation snippet. I feel like it was the same location as the one where  we were when he was bandaging my hand and lecturing me over whatever I had done to it at the time. This time we were standing/walking around the hive, this was definitely his place, and we were admiring the plants he tended to that grew around the hive. Well, he was. I was too busy admiring him to really focus.

 "And you know how this bush here has certain properties..." He was trying to tell me, lifting one of the fat leaves of the bush in demonstration (well I say bush but it was very succulent like so I might be wrong but hey I wasn’t paying attention what can I say). I already tuned out though, as my eyes studied him.

I was thinking to myself something along the lines of "god he's cute. He's so cute, just look at him, look at the way his hair curls and the way he talks and the sound of his voice and uh oh he's looking at me i haven’t been listening." 

"eridan are you hearing anything I've saying? Is something bothering you?" 

"It's nothing," I deflected, flushing and struggling to maintain eye contact with him (I failed). He squinted at me with this really adorable pout, his front teeth kind of sticking out over his lower lip. Already I had gotten lost in staring at him again. 

-The next memory switched to in my respiteblock. I explored a little - i had video game consoles in my room and a computer i think. Definitely a tv monitor for games. Room was darker, muted colors, pretty sure blue was part of the color scheme. I had a carpet in that room too. I had posters on the walls but I didn’t get a good look at them. I assumed they were movie posters. I wandered over to check out the recuperacoon. The outer husk was actually rough to the touch, with a raised, unevenly bumpy texture. I stuck a couple of my fingers into the sopor slime so I could get a sense of the texture, sliding them into it and pulling them back out, rubbing my fingertips together as I processed the texture. The slime was sorta sticky and gooey, but slick enough it can slide off the skin alright. That's why being naked in it isn't an issue bc it cleans off the body nicely. Fabric is probably another story though. 

 -I moved on from this tactile exploration to my computer, and pestered someone on trollian while in my room. They had indigo text so I'm guessing they were the zahhak swap. I was also fairly certain whoever it was, they were one of the male trolls.

 "Hey, it's eridan," I typed, and the response was quick and to the point.

"i know its you eridan" the text read back, and the voice I read it in was monotone, low on patience, a deeper voice. I faltered, and made a nervous noise in my throat, kind of like a laugh, as I responded. Of course he knew it was me, everyone knew each other’s trollhandles and my text color gave it away anyways.

"oh right. Anyways i was wondering if I could ask a favor," I stated. I can’t remember what the favor was supposed to be, but the words came out naturally so I had something I wanted to ask.

"what" the response was even shorter and felt more terse, and I began to panic a little. 

I’m not sure if this was actually how the memory played out, or if this was my conscious self deciding I wanted to change focus memorywise, but what I typed next was along the lines of the following;

"oh you know what never mind it's not that important anyways". 

and before they could respond I pushed my chair back and stood up away from the computer, turning away so I couldn’t see their reply.

 - whoever the indigo text was, they freaked me out and their responses always seemed fairly emotionless or lacking. I think I was quite intimidated by them. 

Based on the swaps I already remembered, I guessed later that if it was a Zahhak swap and male, that it was probably Gamzee, which also was fitting for the vibes I was getting from him.

 -I decided to take a break since I was so unnerved, and chose to look at my shirt- a yellow longsleeve/turtleneck. The symbol... looked like the gemini one instead of Aquarius? Unsure. Hands were sorta thin/gangly, and my nails were a bit long. I realized a few of my more tactile memories, such as resting my hand on the recuperacoon or while typing, a part of my brain registered having to navigate around things because my nails would get in the way, so the way I moved my hands accommodated that, or else the tips of my nails would catch on raised surfaces and textures.

- Pestered fef next, the memory skipped to shortly after she got blinded. 

"Hey fef" I sent, and was a little surprised when she responded back cheerfully.

"hey eridan!" 

"How are your eyes?" I asked, remembering how last time I saw her she had bandages over them.

"They're a lot better than before! I still can't see but my lusus is teaching me a way to sense colors!!" 

"Oh, is that what you're doing now?" I asked (since I was somewhat understandably confused about how she was talking to me)

"No, im not that good at it yet. I need help for things like this still!" (I don’t know what she was referring to specifically, but I remember thinking about how someone specifically was helping her. I guess I’d known she had someone acting as seeing eye troll but didn’t realize it’d include this as well. I don’t know who it was though.)

"... oh." I felt a fresh pang of guilt at this point, knowing it was my fault she needed this help in the first place. Fef of course caught on quickly, and sent me a heartfelt reassurance.

".... hey eridan? It's okay. " 

".....thanks fef"

I knew it was ok as far as she was concerned. She was struggling, but she didn’t blame me at all, and seemed pretty optimistic about the outcome. It didn’t help me feel bad for doing this to her though. I think in some ways it was worse because I wanted her to get mad, or even complain about her circumstances. But even this early on she was making sure not to, not around me at least.

- I switched focus, and tried to remember my dreamself - i wore yellow and my room was bright, suggesting i was a prospit kid. I tried to picture derse robes but it didn’t sit right. I tried focusing on my classpect one more time, picturing my godrobes - I saw dark green colors for that. Also had long sleeves? or something covering my arms at least, that’s what I saw when I looked down at myself. 

 -still felt like the troll with purple blood who got flung by the black king was Nepeta. Whoever they were they were pretty small framewise. they were wearing purple And looked like a knight, so knight of rage? I didn't see their wings though. Could have just been their normal high blood attire too.