#which yeah. probably some internal ableism in there. sorry

[scattered-winter]

i NEED to be more autistic

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! : ) You guys are amazing.

Sorry if this is stupid or offensive but i have a question regarding terminology describing facial diference/ disability

So my first language/ the language i write in is not english so while the terminology post is helpfull since i can translate it/ use it as a genereal guide in what to look out for it does not cover everything. I am sorry if this falls into the category of research question but how do i find good resources for terminology in my own language/ make sure its a good resource with the terms people with facial diferences in my country prefer? Its hard since my country is small and not great when it comes to ableism so there is not many resources availibel in the first place.

The second is a bit more specific. I want to include a character with cleft palate in the wider supporting cast, or at least in the background. So not a mayor/important character I can't spend much time describing them and i dont want to center their description on their facial diference. The term for cleft lip in my language literaly translates as "hare lip" into english whic is...yeah. Its probably not an uniqe case either. There might be some better term for it but i have not been abel to find it and i am not sure there is anything thats not overly medical. If that is the case should i use the medical term instead even if its jarring and include what it describes in a footnote? Does the mod team have sugestions on what else to do in this situation/ similar ones I probably will find myself in? How do i handel ableism thats literaly the integral part of my language. How do i catch terms that have ableist/ bad conotations bejond the basics since it is less called out over here i might not even notice its problematic? I dont want to make the issue any worse, further normalise bad terms by not caring about terms.

I thank you, so much in advance.

Hi! No such thing as a stupid question.

I'll just say that I very much relate to these issues considering my native language calls congenital disabilities “innate flaws” : ) so;

As for first question:

The first step would be to check if there are any organizations/groups that have resources in your language about facial differences, or checking if some international orgs have translations of their pages where they talk about facial differences. Moebius Syndrome Foundation has a page on face equality in 8 languages (+ English).

If there aren't any (high probability that this is the case unfortunately), try to see if there are any advocates for face equality that write in your language and what do they use (and in what contexts!).

If you still have issues, there's always the ultimate beauty of writing - making words up! When there's nothing you can use as a reference, the best way is to just create the word that you need. I'm aware that it could be hard to figure out what's appropriate and not accidentally offensive or insensitive, but your good intentions and putting care into it are already doing a lot of the work for you.

I really like this essay - which is about a very different disability-related topic - that asks a great question in this “how do we make [language thing] good for disabled people?” sphere: what feels beautiful? What term do you feel like sounds nice and not othering or pointlessly medicalized? Because honestly, if I encountered an invented word for facial differences in my native (very non-English) language and the explanation behind it was “I thought it sounded pretty” then I'd take it. Always better than “gross deformity” that many consider neutral without thinking about it at all.

Obviously the easiest way would be to ask someone who speaks your language and has a facial difference, but I'm aware that not everyone has that possibility - still, it could be a good idea to reach out to your local disabled community if you're able to. Or just ask on whatever social media is popular where you live!

You can also send us what is the language that you're having this issue in - despite the blog being very America-centric and English-only, a lot of us speak different languages and might just happen to know the one!

Second question:

First thing I'll address is that cleft palate and cleft lip are two separate things. They are often lumped together because they very often co-exist together, but a person could only have one of them.

Cleft palate hasn't, AFAIK, been referred to as a harelip anywhere, so I'm going to assume the question is about a cleft lip.

There's a few options as to what you can do here, in my opinion;

you describe the cleft lip without using any specific term (“they had an opening/a faded scar on between their upper lip and their nostril”);

the character calls it by the medicalized term* because that's what their doctor has told them, and they could mention how awkward/long/difficult to say/no one knows what it is/etc. the word is;

the character is self-aware and points out that the term “harelip” is weird as hell to say about a person when someone refers to it as such;

or, again, you make a word up. The word “lip” probably has to stay for clarity's sake, but try to replace the animal part with something: cleft, split, parted, fissure, opening, etc.; You can also check how other terms with “cleft” are called in your language: cleft chin, cleft palate, cleft hand/foot, etc.;

or you can make up a word fantasy-writer style and describe a cleft lip but give it a completely new name that fits the setting more - [Name]'s lip, [Some sort of deity]'s blessing, you can kinda do whatever (take a look at the Terms That Suck guide below first though!).

*my go-to way of finding the medical term is going through English Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but it works for this) and switching the language to the one I need. The cleft lip and palate page has 55 languages, so there's a chance it's on there - if it is, you might potentially find a nicer synonym in the “other names”.

Now for my (very personal) guide on catching if a term Kinda Sucks because doctors have some... tendencies in how they name various conditions:

does it use a word that is just a synonym for evil, or otherwise immoral or broken?;

does it have an animal connotation? (hares, wolves, elephants, fish... there's so many...);

does it have a monster/fantasy creature connotation? (i.e., Donohue syndrome being called leprechaunism, Hypertrichosis being called Werewolf disease, etc.);

does it just sound rude? (my native language uses the word “maw” to mean cleft palate, which I find to be fucked up);

is it straight up racist and/or xenophobic? (like most of the historic words for syphilis were just “[nationality] disease”).

There's obviously nuance to everything (“vitiligo” is considered neutral, despite being derived from the word for “blemish” in Latin) but as a vague framework I find these to be useful. Again: what feels good or neutral will probably be the better option over “animal face disease”.

I hope this helps!

mod Sasza

[everythingwasnormalhere]

Craig headcanons, go

GO GAYS GO 🙌✨

Autistic

He's so autistic it's insane

He has shutdowns way too often :(

Even more often as he grows up

He's associated flipping people off with being able to leave class (to go to counselor's office) so he does it when he gets too overwhelmed at school

Because he's never been taught it's wrong, too, but that's secondary

When he has shutdowns he goes non-verbal too

Which has gotten everyone to assume he's simply not too talkative and let him be

Tweek eventually learnt what Craig's shutdowns were and he helped him out with them every time since then

For example getting Craig out of class when he looked like he was getting overwhelmed

Craig's so grateful for this<3

He doesn't get an autism diagnosis until 15 for some reason

Even though he didn't talk until he was 4- it's really weird it took him so long to get it actually

He had a really hard time coping with his diagnosis at first

So much internalized ableism

He probably locked himself in his room for a couple days after that

He told Tweek before he told anyone else

And Tweek helped him come to terms with it<3

Now he's fine with it :)

He hates how noise cancelling headphones feel, and instead wears earplugs to block noise

He doesn't ask teachers for permission because they can't see the earplugs with his hat anyways

His spin is totally space

He Loves space

He's infodumps to Tweek about it really often, Tweek loves it even though he doesn't understand even a third of it

He has those glow in the dark stars on his room's ceiling and a projector

His style never changed much through his life, comfortable clothes, nothing really specific

He's never stopped wearing that hat

Even though it's kinda broken now

Transmasc (he/him), only Tweek and his family know

He's always been so Boy even as a little kid that nobody's ever thought he could be anything else at all

Not exactly insecure about this but... Yes

Awful chest dysphoria

He's gay :)

His father thought that meant he was actually a girl but nope

Sorry for crushing your hopes Mr Tucker but your son is gay 😔✨

He's actually fine with it after not too long dw

Craig's family life is pretty great :)

Still he sleeps at Tweek's quite often

When he's not, Tweek's usually sleeping at his

Because otherwise they both struggle sleeping by themselves

They have such a healthy and cute relationship istg

They've been fake dating since they were 9, real dating since 10, and Craig got them promise rings at 13

They've obviously had troubles a couple times but they fixed them<3

Btw Craig got braces at 12 and wore them till 14

His teeth went from Awful to Actually Pretty Ok

But the braces made him so insecure while he wore them

His favorite subjects at school are the ones related to science

Math? He's awesome at it

Physics? He loves it

Chemistry? Fuck yeah

Biology? Pretty cool too

He hates literature with his whole soul though

"What was the artist feeling here?" "How would I know I wasn't there" (mood)

He's taller than Tweek until he turns 13

After that Craig mostly stops growing and instead Tweek gets so tall it's crazy

It felt so weird to them at the beginning 😭

And yes, Craig is half Peruvian on his mom's side :)

He and Kenny have conversations in Spanish sometimes

It's something they bond over idk

Aaand I think that's it :D he's a pretty chill dude tbh

[sylvanfreckles]

Nice Day For A...Wait For It (4 of 5)

(For no.11: "911, what's your emergency?")

Fandom: Supernatural Rating: G General Warning: chronic illness, internalized ableism, disability, violence

Summary: Sam and Eileen's wedding is just a few days away, and Dean and Castiel join them for some relaxation at the hotel before the ceremony. But Winchester Luck strikes again, and they find themselves at the center of disaster as secrets are uncovered. Cas has gotten stronger since the ritual that tore his grace away and left him human, but will it be enough when he's targeted by a malevolent spirit? (Read on AO3)

...

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”

( Unending Love - Rabindranath Tagore)

...

“Damnit,” Dean lowered his phone as his call rang through to voicemail. “Cas isn’t answering.”

Sam had twisted around in the seat to talk to Eileen but pulled his attention back to his brother. “Drop us off at the corner, we’ll see what we can find out about the estate sale those ornaments came from while you head back to the hotel.”

“You sure?”

“You can pick up Cas and meet us there.”

Dean sucked his lower lip between his teeth as he maneuvered the car closer to the curb. If Cas was okay. And sure, he could be napping or reading or in the shower and unable to answer the phone, but that didn’t stop the heavy feeling in Dean’s gut. They shouldn’t have left him alone.

“Hey,” Sam had a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “He’s okay.”

He barely nodded as Sam and Eileen slid out of the car. The doors were hardly shut before he was off again, roaring back down the road to the hotel.

It was almost noon now, the sun high in the sky. He pulled into a space near the door to the hotel and strode in, not noticing the front desk clerk’s greeting. Down the hall to their room, where the door swung open at his touch. Unlocked.

“Cas?” Dean stuck his head into the room. Nothing looked disturbed, except the sheets on the bed where he’d left Cas. The bathroom was empty, and the wheelchair still sat in the corner of the room, but Cas’s crutches were gone. So he’d probably left on his own.

Back out into the hall. Dean looked up and down it, as though Cas would just be hiding around a corner. Then he hurried down to the desk, where the clerk was talking with one of the young women who’d been complaining about the odd happenings in the hotel.

“Excuse me,” Dean interrupted them. “I’m looking for my…my partner?” He felt stupid saying boyfriend, which was stupid. Hell, he had a ring in his suitcase and still couldn’t say the b-word. “Skinny guy, dark hair? Probably walking on crutches?”

The clerk shook his head, but the young woman nodded. “I think I saw him in the hall, but I don’t know where he was going, sorry.”

“When was this?”

She shrugged. “An hour ago? Maybe more?”

Dean rapped on the counter with his hand. An hour ago. Cas could’ve left the hotel for all they knew.

“No, wait, it had to be an hour.” She shot a look at the door leading to a staff only area. “The lights were still on in the staff room after I saw him, and when I went back with a load of laundry they were all out.”

“The lights were out?” Dean’s eyebrows raised.

The young woman nodded. “It was weird, it was like they all exploded.”

“Yeah,” the clerk leaned forward. “That was when everything fell over in the basement, right?”

“Basement?” Dean wanted to shake them both, to get the information out faster. “What basement?”

“It’s just a bunch of storage. I peeked in the door, but all the shelves were knocked over, and I don’t get paid enough to pick them up,” the clerk explained.

“Where?”

The hotel employees jumped at the angry tone in Dean’s voice, and the young woman meekly pointed at the staff door. “But you can’t go in there…”

He was already pushing past, through the staff area, ignoring the other hotel employee on her knees cleaning up the broken glass.

“You can’t be in here!” she called after him.

There were big washing machines on one wall, with a wooden door next to them. Dean pointed to the door. “Basement?”

“Guests aren’t allowed in the basement!”

He shoved the door open to take in the sight of the room beneath. Several rows of wire shelving had toppled over, scattering bins and boxes and their contents.

“Sir, you’re going to have to leave, or I’m calling the police,” the employee scolded. She tried to take hold of Dean’s arm, but he pulled away from her.

“Cas!”

“This area is staff only, Sir.”

Something silvery caught Dean’s eye and he swore, thundering down the steps into the mess of the basement below.

A lone aluminum crutch lay near the base of the stairs.

“Cas!” Dean started shifting through the detritus of the basement, shoving containers and crates aside. He heard a faint moan and redoubled his efforts.

“Oh my god!” The hotel staffer had followed Dean down the steps, probably to try to force him out of the basement but drew up short when Dean uncovered Cas’s shoulder. “I’m calling 9-1-1!”

Dean ignored her and kept shifting things away, finally freeing Cas’s head from the debris. “No, no, don’t move.” He rested a hand on the back of Cas’s neck. “I’m right here, man. I’ve got you.” It looked like Cas had managed to wrap his arms around his head before the shelves landed on him, which probably saved him from a more severe injury, but Dean wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

Someone called down that an ambulance was on the way, but Dean barely noticed. He shoved a little more of the debris away, then whipped his jacket off and laid it over Cas’s body. “Help’s coming, Sunshine. It’s gonna be okay.”

…

Sam knocked on the door to Cas and Dean’s hotel room before pushing it open. “Dean?”

Dean waved Sam in from his perch in the armchair he’d dragged over next to the bed. “He’s asleep.”

“How is he?” Sam walked up to stand next to Dean’s chair and look over Cas. The dark-haired man was curled up in the bed, one hand holding Dean’s. There was a new bruise on his temple, and clean white bandages wrapped around the scratches on his throat.

“He said the spirit threw him down the stairs then brought the shelves down on top of him,” Dean explained. His thumb stroked the back of Cas’s hand as he talked. “We’ve got bumps and bruises, a broken rib, and an EMT with very awkward questions about the scars on his back.”

Sam winced. Cas’s scars couldn’t be explained away very easily. Naomi had literally carved glyphs into Cas’s flesh during the ritual that had burned out his grace to leave him human. “What did you tell them?”

Dean shook his head. “I called Charlie. Pretty sure she came up with something about him being forced into a cult by a bad ex.”

He sighed and rested his forehead in his free hand. “I can’t do this, Sammy.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“I just didn’t want him to get hurt.”

“Hey,” Sam crouched down and put one hand on Dean’s knee. “You didn’t do this.”

Dean lifted his head enough to stare at Cas’s sleeping form. “What do I do, man? I can’t…I can’t fix this. No matter what I do he’s gonna get hurt.”

“It’s kinda up to him,” Sam replied softly. “Right? You wanted him to make his own decisions, live his own life? Sometimes we get hurt.”

They were silent for a few moments. Sam didn’t really know what to say to this. He loved Castiel, they all did. It hurt to know you couldn’t protect someone you loved.

Maybe Cas had gone through this, too. In all the years Cas had known them when he was an angel, he’d lived through so many changes. His powers had been lost or diminished time after time, but he’d still wanted to stay by their side.

Angels were supposed to be above emotions, but Castiel had loved them long before he knew what love really was. Looking at him now, in the limitations he faced as a human, Sam just knew they had a lot to make up for.

Dean let out another sigh. “Right. Get anything on that estate sale?”

“Edith Greene,” Sam stood up and pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. “Found dead in her home three months ago. Police believe she was strangled during a robbery, body discovered when her maid arrived for work in the morning.”

“Explains the bruises on Cas’s neck,” Dean shrugged.

“And she targeted Cas because he had one of her belongings in his possession.”

“Great.” Dean leaned back in the chair and rubbed his hand across his eyes. “So, we’ve got a vengeful old biddy with tchotchkes in every living room in the city.”

“I do have some good news,” Sam offered. He grinned when Dean finally looked up at him. “Edith Greene was buried in her family plot next to her dearly departed husband.”

Dean sat up. “No cremation?”

Sam shook his head. “We’ve got a body to burn.”

...

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 5)

[dolugecat]

On some Japanese social issues I had learned about at uni and abroad):

(Rb ok!)

Legit had an epiphany about the true hidden meaning of the last arc of Mob Psycho 100. It’s hella projection but for real there is nothing neurotypical about Mob or Mob Psycho. I do not wish to enforce my interpretation on others (ironic bc I do that all the time but this is a serious social theory). There are some interesting and very sad social issues in Japan that the west really doesn’t understand but would I think help people understand a lot of context behind not only Mob Psycho, but also a lot of other anime. I learned this at my shitty university (prestigious but horrific) and while studying abroad in Japan and talking with Japanese peers. Get ready here we go (and tw for bullying and darker things):

Unfortunately in East Asian education systems, bullying can be extremely intense. Growing up I assumed it was over exaggerated extremely in anime for drama but it really can be so horrific. From what I’ve heard, there is often a single kid or so who is just shit on by everyone else, even the teacher. Mogami land *is* the reality of some Japanese kids. I’ve read that in Korea, this social punching bag sometimes is just the darkest skinned person (yayyy colorism /angry) and or someone who does not fit in. I mean, we have that in America too, but maybe not as common for the bullying to be as focused on one misfit rather than several. These kids just can’t escape the stigma too, kids from other schools find out they were a major victim at their old school and it starts anew. Thus there is so much stigma and incentive to join in on bullying so you aren’t the one. Sadly, this also ofc leads to higher suicide rates. That’s where the “shoe on building roof” anime trope comes in, bc somehow taking off shoes is relayed to death (I forgot why sorry)

There is a difference in how intense in general high school vs college is too. In the West, commonly college is the more intense curriculum and is harder than high school, but in Japan it’s usually the opposite. Grind suuuupppeeerrrr hard for entrance exams (huge standardized tests that determines what college you can qualify to) bc unlike the ACT or SAT here, that test is by far the most important factor for college admission. Then chill and relax a bit in college. Can’t relate. Name and prestige is very critical for job application, more important than here. That’s why planning out your future is sooo much more intense for Japanese high schoolers than in America, and why there is sooo much more pressure to excel in high school than here. Japanese school years and holidays are done different than ours, I’d suggest looking it up.

Social prestige of going to an American high school or college is nuts. Like whyyy do you value our shitty education, Japan’s is much higher quality (it’s bc we neo colonized them). Being able to speak English is very, very highly valued and any association with Americans make you cooler. From my experience, some Japanese students got very excited to practice speaking English with us, and their biggest issues with learning it is pronunciation, lmao. Wasai english is unique slang that is indeed English words but it’s kinda different and it’s kinda jarring to remember lol. So, Teru having parents that are working overseas isn’t too uncommon, idk about leaving him absolutely alone, but I did have a ex-friend who just came from Japan in middle school who’s situation probably wasn’t too far off from that. Empty wealth with no love, it’s no wonder those kind of people can end up being huge bullies (minori?)

I did a presentation on 引きこもり(hikikomori) for which means “shut in”, (like Serizawa) and it’s fucked up. It’s a social phenomena where according to some Japanese researchers a mix of undisciplined parenting, guilt/not living up to expectations, and hopelessness makes an alarming amount of youth/ young adults literally never go out side their house/room. Often a parent is “enabling” the behavior by supporting them, but idk the articles seemed a bit victim-blaming to me when I read it, but I don’t think I should make a judgement too hard, not my place. I will say I do suspect and believe I read something to support that ASD might play a role in hikikomoris (there is pitiful resources for autistic people in Asia, much much less support than even here, to the point I don’t think most know it exists). Like come on, with the other points I laid out my personal opinion as an Asian American with autism is that it really seems it’s unknowing ableism against autistic classmates, but I didn’t grow up in Asia so I don’t want to say.

Mental health in general is tragically quite abysmal in Japan, and with it being so hyper competitive and brutal work culture, it’s no surprise birth rate in Japan is so low; some Japanese young adults say it seems unethical to bring a life to such hostile world. Suicide rate is of the highest in the world. It’s fucked, I’ve interacted with some of the locals in Tokyo and they were so nice, but the business men just looked dead inside, it’s so sad.

Relationships between child and parent is also strained bc of this intense work and school culture. Quality time is too scarce when you gotta work so much. And the pressure from parents to do well in education or else you might end up socially stigmatized is rough. Bc your job is who you are, it’s hyper capitalism (thanks us for making them do this)

With autism being so unknown, support for parents in raising autistic kids is almost nonexistent. What happens if the “darker” side of ASD shows up in kids? I used to be a menace when I had meltdowns, I felt so bad but really just became so indiscriminately violent. See where this is going? Legit, I think ESP is a sort of metaphor for neurodivergance to ONE. There is so much stigma around it, and even less way for kids to understand why they are different than the others. My Korean family can’t admit we all got ASD, too much fear and internalized shame.

I got finally diagnosed with ASD as an adult and I’ll tell ya, I relate too much to Mob hurting Ritsu. I felt so bad, but also not in control, I knew what I was doing but not how to stop. Luckily, is was blessed in that my hyperfixations involved science and logic, so I did well at school. Sadly, our boy Mob just don’t got the passion or ability to do well at school. His kanji is very bad, even to point of not being confident he wrote a kanji (世) they learn when they are 9, in elementary school (thanks @katyatalks). Him being a bit berated by his parents for having bad grades and bending spoons seems harsh to Westerners I think, but IMO it’s pretty tame from what I’ve seen of some Asian parents (I get to say that lmao). Ofc, however the shaming is very real and Mob just agreeing with them about how weird and stupid he thinks he is so sad. There is even more pressure for the eldest to be better than here, I feel from some interactions. Nonetheless, it’s implied Mob is quite emotionally detached from his parents, even though he loves them, which also adds to his emotional complex. Combined with originally fragile self esteem and feelings of worthlessness, we got one emotionally stunted boy. However, contrary to common belief people with ASD are sometimes hyper empathic and experience emotions very intensely. We are prone to having “meltdowns” which if not assisted with can be quite violent if very intense. For me, my worse meltdowns as a kid came from when I didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting what I wanted, it seemed selfish and cruel of me but I couldn’t control it. I wanted to be a good kid, so why did hit my moms leg at target when she refused to buy me Pokémon toys? I couldn’t come up with a good reason for why my mind just commanded my body to do bad things, just a single thought was controlling me, I want I want I want I want I want ____. Which I argue could be what ???% represents… bc well…. Yeah….. hmm….. not in control of self (mob unconscious), selfish (not actually, I’ve forgave myself but my “normal” kid self was so ashamed), destructive, hurt family, wanting to stop but can’t, that’s kind of…. Too relatable.

But legit, since realizing my new HC, I’ve started to think of the last chapter of mp100 when I “explode” and it helps me feel better and I do gain “control” a bit easier. I don’t feel so bad anymore either, Mob!

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

Re: TFATWS ep 4, I'm curious to know what the big problems you mentioned are. I just happened to rewatch that one a couple of days ago, so I was just wondering what you meant. IMO that's probably the best episode of that series based solely on that flashback with Bucky and Ayo in Wakanda, which is of course why I happened to rewatch that one, haha.

Oh that scene is so good, they handled that beautifully.

There are a few problems I have with that ep. First Zemo talking about supremacy and being deemed the expert on super soldiers. They retconned his character for the series and I'm not a fan of that.

Also I didn't like the exchange between him and Bucky:

Bucky: "The serum never corrupted Steve"

Zemo: "Touché, but there's never been another Steve Rogers, has there"

Yes, yes there has been and you're talking to him! The serum never corrupted Bucky, he was a hero then and he's a hero now.

And related to that, when Walker tells him: "This is all really easy for you, isn't it? All that serum running through your veins", Bucky doesn't say anything back and that's just wrong. That serum was given to him against his will after Hydra kidnapped him and tortured him then brainwashed him. It wouldn't have taken much for the writers to include a line that would go something like "This serum was injected in me against my will as I was being tortured by nazis so shut the fuck up, Walker".

Another thing I don't like is that Sam keeps talking to Karli and Zemo and Walker trying to stop the violence, which is all good and all, and he sympathizes with Karli's fight... but he's only concerned about making sure he can stop her and the Flagsmashers, he doesn't do anything to actually address the why they're fighting, and I'm sorry but that doesn't sound like Sam at all.

That's more a complaint in general though, it's something Marvel keeps doing where the heroes fight external threats but they never address the internal problems in society or in the government: it's always aliens or wizards or nazis or bad people infiltrating... but the message is always that the system and the status quo must be protected at all costs.

And last but not least Ayo taking Bucky's arm which has been analyzed by many people versed on this much more than me as a sign of ableism.

So yeah some things in that ep are good but these are big flaws imo.

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

In Search of Lost Screws (RQBB '21)

Here at last is my entry for the 2021 Rusty Quill Big Bang!

Fandom: The Magnus Archives Rating: T Word count: ~30k Warnings: Chronic Illness, Mild Body Horror, Internalized Ableism, Canon-Typical Spiders, Mention of Canon-Typical Suicidal Ideation, Alcohol Other tags: Cane-user Jon, EDS Jon, Canon-compliant, Season 5, Set in 180-181 (Upton Safehouse period) Characters: Jon Sims, Martin Blackwood, Mikaele Salesa (secondary), Annabelle Cane (secondary) Relationships: Jon/Martin Summary: While staying at Upton House, Jon and Martin accidentally break their bedroom’s doorknob, and can’t get back into the room until they fix it. Meanwhile Jon tries not to break into literal pieces without the Eye, and also to pretend he’s having a good time as he and Martin lunch with Annabelle, parry gifts from Salesa, and quarrel about whether Jon’s okay or not. He's fine! It's just that the apocalypse runs on dream logic, and chronic pain feels worse when you're awake. Excerpt:

“Have I mentioned how weird it is you’re the one who keeps asking me this stuff?” “I’m sorry. I’m trying to help? I just…” Jon closed his eyes, which itched with the warehouse’s dust, and rubbed their lids with an index finger. “I can’t seem to corral my thoughts here.” “Don’t worry about it. It’s actually kind of fun, it’s just—I’m so used to being the sidekick,” Martin laughed. “Besides, I miss my eldritch Google.” “Should I go back out there, ask the Eye about it, then come back?” Another laugh, this one less awkward. “No. That won’t work, remember? This place is a ‘blind spot,’ you said.” The words in inverted commas he said with a frown and in a deeper voice. “Right, right. I forgot,” Jon sighed. He lowered himself to the floor and examined the finger he’d felt snap back into place when he let go his cane. During the five seconds he’d allowed himself to entertain it, the idea of heading back out there had excited him a little. A few minutes to check on Basira, verify what Salesa had told them about his life before the change, make sure the world hadn’t somehow ended twice over. Give himself a few minutes’ freedom of movement, for that matter. Out there he could run, jump, open jars, pick up full mugs of tea without worrying a screw in his hand would come loose and make him drop them. He could stand up as quickly as he thought the words, I think I’ll stand up now, without his vision going dark. God, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter! He would just know every tripping hazard and every look on Martin’s face, without having to ask these clumsy human eyes to show them to him. “Honestly, it’d almost feel worth it to go back out there just to formulate a plan to find them. At least I can think out there.” “Hey.” Martin elbowed him slightly in the ribs. Jon fought with himself not to resent the very gentleness of it. “I think I’ll come up with the plan for once, thanks. Some of us can think just fine here.” Was it just because of Hopworth that Martin’s elbow barely touched him? Or because Martin feared that Jon would break in here, in a way he’d learnt not to fear out there?

Huge thanks to @pilesofnonsense for hosting this event; to @connanro for beta-reading; and to @silmapeli for their amazing illustration, whose own post you can find here.

If you prefer, you can read this fic instead on Ao3. I won't link it directly, since Tumblr has trouble with external links, but if you google the title and add "echinoderms" (my Ao3 handle), it should come up!

Crunch. “Oh god. Shit! Oh god, oh no—”

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

A clatter, then a noise like a small rock scraping a large one. Jon’s heart plunged; halfway through his question he knew the answer.

“I—I broke it? Look, see, the whole thing just—take this.” Martin tore his hand out of Jon’s and dropped the severed doorknob in it instead. Then he dropped to the floor, diving head- and hands-first for the crack between it and the door as if that crack were a portal between dimensions. Jon closed his eyes and shook this image away, hoping when he opened them again he could focus on what was real.

He should have known this would happen from the moment they left for breakfast. Every time he’d opened that door its knob felt a little looser. Why hadn’t he warned Martin? Well, alright, he didn’t need powers to know that one. He just hadn’t thought of it. Been a bit preoccupied, after all. And even if he had thought of it, that was exactly the kind of conversation he’d been shying away from all week. Watch out for that doorknob; it’s a little loose, he would say, and yeah, probably Martin would answer, Oh, thanks. But there was a chance Martin would say instead, Why didn’t you tell me?—and all week Jon had obeyed an instinct to avoid prompting that question. All week he had made sure to enter and exit their room a few steps ahead of Martin, and hold the door open for him. Martin probably just saw it as Jon’s way of apologizing for their first few months in the Archives together, and once that thought occurred to him Jon had started to look at it that way himself. Maybe that’s why he’d forgot this time.

“Nooo-oooo, come on come on!”

“I don’t think you’ll fit,” Jon said, when he looked again and found Martin trying to wedge his fingers under the door.

(Martin used to leave Jon’s office door open behind him—perhaps absentmindedly, but more likely as a gesture of friendship and openness, which the Jon of that time would not suffer. Sasha and Tim, n.b., only left his door open on their way into his office, when they didn’t intend to stay long; Martin would leave it gaping even if he didn’t mean to come back. Every time Jon had sighed, pulled himself to his feet, and closed the door behind Martin, drawing out the click of its tongue in the latch. And a few times he’d closed the door in front of him, so as to exclude him from a conversation between Jon and Tim or Sasha that he, Martin, had tried to weigh in on from outside Jon’s office.)

“What are you looking for?”

“The—the screw, I saw it roll under there. It fell down on our side. Oh, my god, it was so close—if I’d reacted just half a second earlier, I could’ve?—shit.”

“Oh.” Jon huffed out a cynical laugh.

“I can’t believe it. I broke Salesa’s door! He welcomes us in to an oasis, and I break the door. Oh, god—I’ve broken an irreplaceable door, in a stately historic mansion!”

A few more demonstrative huffs of laughter. “No you didn’t.”

Martin paused. He didn’t get up, but did turn his head to look at Jon. “Yes I did. It’s right there in your hand, Jon—”

“I should’ve known. Check for cobwebs, Martin.”

“Oh come on.”

“This can’t be your fault—it’s far too neat. This is all part of Annabelle’s plan.”

“Do you know that?”

“W-well, no. I can’t, not here. I just—”

“Yeah, I don’t think so, Jon. Pretty sure it’s just an old doorknob.”

“Did you check for cobwebs?”

“Of course there are no cobwebs. A spider wouldn’t even have time to finish building the web before somebody wrecked it opening the door!”

“Then what’s that?” With the tip of his cane Jon tapped the floor in front of a clot of gray fluff in the seam between two walls next to the door, making sure not to let it touch the clot itself.

Martin rolled over to see where he was pointing, and almost stuck his elbow in it. “Ah. Gross. Gross, is what that is.”

“Christ, I should’ve known this would happen. I did know this would happen,” Jon reminded himself—“just ignored the warning signs because I can’t think straight here.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, Jon. It’s a corner. Spiders love corners. I mean, unless you can prove the corner of our doorway has more spiderwebs than anywhere else in the house—”

“Well, of course not. You forget she’s got her own corner somewhere, which we still haven’t found by the way—”

“So, what, you think Annabelle Cane lassoed the screw with a strand of cobweb.”

“Not literally? She could be sitting on the other side of the door with a magnet for all we know!”

Martin peered under the door again with an exasperated sigh. “She’s not.”

“Not now she’s heard us talking about her.”

God, what a delicate web that would be, if all he had to do to avoid the spider’s clutches was reach a door before Martin did. Perhaps if he’d knocked first that’d have saved him. Maybe Martin was right. How could Annabelle know him well enough to foresee this mistake? Most of the time he hated people opening doors for him, after all.

Why do people see someone with a cane and think, Only one free hand? How ever will he open the door!? They don’t do that for people with shopping bags—not ones his age, at least. Letting another person open a door for him felt to Jon like… defeat, somehow. Like admitting the dolce et decorum estness of this version of reality all nondisabled people seemed to live in where he couldn’t open doors. And that version of reality horrified him. Not so much the idea of being too weak to open them—that sounded merely annoying. Like knocking the sides of jar lids on tables and swearing, only with doors. He had beat his fists against enough Pull doors in his time to figure he could live with that. It was more the idea of becoming that way. Letting his door-opening muscles atrophy ‘til it became the truth.

But sometimes you just let a thing happen, and forget to hate it. That was the thing about pride. Sometimes your convictions and your habits stop fitting together—you believe Fuck this job with all your heart, but still tuck in your shirt when you come to the office. And then you fly back from America in borrowed clothes, and pop in at the Institute like that on your way to Gertrude’s storage unit, and that’s what changes your habits. Not the knowledge you can’t be fired; not your now-boyfriend’s plot to put your then-boss behind bars. A thirdhand t-shirt with a slogan on it about how to outrun bears.

On his way out this morning the doorknob had felt so loose in Jon’s hand he almost had told Martin about it. But Martin had been full of let’s-go-on-an-adventure-together-style chatter—like when they’d left Daisy’s safehouse, only, get this, without the dread of entering an apocalyptic wasteland—and listening to him put the door out of Jon’s mind before he’d had time to interject.

Their first day here—or at least, the first they spent awake—Jon had inadvertently taught Martin not to accept invitations from Salesa. The latter had bounded up after Martin’s lunch in linen shirt and whooshy shorts and was, to Martin’s then-unseasoned heart, impossible to deny. So Jon had spent thirty minutes on a creaky folding chair, lunging out of his seat on occasion to collect a ball one of the other two had hit wrong, and trying to keep Salesa’s too-bright white socks out of sight. He’d pretended he preferred to sit out, knowing Martin would worry if he tried to play. But he hadn’t done as good a job hiding his boredom as he thought. “Thanks for putting up with that. Sorry it went on so long,” Martin had said as they re-entered their bedroom. “I just couldn’t say no to him, you know? For such a cynical old man he’s got impressive puppy eyes.”

“It’s fine? You know me, I don’t mind… watching.”

“I just mean, I’m sorry you couldn’t play. How’s your leg, by the way? Er—both your legs, I guess.”

“It’s fine. They’re both fine. I didn’t want to play anyway, remember? I don’t know how.”

“Sure you don’t,” Martin replied, words tripping over a fond laugh.

“I don’t!”

“Come on, Jon. Everyone knows how to play ping-pong.”

Martin had turned down Salesa when he showed up the next day in khaki shorts and a pith helmet with three butterfly nets, without Jon’s having to say a word. More emphatically still did he turn him down when Salesa mentioned the house had an indoor pool, and offered to lend them both antique bathing suits like the one he had on, “Free of charge! A debtor is an enemy, after all, and in this new world I have no wish to make an enemy of” (sarcastic whisper, fingers wiggling) “the Ceaseless Watcher who rules it. I have nothing to hide from you,” he’d alleged, for the… third time that day, maybe? Each morning Jon resolved to count such references; he rarely missed one, as far as he knew, but kept forgetting how many he’d counted.

But Salesa was a salesman, and over time his efforts had grown more subtle. He stopped showing up already dressed for the activity he had in mind, and instead would drop hints at meals about all the fun things they could do if only they would let him show them. Martin loved how the winter sunlight caught, every afternoon around four, in the branches of a tree visible outside the window of their bedroom. “Ah, yes,” Salesa had agreed when he remarked on it one morning. “Turning it periwinkle and the golden green of champagne.” (He poured sparkling wine—the cheap stuff, he said, not real champagne—into an empty juice glass still lined with orange pulp. Over and over, without once overflowing. The oranges weren’t ripe enough to drink their juice plain yet, he said. But they’d still run out of juice first.) “If you think that’s beautiful”—he paused to swallow bubbles come up from his throat, waved his hand, shook his head. “No. On one tree, yes, it is beautiful. But on a whole orchard of bare trees in winter”—he nodded in the direction of Upton’s orchards—“the afternoon sun is sublime. You can see how the twigs shrink and shiver under its gaze; the grass rustles with a hitch in its breath as if it fears to be seen, but with each undulation a new blade flashes gold like a coin,” &c., &c.

“Wow. Sounds like you really got lucky, finding such a nice place to, uh. Sssset up camp?”

Jon knew Martin well enough to hear the judgment in his voice; if Salesa recognized it then he was an expert at pretending not to. “And it's only a two-minute walk away,” he’d said, instead of taking Martin’s bait. “It would be such a shame for my guests not to see it.”

“Oh, well. Maybe in a few days? It’s just, we’ve been outside nonstop for ages. It’s nice to be between four walls again. Besides, we don’t know the grounds as well as you do—and the border isn’t all that stable, you said? Right?”

“It is if you know how to follow it! I could accompany you—show you all the best sights, with no risk of wandering back out into the hellscape by mistake.”

“We’re just not really ready for that, I don’t think. Right, Jon?”

“Mm.”

“Are you sure? If it were me, a foray into a beautiful natural oasis would be just what I needed to convince myself that my peace—my sanctuary—is real.”

“If it is real,” Jon couldn’t stop himself from muttering.

Salesa remained impervious. “You would be surprised how difficult it is to feel fear in a place like that. I don’t think that is just the camera.”

“We‘ll think about it,” Martin conceded.

“Yes—you should both think about it. I am at your disposal whenever you change your mind.”

And so on that morning they had narrowly escaped. Would they had fared so well today. The problem was, on these early occasions Jon had interpreted Martin’s No thankses as being, well, Martin’s. But after a few more of Salesa’s sales pitches Jon began to second-guess that.

“Is it warm enough in here for you both?” Salesa had asked them last night at dinner. “I worry too much, perhaps. I only wish the place took less time to warm up in the morning. At breakfast time, in sunny weather like we've been having, I’ll bet you anything you like it’s warmer out there than in here.”

“It’s alright; we’re not too cold in the mornings either. Right, Jon?”

“Hm? Oh—no.”

“Perhaps we three could take breakfast out there, before the weather changes.”

“Ha—that’s right,” Martin had laughed. “I forgot you still had that out here. Weather changes. Brave new world, I guess.”

Salesa smirked and shrugged. “Well, braver than the rest of it.”

“R…ight. ‘We three,’ you said—so not Annabelle?”

“Mmmmno, probably not her. I have tried taking spiders outside before; they never seem to like it much.”

Nearly every day, here, Jon found a spider in their bathtub. The first time Martin had been with him. Martin had picked the thing up with his fingers and tried to coax it to leave out the window, but by the time he got there it’d crawled up his sleeve.

“Excuse me.”

Martin pulled back his own chair too and frowned up at him. “You okay?”

“Just needed the toilet.” He tried to arrange his mouth into a gentle smile. “Think I can do that on my own.”

The other two resumed their conversation the moment Jon left the dining room. Before the intervening walls muffled their voices Jon heard:

“I suppose that does sound pretty nice.”

“Pretty nice, you suppose? Martin, Martin—it’s a beautiful oasis! What a shame it will be if you leave this place having done no more than suppose about it.”

“It is a bit of a waste, I guess.”

“You wouldn’t need to sit on the ground, if that’s what concerns you. There are benches everywhere.”

He’d been just about to cross through a doorway and out of earshot when he froze, hearing his name:

“Oh, ha—not me, but, Jon might find that nice to know,” Martin said. “Thanks for.” And then silence.

Was that the whole reason he kept declining invitations to explore the grounds? To keep grass stains out of Jon’s trousers? Martin was the one who’d sat down on that godforsaken Extinction couch; why did he think—?

Not the point, Jon told himself as he sat on the toilet and set his forehead on the heels of his palms. He tried to watch the floor for spiders, but his eyes kept crossing. The point was that if—? If Martin was lying about wanting to stay inside—or, more charitably, if he was telling the truth but wanted that only because he thought Jon would have as dismal a time out in the garden as he had at ping-pong—then…?

He imagined holding hands with Martin while surrounded by green. Gravel crunching under their feet. Martin smiling, with sunlight caught in the strands of his hair that a slight breeze had blown upright.

“And if you get too warm,” he heard Salesa tell Martin, as he headed back into the dining room, “we can move into the shade of the pines! You know, they don’t just grow year-round? They also shed year-round. The floor under them is always carpeted in needles, so you need never get mud on your shoes.”

“Huh,” Martin laughed. “Never thought of it that way.”

“But of course there are benches there too,” Salesa added, his eyes flickering up to Jon.

As Jon hauled himself into his seat he asked, in a voice he hoped the strain made sound distracted ergo casual, “So, what, like a picnic, you mean.”

Not a fun picnic. Not very romantic, since their third wheel was the first to invite himself. Salesa neglected to mention how much wet grass they would have to trek through to get to his favorite spot; that there were benches everywhere didn’t matter since they couldn’t all three fit on one, so they ended up sat in the dirt after all—and n.b. it required a second trek to find a patch of dirt dry enough to sit on at this time of morning. Jon was so sick with fatigue by the time they sat down he could barely eat a thing, though he did dispatch most of Martin’s thermos of tea. His hands shook and buzzed, and felt clumsy, like they’d fallen asleep; he ended up getting more jam in the dirt than on Salesa’s soggy, pre-buttered toast. He felt as though the rest of his flesh had melted three feet to the left of his eyes, bones and mind. Eventually he elected to blame his dizziness on the sun. When his forehead and upper lip started to prickle, threatening sweat, he stood up and announced, “It’s too hot here.”

Or tried to stand, anyway. One leg had oozed just far enough out of its joint that it buckled when he tried to stand; indigo and fuchsia blotches overtook his sight. He pitched forward, free arm pinwheeling—might have fallen into the boiled eggs if Martin hadn’t caught him. “Jon! Are you okay?”

God, why was Martin so surprised? This must have been the fifth or sixth time he had asked him that question since they left the house. One time Jon had bent down to brush dirt off his leg and Martin had thought he was scratching his bandages. So he asked him were they itchy, had they started to peel, did they need changing again, were they cutting off his circulation (no, not yet, not yet, and no). How could someone be so attentive to imaginary ills and yet miss the real ones? At another point, an enormous blue dragonfly had buzzed past, and instead of Did you see that? Martin had turned around to ask Are you okay. Now, on this fifth or sixth occasion, for a few seconds of pure, nonsensical rage he wondered how Martin dared stoop to such emotional blackmail. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, Jon thought; aloud he snorted, as in malicious laughter. His throat felt thick, like he might cry.

“Fine, I’m just—sick of it here.” He pulled his arm free of Martin’s and overbalanced. Didn’t fall, just. Staggered a little.

“Should we move to the shade? We could try to find those famous pines, I guess.”

Jon sank back to the ground. “What about Salesa? Do we just leave him here?”

“Oh. Right,” said Martin. Salesa had eaten most of Jon’s share, and drunk both Jon’s and Martin’s shares of wine. Now he lay asleep in the dirt, head pillowed on one elbow, the other hand’s fingers curled round the stem of a glass still half full. “I guess, yeah? I mean he seems to know the place pretty well, so. It’s not like he’ll get lost out here.”

“We might, though.”

Martin sighed. “True. Should we just head back to our room, then? Maybe get you a snack.”

“Not hungry.”

“A statement, I meant.”

“Oh. Alright, sure,” Jon made himself say. “That sounds like—sure.”

So then they’d headed back, and only Martin had a free hand, and Jon was too tired by that point to distinguish his mind’s vague warning not to let Martin open the door from his usual pride on that subject—and that kind of pride never does seem as important when it’s your boyfriend offering. So he’d dismissed the warning and, well, look what happened.

When he got up from his knees and turned round Martin frowned at Jon. “Are you alright? You’re sat on the floor.”

Jon frowned, too—at the seam between the floor and the hallway’s opposite wall. “I was tired.”

“You hate sitting on the floor.”

“I sat on the ground out there,” Jon said, with a shrug that morphed into a nod in the direction they’d come from.

“Yeah, under duress,” Martin scoffed. “In the Extinction domain you wouldn’t even sit on the couch.”

There was something odd in Martin’s bringing that up now; somewhere, in the back of his mind, Jon could hear a pillar of thought crumbling. But he lacked the energy to find out which of his mind’s structures now stood crooked. “I think this floor is a lot cleaner than that couch,” he said instead, with an incredulous laugh.

“Even with the cobwebs?” Martin didn’t wait for Jon’s answering nod. “Fair enough,” he said, one hand on the back of his neck as he twisted it back and forth. He dropped the hand, sighed, cracked his knuckles. Looked at Jon again. “Yeah, okay. Guess we don’t have to deal with this right now. Let’s find you another bedroom first.”

“Maybe that’s just what Annabelle wants,” Jon muttered, deadpanning so he wouldn’t have to decide whether this was a joke.

Martin snorted. “I’ll risk it.”

Find was a generous way to put it; in fact there was another bedroom only two doors down. By the time Jon got his legs unfolded he could hear the squeak of a door swinging open down the hall. When he looked up, Martin said as their eyes met, “Nope—bed’s too small. You good there ‘til I find one that’ll work?”

“Seems that way.” Jon tried to smile, relief warring with his usual If you want something done right urge. In the quiet moment after Martin neglected to close that door and before he swung open the next one, Jon made himself add, “Thank you.”

“Of course. Oh wow,” Martin said of the next room, in whose doorway he’d stopped. “This one’s a lot nicer than ours. It’s got a balcony. Wallpaper’s pretty loud though. D’you think that’ll keep you awake?” Laughingly, “I know you don’t close your eyes to sleep anymore, so.”

“How loud is ‘pretty loud’?”

“Sort of a… dark, orangey red, with flowers?”

Jon shrugged. “I won’t see it at night.”

“Oh, god. I hope it doesn’t come to that. Should we do this one, then?” Instead of closing the door, Martin swung it the rest of the way open, then strode back to Jon’s side of the corridor, arm already outstretched. Jon managed to stand before Martin could reach him, but, as it had done outside, his vision went dark for a few seconds. He felt Martin’s hand on his shoulder before he could see his frown.

“You alright?” Martin asked yet again.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“It’s just—you don’t usually blink anymore, except for effect.”

“Oh.”

Out there, none of the watchers blinked. At first, soon after the change, Martin had asked Jon to try, “Because it just feels so weird. Like I’m under constant scrutiny. Literally constant, Jon. You get why that feels weird, right?” (Jon had agreed—sincerely, though he wondered why Martin needed to ask that question in a world whose central conceit was that being watched felt weird. He’d also chosen not to point out that his scrutiny, like that of Jonah Magnus, was not, technically, constant, since he did sometimes look at other things. But he still rehearsed this retort in his mind every time he remembered that conversation.) Turned out it was hard to time your blinks properly when your eyeballs didn’t need the moisture. He’d forget about it for who knew how long, then remember and overcompensate by blinking so often Martin at first thought he was exaggerating it on purpose as a joke. It got old fast, in Jon’s opinion, but even after he learnt Jon didn’t intend it as a joke Martin still found it funny. “You’re doing it again,” he’d say every time, shoulders wiggling. Eventually Jon had asked him,

“You know you don’t blink anymore either, right?”

“Oh god, don’t I?” When Jon shook his head, with a smile whose teeth he tried to keep covered, Martin squeezed his own eyes shut and pushed their lids back and forth with his fingers. “Ugh—gross!” And for the next half hour he’d done the whole forget-to-blink-for-five-minutes-then-do-it-ten-times-in-as-many-seconds routine, too. After that they had both agreed to pretend not to notice the lack of blinking. Jon figured he couldn’t hold it against Martin that he’d broken this rule though, since Jon himself had broken it first, on their first morning here:

“You blinked,” he had informed Martin as he watched him stir sugar into his tea. Martin, who had not only blinked but broken eye contact to make sure he dropped the sugar cube in the right place, replied with a scoff,

“Didn’t know it was a staring contest.”

“No, I mean—”

“Oh! I blinked!”

“…Right,” Jon said now. “I’m—it’s nothing.”

Martin sighed. He closed his eyes, but probably rolled them under their lids. Jon used the inspection of their new room as an excuse to look away, but took in nothing other than the presence of a large bed and the flowered wallpaper Martin had warned him about.

“‘Kay. If you’re sure.”

Taking a seat at the foot of the bed, Jon looked down at his grass-stained knees and prepared himself to ask, Look, does it matter? I’m about to lie down anyway, so, functionally speaking, yes, I am fine.

“So, you’ll be okay here for a bit while I go figure out what to do about the door?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. I’ll come check on you as soon as I know anything, yeah?”

“Of course.”

“Although—if you’re asleep, should I wake you up?”

“Yes,” Jon replied before Martin had even got the last word out. He heard a short, emphatic exhale, presumably of laughter. “Wait—how would you know, anyway?”

“Oh. Yeah, good point.”

Jon looked down at his shoes. His fingers throbbed in anticipation, but he figured he should spare Martin the horror of getting grass stains on a second bedroom’s counterpane. The first shoe he pulled off without untying, since he could step on its heel with the other one. But he had to bend over to reach the second one’s incongruously bright white laces, biting his lip when he felt his right femur poke past the bounds of its socket as between a cage’s bars. On his way back up his vision quivered like a heat mirage, but didn’t go dark. He scooched himself up to the head of the bed. Made sure to face the ceiling rather than the red wallpaper.

A few months into his tenure in the Archives, Jon had discovered that if you close your eyes at your desk, even just for a minute, you can trick your whole body into thinking you’ve been gentle with it. But that trick didn’t work anymore. Out there, this made sense; interposing his eyelids between himself and the world’s new horrors couldn’t push them out of his consciousness, any more than it had helped to close the curtains at Daisy’s safehouse. Martin’s sentimental attachment to sleep had baffled him, as had his insistence on closing his eyes even though they’d pop back open as soon as his body went limp. Here, though, Jon sympathized with Martin’s wish. He too missed that magic link between closed eyes and sleep. Probably he should just be grateful for this rest from knowing other people’s suffering? The thing he had wished to close his eyes against was gone here. But now that most of his bodily wants had synced up with his actions again, it felt… wrong, like a tangible loss, that he couldn’t assert It’s time for rest now by closing his eyelids. That it took effort to keep them joined. Jon even found himself missing the crust that used to stick them together on mornings after long sleep.

That should have been his first sensation on waking, their first morning here. After seventy-one hours his eyelids should’ve been practically super-glued together. Instead, they’d apparently stayed open the entire time. It wasn’t uncomfortable—he hadn’t woken up with them smarting or anything. Hadn’t noticed one way or the other; after all, when not forced awake by an alarm, one rarely notices the moment one opens one’s eyes in the morning. He just didn’t like knowing that he looked the same waking and sleeping. It didn’t make sense. The dreams hadn’t followed him here, so what was he watching? He could see nothing but the ceiling.

He rolled over, hoping to look out the window. Doors, technically. Between gauzy curtains he could make out only wrought-iron bars and the tops of a few trees. A nice view, he could tell; when he got his second wind he was sure he’d find it pretty. For now he wondered how much more energy debt he had put himself in by rolling over.

Drowning in debt? We can help!

How had he not foreseen how horrible it would be inside the Buried? The inability to move or speak without pain and loss of breath—“Just imagine,” he muttered sarcastically to the empty air, as though addressing his past self. “What might that be like.” He’d lived for years with the weight of exhaustion on his back—heavier at that time than it’d ever been before. And he knew how it felt to risk injury with every movement. What an odd frame of mind he must have lived in then, to think his magic healing wouldn’t let him get scratched up down there. Had he thought it would protect him from fear? I must save my friend from this horrible place! But also, If I get stuck there forever, no big deal; I deserve it, after all. There seemed something so arrogant about that now, that idea that deserving pain could somehow mitigate it. That because monsterhood made him less innocent, it would make him less of a victim. How could he have thought that, when he’d known pulling her out of there didn’t mean he forgave her? He should apologize to Daisy for—

Right. Nope, never mind.

He began to regret rolling over. If he planned to stay on his side like this for long, he shouldn’t leave his shoulder and hip dangling. He could already feel their joints beginning to slide apart. But his body had started to drift to that faraway place from which no grievance ever seemed urgent enough to recall it—neither pain now nor the threat of greater pain later. Nor the three cups of tea he’d drunk.

After he and Martin had fallen asleep on Salesa’s doorstep, Jon had vague memories of being led up the stairs to their bedroom, though he remembered neither being shaken awake nor getting into bed. Just a seventy-odd-hour blank spot, followed by pain of a kind he had thought he’d left behind.

It wasn’t that watchers couldn’t feel pain, after the change. They could, but it was like how real-world pain felt through the veil of a dream. Your actions didn’t affect it as directly as they should. In the Necropolis Martin had asked him, “How exactly does a leg wound make you faster?” If he’d had the courage to answer, at the time he would have said something about his own wounds not seeming important now that he had to tune out those of the whole world. That wasn’t it though, he knew now. Pain just worked differently out there. When Daisy attacked him, it had hurt—but the wound she left him hadn’t protested movement. Not until he and Martin entered the grounds of Upton House. You could bear weight on an injured leg just fine out there, because it wouldn’t hurt more when you stood on it than otherwise.

Sometimes, when his joints slid apart while he slept, he could still feel it in his dreams. Up until 13th January 2016 (for months after which date he dreamt Naomi Herne’s graveyard and nothing else), his sleeping mind used to craft scenarios to explain its own pain and panic to itself. Running from an exploding grenade, staying awake through surgery, that sort of thing. But over the years, as the sensation grew familiar, his dreams about it became less urgent, their anxieties more mundane. He’d shout for help from passing cars, then feel like he’d lied to the stranger who opened their door to him when it turned out running to get in the car hurt no more than standing still.

Even before the change, it’d been ages since he’d had to worry about that. Since the coma, Beholding had fixed all these accidents, the way it’d fixed the finger he tried to chop off. They wouldn’t reset with a clunk, the way they had when he used to fix them by hand. It was more like his body reverted to a version the Eye had saved before the moment of injury. When he tried to pull open a Push door he’d hear the first clunk, followed by about half a second of pain, then after a gentle burst of static—nothing. Just a door handle between his fingers that needed pushing. If he tripped on uneven pavement he might still go down, but his ankle wouldn’t hurt when he stood back up, and the scrapes on his hands would heal before he could inspect them. Here, though, in this place the Eye couldn’t see, Jon lacked such protections. He didn’t have the dreams either? And that was more than worth it as a tradeoff, he was sure. But it still smarted to remember that pain had been his first sensation waking up in an oasis. Not birdsong, not sunshine striped across linen, not the warm weight of another person next to him. He knew he’d come back to a place ruled by physics rather than fear because he’d woken up with gaps between his bones.

“Jon? Are you awake?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes.”

“Cool.” Martin sat down on what felt like the corner of bed nearest the door. “I think I know how to do this now.”

“How to put the doorknob back on?”

“Yeah. God, I still can’t believe it twisted clean off in my hand like that. With no warning—like, zero to sixty in less than a second. I mean, can you believe our luck? The thing’s perfectly functional, and then suddenly it just—comes off!”

“Er…”

“Oh, god, sorry—I didn’t mean—”

“What? Oh—hrkgh”—Jon rolled around to face Martin, hoping the little yelp he let out when his leg slopped back into joint would sound like a noise of exasperation rather than pain. He found Martin sat looking down at the severed doorknob which poked up from between his knees. “No, Martin, of course not, I know—”

“Still, I’m sorry about—”

“No, it’s—it’s fine?”

On that first morning, Jon had managed to get his limbs screwed back on properly without making enough noise to wake up Martin. He’d limped out of their room and down the hall, pushing doors open until he’d found a toilet, whereupon he sat to pee and marveled that the flush and sink still worked. It was bright enough inside that he hadn’t thought to try the light switch on his way in—too busy contorting his neck to look for the sun out the window. On his way out, though, he flicked it on, then off. Then on again and off again. How could it work, when there was no power grid the house could connect to? Automatically Jon tried to search his mind’s Eye for a domain based in a power plant or something. Right, no, of course—that power did not work here.

When he got back to their room he found Martin awake. “Oh—morning,” Jon told him with a shy laugh.

“It—it is morning, isn’t it,” Martin marveled. Then he asked if Jon could hand him the map sticking out of his backpack’s side pocket. (What good are maps when the very Earth logic no longer applied here, after all. But Martin was rubbish at geography, so Jon still had to provide the You Are Here sign with his finger for him.) Jon grabbed the map on his way back to bed, and was about to tell him about the miracles of plumbing and electricity he’d just witnessed—not to mention the bathtub he’d admired on the long trek from toilet to sink—when Martin frowned and asked, “Why are you limping?”

“Am I?” Jon had shrugged, then cleared his throat when the motion made his shoulder audibly click. “Daisy, must be.”

“No, Jon. That’s the wrong leg.”

He slid both legs out of sight under the blankets and handed Martin the map. “It’s nothing. It just… came off a bit. Last night."

Before Jon could add It’s fixed now though, Martin said, “I’m sorry, what?”

Jon had assumed Martin understood the kind of thing he meant, but that he’d misled him as to its degree—i.e., that Martin objected to his talking about a full hip dislocation like it mattered less than what happened with Daisy. So he’d said,

“No, sorry, not all the way off—”

And Martin just laughed. “What, and you taped it back up like—like an old computer cable?”

“Sort of, yeah? It—it does still work, more or less.”

“Right, of course. No need to get a new one, yet; you can just limp along with this one. No big deal! Just make sure you don’t pull too hard on it.”

“I mean.” By now he could sense Martin’s sarcasm, his bitterness; that didn’t mean he knew what to do with them. So he'd said with a huff of laughter, “I can’t just send for a new one. That’s—that’s not how bodies work. You have to….” Wait for it to sort itself out was the natural end to that sentence. But he hadn’t been sure he could say that without opening a can of worms.

“Wait so… what actually happened? Are you okay?”

Only at this point had Jon recognized Martin’s response as one of incomprehension. What happened exactly? he had asked, too, when Jon told him the ice-cream anecdote. Did no one ever listen when you told them about these things?

“Nothing. Never mind. It’s fine.”

“Oh come on.”

“It’s. Fine! It’s not important.”

And then for days Martin kept alluding to it. Like some kind of reminder to Jon that he hadn’t opened up, disguised as a joke. Every time something came out or fell down he’d mutter, “So it came off, you might say.” Eventually they’d fallen out over it, and now neither one could come near the phrase without this song and dance.

“Don’t worry about it, Martin,” Jon assured him now; “I’m over it.”

“…Uh huh. Well, putting that to one side for the moment—I think I can fix this?”

“Oh? Great!—”

“—Yeah! It should be simple, actually. I think I just need to replace the screw that fell out? I mean, there doesn’t seem to be anything actually broken, just, you know,” with an awkward laugh, “the screw lives on the wrong side of the door now. But if we can just put a new one in the door should be fine.” He looked to Jon as if for help plotting their next steps.

“I—I don’t, um. Think we have one.”

Martin’s shoulders dropped; the corners of his mouth tightened. “Yeah, I know we don’t have one, Jon. I just mean, we need to find out where Salesa keeps them.”

“Oh!” Jon replied, in a brighter tone. Then he registered what this meant. “Oh. Right.”

“Y…eah.”

“Any idea where to look?”

They checked what seemed to Martin the most obvious place first. Salesa used one of the ground-floor drawing rooms as a sort of repository for everything he’d left as yet unpacked—all the practical items he hadn’t been able to repurpose as toys, plus some antiques he’d been too fond of or too nervous to part with. Two nights ago, Salesa had noticed the state of Jon’s and Martin’s shoelaces, and insisted they let him replace them with some from this little warehouse. “Please, come with me; I’ve nothing to hide. You can have a look around, see if I have anything that might help you on your journey….” As he said this he’d counted to two on his fingers, as though listing off attractions they should be sure not to miss.

Jon watched Martin perk right up at this. All week Salesa had kept pleading with them to tell him about any luxuries they had wanted while touring the apocalypse, so he could try to find something to fulfill those wants. “Well, I—I don’t know about luxuries,” Martin had ventured the third time this came up. “But I do think we might run out of bandages soon, so. If you’ve any extra?”

“Of course, of course, yes, how prudent of you, always with one eye on the future. Must be the Beholding in you.” (Neither Jon nor Martin knew what to say to that.) “But there will be plenty of time for that. I meant something for now, while you are here, while you don’t need to think of things like that.” And sure enough, each time Salesa had come to them with presents from his little warehouse (booze, butterfly nets, more booze, antique bathing suits, &c.), he’d forgot about Martin’s homely request for gauze and tape. Martin insisted they change the dressing on Jon’s leg every day; by now they’d run through the bandages he brought from Daisy’s safehouse. So when Salesa suggested they accompany him to his repository, Martin said,

“Sure, yeah! That sounds really helpful.” (Salesa clutched his heart as though he’d waited all his life to hear such praise.) “Er. The things in your warehouse, though. They’re not L—um.” Leitners, Martin had almost called them. “You don’t think they’ll develop any… strange properties, when we leave here, do you?”

“Of course not,” Salesa had answered, stopping and turning all the way around in the corridor to face Martin with a frown. “Martin, I promise, only my antiques are cursed—and even then, not all of them.” He’d resumed the walk toward his little warehouse, but turned around again and held up a hand, as if to preempt a question. “There are, indeed, yes, some items out there, touched by the Corruption, which can pass their infection on to other things they come in contact with. But, no,” he went on, his voice fighting off a joyous laugh, “no, the only item I have like that does almost the opposite.”

“Oh.”

Salesa nodded, but did not turn around this time. “Strange little thing. It’s an antique syringe that, so long as you keep it near you, repels the Crawling Rot. I like to think it helped dispatch that insect thing Annabelle chased away. But if you try to get rid of it,” he added in a darker tone, “all the sickness, the bugs, the smells, even stains on your clothes—everything disgusting that it’s kept away—they remember who you are, and they hunger for you more than anyone else. The man who sold it to me….” He shook his head ruefully, hand now resting on the door.

“Was eaten alive by mosquitoes,” Jon muttered.

“Something like that, yes,” said Salesa, as he jerked open the door.

Jon hated the way his and Martin’s shoes looked now. He hadn’t had to put new laces on a pair of old, dirty shoes since he was a kid, and the contrast looked wrong—the same way starched collars and slicked-back hair on kids look wrong. Jon’s trainers were gray, their laces a slightly darker gray, so these white ones wouldn’t have looked quite right even without the dirt. Martin’s had once been white, but their original laces were broad and flat, while these were narrow and more rounded. The replacements’ thin, clinical white lines looked something between depressing and menacing. Too much like spider web; too much like the stitching on Nikola’s minions. When they came undone on this morning’s walk, Jon had made sure to tread on them in the mud a few times before tying them back up. Poor Dr. Thompson’s syringe must have retained some of its power here, though, because they still looked pristine. Jon wondered if it had no effect on spiders, or if without it this whole place would have been draped in cobwebs.

Martin seemed pleased with their haul, though. Despite Salesa’s amnesia on the subject, his little warehouse held more plasters, gauze, medical tape, antibacterial ointment, alcohol wipes—the list went on—than one man could ever use. In a strange, raw moment Jon liked to pretend he hadn’t seen, Salesa had wrung his hands as his eyes passed over this hoard. His lip had quivered. He’d practically begged Martin to take the whole lot away with them. “What harm will come to me here? And if it does come, what good will it do, protecting one lonely old man from skinned knees and paper cuts? The two of you—where you are going—the gravity of your mission!” At this point he’d seized one of each their hands. “Everything I have that even might help, you must take it. Please.”

“I—yeah,” Martin stuttered. “This is—really helpful, yeah. We’ll take as much as we can fit in our bags.”

Salesa had let go their hands by this point, and crossed his arms. “Right, yes, bags, of course, the bags. Are you sure you don’t want my truck?”

“Oh, well, thanks, but I don’t think either of us knows how to—”

“To drive a truck?” Salesa uncrossed his arms and began to reach for Martin’s shoulder. “I could teach you—”

“It won’t work without the camera anyway,” pointed out Jon. “We have to walk.”

Martin sighed. ”That too. ‘The journey will be the journey,’ as Jon keeps saying.”

“I said that once,” Jon protested.

No such success on this return visit. They found a small pile of miscellaneous screws, one of which Martin said would work (though it was the wrong color, he alleged, and had clearly been meant for some other purpose), but the screwdriver they needed remained elusive. “I mean, I can’t be sure they’re not in here—the place is as bad as Gertrude’s storage unit. We could spend all day here and still not be sure—”

“Let’s not do that,” said Jon, pushing an always-warm candlestick with a pool of always-melted wax out of Martin’s way with his sleeve for what felt like the hundredth time.

“No arguments here.”

“Where to next?”

“I guess it makes sense that they’re not here. This room’s all stuff Salesa brought, and why would he bring home-repair stuff when he didn’t even know where he’d wind up.”

“Except for the screws.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t look like he keeps screws here, remember? There’s just a couple random ones lying around, like he forgot to put them away or something.”

Jon peered between the clouds in his mind, trying to catch sight of Martin’s thought train. “So you’re saying the screwdriver should be…?”

“Somewhere less… frequented, I guess? They’ll probably still be wherever they were when Salesa found the place.”

“Not somewhere that was open to the public, then.”

Martin sighed. ”I mean yeah, probably. Not that that narrows it down much.”

“Somewhere… banal, less posh.”

“Not sure how much less posh you can get than this place. But yeah, I guess. Have I mentioned how weird it is you’re the one who keeps asking me this stuff?”

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to help? I just…” Jon closed his eyes, which itched with the warehouse’s dust, and rubbed their lids with an index finger. Odd that his eyes weren’t immune to dust, when leaving them open for seventy straight hours hadn’t bothered them. And why didn’t the syringe keep dust away? In Dr. Snow’s day (not far removed from Smirke’s, n.b.), Jon seemed to recall that dust had been used as a euphemism for all waste, including the human kind Dr. Snow had found in the cholera water. It was like how people today use filth—hence the word dustbin. And hadn’t Elias once called the Corruption Filth? Jon opened his eyes and watched Martin swirl back to full color. “I can’t seem to corral my thoughts here,” he concluded.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s actually kind of fun, it’s just—I’m so used to being the sidekick,” Martin laughed. “Besides, I miss my eldritch Google.”

“Should I go back out there, ask the Eye about it, then come back?”

Another laugh, this one less awkward. “No. That won’t work, remember? This place is a ‘blind spot,’ you said.” The words in inverted commas he said with a frown and in a deeper voice.

“Right, right. I forgot,” Jon sighed. He lowered himself to the floor and examined the finger he’d felt snap back into place when he let go his cane. During the five seconds he’d allowed himself to entertain it, the idea of heading back out there had excited him a little. A few minutes to check on Basira, verify what Salesa had told them about his life before the change, make sure the world hadn’t somehow ended twice over. Give himself a few minutes’ freedom of movement, for that matter. Out there he could run, jump, open jars, pick up full mugs of tea without worrying a screw in his hand would come loose and make him drop them. He could stand up as quickly as he thought the words, I think I’ll stand up now, without his vision going dark. God, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter! He would just know every tripping hazard and every look on Martin’s face, without having to ask these clumsy human eyes to show them to him.

“Honestly, it’d almost feel worth it to go back out there just to formulate a plan to find them. At least I can think out there.”

“Hey.” Martin elbowed him slightly in the ribs. Jon fought with himself not to resent the very gentleness of it. “I think I’ll come up with the plan for once, thanks. Some of us can think just fine here.”

Was it just because of Hopworth that Martin’s elbow barely touched him? Or because Martin feared that Jon would break in here, in a way he’d learnt not to fear out there?

“Oh—I know,” Martin said, clicking his fingers and pointing them at Jon like a gun. “We passed a shed this morning, remember?”

Jon squinted. “Not even remotely.”

“No yeah—on our walk with Salesa. I tried to ask him what it was for, but he kept droning on and on. By the time he stopped talking I’d forgot about it.”

“Huh,” said Jon, to show he was listening.

“That seems like a good place to keep screws and all, right? If it’s so nondescript you can’t even remember it.”

“Sure.”

“Great! Are you ready now, or d’you need to sit for a bit longer?”

“I’m ready.” This time he accepted Martin’s hand, not keen to trip on something cursed.

“Anyway, if we don’t find them and Salesa’s still out there, we can ask him on the way back.”

Jon’s heart shrunk before the prospect of inviting Salesa to be the hero of their story. Please, Mr. Salesa, save us from our screwdriver-less hell! They would never hear the end of it. It would inevitably remind the old man of the countless times in his youth when he’d been the only man in the antiques trade who knew where to find some priceless treasure. Let Salesa open their stuck door and they’d find Pandora’s bloody box of stories behind it. He winced and let out a grunt as of pain before he could stop himself. “Let’s not tell him, if we can help it.”

“Of course we should tell him,” Martin protested. “We can’t just leave it broken like this.”

“But if we can fix it without his help—?”

“What? No! Even then, he’s our host. We have to tell him. It’s his door, he deserves to know its—I don’t know, history?” Martin sighed, shoving one hand in his hair and holding out the other. “If he’s got a doorknob whose screw comes loose a lot, he should know that, so he can tighten it next time before it gets out of hand. I mean, we’re lucky it only chipped the paint when it—when it fell off, you know?” (Jon, for his part, hadn’t even noticed this chip of paint Martin referred to.) “And—and suppose he’s only got this one screw left,” tapping the one in his pocket, “and the next time it happens his last screw rolls under the door like this one did.”

“And what is he supposed to do to prevent that scenario? There aren’t exactly any hardware stores in the apocalypse.”

Big sigh. “Yeah, fair enough. I still think we should tell him. It just feels wrong to hide secrets from him about his own house, you know?”

“Fine,” sighed Jon in turn. ”Should we tell him about the scorch marks on the window sill as well?”

“No?” Martin turned to him with an incredulous look. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“I mean—I was, but—”

“Please tell me you get how that’s different.”

“Enlighten me,” Jon said wearily.

“Seriously? Of course you don’t tell him about the?—those were already there! If we’d put them there, then yeah, of course we’d need to tell him.”

“So it’s about confessing your guilt, then. Not about what Salesa makes of the information.”

“I mean, I guess?” Martin looked perplexed, lips drawn into his mouth. “Actually, no. Because those are just scorch marks, they don’t—you can still get into a room with scorch marks on the windowsill, Jon.”

“And yet if you’d left them you’d tell him about it?”

“Well yeah but if I told him about it now it’d just be like I was—leaving him a bad review, or something. It’d just be rude. ‘Lovely place you have, Salesa. So kind of you to share your limited provisions with us refugees from the apocalypse. Too bad you gave us a room whose windowsill could use repainting!’”

Jon laughed. “Yes, alright, I get it.”

Martin’s sigh of relief seemed only a little exaggerated. If he hadn’t wiped pretend sweat from his brow Jon might have bought it. “Okay, that’s good, ‘cause”—when Jon kept laughing, Martin cut himself off. “Hang on, were you joking this whole time?”

“Sort of?”

“Were you just playing devil’s advocate or something?”

“I mean—not exactly? For the first seventy or eighty percent of it I was completely serious.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. It was just—fun. It felt nice to take a definite sta—aaaa-a-aa.” Something in Jon’s lower back went wrong somehow. An SI joint, probably? The pain caught him so much by surprise that when he stepped with that side’s leg he stumbled forward.

“Whoa!” Martin’s hand closed around his upper arm. Jon yelped again, from panic more than hurt this time, as his shoulder thunked in its socket. “Jon! Are you okay?”

“Don’t do that,” Jon hissed, trying lamely to shake his arm out of Martin’s grip. It didn’t work. The attempt just made his own arm ache, and produce more ominous clunking sounds.

“I—what?”

“It was fine. I don’t need you to catch me.”

Martin let his arm go. “You were about to fall on your face, Jon.”

“I’d already caught myself—just fine—with this.” He gestured to his cane, stirring its handle like a joystick.

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“I don’t know, look?”

“It’s not—?” Martin scoffed. “Look when? It’s not like a rational calculation. I can’t just go ‘Beep. Beep. See human trip. Will human fall on face? If yes, press A to catch! If not, press B to’— what, stand there and do nothing? It’s just human nature; when you see someone falling that’s just what you do. I’m not going to apologize for not calculating the risk properly.”

“Fine! Yes, okay, you’re right. Forget I said anything.” Throwing up his free hand in defeat, Jon set off again—tried to stride, but it was hard to do that with a limp. Even with his cane, he couldn’t step evenly enough to achieve a decisive gait.

It was fine, Jon reminded himself. He’d had this injury (if you could call it that) a thousand times before. When it came on suddenly like this it never stuck around long. Sure, yeah, for now every step hurt like an urgent crisis. But any second it would right itself as quickly as it had come undone.

“No, no, I understand! Point taken! Note to future Martin,” the latter shouted from behind Jon, voice troubled by hurried steps; “next time let him fall and break his bloody nose.”

Trusting Martin to shout directions if he went the wrong way, Jon pressed on, rehearsing comebacks in his mind. Is this not a boundary I’m allowed to set? You don’t let me read statements in front of you. Isn’t that part of human—isn’t that my nature, too?

Oh, yes, human nature, that must be it. You didn’t lunge after Salesa at ping-pong the other day, did you? I saw you opening doors for Melanie when she got back from India. You stopped for a while, did you know that? You all did, everyone in the Archives. And then—it’s the strangest thing!—you all started up again after Delano. Maybe you lot don’t see the common factor here; people always do seem to think it’s more polite not to notice.

So what if I had broken my nose? You nearly broke my shoulder, catching me like that. Does that not matter because you can’t see it? Because it wouldn’t scar?

They were all too petty to say aloud. Too incongruous with the quiet. He could hear his own footsteps, and Martin’s, and the clank of his cane’s metal segments each time it hit the ground, and a few crows exclaiming about something exciting they’d found on his right. Nothing else.

“Looks like Salesa went inside,” Martin shouted from behind him.

Jon stopped walking and turned around. “What?”

“Left a couple things out here, but yeah.” Martin jogged to catch up with him, from a greater distance than Jon would have expected given how much limping slowed him down. He must have veered off course to inspect the clearing Salesa had vacated. In one hand he carried an empty wine glass by its stem, which he lifted to show Jon.

“Huh.”

“Yeah.” When he caught up with Jon, Martin stood still and panted. “Guess it won’t be as easy to ask him about it as we thought. If we don’t find what we need in there,” he added, glancing demonstratively to something behind Jon.

Following Martin’s eyes, Jon finally saw the shed. Nondescript boards, worn black and white by the elements. Surrounded by hedges three months overgrown.

Turned out it wasn’t a shed anymore, though—Salesa had converted it to a chicken coop. “Explains the boiled eggs,” shrugged Jon.

“God, they’re adorable. Do you think it’s okay to pet one?” Martin crouched in front of a black hen with a puffball of feathers on top of her head. (Martin called her a hen, anyway, and Jon trusted his authority on animals other than cats). “I don’t really know, er, ch—hicken etiquette,” he mused, voice shot through with nervous laughter.

The black hen sat alone in a little box, and didn't seem to want attention. A little red one they’d found strutting around the coop, however, ventured right up to Martin and cocked her head, like she expected him to give her a present. While Martin cooed over her and the other chickens, Jon went outside and laid flat on his back in the grass under a tree. “Take your time,” he shouted. “I’m happy here.”

Sure enough, when Martin emerged from the coop and helped him stand back up, whatever cog in Jon’s pelvis or spine he had jammed earlier was turning again. And by the time they got back to the house, Martin had talked himself into the idea that maybe all the house’s doorknobs that looked like theirs came loose a lot, and Salesa had taken to keeping the screwdriver to fix them in, say, the hall closet, or in their toilet’s under-sink cabinet.

“I think we’re gonna have to find Salesa and ask him about it,” concluded Martin, when these locations turned up nothing they wanted either.

“If you’re sure.”

Jon sat down on the closed toilet seat. Hadn’t that been what he said just before the last time he sat down on the lid of a toilet before Martin? He’d dutifully turned away, that time, as Martin undressed, wanting to make sure he knew he’d still let him have some privacy. But then, of course: “Where should I put these, do you think? —Er, my clothes I mean.”

“Oh. Um.” Jon had turned his head to look at the stain on Daisy’s ceiling, for what must have been the tenth time already. “I can hold onto them if you like.” Which then meant Martin had to get them back on before Jon could undress for his own shower and hand him his clothes. As he’d piled his trousers into Martin’s hands a tape recorder fell out of one pocket and crashed to the floor, ejecting the tape with Peter’s statement on it. “Shit,” Jon had hissed and ducked to the floor to pick it up, trusting the slit in his towel to reveal nothing worse than thigh.

“Shit,” Martin echoed. “I hope that wasn’t your phone.”

“No—just the recorder.” Still on the floor, Jon clicked its little door shut and pressed play. Sound of waves, static, footsteps. He switched it off. “Seems alright.” Thank god, he stopped himself from adding. Jon didn’t want to lose this one, this record of how he’d found Martin, in case he lost him again. But he didn’t want Martin to hear the sounds of the Lonely again so soon, either. That was why he’d stayed with Martin while he showered, rather than waiting in the safehouse living room. He wouldn’t have insisted on it, of course. He didn’t exactly believe Martin would disappear again? But long showers were such a cliché of lonely people, and steam looked so much like the mist on Peter’s beach, and when Jon asked how he felt about it, Martin said that thought hadn’t occurred to him,

“But as soon as you started to say that, I.” He’d stood with his teeth bared, half smiling half grimacing, and bringing the tips of his fingers together and apart over and over. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Heh—it scares me too now, if I’m honest. That’s… a good sign, I guess, right?”

They had come a long way since then, Jon told himself. They were more comfortable with each other now. On their first morning here, they’d showered separately, but after (Martin’s) breakfast Jon’s irritation had faded and he had resolved to pretend along with Martin that this was a holiday. So they’d got to use the enormous bathtub after all— the one at whose soap dish Jon now found himself staring as he sat on the lid of the toilet. When the heat made him dizzier, as he’d known it would, he had relished getting to rest his cheek on Martin’s arm along the rim of the tub, where it had grown cool and soft in the few minutes he’d kept it above the water.

“Let’s have lunch first,” Martin said now; “you’re getting all….” While he looked for the right word he dropped his shoulders and jaw, and mimicked a thousand-yard stare. “Abstract, again. Distant. People food should help a little, yeah? Tie you back down to this plane a bit?”

“Probably,” Jon agreed, smiling at Martin’s tact.

But to get to the kitchen they had to pass through the dining room—where they found Salesa snoring in a chair at the head of the table. “Let’s just ask him now before he gets up and moves again,” maintained Martin. Jon shrugged his acquiescence and leant in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. Why hadn’t he used the toilet before letting Martin lead him here?

”Um, Mikaele?” Martin inched a few steps toward him, but a distance of several feet still gaped between them. “We have something to ask you, if that’s—hello? Mikaele?”

A likely-sounding gap between snores—but nope. Still sound asleep. Salesa sighed, licked his lips, then began to snore again.

“Mikaele Salesa,” called out Jon from his post at the door, rather less gently. “Mikaele Salesa!” He turned to Martin, meaning to suggest that they eat now and trust the smell of food to wake Salesa, but stopped himself when he saw Martin creeping timidly toward Salesa with his hand outstretched.

“Sorry to disturbyouMikaele,” Martin squeaked out, so quickly that the words blended together. He gave Salesa’s shoulder the lightest possible tap with one fingertip, then snatched his hand back with a grimace of regret as Salesa’s own hand reached up, belatedly, as if to swat Martin’s away. “Oh, good, you’re—”

Salesa interrupted with a snore. Martin sighed and turned to Jon. “What d’you think? Should I shake him?”

Jon pulled out a neighboring chair and sat on it. “No need for anything so drastic. Try poking him a few more times first.”

“Right.”

Once he’d tired of rolling his cane between his palms Jon bent down to set it on the floor. He’d learnt his lesson about trying to hang it on the back of these chairs, though in this fog it had taken several incidents to stick. Every time it ended up crashing to the floor, when he scooched his chair back or when Martin tried to reach an arm around him. Then again—he conjectured, bent halfway to the floor with the cane still in his hand—if he did drop it, that might wake Salesa.

Two nights ago Jon had got up to use the toilet, and knocked his cane down from the wall on his way back to bed in the dark. It crashed to the floor; Jon swore and hopped on one foot back from it, imagining the other foot’s poor toenail smashed to jagged pieces as it thumped to life with pain. Meanwhile he heard rustling from the bed, and Martin’s voice, querulous with sleep. “Jon? Jon, what’s—happened, what—are you.”

“Nothing it’s fine go back to”—he’d hissed as his knee decided it had enough of hopping—“don’t get up, just. I’m gonna turn on the light, if that’s alright.”

“What fell? Are you okay?”

“The cane. I knocked it over in the dark.”

“Oh.”

He got no verbal response about the light, but guessed Martin had nodded.

From a distance his toe looked alright—no blood, anyway, so he could walk on it without risking the carpet. Jon picked his cane up from the floor and steered himself to the foot of the bed, where he sat down. His toenail had chipped, it looked like—only a little, but in that way that leaves a long crack. If he tried to pick it straight he’d tear out a big chunk and it would bleed. But if he left it like this it would snag on the sheets, on his socks, until some loose thread tore the chunk of nail off for him. What could he do for this kind of thing here? At home he’d file the nail down around the chip, then cover it in clear nail polish, and just hope that’d hold out until the crack grew out and he could clip it without bleeding. But here? A plaster would have to do, he guessed. They had plenty of those now.

Jon hated bandaging, ever since Prentiss—in much the same way that Martin hated sleeping in his pants. He’d had time to learn all its discomforts. How sweaty they got, the way they stuck to your hairs, the way lint collected in the adhesive residue they left. Didn’t help he associated them with that time of paranoia. They didn’t make him act paranoid, understand; he just habitually thought of bandage-wearing as what paranoid people do. It made an echo of his contempt for that time’s Jon cling to his perceptions of current Jon. On his first morning here, when the ones on his shin where Daisy’d bit him peeled off in the shower, he hadn’t bothered to replace them. After all, the bite only hurt when something pulled on it or poked or scraped against it, so he figured his trousers would provide enough protective barrier.

“That healed fast,” Martin had remarked, when he noticed the undressed wound in the bath—and then, when he looked again, “Yyyyeah I dunno, I think you might still want to bandage that. We don’t want dirt getting in there.”

“Do I have to?”

“Humor me.”

When they got back to their room he’d let Martin dress it himself. Martin had sucked air through his teeth. “This is days old—it shouldn’t be all hot and red like this.” According to him these were early signs of infection, which would get worse if they didn’t take better care of it—i.e., keep the wound freshly bandaged and ointmented. Jon refrained from pointing out that when the cut on his throat had got like that he’d left it uncovered and been fine. But he did ask what worse meant. “Really bad,” testified Martin. “I had a cut on my finger get infected once. Really disgusting. You don’t want to know.”

Jon smiled at him, raised his eyebrows. “After Jared’s mortal garden I think I can handle it.”

Martin smiled too, but wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “There was pus involved.”

“Oh, god! How could you tell me that!” gasped Jon, hand to his chest.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it also hurt? A lot? And it can make you ill. So we should try to avoid it, yeah?”

He’d tried to disavow the disappointment in his sigh by exaggerating it. “Yes, alright.”

“Don’t know why you’d want to leave it exposed anyway. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Well, sure, when you do that,” Jon had muttered, flinching away. As he asked the question Martin had lightly tapped the skin around the gash through its new bandage. A second or two later Jon added, “Less than when I got it? It’s hard to tell; it’s… different here.”

With a sigh that caught on phlegm and irritation, Martin asked, “Different how?”

He hadn’t been able to answer then, but he knew now, of course. It hurt the way things do when you’re awake. Not with the constant smart and throb it had when he’d first got it, but, it snagged on things now. Had opinions on how he moved. When he bent his knee more than ninety degrees, that stretched the skin around it painfully. Also if he knelt, since then the floor would press against it through his trousers. And stepping with that foot felt odd. Didn’t hurt, exactly, but sort of… rattled? Like a bad bruise would. This all seemed so small, compared to the moment of terror for his life that he’d felt when Daisy bit into him—that gaping wound in his new self-conception, which his healing powers had sewn up so quickly. The ritual of bandaging it every evening seemed so otiose, so laughably superstitious. He despised the thought of adding another step to it.

While Jon went on examining his toe, Martin asked, “What was the... thumping. It sounded like.”

“Oh—no—I didn’t fall; it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“No—yes—stop, it’s nothing, don’t get up. I just forgot I left it on the—leaning against the doorwall” (he hadn’t decided in time whether to say doorway or wall and ended up with half of each) “so I walked into it, er, toe first.”

“Oh,” Martin said again. Jon could hear him subsiding against the pillows behind him. “It came down?”

Big sigh. Jon’s fingernails met his palms. He set his foot back on the floor, and when his hip whined in its socket he clenched his teeth and kept them that way. In his mind he heard days’ worth of similar jokes. When he couldn’t get a jammed jar open: So you’re saying it wouldn’t… come off? When they got back their clean laundry: Can you believe all those grass stains came out?—oh, sorry: that they came off, I meant. Always with an innocent laugh, like Jon’s original phrasing had been just, what, like a Freudian slip, rather than something perfectly comprehensible that Martin had refused to engage with, taken from him, and rendered meaningless on purpose. “No it did not,” he snapped, “and I would appreciate it if you’d quit throwing that back in my face.”

“Whoa, uh. O…kay. What’s… going on here exactly?”

“You—?”

His heart plummeted; his face stung with embarrassment. Came down, Martin had said—not came off. He’d just been confirming that Jon’s cane had fallen down.

“Oh, god—nothing, never mind. You did nothing.”

“Well that’s obviously not true.”

“I just—I thought you’d said ‘came off.’ I thought you meant, had my toe ‘come off.’”

“Oh,” said Martin, yet again. When Jon turned to look he found him still blinking and squinting against the light. “Do you… need me to not say that anymore?”

“Not when I—?” Not when I’ve hurt myself, Jon meant. But Martin hadn’t done that, so this grievance didn’t actually mean anything. He’d been seeing patterns where there were none, and now that he’d seen through the illusion Jon knew again that Martin never would say it like that. “No, it’s fine. Do whatever you want.”

Martin turned the tail end of his yawn into a huff of false laughter. “Nope. Still don’t believe you.”

“Everything you’ve said makes perfect sense with the information you have. It’s all just—me. Being cryptic again.”

“Okay, uh. Are you waiting for me to disagree? ‘Cause, uh. Yup—you’re still being cryptic. No arguments there.”

Jon just sighed, really scraping the back of his throat with it. Almost a scoff.

“Sooo do you wanna fill me in, or.”

“No?” With an incredulous laugh. “Well, yes, just.”

He hadn’t known how to start from there, while so tightly wound and defensive. It seemed cruel to raise such a sensitive subject when Martin sounded so eager to go back to sleep. Or maybe he just didn’t want to hear Martin whimper apologies. Didn’t want to deal with how fake they would sound. They wouldn’t be fake; he knew that. But they would sound fake, which meant it would take an effort of will, a deliberate exercise of empathy, to accept them as real. He wasn’t in the mood to hear yet another person say I’m sorry, I didn’t know; much less to respond with the requisite It’s okay; you didn’t know. It would take a strength of conviction he didn’t have right now.

“Y—you don’t have to explain it tonight? I’ll just, I’ll just not use that phrase anymore, and maybe in the morning you’ll be less in the mood to lash out at me for things that don’t make sense.”

And what was there to say to that? It had taken Jon three tries to force out, “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Good night, Jon.”

“Good night. I still need the light, for.”

“That’s fine. Just turn it off when you come back to bed.”

“You won’t wake him up,” a new voice interjected.

Annabelle. Jon couldn’t see her, but he had learnt by now to recognize that voice, with its insufferable upbeat teasing inflection like every sentence she said was a riddle. He caught a glimpse of movement, then heard the click of her shoes on the floor. She must have poked her head round the doorway at the far end of the table while she spoke, then scuttled off again. At last he got a good look at her, as she put her blonde-and-gray head through the closer door.

“He’s a very heavy sleeper,” she informed them, with a smile and a shrug. “You can shake him all you want; it’s not going to work.”

Martin cleared his throat—trying to catch Jon’s attention, presumably. But Jon feared Annabelle would vanish again if he took his eyes off her. Not that he wanted her here, either, but?—he at least wanted to know which direction she went when she disappeared.

“What are you doing here, Annabelle.”

She shrugged two of her shoulders. “Just offering you some advice.” Then she used the momentum from the shrug to push herself backward, out of the doorway back into the corridor. Before the last of her hands disappeared off to the right, she waved to both of them.

“Well, how about some ‘advice’ about this, then—”

“She’s already gone, Martin.”

“Seriously? God—which way did she go?” Jon pointed; Martin bolted down the hallway after her. “Oi! Annabelle!”

“Shhh!”

“Annabelle! Do you know where Salesa keeps the—”

Jon did his best to follow him, praying all his limbs would go on straight this time. “Don’t!”

“What? Why not?” he heard, from the other side of the wall. Thankfully he could no longer hear Martin’s pounding footsteps. He overtook him in the hallway, just about able to make out his face around the dark swirls in his vision. “She’s as likely to know as Salesa, right?” Martin continued. “And it’s not like she’d lie about it. I mean, what would be the point?”

“I just don’t think we should give her any kind of advantage over us,” Jon snarled. The attempt to keep his voice down made the words come out sounding nastier than he intended.

Martin scoffed. “You don’t think maybe this is a bit more important than your stupid principle about not accepting help from her?”

“Is it?” Jon took hold of Martin’s sleeve, having just now caught up to him. “The new room’s fine. It’s even nicer than the old one, right? We could just stay there.”

“I already told you, Jon. I’m not just gonna leave it like this.”

“’Til Salesa sobers up, I meant.”

“If we have to, yeah, but—? All our stuff’s in that room. The statements’re in there.”

“I just don’t think we should show her that kind of vulnerability,” Jon hissed, shifting from foot to foot in his eagerness either to sit down or go somewhere else. “I don’t want to give Annabelle something she can use over us.”

“How does this make us more vulnerable than we are eating her food?”

“It doesn’t, alright? That doesn’t mean we should add more to the pile!” He watched Martin shrug and open his mouth, but cut him off in advance: “Last time we had this argument you were the one maintaining she was dangerous.”

It was on their first night here—their first awake here, anyway. They’d been heading back to their room, Martin lamenting that he’d not packed anything to sleep in when they left Daisy’s safehouse. “Won’t make much difference to me,” Jon had shrugged at first.

Martin had shaken his head, grimaced at something in his imagination. “I hate sleeping in my pants. It’s just gross. Dunno why anyone would choose to do it.”

“How is it gross?” Jon had laughed. He’d expected to hear some weird thing about its being unsanitary for that much leg to touch sheets that only got washed every two weeks, and to argue back that in that case shouldn’t he sleep in his socks. Disdain for the body seemed damn near universal, and yet manifested so differently in each person whose habits Jon had got to know up close. Georgie had heard that underarm hair helped wick away the smell of sweat—so she let that hair grow out, but shaved the ones on her stomach for fear they’d smell like navel lint. And Daisy, a woman who used to sniff her used-up plasters before throwing them in the bin, would spray cologne in the toilet every time she left it. Jon had enjoyed getting to know which of bodily self-contempt’s myriad forms Martin subscribed to.

But this turned out not to be one of them. Instead Martin explained, “It’s so sweaty. Like sitting on a leather couch in shorts, except the leather’s your other leg? Ugh. I hate waking up slippery.”

“That’s why I put a pillow between mine,” laughed Jon. “Suppose I will miss Trevor’s t-shirt, though. Now that I don’t have to worry about showing up in people’s dreams like that.”

“Oh, god, right—what is it? ‘You don’t have to be faster than the bear’—?”

“‘You just have to be faster than your friends,'” Jon completed, in the most sinister Ceaseless-Watcher voice he could muster. Martin snorted with laughter.

And then they’d opened the door to discover Annabelle had done them a fucking turndown service. Quilt folded back, mints on the pillows, and a pile of old-timey striped pajamas at the foot of the bed. “Huh. Cree…py, but convenient, I guess. Least they’re not black and white, right?” Martin unfolded the green-striped shirt on top, then handed it with its matching trousers to Jon. “These ones must be yours.”

“Mm.” Jon let Martin hand him the pajamas, then tossed them onto the chair in the opposite corner of the room (from which chair they promptly fell to the floor). The mint from his side of the bed he deposited in the bin under the bedside table.

“So who’s our good fairy, d’you think? Salesa, or.”

“Annabelle,” Jon hissed. “Salesa was with us all through dinner.”

Martin nodded and sighed. “Yeah.” He sat down on the bed, still regarding the other set of garments—these ones striped yellow and blue—with a puzzled frown. “God, I’ll look like a clown in these. You sure I won’t give you nightmares about the Unknowing?”

But Jon said nothing, still hoping he could avoid weighing in on Martin’s choice whether or not to accept Annabelle’s… gifts.

“It’s probably Salesa’s stuff, at least. Not Annabelle’s. I mean,” Martin mused with a brave laugh, “he’s got a lot of weird outfits on hand apparently.”

“Unless she wove them out of cobwebs.”

“That’s not a thing,” Martin groaned, making himself laugh too. “Spider webs aren’t strong enough to use as thread.”

“Not natural ones, maybe,” Jon said with a shrug and a careful half smile. With no less care, he turned the sheets and counterpane back up on his side of the bed, restoring the way it’d looked when he and Martin made up the bed that morning. Stacked the frontmost pillow back upright against the one behind it. Punched it a little, more as a way to break the silence than because it looked too fluffy. Then sat down in front of them and put his shoe up on the bedside table so he could untie it—glancing first at Martin to make sure he didn’t disapprove.

“I mean, I guess,” Martin mused meanwhile. “Not sure why she’d bother, though. Maybe it’s”—with a gasp and a smile Jon could hear in his voice—“maybe she’s put poison in the threads, and that’s why yours and mine are different. Mine’s got—I dunno, some kind of self-esteem poison, like, a reverse SSRI, to make me feel like you don’t need me, so when she kidnaps you I won’t try to save you. And yours….”

As Jon pulled off his now-untied shoe one of the bones in his hip jabbed against some bit of soft tissue it wasn’t supposed to touch. He gasped and dropped his shoe. It thudded on the floor.

“You alright?”

“Fine. Some kind of dex drain, probably.”

“Ha.”

After a silence, Martin spoke again: “Are you sure you’re okay staying here for a bit? Sorry—I kinda bulldozed over your objections earlier.”

Jon finished untying his other shoe, then paused to think while he shook the cramp out of his hand. “No,” he decided. “You didn’t bulldoze, you just…questioned. And you were right to.”

“Still, I mean. It might not be a great idea to stick around here with the spider lady who’s had it in for us since day one. Have you re-listened to the tapes from the day Prentiss attacked, by the way, since you got them back from the Not-Sasha thing?”

“Right—the spider, yes.”

“Yeah, exactly! You wouldn’t even have broke through that wall if it hadn’t been for the spider there!”

Jon nodded and scrubbed at his eyes, trying to muster the energy to match Martin’s tone. This was an important conversation to have, he knew. And a part of him shuddered with recognition to hear Martin talk about those tapes. He had re-listened to them—first at Georgie’s, one night in the small hours as he cleaned her kitchen, thinking clearly for the first time in months and trying to pinpoint the exact moment his thoughts had been clouded with paranoia, so that he might know what signs to look for if something else tried to infect his mind like that. And then again after Basira found the jar of ashes. That time he’d just wanted to suck all the marrow he could from the memory of Martin with his sensible corkscrew and his first answer to Why are you here, even if it did mean having to hear himself ask if Martin was a ghost. A few weeks later, however, after Hilltop Road, he’d done a fair bit of obsessing over the spider thing with Prentiss, yeah. He just wished he could remember what conclusion he’d come to.

All he could remember was going for those tapes yet again only to find them missing from his drawer. But he’d been chasing phantoms all day; it was late at night by then, and when he’d dashed out to tell Basira his fear Annabelle had stolen them, stolen his memories from him just like the Not-Them had, he’d stood there over her and Daisy’s frankenbag for what felt like an hour, mouth open, unable to utter a sound. It felt too much like going to wake up his grandmother after a dream. So he’d told himself to sleep on it—that he’d probably left the tapes in some other obvious place, and would find them in the morning. And when he remembered his panic, the next day at lunch, and checked his drawer again, the tapes were back, right where he expected them. He’d dismissed it as a dream after all. But no—Martin must have borrowed them. He must’ve been worried about the Web, too.

“It’s… it should be okay. I don’t think it’ll be like that here.”

Martin sighed. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“That thing where you just—decide how something is without even telling me why you think so. I mean it’s one thing out there, when you ‘know everything’” (this in a false deep voice) “and can’t possibly share it all, but here? When you’re just guessing, like everyone else? Why don’t you think it’ll be like that here? And what does ‘like that’ even mean?”

“I'm sorry—you’re right—I just mean, I don’t think she has her powers here. Based on what Salesa said about the camera, and on what happens when I try to use my powers….”

“Salesa just said the Eye can’t see this place, though. What about that insect thing he said found its way in?”

“I mean.” Jon shrugged. “We managed to find our way here without the Eye’s help.”

“Yeah, but if the Web has no power here then how could she have called me on a payphone? She had to have known where I was to do that, yeah? And she couldn’t know that from here unless the Web told her to do it, right?”

“Maybe? We don’t even know if the Web works like that.”

“Told her to do it, made her want to do it, gave her the tools to do it, whatever. You know what I mean. Look—we know the Eye’s not totally blind here, since it can still feed on statements. Right?”

Jon wondered now how either one of them could have been so sure of that. “Apparently,” he liked to think he had said—but more likely he’d replied simply, “Right.”

“So then by that logic the Web still probably likes it when she—I don’t know, when she manipulates people here. It probably still gets, like, live tweets from her about it. How do we know it can’t use that information to weave more plots around us?”

“If that’s even how it works,” Jon had replied again. “The other fears don’t work like that—they don’t plan, they just.” He tried to sort his intuition into Martin’s live tweet metaphor. “The fears just like their agents’ tweets, they don’t… comment on them, o-or build new opinions on what they’ve read. It boosts the avatar's… popularity, I guess? Their influence?” Jon hadn’t even logged into Twitter since before the Archives. “But unless the Web is different from all the other fears, it doesn’t—it’s not her boss. It doesn’t come up with the schemes, it just.”

“Isn’t it literally called the ‘Spinner of Schemes’, though? The ‘Mother of Puppets’?”

And Jon couldn’t remember what he’d said to brush off that one.

“Of course she’s dangerous,” Martin said now. “I just don’t see what sinister plot of hers we could possibly be enabling by asking her where to find screwdrivers.”

Jon scoffed. “She’s with the Web, Martin! The ‘Mother of Puppets,’ the ‘Spinner of Schemes’? You’re not supposed to be able to see how the threads connect. Anything we ask her gives her another opening to sink her hooks into.”

“So what, you just don’t want to owe her a favor?”

“Yes?” Jon blinked—on purpose, needless to say. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I mean—why do you think she’s here, Martin, ingratiating herself with us?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because it’s the one place on Earth that hasn’t been turned into a hell dimension?”

Jon snarled and set his head in his free hand. The dizziness was coming back. “In her statement Annabelle said the trick to manipulating people was to make sure they always either over or underestimate you.”

“Okay,” granted Martin, as though prompting Jon to explain how this was relevant.

“She’s trying to humanize herself,” he maintained, scratching an imaginary itch behind his glasses. “We shouldn’t let her.”

“I mean, she is physically more human here.”

“Is she? She doesn’t seem to be withdrawing from the Web; she’s not—like this.” Jon turned his wrist in a circle next to his head.

“Yeah but she’s been here for months, right? Maybe she’s passed through that stage.”

A bitter huff of laughter. “So you’re saying she’s reformed.”

“No. I’m saying the fact she’s not all—loopy here doesn’t necessarily mean she still has any power.”

“She’s got four arms and six eyes, Martin!”

“And you sleep with your eyes open and summon tape recorders, Jon!”

“Well,” mused Jon with a wry smile, “not on purpose.”

“That’s my point! You’ve only got—vestiges here, yeah? I’m not saying we should trust her; I don’t wanna be friends or anything. I’m just saying I don’t think the actual concrete danger she poses here is what’s making you hate the idea of asking her for directions.”

“What about that insect thing Salesa said she chased off. Does that not sound spidery to you?”

“We don’t know that! Maybe she waved his syringe at it.”

Jon took a deep, shaky breath through his nose. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to bring up this next part; he feared it might make Martin too afraid to stay here any longer. “I think she’s plotting against us.”

Blink. “Well, yeah. Of course she is. She’s been plotting against us for—”

“Here, I mean. I mean, I think that’s why she’s here. She’s been hiding from the Eye on purpose so she could lure us into her trap with her spindly little”—Jon thought of the earrings that dangled from Annabelle’s ears like flies, swinging with her every sudden movement. Unconsciously he struck out with his hand as if to catch one, closing his fist around empty air. “Without my being able to see either her or the trap. At best, she’s here gathering information about us so she can report it back to her master.” He pictured the thousand spiders he’d seen birthed during Francis’s nightmare crawling back and forth with messages between here and the nearest Web domain—

“I thought you said the fears didn’t work that way,” pursued Martin—

“And every little thing we tell her is one more thread she can use to pull on us.”

“Okay, but, even if you’re right, ‘Hey Annabelle, our doorknob’s busted, can you help us find the tools to fix it’ isn’t actually a fact about us.”

“But that’s just the best-case scenario, Martin! The worst-case scenario is that she predicted we’d get locked out of our room, or even loosened the screw herself—”

“Not this again—”

“—because she knew we’d have to ask her for help, and wherever she tells us to look for the screwdriver is where she’s laid her trap! Think about it—this couldn’t happen outside the range of the camera, right? It would only work in a place where I can’t just know where to find something. That’s the only scenario where we’d ever ask her for directions.” Martin sighed, crossed his arms, rolled his eyes. Jon looked right at him, hoping to catch them on their way back down. “What if her plan is to trap us here forever so we can’t go stop Elias? What if by trusting her with this, we give her the tools to keep the world like this forever?”

Again Martin sighed. He bit his lip, at last seeming not to have an argument lined up already.

“I can’t actually stop you from going after her”—Jon heard Martin scoff, but pressed on—“but I can’t take part in this.”

“You sort of already did stop me, Jon.” He lifted his arm, pointing vaguely in the direction she’d gone. “We can’t catch up with her now.”

That wasn’t quite true, Jon knew; Martin had chosen to stop and listen to him. Instead of pointing this out in words Jon smiled, meekly, and reached for Martin’s hand. “Guess that’s true. Are you, er, ready for lunch now?”

His answering scoff sounded fond, indulgent, rather than incredulous. “Yeah, alright.”

With Martin’s hand still in his, Jon turned around—an awkward business, while holding hands in such a narrow passage—and began to walk back towards the dining room. At the end of the corridor stood a tall, thin, many-limbed figure, holding a water carafe, a stack of glasses, and four steaming plates of food.

“You boys getting hungry?” As she stepped toward them her shoes clacked against the floor. How had they not heard her approach? And what was she doing back at that end of the corridor?

“How did you—?”

“I have my ways. I’ve brought lunch for you both, if you’re amenable.”

“Oh—well, thanks, you’re, you’re just in time, actually.” Jon didn’t dare look away from Annabelle Cane long enough to confirm this, but suspected Martin had directed that last bit at him as much as her. “Can I help you with those?”

Annabelle managed to shrug without dislodging anything from the four plates in her hands. “You can take the napkins if you want,” she said, extending toward Martin the forearm from which they hung.

Jon sat back down in the chair he’d left at a haphazard angle—though it felt weird, since he usually sat on the table’s other side. He thanked Martin when he handed him a napkin, and allowed Annabelle to set an empty glass and a plate of food in front of him. It was a pasta dish, with clams—from a can, he reminded himself. A can and a jar of pasta sauce. Couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes to put together.

“Salesa’s still out of it,” observed Martin. “Don’t think he’ll make too much of his.”

“A shame,” Annabelle agreed. She set a plate down in front of the sleeping Salesa anyway. “Maybe the smell of food’ll wake him up.”

“Are you going to eat with us?” Martin asked, as he and Jon both watched her deposit a fourth plate across the table from them.

“I may as well. We do still have to eat to live here, don’t we?” Jon could tell she meant this comment as an invitation for him to join their conversation, but he didn’t intend to take her bait. “Besides,” Annabelle went on, “this way you’ll know I’ve not saved the best for myself.” With one hand she picked up her own plate again; another of her long, thin arms reached out to take Jon’s plate.

He dragged it to the side, out of her reach. “No, thank you.”

“Alright. Martin,” she said, looking over at him with a patient, patronizing smile. “Will you switch plates with me?”

“Oh, my god,” Martin groaned into his hand. “Sure, why not.”

Something small and gray skittered across the table toward her. For half a second Annabelle took her eyes from Martin. Her nostrils flared; one of her eyes twitched; Jon heard a stifled squawk from behind her closed lips as she swept the skittery thing over her edge of the table. He made no such effort to hide his scoff. Did she think she could play nice, by declining to hold little spider conversations in front of them? That they’d think she was on their side as long as they couldn’t see her chatting to her little spies?

“Thank you,” Annabelle sing-songed meanwhile, returning her gaze to Martin. “You’re sweet.”

On their first morning here, after showering and then shuddering back into their filthy clothes, Jon and Martin had barely left their room before Annabelle dangled herself in their path, with cups of tea (Jon refused his) and an offer to show them to the pantry. From this tour Jon had concluded that all food in this place was tainted by her influence. And he didn’t actually feel hungry at that point? He remembered Martin remarking on his hunger before they’d both fallen asleep, but Jon had felt only tired. Surely that meant he still didn’t need food here, right? It’d been like that before the change, after the coma—he’d needed sleep and statements to keep up his strength, but could function just fine without… people food. So he’d resolved to accept nothing offered him here—or at least, nothing Salesa and Annabelle hadn’t already given him and Martin without their consent. No tea, none of Salesa’s booze, no use of the huge industrial washing machines, no food.

That resolution lasted about nine hours. He knew because on that first day time still felt like such a novelty he and Martin had counted every one. Once he’d tried and failed to compel Salesa—once he’d heard him give a statement and managed to space out for half of it, rather than transcending himself in the ecstasy of vicarious fear—Jon started to grow conscious of his hunger. After two hours he felt shaky; after four he started picking quarrels, first just with Annabelle when she showed up with snacks, then with Salesa, and then even with Martin; after six he felt first hot, then cold. Finally around the eight-hour mark he was hiding tears over an untied shoelace, and figured it was worth finding out how much of this torment people food could solve. He sat through dinner, flaunting his empty plate—then stole to the pantry for something he could make himself. Settled for dry toast and raisins. “Couldn’t you find the jam?” Martin had asked him.

“Didn’t think of it,” Jon lied, once he’d got his throat round a lump of under-chewed toast.

“You want me to get some for you? That looks pretty depressing without it,” Martin said, with his eyebrows and the line of his mouth both raised in a pitying smile.

“Better make it one of the sealed jars.”

“What, so Annabelle can’t have got to it?” Jon nodded, chewing so as to have neither to smile back nor decide not to. “You know she made the bread, right.”

Of course she had. Jon dropped his head onto his fists. “Fuck.”

“What did you think?” mused Martin with a laugh. “That Salesa just popped down to the supermarket?”

“I don’t know—that they’d taken it from the freezer, maybe?”

“I mean, that’s possible,” Martin granted with a shrug. “Should I get you that jam?”

Big sigh. “Fine.”

In reality he’d stared up at the row of jam jars in Salesa’s pantry for a full ten seconds before deciding not to have any. He feared spiders would spill out of the jar onto his hand as soon as he got it open. But he also feared he might not be able to open it at all—only hurt himself trying. Way back in their first year in the Archives together, Martin had once seen him struggling to get open the jar where he kept paperclips. Jon hadn’t realized he was being watched—or, that is, that Martin was watching him. In the Archives the sense of someone watching was so omnipresent one soon lost the ability to distinguish Elias’s evil Eye from other, more mundane eyes. Anyway, after three minutes’ effort and nothing to show for it but a misplaced MCP joint in his thumb, Jon had given up on paper-clipping the photos Tim had pilfered for him to their relevant statement and begun hunting through his desk drawers for a stapler instead. And then a high-pitched pop above his head made him startle so badly he gasped, choked on his own spit, and flung the picture in his hand across the room like a paper airplane.

Around the sound of his own cough he could hear Martin shouting Sorry, and Tim and Sasha laughing on the other side of the wall. Martin’s laugh soon joined theirs, though it sounded desperate, sheepish. He dove after the photo Jon had dropped, and then, when he came back with it, explained, “Got the paperclips for you.”

Jon frowned. “This is a photograph, Martin.”

“No, I mean—?” His laugh came out like a whimper; he picked the unlidded jar up an inch off the table, then set it back down. “Here.”

Okay, so, not exactly an auspicious start, but, it still became a thing? Martin opening his paperclip jar. At first he’d wished he could just remember not to seal it so tightly; he could get it just fine when he stopped turning it earlier. At least when the weather hadn’t changed since the last time he opened it. But then when they all started leaving the Archives less often, and the break-room fridge filled up with condiments that all seemed to have twist-off lids… he’d kind of liked that? Martin would hand him the peanut-butter jar, with its lid off and pinned to its side with one finger, before Jon had even finished asking for it. This seemed to be the pattern behind all his early positive impressions of Martin: the jar lids, the corkscrew, the way he managed to make mealtimes at the Institute feel like proper breaks. Martin had seemed like such an oaf to him at first—clumsy, absent-minded, always seeming to think that if he professed enough good will with his smiles and cups of tea and I know you won’t like this, but, then no one would notice his impertinent comments and all the doors he left wide open. All the dogs and worms and spiders he let in. He’d seemed to Jon the human embodiment of a fly left undone—more so than ever after the morning he’d walked in on him wearing naught but frog-print boxer shorts. But he had this easy grace with things that needed twisting off. Banana peels, bottle caps, wine corks, worms.

And then when he came back after the Unknowing Martin was never around. Jon and Basira and Melanie all lived in the Archives, like Martin had two years before, but by that point he wasn’t on Could you open this for me? terms with any of them. But he hadn’t needed people food anymore, and if he subluxed a joint it would heal instantly anyway. So he’d just struggled and sworn, feeling stupid for shrinking from the pain even after having chopped off his own finger. And it got easier with practice. By the time he and Martin reunited, he’d got so used to it that sometimes he’d hand jars to Martin already unlidded. Martin hadn’t seemed to notice. Finally, one evening a day or two after that row they had over the ice-cream thing, Jon had opened a jar of pasta sauce (he’d taken up people food again at Daisy’s safehouse, if only to make their time there feel more like a regular holiday), and reached out to hand it to Martin—then paused and retracted the hand that gripped the jar, remembering his promise to be more open about.

“This is, um.” He’d glanced up at Martin, then back to the floor as the latter said,

“Huh?”

“This is one of those things that’s got better since the coma. Since I became an avatar. I can, um. I can open jars now? Without.” He’d almost said Without hurting myself, then remembered that wasn’t technically true. Deep breath. “Without lasting harm. It—it hurts for a second? But the Eye heals it instantly. That's why I’ve been.”

“Oh,” Martin said, seeming to stall for time as he absorbed this information. He accepted the jar which Jon again held out to him, and turned it around in his hands, eyes on its label. “Yeah, I—I noticed, you’re really good at opening jars now,” he went on with a laugh. Again he paused, and blew a sigh out of his mouth. “Right. Okay. Thank you for telling me?”

“I’ll try and be better about….”

Martin nodded, turning back to the stove and beginning to stir sauce into the pasta. “Yeah. I, uh—I didn’t know that was why you used to need me to open them for you?” Since the other night’s argument, Jon had gathered as much. He nodded too. “I thought you were just, heh, you know. Weaker than me.”

“I mean, I am—”

“Well yeah but you know what I mean.”

“I do. I should’ve told you.”

“No, I—actually I think you’re in the clear on that one, if I’m honest. I just—it’s just weird? I thought I was done having to” (another blown-out sigh punctuated his speech) “having to reframe stuff I thought was normal around some unseen horror. Sorry,” he added when he’d finished beating sauce off Daisy’s wooden spoon; “that’s probably not a great way to.”

“No—it’s fine?”

“Suppose it sounds like an exaggeration, now, after all we’ve.”

Mechanically, Jon nodded, without deciding whether he agreed or not. Around an awkward laugh, he confessed, “‘Unseen horror’ might be the nicest way I’ve ever heard anyone describe it.”

“Er. Yikes? That sounds like you might need some better friends, Jon.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, laughing again. “I—I just mean, it’s nice to hear something other than?” Jon paused and pushed his little fingers back the hundred or so degrees they each would go. First the left, then the right. Other than what? Well, doubt, for a start. Though most of the doubt he heard from outside himself was implicit. Careful silence from people he told about it; requests people made of him seemingly just so he’d have to tell them he couldn’t do that; impatience, bafflement, suspicion from strangers. Why are you out of breath, the woman behind the Immigration desk had asked him at O’Hare, as if breathlessness incriminated him somehow. But that wasn’t the response he’d subconsciously measured Martin’s phrase against. What he had in mind now was more like… bland support. Hurried support. Assurances quick and dutiful, yet so vague he could tell the people who gave them were thinking only of the mistakes they might make, if they dared to acknowledge what he’d said with any more than half a sentence. The I’m sorry you’re in pain equivalents of Right away, Mr. Sims.

That was it—unseen horror was an original thought. Martin had put it in his own words, rather than either borrowing Jon’s or using none at all. “Other than a platitude.”

So at Salesa’s when Martin came back with the jam jar he handed it to Jon. Jon made a show of trying to open it, but could feel his middle finger threatening to leave its top half behind. It frightened him, in a way he’d forgot was even possible. For such a long time now, pain had just been pain? He’d grown so unused to the threat it held for normal people. The threat of actual danger, of injury. He’d set down the jar on the table in front of him, and crossed his arms in front of it.

“Can’t get it, huh?” Martin asked; Jon shook his head.

How much danger, though, he wondered. Earlier that day, after he and Martin got out of the bath, his left index finger had popped out while he was buttoning his shirt. It still ached when he used the finger, or thought about the cracking sound it had made—but didn’t throb anymore without provocation. Not much danger there; not even much inconvenience. He supposed if he hurt his middle finger too then he might have some trouble with his trouser button the next time he had to pee? Right, yes, what a cross to bear. I hurt myself doing x; now it hurts to do x. But it already hurt to do x, didn’t it? Didn’t x always hurt, before the change? Why did he so fear to face an hour or a day where it hurt more than usual, but not so much I can’t do it?

“So you’re saying it won’t… come off?”

“Ha, ha.”

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

“What if I open it and it’s full of spiders?”

Martin had smiled, rolled his eyes, pulled the jar toward him, and twisted its lid off with a pop. “See? No spiders in this one.

“While you’re here, Annabelle,” Jon heard Martin say, “I don’t suppose you know anything about where Salesa keeps his screwdrivers?”

Annabelle tapped her chin and said, very pleasantly, “Hmmm. Perhaps they’re where he left them after the last time something broke.”

Martin’s lips drew closer together. “Yeah,” he nodded, “probably. Any idea where that might be?”

“Perhaps he keeps them next to whatever screw comes loose most often.”

“And do you know which screw that is?”

She shook her head, though who knew whether that meant she didn’t know or merely that she didn’t mean to tell him. “Perhaps he only uses the item when he’s alone,” she said, with a shrug and a sly smile.

“…Ew.” Annabelle cackled like a school kid pulling a prank. “Right, great,” sighed Martin. “Thanks a lot. Forget it. You done, Jon?”

Jon glanced sleepily down at his plate. Only half empty, but cold by now. “Yes.”

“Nice of you to grace us with your presence, Annabelle,” Martin said, sliding his and Jon’s plates toward her side of the table.

Instead of energy, lunch gave Jon only a slight queasy feeling—like one gets from eating sweets on an empty stomach.

“God”—hissed Martin, with clenched fists, as they ambled back to their room—“‘Perhaps he keeps them next to the screw that gets loose most often.’ Yeah, figured that out already, thanks! Can you even believe her? Sitting down to eat with us, as if she’s all ready to help, and then the best she can do is,” he paused and straightened, then said with a finger to his chin in imitation of Annabelle, “‘Oh, hm, guess he only uses it alone. Oh well!’”

“Don’t know what else you expected.”

Martin sighed, his arms crossed now. “Guess I should’ve done what you asked after all, since that accomplished nothing.” After a moment he went on, “Least it wasn’t a trap, right? I tried not to give her anything she could use against us.” With a smile Jon could hear without looking at him, “You notice how I pointedly didn’t offer to help clean up?”

“No, I didn’t,” Jon confessed, laughing a little.

“No?!” Again Martin paused on his feet, frowning, incredulous. Jon wished he wouldn’t; standing still made him dizzier, took more effort than walking, like that poor woman in Oliver’s domain. Daniela? Martin shook his head at himself. “Ugh—then who knows if she noticed, either. I thought I was being so obvious!”

“I mean—”

“Wait, hold up, let’s double back.”

“Are you going to go back and tell her it was on purpose?”

“No, just”—he echoed Jon’s laugh—“no, of course not. I just wanted to try that wing’s toilets next. Didn’t want her to see which way we were going.”

“Oh.” By this time Martin had turned around and started to walk the other way; Jon hung back. “Er. I thought—I thought we were going to our room first.”

“What, the new one you mean?” asked Martin, turning his head around to look back at him.

“…Yes,” Jon decided. Until this moment he’d forgot about that, and been daydreaming of their original bed.

“Sure, if you want. Do you need a break?”

“I… I think so, yes.”

Martin turned the rest of the way around, shuffled toward Jon and looked him over, with a concerned frown. He took his free hand between his fingers and thumb, brushing the latter over Jon’s knuckles. “Yeah, okay. You still seem pretty out of it. How are you feeling?”

“Not great,” answered Jon, though he smiled in relief at Martin’s willingness to change the plan for him.

“Food didn’t help?”

His stomach seemed hung with cobwebs; his mind, like a large room with half its lights burnt out. His light head seemed attached to his heavy, aching body only by a string, like a balloon tied to an Open-House sign. He still needed the toilet. “Not really?”

“Yeah, thought not. You need a statement, huh.”

Jon shrugged, avoiding Martin’s eyes. “Probably.”

In the interim bedroom Jon sat down at the edge of the bed, bent down over his legs, and untied his shoes, wondering why his life always came back around to this. His hip got stuck like a drawer that’s been pulled out crooked, so he had to lever himself back up with his arms, trapping fistfuls of counterpane between thumbs and the meat of his palms. It made his hands cramp, but that helped—the way it would have helped to bite his finger. When he’d got himself upright again he sat and blinked for a few seconds, hoping each time he opened his eyes that his vision would’ve cleared.

Martin sat down next to him and put his hand on Jon’s arm. “You’re blinking again. You okay?”

“Just… kind of dizzy? It’s an Eye thing.”

He let Martin pull him towards him until their shoulders touched. “Yeah. Makes sense. Nap should help. Statement’ll definitely help.”

“Right.”

They agreed to lie on the bed rather than properly in it, not wanting to have to put the covers back together afterward. Jon set his head on that squishy part of Martin’s chest where it started to give way to armpit, knowing to angle himself so the scar tissue pressed the hollow part of his cheek rather than anywhere bonier. It was normally dangerous to lie half on his back, half on his side like this, but he’d lately discovered he could use Martin’s leg to keep his hip from falling off. He could feel the muscles in his shoulder twitching and cramping, whether to pull the joint out or keep it in who could tell. But it’d be fine as long as he shrugged the arm every few minutes.

All the ways they knew to spend time in each other’s company had come together in Scotland, where he’d had none of these worries. Even after the change, on their journey, with nothing but sleeping bags between them and desecrated earth, he’d borne only the same aches he’d been ignoring since he read the statement that ended the world. Jon imagined lying next to Martin like this on the cold stone of a tomb in the Necropolis, surrounded by guardian angels’ malicious laughter. Not feeling the cold, or the grain of the stone against his ankles and the bandage on his shin—just knowing it was there, like when you watch someone suffer those things in a movie. Less vivid even than a statement about lying on a tomb; in Naomi Herne’s nightmare he’d felt the stone in her hands.

“Hfff, okay—ready to get back to it?”

“Mrrr.”

“…Jon, are you asleep?”

He shrugged his hanging shoulder. “No.”

Nose laugh. “Come on, wake up.”

“Mmrrrrrrr.”

“My arm’s asleep.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It won’t wake up ‘till you get up off of it, Jon,” said Martin, gently, between huffs of laughter.

“Hmr.” Jon rolled away to face the wall with the window, freeing Martin’s arm.

“Do you want me to go look without you?”

“Okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mhm.”

Cold air washed over his newly-exposed arm, ribcage, side of face, the outside of his sore hip. It was cold on this Martinless side of the bed, too. He rolled back over into the shadow of his warmth, but that still wasn’t as good as the real thing. Maybe he could pull the covers halfway out and roll himself up in them.

“Aaagh, no—Jon”—Martin’s cool hand on top of his as he tried to hook his fingers round the counterpane— “we’re trying to leave the room the way we found it, remember?”

“Hmmmrrgh.” He consented to leave his hand still when Martin’s departed from it. A few seconds later, a rustle against his ear, the smell of smoke and old clothes.

“Here.”

Jon crunched the jacket down so it wouldn’t itch his ear. “You won’t need it?”

“Probably not.”

“Hm.”

“I’ll be back for it if I have to go outside again, yeah?”

“Okay.”

In his mind’s eye they trudged into the wind, hand in hand. It blew Martin’s hood off his head, and inverted Jon’s cane like an umbrella. He shrunk himself further under Martin’s jacket, relishing the new pockets of warmth he created as his calves met his thighs and his hands gripped his shoulders.

“Ooookay…! Wish me luck?”

“Good luck,” managed Jon around a yawn.

Martin had been right about the wallpaper. Not only was the red too bright to look at comfortably; it also had the kind of flowered pattern just complex enough that every time you look back at it you’re compelled to double-check where it repeats. Every fourth stripe was the same as the first, right? Not every second? And that weird little scroll-shaped petal—he’d seen that one too recently. Was it the same as?—No, that one was a bud. He pulled Martin’s jacket up so it covered his eyes.

They’d put their jackets through the laundry with everything else, their first day here, but that hadn’t got the smell out. Enough time had passed between the burning building and their arrival here for the smoke to embed itself permanently into their jackets and shoes, like how duffel bags once taken camping always smell like barbecue. And everything they’d ever shoved in those backpacks still had some of that odd, sour, Ritz-cracker smell of clothes left unwashed too long.

Daisy used to smell like smoke and laundry, too, once she quit smelling like dirt. It was the smell of the old green sleeping bag she’d zipped up to Basira’s. She said she’d have showered it off if she could; she didn’t like it. To her it was a Hunt smell—it reminded her of her clearing in the woods. But there weren’t any showers in the Archives. She’d point this out every time, in the same wry voice, so Jon was sure she’d intended the metaphor. No showers in the Archives: you couldn’t hide your sins in a temple of the Eye. This had comforted Jon—or maybe flattered was the word, though he knew her better than to think she’d have done so on purpose. He just wasn’t sure he agreed. He’d hid his sins pretty well from himself, after the coma. It was easy; you just had to lose track of scale. No one could remember all of them at once, after all. Others had had to point the important ones out to him.

Were those footsteps he could hear out there? Not Annabelle’s—? No; her clicky shoes. These were blunter. Could be Salesa, awake at last, come to invite them to play a game with him. “How do you two feel about… foosball?” he would say, drawing out the last word in a husky whisper. Only then would he swing the door wide open to reveal himself in a shiny jersey, shorts, and studded shoes. He set his fists out before him and turned them in semicircles, pretending to manipulate the plastic rods of a foosball table. Jon curled still more tightly into himself at the thought of Salesa’s face, how his showman’s grin would crumple like a hole in a cellophane wrapper when he realized the fun one had gone and that he faced only the Archivist. “Oh—hello. Jon, is it? Where has your lovely Martin gone?”

“Oh, uh. Martin needs a screwdriver to fix our door, so I.”

He watched Martin march his silent way slowly, solemnly down a corridor that grew darker, grayer, vaguer with every step until the webs that lined its every side and hung in laces from the ceiling began to catch on his shoes, his belt, his glasses.

“I let him go off alone.”

Jon’s whole body flinched. He gasped awake—oh shit. How had he just let Martin go? He had to—couldn’t stay here—find Martin—keep him out of Annabelle’s clutches—

Stick-thin bristling spider legs tapped the floor of his mind like fingers on a table. Find Martin. Jon instructed himself to sit up, swing his legs over the side of the bed and reach down to grab his shoes. He twitched one finger. See? You can do this. In a minute he’d try again and be able to move his whole arm, push himself up onto one hand. Find Martin.

Also probably go to the toilet. With an empty bladder his head would be clearer, he could figure out which direction to look first.

After Hopworth, while he laid on the couch in his office waiting for the strength to throw himself into the Buried, Jon had imagined Martin and Georgie and Basira and Melanie all stood around that coffin, wearing black and holding flowers. Denise? No, it definitely had three syllables. A scattered applause began as Jonah Magnus emerged from his office, closed behind him the door printed with poor dead Bouchard’s name, and stepped up to the podium. Georgie, not knowing his face, began to clap; Melanie stayed her hands. Elagnus’s shirt, hidden behind suit except for the collar, was striped in black and white. A ball and chain hung from his sleeve like an enormous cufflink. He opened his mouth to speak, and a tape recorder began to hiss.

“What are you doing here?” asked Basira.

“Never underestimate how much I care for the tools I use, Detective. I wouldn’t miss my Archivist’s big day.”

“So they just let you out for this.”

Elias shrugged with false modesty. His chain jingled. “When I asked them nicely.”

“How did you even know he was dead?” interposed Melanie. “Basira, did you tell him about the—”

“She didn’t have to,” said Elias, raising his voice to cut Melanie’s off. “Nothing escapes my notice, and I like to keep an eye out for this sort of thing.”

“Well—it’s—good to see you.” Tim’s voice. Unconvincing, even then.

Jon steeled himself to hear his own voice stammer out, “Yes—y-yes!” but heard nothing except the hissing of the… tape. Yes, that was the wrong tape—the one from his birthday.

“Anyway. Somebody mentioned cake.” Elias jingled as he arranged his hands under his chin.

Tim scoffed. “They didn’t serve cake at my funeral.”

“I preferred going out for ice cream anyway,” pronounced Martin, his arms crossed and his nose in the air. Jon pushed himself up on shaking hands. Find Martin.

They had gone for ice cream at John O’Groats before the change, while living at Daisy’s safehouse. Martin had apologized on behalf of the kiosk for its measly selection—no rum and raisin. Jon pronounced a playful “Urgh,” assuming Martin had cited this flavor as a joke. “I think I’ll manage without that particular abomination.”

“Wait, what? Why did you order it at my birthday party then?”

Jon stood still with his ice cream cone, squinted into space, and blinked. “I did?”

“My first birthday in the Archives, yeah!”

“Huh. That’s… odd.” Martin placed a gentle hand on Jon’s back to remind him to resume walking. “I suppose I must have been—huh. Yes,” he mused, nodding slowly as his hypothesis came into focus between his eyes and the ground. “I must still have thought I was tired of all the good flavors at that point.”

He heard Martin scoff a few steps ahead of him. “What, and now you’re happy with plain old vanilla?” Then he heard arrhythmic footsteps thumping toward him from Martin’s direction; he looked up to find Martin reaching his napkin-draped free hand out toward Jon’s ice cream cone. “You’re dripping again,” he explained.

Jon mumbled thanks and shrugged a laugh. “I-I’ve, uh. Come back around on most of them.”

“Except rum and raisin?”

“No—I’ve come around on it, too, just, uh.” He tried to make the shape of a wheel with his ice-cream-cone-laden hand. It flicked drips of vanilla across his shirt. Martin came at him with the napkin again. “Thank you. I just disliked that one to start with.”

“…Right. Okay, so what revolution occurred in your life before the Archives that overturned all your opinions on ice cream flavors?”

So Jon had told Martin about that summer when his jaw kept subluxing. He’d used that word, assuming Martin was familiar with it already—incorrect, as he knew now. Presumably Martin had gathered from context that Jon meant he’d hurt his jaw, in some small-scale, no-big-deal way whose specifics he’d let slide as an unimportant detail. But then as the anecdote wore on he must have begun to feel the hole in his knowledge. And lo, at last Martin had invoked that dread specter the clarifying question.

“Okay but so your grandmother had no problem with you basically living off ice cream all summer?”

“Well, she did when I could chew. But not when it was that or tinned soup.”

“Ah—right. ‘Cause you hurt your… jaw, you said?” Jon nodded. “What happened exactly?”

“Oh. Uh. Happened? Nothing, just my—I was born, I guess. Just part of my genetic condition; I happened to get it especially bad in the jaw that year. I-it’s much better now, though,” he hastened to add when he noticed Martin’s frown.

“What genetic condition? You never told me you had one.”

“Didn’t I?”

At the time, the anger in Martin’s answering scoff had surprised him. “No, Jon, you never said.”

“Oh. Sorry? I—I mean, you’ve seen me with this for years—I just?—thought you knew.”

“Seen you with—what, the cane, you mean? I thought that was Prentiss!”

Jon glanced to the doorway to double-check that was where he’d left his cane.

“What? No,” he had mused. “Of course not. I’ve had this since….”

“But you never used it.”

“No—surely, I—”

“Not once before Prentiss.”

Even as he’d said the words, Jon’s memory of that time had returned to him and he’d known Martin was right. Before Prentiss attacked the Institute he’d brought his cane with him to work in the Archives every day, and every day left it folded up in his bag. All out of an obscure notion that if he’d used it before Elias and before his coworkers, they’d take it as a plea for mercy, an admission of weakness or incompetence. God, he was naïve back then. He’d used the cane often enough back in Research; why hadn’t he worried Tim and Sasha would find its new absence conspicuous? That they’d worry just as much about his refusal to use it? The whole thing seemed even more stupid, too, now that he knew Elias must have noticed the change. How it must have pleased him, to see his shiny new Archivist so obsessed with proving he was fit for the job.

“Yeah but,” Jon pursued, instead of voicing any of this, “Tim never—?”

Martin nodded and shrugged. “I don’t know; I figured Tim didn’t get them in the legs as much as you did. I didn’t see you guys after the attack, remember? Not ‘til you got out of quarantine.”

“Right, no, of course you didn’t. I’m sorry,” said Jon mechanically, already consumed with the question he asked next. “Martin—did you think it was the corkscrew?”

From Martin’s sigh Jon figured he’d been expecting this question. “Kinda? At first, yeah. Half for real, half just—you know, as a habit? Like, ‘Look, a way to blame yourself!’” He splayed out his hands, rolled his eyes.

“Yes—I do that too.” Jon barely got the words out above a whisper; he couldn’t not smile, but fought to keep it from showing teeth. A muscle under his chin spasmed with the effort.

“But then I noticed you switching sides with it a lot, so, yeah. I knew it couldn’t be just that.”

“Really?” He waited for Martin’s answering shrug. “You’re the first person who’s ever noticed that. Or at least commented on it.”

“Sorry?”

“No—it’s.”

This attempt to communicate a similar sentiment, Jon recalled as he reached for his shoes, hadn’t gone as well as the one a few days later (over unseen horror &c.). Beholding had at that moment presented him with the image of a fat, hunched woman in shorts. She shuffled forward a few steps in a queue at Boots, next to him, and shifted her weight so the cane in her right hand supported her nearer leg. He felt a strong impulse he knew wasn’t his own—one born partly of resentment, part exasperation, part concern—to tell the woman that was bad for her shoulder, that she should switch hands too. But knew if he tried she’d either pretend she hadn’t heard it, or tell him off for criticizing her. Jon didn’t know what she would say more specifically; the Eye didn’t do hypotheticals. It had given him no more than this single moment of preverbal intuition. After the change he could have sought out other conversations Martin had had with his mother, and they might have given him a pretty good idea. But he’d promised Martin not to look at things like that.

He managed to dislodge a finger while tying his shoe. The other shoe he’d pulled off without untying; in a fit of impatience he tried now to shove his foot into it as it was. No good—he got the shoe on, but it just made the other index finger, the one he’d hooked into the back of the shoe behind his heel for leverage, pop off to the side too. Jon was afraid to find out what shape it would end up in if he pulled his finger back out of the shoe like that, so he had to untie it after all, one-handed. Then carefully extract his finger. It sprung back into place as soon as he removed the offending pressure (namely, his heel), but he still whimpered and swore. The corners of his eyes pricked with indignation when he remembered he still had to pee.

In this case, for once, Beholding had told him the important part: that that was why Martin had noticed. Had he noticed Melanie, too, Jon wondered, when she got back from India? She would switch hands sometimes, too—but, of course, without switching legs. He wondered if that had picked at the same unacknowledged nerve of Martin’s that his mother’s habit had. It had bothered Jon, too, but in a different way. He’d resented it a little, but also felt humbled by it, the way he always did by others’ discomfort. Getting shot in the leg seemed so big? Like such an aberration. So uncontroversially important—probably because it was simple, legible. Georgie could convey its hugeness to him in three words. She got shot. Obviously there was more to the story than that; there were parts he could never…

Well, no. There was a part of it he felt he should say he could never understand: that she’d kept the cursed bullet because she wanted it. In fact he was pretty sure he did understand that. But he didn’t have the right to admit it, he didn’t think. And no reason to hope she would believe him if he did. The second he’d learnt the bullet was still in there, after all, he and Basira had rushed to dig it out. Surely, from her perspective that could only mean he didn’t and could never understand. Or maybe he just wanted her to see it that way—wanted her to get to keep that uncomplicated resentment of his ignorance. It made his perspective look stupid and ugly, sure. But the truth made it look self-absorbed and pitiful. The truth was that until Daisy insisted otherwise, he’d assumed only he could see his own corruption and assent to it: that the others must not have known what they were doing.

Then again, maybe even if Melanie knew that, she would see only that he had underestimated her. Maybe it didn’t matter how much she knew.

Melanie switched off which hand she held her white cane with now, too. But that was probably healthy? Jon knew no more than the average person about white-cane hygiene. He just remembered feeling the floor drop out of his stomach when they’d got coffee together during his time in hiding and he had seen her switch her original, silver cane from hand to hand. Part of him had wanted to scoff or rationalize it away. How much could the shot leg hurt, really, if she still noticed when her arms got tired? But another part of him shuddered at the thought one arm alone couldn’t compensate for the weight her leg refused to take—that she had to keep switching off when one arm got weak and shaky from supporting more weight than it should have to. It wasn’t that he hadn’t experienced pain or impairment on that scale. He had, though the thought of a single injury sufficing to cause it still made him feel cold inside. It was that he kept seeing proofs, all over, everywhere, that the parts of his life he’d only learnt to accept by assuming they were rare weren’t rare.

Leitner hadn’t made the evil books; he’d just noticed they were there. And then had his life ruined by their influence, like everyone who came across them. Jon had had no time and no right to deplore the holes Prentiss had left in him and Tim, because on the same damn day he learnt someone had shot the previous Archivist to death. Alright, so it was him, then, right? Him and Tim—just doomed, just preternaturally unlucky. Tim, handsome face half-eaten by worms, estranged (as Jon then assumed) from a brother who seemed so warm and accepting in that picture on his lock screen; Jon, saved from Mr. Spider only by his childhood bully, now fated to take the place of another murder victim—and also half-eaten by worms. But no; he and Tim had got off lightly. Look what had happened to Sasha the same fucking night. The very thing whose influence convinced him the world had it out for him? Had killed Sasha. Literally stolen her life. How many lives around him got stolen while he mourned his own?

“I want you to comment on it,” Jon had managed to clarify. But Martin had scoffed as he stood in the foyer of Daisy’s safehouse, hopping on one foot to pull off the other shoe:

“Yeah, well. You haven’t exactly led by example on that one.”

“How could I?”

He accepted Jon’s scarf and long-discarded jacket, hanging them up beside his own. “Gee, I don’t know—commenting on it yourself?”

“On… switching which side I used the cane on.”

“Don’t play dumb, Jon. On this ‘genetic condition’” (in a deep, posh voice, with a stodgy frown and fluttering eyelashes) “you’ve apparently had this entire time. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“I thought you knew, Martin! Why would I mention it in a childhood anecdote if I didn’t think...?”

“Well I didn’t know, okay? You never told me. You never tell anyone anything about what’s going on with you, you just—you just make everything into another heroic cross to bear.”

“That’s not—?” He wanted to tell Martin just how little that made him want to say about it. But he guessed Martin was really talking less about the EDS thing, more about how he’d spent their whole first year in the Archives pretending to dismiss the statements that scared him. How he’d sent Tim and Martin home when he’d found out about Sasha. How he’d stayed away from the Institute even after his name got cleared for Leitner’s murder. “What do you want to know.”

“Why you never—?” In a similar way, Martin seemed to reconsider his initial response. “Yeah, okay, right. Object-level stuff, yeah?” Jon nodded and wanly smiled. “Okay, so. What’s it called?”

After taking a minute to ditch his shoes, wash the sticky ice-cream residue off his hands, and drink some water, he’d sat down on the couch with Martin and told him its name, what it was, what it did. What does that mean, though, Martin kept asking, so he’d explained how it applied to the anecdote about his jaw. Martin asked why it meant he needed a cane.

“Be…cause all my joints are like that.”

“Yeah, but why does it help with that? What is the cane actually for, is what I’m asking.”

Jon hated being asked that question. “It—it means I don’t fall over when one of my joints stops working? A-and… also makes walking hurt less. I suppose.”

“So, when they’re working right, that’s when you don’t need it?”

“No—yes?—sort of. Now sometimes I just need it when it’s been too long since I had a statement. I get sort of. Weak.” Quickly Jon added, “But I don’t need it for stability so much since the coma.” He’d shown Martin how now, when he pulled out his finger, the Eye would just sort of erase that version of reality—how the dislocation wouldn’t snap back, but simply cease to exist. As if his body were a drawing on which the Beholding had corrected a mistake. He put his palms together behind his back, in the way he’d been told one couldn’t without subluxing both shoulders, and told Martin to watch how the hollows between his shoulder bones vanished. He opened his jaw ‘til it jarred to the side, and told Martin to listen for the static.

But Jon had never shown Martin how these things worked before the coma. Martin had no reference for this kind of thing; he understood only enough to find the sights unsettling. “That’s—no, that’s okay, I’ll”—he stuttered as Jon fumbled with his kneecap in search of a fourth example—“I-I get it. I’ll take your word for it.”

“I just thought.”

“No, I—? I don’t need you to prove it to me, Jon.” (The latter nodded, blushing, trying to smile.) “I get… I’m sorry. I guess I get why it’d feel easier not to say anything if? If you think it’s either that or have to convince people it’s a thing.”

Again Jon nodded. He suspected Martin wasn’t through talking yet. But Martin still wasn’t looking at him, eyes squeezed tight against Jon’s party tricks. So, to show he was listening, Jon said, “Yes. Er—thank you, Martin.”

“I just don’t like it when you hide things from me.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You could at least ask if I want to know about them, yeah?”

Even at the time, Jon had doubted this. If they’d had this conversation after the change, he might have pointed out to Martin that when you mention something the other person has no inkling of, you make them too curious to decline your offer of more information, even if afterward they’ll admit they wish you’d never told them.

“Or ask me if I even recognize what you’re talking about, the next time you start going on about some childhood anecdote where you incidentally had a dislocated jaw. Honestly, would it kill you to start with, ‘Hey, did I ever tell you about x’?”

“No, it wouldn’t. You’re right. I’ll try. What… kinds of things did you—? For the future, I mean. What kinds of things did you want to make sure I tell you about.”

Martin sighed, in that way he did when he thought Jon was going about something all wrong. But after a pause to think, he did ask, “About this, or in general?”

“Either—both—first one, then the other.”

“Okay. I guess… I want to know when you’re hurt, mostly. Like—I can’t believe I even have to say this—that’s kind of important, actually? How am I supposed to know how to behave around you if I never know whether you're secretly in pain or not?”

This seemed weird—both now and at the time. Jon figured he must be missing something. If Martin thought he only needed the cane because of Prentiss then, sure, that might have affected how he imagined Jon’s discomfort to himself, but? Wasn’t the cane itself an admission of pain? Why did Martin think he owed him more than that—that he had owed him more than that at the time, no less? Did he not realize how fucking private that was? What a surrender of privacy the cane represented?

But, no, he reminded himself now; nondisabled people don’t realize that, unless you tell them about it. Repeatedly. Over and over. It only seems obvious to you because you lived it already.

“Er.” At the time he’d just shown Martin his teeth, with the points of his left-side canines joined. Nominally a smile, but more like a show of hiding the grimace beneath than an actual attempt to hide it. “That’s harder than you might think? Technically I’m always….”

“Oh.”

“Sorr—”

“—What do you mean, ‘technically’?”

“I’m—not always aware of it?” He disliked that phrase, in pain—how it implied a discrete and exclusive state. One could not be in Paris and at the same time in London; similarly, most people seemed to assume one could not be in pain and also in a good mood. In raptures. In a transport of laughter. That when one admits to being in pain, one implies that’s the most important thing they’re conscious of.

“Well that doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, I know—‘if a tree falls down in a forest’—blah blah blah.” With a gentle smile to acknowledge he’d picked up this mode of speech from Martin. He turned his wrist in circles so it clicked like an old film reel. “Philosophically speaking, if you’re not aware of pain, you can’t be in it. Maybe ‘technically’ isn’t the right word.”

“Oh yeah ‘cause that’s the angle I want to know about this from.”

Jon sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I just mean, it doesn’t always matter to me.”

“Well it matters to me,” Martin scoffed.

“Yeah—I’m getting that. Is there any way I can explain this that you won’t jump down my throat for?”

Martin sighed, groaned, pulled at his hair a little but made himself stop. (He doesn’t pull it out, Jon knows—he just likes having something to grab onto during awkward conversations. Usually emerges from them looking like a cartoon scientist.) “Okay, yeah,” said Martin. “I get it. I’m sorry too.”

“I mean—when you get a paper cut, that hurts, technically, right?”

“Well yeah, a little, but that’s not the kind of—”

“But just because you notice that hurt doesn’t mean?” He paused to rearrange his words. “You’re not going to remember it later unless someone asks why you’ve got blood on your sleeve.”

“Y—eah. Sure.”

“Is that…?”

“When you’re suffering, then. I want you to tell me that. And—whenever something weird happens? Like, before it stops being weird and you talk to me like I’m stupid for not already knowing about it.”

“What if”—this far into his question, Jon worried it might come off as a smart-alecky, devil’s-advocate thing. So he paused, pretending he needed time to formulate its words. “What if I haven’t decided yet whether it’s weird or not.”

“That in itself is pretty weird, Jon.”

“Fair enough.”

“I want to be part of that conversation. I want you to trust me enough to bounce ideas off me! It’s not like—? I mean why wouldn’t you do that?”

Jon had shrugged and grimaced, hands in his trouser pockets. “Not to worry you?” he’d suggested. But as he bit his lip and shimmied down from the bed Jon knew now that that was the sanitized version—and probably, if you’d asked him a day before or afterward, his past self would have known that too. Most things you told Martin, he’d either ignore them completely or latch onto them, refuse to let them go, and interpret everything else you said in the light they cast. Jon had learnt not to raise any given topic with him until he was sure he wanted to risk its becoming a long, painful discussion. This was part of why he hadn’t kept his promise, he told himself as he turned their interim bedroom’s doorknob. Why he’d said so little about anything weird that had happened to him at Upton House.

“Martin?”

“Oh hey, Jon—you’re awake.” Martin glanced in his vague direction but stayed bent over his work, so Jon could not meet his eyes.

“You found the screwdriver.”

“Yeah! And a screw that matches better, see?” He fished the first one they'd found out of his pocket and held it up next to the door for comparison. Jon supposed they looked a little different—bright yellowy gold vs. a darker gold. “They were in the library, of all places. There’s a little box full of ‘em that he keeps right next to his reading glasses, apparently. Guess he must break them a lot. How are yours, by the way? Any bits feel loose?”

Dutifully, trying to keep his dazed smile to himself, Jon pulled off his glasses. Folded and unfolded each arm, jiggled the little nose pieces. He shook his head. “Don’t think so. You can have a look yourself though, if you like.”

“Remind me later. Should’ve brought the whole box, probably,” Martin said, voice strained as he twisted the screw that last little bit. “There!” His open mouth broadened into a smile. “Time to see if it worked. You wanna do the honors?”

Jon shook his head, breathed a laugh through his nose. “You should do it. You’re the reason it’s fixed.”

“I mean, yeah,” shrugged Martin as his hand closed round the doorknob, “but I’m also the reason it broke.” It opened with a click. “Ha-ha! Success! Statements—our own clothes—our own bed! Er. Ish.”

Something tugged in Jon’s chest; he’d forgot the statements were why Martin thought this quest so urgent. He lingered at the side of the bed while Martin rummaged in his backpack, remembering for once to toe his first shoe off while standing.

“Man. Looks sorta underwhelming now, after the other room, huh?”

“Least our wallpaper’s better.”

“Tsshhyeah, and our view.”

Jon didn’t turn around, but surmised Martin must be looking out at that tree he liked. “Is it four already?”

“Uhh—nearly, yeah. You were out for a while; took me ages to find that damn thing. Here you go,” announced Martin as he slapped a zip-loc bag full of statement down on the bed.

(“So they won’t get water damage,” he had answered a few days ago, when Jon asked him why he’d individually wrapped each statement like snacks in a bagged lunch. “What? It’s not like we have to worry about landfills anymore. If I put them all in the same bag, you’d take one out and not be able to get it back in.”)

“What happened to my jacket, by the way? And yours?”

“Uhhh.”

“Right, okay,” Martin laughed; “I’ll go get them before I forget. I’ll put this away too, I guess” (meaning the screwdriver still in his hand). “Don’t wait for me, yeah? I don’t mind missing the trailers.”

Jon smiled. “Sure.”

As Martin hurried off, Jon sat down to untie and pull off his other shoe, threaded the lace back through the final eyelet from which it’d come loose, picked up the first shoe and untied that one, then stood up and set them by the door next to his cane. Both hips and all ten fingers behaved themselves throughout. As he walked by the vanity he grabbed the coins he’d removed to do laundry the other day and stuck them back in his trouser pocket. Useless, of course, but he’d missed having something to fidget with. He squatted down and peered under the vanity for the hair tie he’d dropped, for the fifth or sixth time since he’d misplaced it. Didn’t find it. That was fine; he had another one around his wrist. His knees felt weak, so instead of standing back up he crab-walked to the foot of the bed and sat down with his back against it. Straightened his legs out before him on the floor. Then he dug the coins from his pocket and counted them. Yup—still 74p.

Danika! Not Daniela—Danika Gelsthorpe. God, he would never forget one of their names out there. Never underestimate how much I care for the

“I'm back. What’s down there? Did you find the screw?” asked Martin as he hung their jackets up behind the door.

Jon shook his head. “Forgot about it. I was looking for that hair tie.”

“Well you’re on your own there; I’m done finding things today. The screw can wait,” Martin laughed—“he’s got a whole bag inside that box in the library. Do you need a hand getting up?”

He let Martin help him. Both knees cracked; the world’s edges went dark for a second. “Thank you,” he said, and it came out more peremptory than he’d meant it.

“Statement time?”

“Right. You don’t mind? I can wait ’til we’ve both had a rest, if you don’t want to be in the room while I.”

“No, I’m alright; I’ll stay here.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you hated statements.”

Martin shrugged. “Not these ones so much, now that. Heh—they’re almost nostalgic, if I’m honest. ‘Can it be real? I think I’ve seen a monster!’”

“They are a bit,” agreed Jon, looking down at the plastic-sleeved statement and making himself smile.

“Go on. Seeing you feel better will make me feel better too.”

That made it a bit easier to motivate himself, Jon supposed. From the moment he’d lain down on the bed he’d felt like he was floating on gentle waves—like if he let himself listen to them he could fall asleep in seconds. But that wouldn’t make Martin feel better. And no guarantee it would him, either, once he woke up again. He rearranged the pillows behind himself so he’d have to sit up a little; this might help keep him awake, and it meant he could rest his elbows on the bed while he held up the statement, rather than having to lift them up before his eyes. It made his neck sore, a bit, this angle, but that was fine. That might help keep him awake, too.

He sighed, readying himself for speech. Then heard a click, and felt a familiar buzz and weight against his stomach. The tape recorder had manifested inside his hoodie’s kangaroo pocket.

“Statement of Miranda Lautz, regarding, er… a botched home-repair job. Heh. Seems appropriate. Original statement given March twenty-sixth, 2004. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.”

[Image ID: A digital painting of Jon and Martin on an old-fashioned canopy bed with white sheets and orange drapes. Jon sits on the near side of the bed, reading a paper statement. He frowns slightly, looking down at the statement in his hands; he wears round glasses perched low on his nose. He’s a thin man, with medium brown skin dotted by scars left from the worms, and another scar on his neck from Daisy's knife. His hair is long and curly, gray and white hairs among the black. Jon sits supported by pillows—several big, white, lace-trimmed ones behind his back, and one under his knees. His right leg is slightly crossed over his left ankle, on which a clean white bandage peeks out beneath his cuffed, dark green trousers. He wears an oversized red hoodie and red-toed brown socks. Sat on the far side of the bed, next to Jon but facing away from both him and the viewer, is Martin—a tall and fat white man with short, curly, reddish brown hair and a short beard. He has glasses and is wearing a dark blue jumper and gray-brown trousers. Past the bed on Martin’s side, the bedroom door hangs ajar; in this light, it and the wall glow bluish green. On the near side, though, the light grows warmer, the orange canopy behind Jon casting pink and brown tints onto the white pillows and sheets. End ID.]

It seemed to be a Corruption statement, or maybe the Spiral. Possibly the Buried? A leak in Ms. Lautz’s roof caused a pill-shaped bulge to appear in her kitchen ceiling, about the size of a bread loaf. Water burst from it like pus from an abscess (as she described it. Nothing else Fleshy though, so far). Ms. Lautz repaired the hole in her ceiling, but every morning a new one reappeared somewhere else. Sometimes they appeared bulging and pill-shaped like the first one; other times she found them already burst, covering the room in water shot through with dark specks like coffee grounds.

Jon wished he’d refilled his empty water glass before starting to record. His mouth was so dry that every time he pronounced an L his tongue stuck to its roof. At this point he’d welcome a hole to burst in it and flood his mouth with water. Then again, he did still have to pee.

Eventually she and her spouse hired someone to find out what was wrong with the roof. She described hearing boots tramping around up there for half a day while they checked out all the spots where she and Alex had reported leaks. The inside of Jon’s trouser leg pulled at the bandage on his shin, making it itch. The repair men told Ms. Lautz it’d be safer and barely any more expensive to replace the whole thing. The ring and little fingers of Jon’s left hand were starting to go numb from having that elbow too long pressed against the bed. Miranda and Alex thanked the roof people and sent them off, saying they’d think it over.

He began to regret crossing his legs this way. He’d balanced his right heel in the hollow between his left foot’s ankle and instep, and in the time since he’d arranged them that way gravity had slowly pushed his foot more and more to the side, widening that gap. By this time he was sure it was hyperextended—possibly subluxed? It hurt already, and, he knew, would hurt more when he tried to move it. This rather ruined his fantasy of heading straight for the toilet when he finished reading.

Martin was right; these old statements seemed positively tame, now. He knew he owed it to Ms. Lautz to engage with her fate, but?

No. No buts. Whatever hell she lived in now, it looked just like the one she was about to describe for him, only worse. You can’t even pretend you’re sorry she’s living out her worst fear if you stop in the middle of reading that fear’s origin story. Never underestimate how much I

Once the repair men had left, Miranda Lautz wandered into her kitchen for lunch. She found her ceiling bulging halfway to the floor, with the impression of a face and two twisted arms at its center. Like someone had fallen through her roof, head first. Jon’s stiff neck twinged in sympathy. Miranda screamed and strode to the other side of the house in search of beer, figuring she'd find better answers at the bottom of a bottle than in her own head. When she got back to the kitchen with them, the beer bottles didn’t know what to do either, but said—

“God damn it. Not ‘ales’—‘Alex’. Obviously.”

He let the statement’s pages flop over the back of his hand, let his head tip backward until the top of it bumped against headboard and his eyes faced the ceiling. That settled it, then, didn’t it. If he had the Ceaseless Watcher looking through his eyes, he wouldn’t make a mistake like that—and he certainly couldn’t change position while recording. On top of his more substantial regrets, Jon had spent their whole odyssey before they came to Upton House ruing that he’d sat at the dining-room table to read Magnus’s statement, rather than on the couch or the bed. The chairs at that table had plain, flat wood seats—no cushion, no contouring for the shape of an arse. When he opened the door to the changed world, the cataclysm had preserved his bodily sensations at that moment like a mosquito in amber. He’d had a sore tailbone and pins and needles down his legs for untold eons. Right up until he and Martin crossed from the Necropolis onto the grounds protected by Salesa’s camera, where his tailbone faded out of awareness and his head filled up with cotton.

“Ohhh. ‘Alex’. Okay, that makes a lot more sense,” laughed Martin meanwhile. Jon could feel Martin’s shoulder bouncing against his. “She must’ve written it in cursive, huh.”

“I can’t do this right now, Martin.”

“Oh—okay, yeah. You rest; I’ll finish it for you.”

Jon closed his eyes and let air gush out from his nostrils. But you hate the statements, he knew he should say. Wouldn’t this make it easier, though? To let Martin have out this last bit of denial first?

The tape recorder in his pocket still hissed, still warmed and weighted down his stomach like a meal.

“Thank you,” he said.

The operator on the phone said she and Alex should wait for the ambulance to arrive, rather than try to free the man in the ceiling by themselves. Jon turned his neck back and forth, hoping Martin couldn’t hear its joints’ snap/crackle/pop. He picked his elbow up off the bed and shook out his hand. But when the paramedics cut the ceiling open, only a torrent of water gushed into their kitchen—water flecked with a great deal of what looked like coffee grounds. A day or two later the roof people called, to ask if they’d decided whether to have the roof repaired or replaced. They assured her none of their employees had gone missing. At the time of writing, Miranda and Alex still hadn’t decided what to do about the roof. A week ago, they’d found a squirrel-shaped bulge in their bedroom ceiling; they’d packed their bags and come to stay with Alex’s sister in London.

“Right! That wasn’t so bad.” Martin set the statement down and stretched his arms over his head. “Huh.”

“Hm?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just—it’s been a while. Thought it might feel, I don’t know, worse than that? Or better, I guess, since the Eye’s so ‘fond’ of me now.”

“I don’t think they work here.”

“What?”

“The statements. The Eye can’t see their fear.”

“Oh.” Jon could feel Martin deflating. He let himself avalanche over to fill the space. “You don’t feel better, do you.”

“No.”

“Maybe it’s just—slower here, like it’s taking a while to load or something. Remember how long the tape recorder took to come on last time? It was like—you were like— ‘“Statement of Blankety Blank, regarding an encounter with”—Oh, right,’ click.”

That was true. The tapes had known Salesa would give a statement before it happened, but with these paper ones they’d seemed slow on the uptake. Martin had also sworn the recorder that manifested to tape Mr. Andrade’s statement was a different machine than the one Salesa’d spotted that first morning. Jon wondered which machine the one in his pocket was.

Not relevant, he decided. He shook his head in his palm, stroking the lids of his closed eyes. “No—if they worked here I wouldn’t be able to stop in the middle of one.” As soon as he said it he winced, bracing himself for argument.

After the change he remembered wailing to Martin about how he couldn’t stop reading Magnus’s statement—how its words had possessed his whole body, forced him to do the worst thing any person ever had, and forced him to like it, to feel Magnus’s triumph as they both opened the door. Martin had pressed Jon’s face into his clavicle, rubbed his nose in the scent of Daisy’s laundry soap, covered the back of Jon’s head with his hands. Tried to interpose what he must then have still called the real world between Jon and what he could see outside. He’d said over and over, I know, and We‘ll be okay. Jon had known that meant he wasn’t listening, and yet still hadn’t been prepared for the argument they had later, when he mentioned in sobriety the same things he’d wailed back then.

“Hang on”—Martin had pleaded—“no, that can’t be true. I’ve been interrupted in the middle of a statement loads of times—and I know you have too.”

“By outside forces, yes, but you can’t decide to stop reading one. Believe me, Martin, I wouldn’t have—”

“Tim did.”

“No, he didn’t—”

“Yes he did! He was gonna do one and then Melanie—”

“No, Martin, I’ve heard the tape you’re talking about. Tim introduced the statement but didn’t actually start—”

“He did so! He read the first bit, and then stopped. ‘My parents never let me have a night light. I was—’”

“‘Always afraid, but they were just’....” Behind his own eyes he’d felt the Eye shudder and throb with gratitude. Just that sort of stubborn, it had seemed to sing, in a bizarre combination of his own voice with Jonah’s with Melanie’s, which doubled down when I screamed or cried about something, instead of actually listening.

“Yeah,” said Martin, forehead wrinkling. “And then he said, ‘This is stupid,’ and stopped.”

“You’re right.”

Jon still had no satisfying answer to that one, and cursed himself for having opened that can of worms back up again. It had been Tim’s first-ever statement, he reminded himself, and maybe Tim had never intended to get even that far. Maybe he’d been waiting for someone to interrupt him, as Melanie eventually did. Even out there, the Eye couldn’t really show him things like that. He could find out what Tim had said—could look it up, as it were—and what he’d thought, but motivation was a bit too murky, multilayered, complicated. It wasn’t real telepathy? The vicarious emotions the Eye gave him access to worked in broad strokes, generalities—just like common or garden empathy. Sure, he could imagine other people’s points of view more vividly, now that he could see through their eyes. But he still had to imagine them to life, based on the clues around him and what emotions those clues stirred in him. It didn’t work well for situations like this; he could hear Melanie’s footsteps and feel Tim’s reluctance to read a statement, but that was it. Enough to concoct plausible explanations; not enough to pick out the truth from a list of them. Plausibilities were too much like hypotheticals.

In the timelessness since that argument with Martin, though, Jon had also wondered whether it mattered if Tim had read the statement before recording it. He didn’t have footage, as it were, of Tim doing so; either the Eye had more copies of the statement’s events than it needed already and so had deleted that one from storage, or, conversely, perhaps it could no longer see versions of it that relied too heavily on the pages Mr. Hatendi had written it on, since Martin had burned those. But Tim’s summary, before he started reading. Blanket, monster, dead friend. It was bad, sure (like the assistants’ summaries always were, a ghost of past Jon interposed). But it sounded like the summary of a man who’d read it with his mind on other things. Inevitable and gruesome end. How he tried to hide; he couldn’t. Not at all like that of someone skimming it for the first time as he spoke. He did rifle through the papers though? So Jon couldn’t be sure. The suspicion ate at his mind, especially here. Could he have kept the world from ending just by—reading Magnus’s statement, before he went to record it? The way he used to way back at the start, before he trusted himself to speak the words perfectly on the first try? You didn’t mean to record it, did you? No, I’m sure you told Melanie and Basira you were just going to

“Guess that makes sense,” Martin said now. “So, you’re still feeling…?”

“Not great?”

“Yeah.”

“I… I feel human, here.”

“Oh wow. That’s—”

Jon told himself to put the hope in Martin’s voice to bed as soon as possible. “I know I’m not—not fully.” He allowed a smile to twitch the corners of his lips, flared his nostrils around an exhale that almost passed as a laugh. “Most humans don’t spontaneously summon tape recorders. Or sleep with their eyes open.”

“Yeah, but still, you don’t think maybe—?”

Again Jon hastened to cut Martin off. “A-and even if I was, it’s. I know that should be a good thing? But—”

At this point Martin interposed, “Should be, yeah! You don’t think it might mean you could—I don’t know, go back to normal? If we stayed here for a while?”

“Maybe? I-I might stop craving the Eye so much, but we’d still have to go back out there eventually, to face Elias, and. To be honest with you, Martin?” He huffed a laugh out, bitterly. “My ‘normal’ wasn’t exactly...”

“Right.” Martin sighed. “So you mean you feel like you used to, as a human. Which was…”

“Not great.”

“Right.”

“I haven’t been very well, here.” Jon shrugged for the excuse to duck his head. He could feel himself blushing, the heat spilling from his face all down both arms. Good thing the tape recorder in his pocket had gone cold.

Next to him, Martin puffed air out of his cheeks. “Yeah, I know.”

“I’m dizzy and confused without the Eye, and it—it can’t fix me here? When I.” He drew in breath, lifted his heel off his ankle and set that leg to the side, letting its foot roll into Martin’s shin. Bit his lip and scrunched his nose in preparation. Flexed the other foot’s toes, trying to isolate the lever in his ankle that would—there. Clunk. Then a noisy exhale: “Jyyrrggh. When that happens,” he choked out, voice strained by both pain and nerves. “It’s like before I became an avatar. I have to fix it myself, and it doesn’t just.” Magically stop hurting, he hoped went without saying; already he could hear Martin sucking air through his teeth. It made Jon’s cheeks itch. “Shouldn’t have let myself get used to a higher standard, I suppose.”

“What? No—of course you should have. Did you think I was gonna say that?”

“No, of course not; I just meant—”

“You deserve to feel healthy, Jon.”

“Do I? Health is clumsy, it’s callous, it, it lets terrible things happen because they don’t feel real—it can’t imagine them properly, can’t understand what they mean….”

“Okay, first of all, ouch.” Jon snarled a laugh at that, without knowing whether Martin meant it as a joke. “Second of all, that is not why you—why the world ended, okay? Especially, ‘cause, you weren’t ‘healthy’ then. You read Elias’s bloody statement because you were starving, remember?”

“Hmrph,” pronounced Jon, to concede he was listening without either confirming or denying the point.

“And thirdly, you’re not ‘callous’ out there? You don’t”—a scoff interrupted his words. “You don’t ‘let things happen because they don’t feel real’—that’s sure not how I remember it. Okay? I remember you crying for—god, I don’t know, days, maybe? Weeks?—about how you could feel everything, and couldn’t stop any of it. That’s the thing we’re hiding from here, Jon, so if you don’t actually feel any healthier here then what even is the point?”

In a voice embarrassment made small Jon managed, “I mean? I’m still kind of having fun.”

“Really? You don’t seem like it—”

“Not today, maybe—”

“Right, yeah, no; spending all day trying to fix a doorknob isn’t exactly—”

“But I don’t want to leave yet. I should still have a few good days left before the distance from the Eye gets too….”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” For a few seconds he tried to think of something better to say, then gave up and told the truth, though in a jocular voice to hide his self-consciousness. “Always was the person who got ill on holiday.”

“Oh, god, of course you were—”

Voice growing higher in pitch, Jon pleaded, “It didn’t usually stop me from enjoying it?”

“What about America?” laughed Martin. “Did you still enjoy that one?”

“Of course not—I got kidnapped.”

“I mean, yeah, but you were pretty used to that too by then, right?”

“God.” Jon sniffed, crunchily, reeling back in the snot he’d laughed out. “Besides. That was a business engagement.”

Martin acknowledged this comment with a quick Psh, as he turned himself around on the bed to face Jon a little more. “Can I trust you to”—he stopped.

“Yes.”

“No, let me—that wasn’t fair; I can’t ask you that yet.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Martin; I didn’t—”

“Of me, I meant, it wasn’t fair.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’ve been ignoring your distress all week because I wanted it not to matter.”

“I don’t know if I’d call it ‘distress,’” pointed out Jon. “Plus, I have been sort of, er. Secretive, about it.”

The exasperation in Martin’s sigh was probably meant for him, not for Jon, the latter reminded himself. “Yeah, but you’re not subtle. I can tell when you’re hiding something. It wasn’t exactly a big leap to figure out what. But I told myself it was temporary, and that you were acting like.”

Jon laughed preemptively. “Yes?”

“Like a little kid in line for a theme-park ride.” Again Jon laughed—less at the comparison itself than at how much Martin winced to hear himself say it. “I’m sorry. I should’ve taken you more seriously.”

“And I should have told you what was going on with me.”

“Yup,” concurred Martin at once.

“I know you hate it when I keep things from you.”

“I do—I hate it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry too.” Martin waved this away like a fly. “I just—you said you think we’ve got a few more days, before it gets too much or whatever.”

“Yes.”

“Can I trust you to tell me when we need to leave?”

Jon tried not to answer too quickly, knowing vaguely that that might sound insincere. “Yes,” he said again, after pausing for a second. “You can trust me.”

“Okay? Don’t try to spare my feelings, or anything like that. Like—don’t just go, ‘Oh, well, he’s having a good time. That’s fine; I don’t have to.’ Yeah? ‘Cause I won’t have a good time if I’m worried you’re secretly suffering.”

This Jon did know; it sent a thrill of recognition down his spine, as he remembered their first day’s ping-pong adventure. “Right. I’ll do my suffering as publicly as possible.”

“Uh huh.” Martin’s arm tightened around Jon’s shoulder. “Just don’t worry about disappointing me? I mean, sure, I like it here, with the whole ‘not being an evil wasteland’ thing, but I’d much rather be out there with you happy than with you than spend one more minute in paradise with her.”

With a smile, Jon replied, “That might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come on. We’ve got a job to do.”

“I suppose we do.”

As they walked on out of the range of Salesa’s camera, Jon glanced backward one more time and thought, Yes, that makes sense—but couldn’t quite recall what he had expected to see. It was like when you look at a clock, and tick Check the time off your mental to-do list, then realize you never internalized what time it was. “Pity,” he mused.

“What?”

“It’s, er, going away. That peace, the safety, the memory of ignorance.”

“That’s… Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Do you remember any of it? W-What Salesa said? Annabelle?”

“Some, I think. It’s, uh… do you mind filling me in?”

“Wait, you need me to tell you something for once?”

“I guess so. It’s, er… it’s gone. Like a dream. What was it like?”

After a pause Martin said, “Nice. It was… it was really nice.”

“Even though Annabelle was there?”

“I mean, yeah, but she didn’t do anything,” shrugged Martin. “Except cook for us. That was weird.”

“She cooked?” Jon watched Martin nod and smile around a wince. “And we let her do that? I let her do that?”

With a scoff Martin answered, “Under duress, yeah.”

“Huh.” Jon twirled his cane in circles, wondering why he’d thought he would need it. “Well, she didn’t poison us, apparently.”

“Nope. And believe me, we had that conversation plenty of times already. Er—maybe just let me put that away for you before you take somebody’s eye out, yeah?”

Jon nodded, folded his cane and handed it to Martin, then made himself laugh. “Was I… a bit neurotic about it.”

“About Annabelle?” Again Jon nodded. “Oh, we both were. We kept switching sides—one day I’d be like, ‘But she’s got four arms, Jon!’ and the next you’d be like—”

“She had four arms?”

“Yup. And six eyes. But your powers didn’t work there, so we thought maybe hers didn’t either? Never did find out for sure. God—you remember the day we got locked out of our room?”

“Er….”

“So that’s a no, then.”

“Sorry.”

Martin’s lips billowed in a sigh. “No, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.”

“So… what happened? Who locked us out? Was it Annabelle?”

“No, no, no one locked us out. It was just me, I uh—I sorta broke the doorknob? God, it was awful. Went to open it and the whole thing just came off in my hand, like” (he made the motion of turning a doorknob in empty air, and imitated the sound Jon figured it must have made coming off) “krrruk-krr.” Jon fondly laughed; he could imagine Martin’s horror at breaking something in a historic mansion. “It was just one screw that came loose, though, so you’d think, easy fix, right? Except the bloody screwdriver took forever to find. Turns out Salesa kept them in the library, of all places.”

“S-sorry—what does this have to do with Annabelle?”

“Oh—nothing ultimately, just.” Martin grimaced at his own recollection. “God, we had this whole argument over whether to ask her about it, and when I finally did can you guess what she told us?”

“What?” managed Jon; his throat felt small and weak all of a sudden.

Martin put a finger to his chin, and blinked his eyes out of sync. “‘Perhaps he keeps them next to something that breaks a lot,’” he recited, with an inane, self-congratulating smile. For a fraction of a second Jon could recognize it as Annabelle’s I’ve-just-told-a-riddle expression. But the memory faded and he could picture her face only as he’d seen it in pictures before the change.

“O…kay. And was that… true?”

“I mean, yeah, technically. Useless, though. And after we spent so long agonizing over whether it was safe to ask her….”

Jon allowed himself a cynical laugh. “Are you sure she didn’t orchestrate the whole thing?”

“Ugh—no, it wasn’t her. We had this conversation at the time. You made me check for cobwebs and everything.”

“And you… didn’t find any?”

“Of course not, Jon; it was a doorway.”

“Right. Doorway, yes.”

“Are you sure you’re feeling better? You still seem a bit….”

“No, I’m—I feel fine, I just can’t seem to. Retain anything concrete about… where did you say it was? Upton House? God that’s strange, that it would just be….”

Part of Jon felt tempted to deplore it as a waste of space, on the apocalypse’s part. These stretches of empty land were one thing, but a mansion? Couldn’t they at least get a Spiral domain out of it?

“I mean, not really. He told us all about it, remember? With the magic camera?”

“Right, yes,” Jon agreed.

“Well, we got it all on tape, if you want to listen to it later.”

“Yes, that sounds—all of it?”

“Well not the whole week or anything. It just came on whenever it thought it was important, I guess.”

“So not the part about the doorway.”

“Nope.”

“Pity.”

[sometimes-men-need-help-too]

What does modern feminism do that you don't agree with? This is genuine btw

A couple things before I start: 

- This is not meant to bash all the feminists out there unless they fit into what I’m saying. I know there are good feminists out there 

- When I say ‘you’ I’m not meaning you, I’m saying it in a general way 

-I hope I get my point across and it’s clear. I sometimes struggle with that 

Also I’m sorry this is so long and it’s in no particular order and I hope none of this comes across as being aggressive or anything

~~ 

A lot of my issues with the movement boils down to attitudes. To me, that is very telling of its true colors. And I do try not to necessarily judge an entire movement from just the bad people because I know that isn’t fair, although I do feel like the bad feminists have taken over the movement and end up drowning out the good voices and that’s why we hear more negativity than positivity. 

One thing that I have issue with the lack of respect towards those that disagree whether it’s with the movement itself or it’s a particular thing. For a movement that preaches about a woman’s choice, I don’t feel that really happens like it should. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong here but depending on what the topic is I get a general impression like you’re not really supposed to disagree with what’s being side. You do and you might have someone lash out at you (that’s another point I have). Or if you say you’re anti feminist, you have people coming up with these reasons why they think you are; one being internalized misogyny  and you get called a pick-me which I find a bit insulting.  I should be able to have an opinion without someone assuming I’m trying to get a man’s attention or I can’t think for myself or I hate other girls. That isn’t it! Wouldn’t you think that is misogynistic? 

And if it’s not  internalized misogyny, then there are other factors; her being white (which usually then goes on to sound racist)  or it’s because she has money or  internalized racism or whatever they come up with. And it sounds condescending and that just bugs me. Hey, maybe instead of some underlying reason, we just don’t agree. 

or you have people try to stick the label on anyway. 

‘If you believe in equality you’re a feminist’

The label means nothing. I don’t understand why some will focus on this so much. I don’t want to be called a feminist. I don’t need to. In the same way, it’s not necessary for me to refer to myself as an MRA (men’s rights activist). And yeah, I know this says it’s an “MRA blog” that’s what I had when I started. But ultimately, the label isn’t important. I’m all for equality. It’s cool, it’s great. But I see this sort of thing (online that is) being forced on people and the thing is, with that wording it makes it sound like the movement is all inclusive when it’s not. You have to have certain politics and for the most part (unless you’re a religious feminist) you have to be pro choice otherwise you’re not a ‘real’ feminist. 

My next issue is all the aggression. You can just tell sometimes with how people respond online or if you catch a video that someone posted. And not only that, but how quickly people fall into name-calling or just all around acting like a child. And for the most it seems pretty acceptable to some because it keeps happening. It’s not hard to find on this site or otherwise. If you can’t communicate your opinions about something without having a fit or blocking someone (excluding if they just keep harassing you) then you’re not mature enough. That shows me you don’t really care about having a real discussion. And some can say that it happening on here is probably done by teenagers and to an extent they’re probably right. But it happens on other sites and in real life as well and it’s more than just teens. It’s people my age and older and that’s not cool. 

And then we have  how some like to ignore the differences between men and women. Sure, yes, there are many things a woman can do just like a man but we also have to acknowledge our differences.  I don’t see a lot of that with some forms of feminism. STEM, for example, is something I would attribute the differences more to just how men and women tend to be rather than sexism. Could there be certain circumstances where it is sexism? Sure, I suppose you can’t rule it out entirely. Otherwise I would say it’s just what they’re happy doing. I know girls who are doing science stuff or business things but I also know girls who are going to be teachers or psychologists or nurses. It’s not that they're actively being told by everyone that they can’t do it(I suppose unless they live in some other country like that). That’s just what they want to do, you know, their choice. Just like how some men go towards a job like with computers or farming or they’re pre-school teachers or gynecologists.

 I found an interesting fact (source will be posted below) that said women are actually preferred over men two-to-one for faculty positions. The study was done by psychologists from Cornell University with professors from 371 colleges/universities in the US. It also noted that: “recent national census-type studies showing that female Ph.D.s are disproportionately less likely to apply for tenure-track positions, yet when they do they are more likely to be hired, in some science fields approaching the two-to-one ratio revealed by Williams and Ceci.” 

Yet, we need to ask ourselves honestly, how often do facts like these get passed around vs the idea that women are suffering from misogyny and therefore are unable to fully represent in STEM jobs? 

The next thing I want to address is misandry. Now there are a good portion of people who don't think it exists or if it does, it's really not much of an issue because of the "power" and the "privilege" men have within society. And to me, I have a problem with that. If feminism is supposed to be for men as well, I would think they would want to combat misandry as well as misogyny. If someone really doesn't think it exists, I would suggest that the person really take a look at what goes on in real life and online that's directed towards men.

There's the whole "male tears" thing which is on coffee mugs and t-shirts. There's the kill all men/yes all men thing. All of which are supposed to be jokes and if a man says something about it he gets mocked for his "fragile masculinity"

That's just not okay. They're being immature and a bully which they usually try to justify (men have done this and that throughout history to women) but you just can't.

I found this article, this really really atrocious article. It's one of those open letter things and found on this feminist website (feminisminindia) and I almost believed it to be satire with how.... stereotypically Tumblr it was. I did research and looked at the info regarding the site and nope, it's a serious site. I'll post the article below but I'll also summarize it:

Basically this woman is telling the men in her life that she will not stop saying "men are trash or other radical feminist opinions." She's saying it because women and others have suffered so much at the hands of the patriarchy because they're not straight white men. She goes on to say:

So let’s establish: misandry isn’t real. Just like unicorns and heterophobia, misandry is a myth because it isn’t systematic or systemic. Unlike misogyny, cis men don’t face oppression purely based on their gender. While they may encounter instances of racism, homophobia and ableism, they are not dehumanised as a function of their gender identity (read: cis privilege).

That is wrong. Absolutely wrong. Misandry is real. "Cis" people do face oppression purely based on their gender. Anyone can. To deny that lacks understanding.

And the rest is just saying that: It is time to start hating on men-as-a-whole and starting celebrating the men that you are.

And: Because at the end of the day, feminists need men. Whether it’s because you wield structural power or because we genuinely value your existence, we need to band together to destroy ‘men’ because men are trash, but you, if you made it to the end of this, are probably not. Prove me right.

I would imagine this is a common viewpoint. And it's not a good one. If you genuinely think a whole group as a whole is bad you need to reexamine your thoughts. It's not "men" that are bad, it's the sexist people.

To wrap this up (I'm sure you might be tired of reading this lol); like I said, the attitudes play a huge part of it. Modern feminism, in my opinion, is just not good enough for me to say I agree with it and want to identify as one. I just can't

Here is the link to the feminist article: https://www.google.com/amp/s/feminisminindia.com/2020/09/23/men-are-trash-and-other-radical-feminist-opinions/%3famp

And here is the link for the STEM thing: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-21-over-men-stem-faculty-positions

[haunted-by-catholic-guilt]

Cumbersome And Heavy Body

Jon was born hurting.

Well, that was an exaggeration, but he did have chronic pain for as long as he could remember.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TW FOR INTERNALIZED ABLEISM

i think thats all this has been in my folder for ages

yeah the title is from a mother mother song don't @ me

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

Jon was born hurting.

Well, that was an exaggeration, but he did have chronic pain for as long as he could remember.

He was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and fibromyalgia at age 26, after ten years of progressing symptoms and a lot of pushing from Georgie.

He had started using a cane that same year, after one too many falls for his liking.

He was embarrassed, of course, being as young as he was and needing to use it, but after much reassuring from Georgie, and the pure pain he was in, he finally did it.

He wore braces sometimes, but found that the cane was much to.. showy already that he wasn’t well.

No one at the institute seemed to care, second glances, some odd comments on the rare occasion.

On his first day as head archivist, he looked down to the archives, a steep, jagged set of stairs in his path.

Fuck.

He sighed and painstakingly slowly made his way down the stairs, he was early, and no one saw him, thank god for that.

It continues on like that for a while, going into work early, leaving late, not leaving for lunch.

It worries Martin, and Martin makes that clear.

Jon does not like Martin.

The dog in the archives for one, his constantly late work, his penmanship, his lack of basic knowledge, his frequent interruptions-

Jon could go on and on about why he hates Martin Blackwood, and he makes sure Martin knows.

It does not stop Martins’s worry, or his kindness, and that’s what Jon hates the most.

Jon tries to calmly hate Martin, scarcely snapping at him, and very rarely raising his voice, at anyone, really.

Today, however, Jon had woken up in some of the worse pain he had felt in a long time, something more than the normal bad pain.

His joints were burning, and it was expanding into an ache around them, his skin stung at any small touch, and a stinging pain threads its way through his veins.

Despite this, Jon still went into work, having to stop every few steps to catch his breath, and regroup.

He got in early and locked himself in his office, not talking to anyone and hoping it would stay that way.

But of course, Martin couldn’t give him that, could he?

A soft knock on the door, more for courtesy than asking for permission, Jon had learned.

“Goodmorning, Jon! I brought you tea-“

Jon felt anger rise and boil over before he could stop it, he slammed his hand on his desk, which did not help his pain but that was the least of the issues at hand.

“Damnit, Martin! I don’t want your goddamn tea, I don’t want to talk to you, please for the love of God leave me alone and do your goddamn work well for once? If your performance does not improve soon I will have you fired. And stop getting in the way.

He was yelling, he didn’t mean to yell, but he was.

Martin was pale and shaking, he looked like he was about to cry, and Tim and Sasha had gone dead quiet outside of his office.

Martin cleared his throat, and quickly pulled himself back together.

“R-right I’ll jus- I’ll be going.”

Martin closed the door, and Jon sagged into his chair.

He was going to pay for this, he lost his temper and now he was going to pay for it.

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

Martin closed the door to Jon’s office, and it took all he had not to start crying right then and there.

He inhaled shakily, and glanced into the break room, where Sasha and Tim were currently quiet, and staring at him.

Shit.

Tim was the first to move, quickly moving to Martin and then ushering him into the breakroom and sat him down at the table, and Sasha gently pried the tea out of his shaking hands, but he hardly noticed, being too focused on not crying.

He heard Tim talking, his voice was loud and sounded angry, and Sasha was stroking his arm but sounded pissed.

He didn’t hear anything that was being said, he just stared forward, feeling the tears prickle at his eyes, he didn’t even realize he had finally started crying until Sasha cooed, and ran her thumb over his cheek, wiping away the tears.

“Oh Martin, I’m so sorry.”

He quickly shook his head, it was his own fault, no one needed to apologize.

“N-No it’s alright, I’m fine just uh- over sensitive is all, I’m sorry.”

Tim huffed and patted his shoulder, and walked away, not giving any indication of where he was going, but Martin and Sasha both knew, Martin tried to stop him, though.

“Tim you don’t- Tim!”

His attempt was futile and the door was already open and being slammed again.

He let out a shaky sigh and put his head on the table before he stood back up.

“Well I should probably get back to work”

He let out a quiet heh, and Sasha looked displeased.

“Martin, love, it’s ok that you’re upset by that, he was an ass.”

Martin forced a laugh, but reassured her he was fine, and went back to work.

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

Jon hissed out a sigh, Tim was right.

He was just graced with quite the telling off from an extraordinarily angered Tim, which he completely deserved, some of the highlights included his selfishness, him being a jerk to Martin for no fair reason, and many, many, other things.

He didn’t try to fight back, he knew he deserved it, but he also couldn’t bring himself to talk at all.

His blood was boiling with pain, and his joints had become stiff with aching, he felt like he had been struck by lightning.

Jon sighed, and stood up, he knew he needed to apologize to Martin, the sooner the better, but before he could do anything, everything went black.

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

It had been about half an hour since the incident, Tim having spent the larger part of it chewing out Jon, when they heard a crash from Jon’s office.

“Shit”

Tim scowled but he and Martin rushed into Jons office you see him on the floor, unconscious, Martin quickly knelt by him, and grabbed his wrist.

“He doesn’t have a temperature, but his heart rate is fast”

Tim crouched down next to the small man’s unconscious form, before Martin seemed to get an idea.

“Tim, can you set his legs on your lap? Elevation might help.”

He couldn’t comprehend how Martin was still this caring to Jon who not even an hour earlier yelled such nasty things at him, but he did as he was asked.

After a few minutes, Jon started to stir, and opened his eyes, he looked confused for a second, but then revelation hit him.

“Oh- Martin I- I’m so sorry”

Martin smiled, a sad smile, but Tim could tell he was hurt and wouldn’t say anything.

“It’s quite alright Jon, are you okay?”

Jon shifted a little, before realizing his feet were being held, he smiled sheepishly and wiggled out of Tim’s grasp.

“I’m okay, it happens sometimes.”

Martins brow furrowed and despite himself, Tim felt worry blossom in him too.

“It shouldn’t happen, have you gone to a doctor?”

Jon nodded, and began to pull himself off of the floor, and Martin shot up immediately, eager to help, where Tim slowly stood up.

“Yes, it’s fine, Martin.”

Martin helped Jon sit down at his desk, and looked down, still embarrassed about earlier, Tim supposed.  

“Come on boss, the least you can do is tell Martin why you yelled at him and then fainted.”

Martin made a noise, and stuttered.

“Tim, that is not necessary! If he doesn’t want to tell us he doesn’t need to”

Jon knew he should tell them, should tell them ‘sometimes I pass out, it’s one of the many symptoms of my chronic illnesses!’ but he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to be seen as fragile, and weak.

“Martin I’m so sorry for yelling earlier, I’m not feeling my best and I took it out on you, but I shouldn’t have”

This time Martin looks up at Jon and looks surprised by a genuine apology.

“It’s alright Jon, really.”

Tim looked like he was about to fight it, but Jon felt a burst of pain from his knee, and let out a whimper despite himself.

“Jon? Are you alright?”

He gritted his teeth and nodded.

“Jon I can tell you’re not, what’s going on?”

Jon sighed, and wrong his hands, anxious for reasons he didn’t understand.

“It’s fine. I just- I have a- a chronic illness, and one of the symptoms of one of them is sometimes when I stand up, or sit up, I get dizzy and sometimes faint, I’m fine really, I just prefer to keep it to myself.”

He twisted his hands again, uncomfortable but Martin put his hand on Jon’s, clearly in a gesture of comfort.

“I- I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and Fibromyalgia, my joints aren’t right, too flimsy and bendy, more things too… and my pain varies, but it’s always there and I use the cane to help balance, and no I don’t need your pity or to be treated like I’m fragile just because I’m disabled, it’s just there.”

He looked up to see Martin smiling softly at him, and Tim looking surprised, and Sasha, who had apparently shown up without his knowledge, was leaning against the doorframe.

“Jon, we‘re not going to treat you differently now that we know what’s wrong with you, it can just make it easier for us to, you know, help you!”

Sasha’s voice was soft and reassuring, and she stepped into the room further, and Tim spoke up.

“Boss, you really gotta stop hiding information from us like, ya know, the fact that sometimes you pass out, or you’re going to give poor Martin an early heart attack”

Martin blushed and stammered at that statement, before moving his hand to Jon’s shoulder.

“Jon, I’m glad you told us, I know it can be hard to be open about those things.”

Jon nodded, and slowly started to push himself off the floor, and Martin immediately started to help him up, Tim grabbed his cane from where it had fallen, offering it to him.

“Let us help you, boss, we are a team after all, aren’t we?”

Jon smiled and nodded, and for a second, felt okay.

[bubonickitten]

Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Previous chapter: AO3 // tumblr

Chapter 17 full text & content warnings below the cut.

CWs for Chapter 17: panic/anxiety symptoms; brief mention of past self-harm (from last chapter); mention of past (canonical) blood/injury; brief allusion to past passive suicidal ideation; brief claustrophobia/Buried themes (in the context of a nightmare); some blink-and-you'll-miss-it internalized ableism re: ADHD (not explicitly stated as such); Jon-typical self-loathing, internalized victim blaming/dehumanization, etc.; discussion of low self-worth, fear of abandonment/rejection, and other Lonely themes; extensive discussion of Jon's statement consumption (so, general warning for restrictive behaviors re: 'eating' and self-hate re: addiction/compulsions); swears. SPOILERS through Season 5.

Chapter 17: Intervention

Even asleep, Jon is a flurry of movement. The muscles in his jaw tense repeatedly as he grinds his teeth; his limbs twitch and jerk and tremble; his fingers curl into his palms, fists clenching and relaxing at random intervals. The quick, erratic motions beneath his closed eyelids are accompanied by gasps and the occasional whimper. Impossibly, he looks even frailer than usual – folded in on himself and shivering despite the thick, oversized jumper engulfing his slight frame.

Martin sits on the floor with his side pressed up against the cot, his arm resting on top of it and his eyes riveted on the few inches of space between Jon and himself. Part of him wants to reach out, to soothe away the varying shades of distress flitting their way across Jon’s face; another part of him, quieter but nonetheless insistent on making its existence known, tugs him in the opposite direction, urging him to widen that handspan of distance between them into a chasm. Something about Jon’s ragged breathing keeps Martin rooted in place, his heart skipping a beat any time the pauses between breaths stretch just a little too long for comfort.

At least he’s breathing at all, Martin thinks with a pang. His hand twitches in an unconscious desire to check for a pulse – some secondary sign to reassure him that Jon really is just sleeping.

At the gentle knock-knock on the doorframe, Martin jumps. The door to Document Storage, already cracked an inch or so, creaks as it swings wider.

“Jon?” Georgie calls softly, peeking through the gap. “You in here? I was just – oh,” she says when she sees Martin. An instant later she notices Jon, tossing and turning on the cot behind him. “What happened? Is he okay?”

“He… well, he’s fine now. I think. Just… sleeping.”

“Wait,” she says, fully entering the room and approaching to watch Jon with genuine astonishment, “you actually got him to sleep?”

“Not really? He was having trouble staying vertical, so I told him he should lie down until the vertigo passed, and…” Martin shrugs. He’s still taken aback by the fact that Jon complied without argument. “I don’t think he was planning on falling asleep, but he was out as soon as his head hit the pillow.” Jon’s fingers spasm, brow wrinkling as he cringes and curls into a tighter ball. Martin sighs. “Doesn’t look very restful, though.”

“Oh, he’s always been a fitful sleeper. Even back in uni. He didn’t used to be that bad, though. Or – he was, but in short bursts. Not… drawn out like this. He’d usually wake himself up after a minute or so of…” She frowns as Jon goes taut in a full-body spasm. “That.”

“I guess the Eye doesn’t want the dream to end,” Martin says quietly. Jon twists his fingers against the sheets, gathering the fabric in a death grip. Martin’s hand twitches again, inching just a bit closer to Jon’s. He resists the urge to uncurl Jon’s fingers, to give him a hand to hold instead.

“Last I checked, the nightmares weren’t as nightmarish anymore,” Georgie says. “I mean, by his own admission, he treated mine and Naomi’s dreams like social calls.”

Martin tears his eyes away from Jon to glance at Georgie, a puzzled expression on his face. “Naomi?”

“Naomi Herne. He said hers was the first statement he took in person.”

“Yeah, back when he was still putting on the skeptic act. And she filed a complaint against him for being…” Martin smiles and shakes his head. “Well, Jon.”

“I’m not surprised,” Georgie says with an amused snort. “They seem pretty friendly now, though.”

“What, seriously?”

“Yeah. They do have a similar sense of humor. She doesn’t seem to scare easy, which probably helps. And she has a cat, so…”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Jon… has trouble initiating when it comes to having a social life,” Georgie says slowly. “Just wanting to talk doesn’t strike him as a good enough reason to start a conversation. He worries he’ll just be an annoyance. It’s like he needs to come up with some concrete justification for reaching out. But Naomi is always excited to talk about the Duchess – that’s her cat – which means Jon is less likely to feel like he’s bothering her. Which also makes him less likely to talk himself out of sending a text. Plus, it’s a safe, normal thing to talk about, and he loves cats, so…” She shrugs. “It’s good for him.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah. Gives her an excuse to stay in touch, too, I think.” Georgie gives Martin a significant look. “Lonely, you know?”

“I…” Martin rubs the back of his neck, not meeting her eye. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, I thought… well, he said the nightmares weren’t as bad as they used to be.” Georgie frowns as she watches Jon’s lips twist, his teeth bared as he sucks in a sharp breath. “I don’t know. At least he’s actually sleeping. I don’t think he’s slept for more than forty minutes at a time since he got out of the hospital.”

“That was nearly a month ago.” Martin gapes at her, horrified. “How has he even been able to function with that level of sleep deprivation?”

“The same way he survived for six months without a heartbeat. And why he has to consciously remind himself to breathe sometimes, and has a tendency to forget to blink, and doesn’t have much of an appetite for normal food anymore. He’s not fully human –”

Georgie must sense Martin preparing to go on the offensive, because she holds up both hands palms-out, placating.

“I’m not saying that he’s inhuman, either. He might be convinced that he’s more monster than human, but he’s still a person. He’s just… different now, and he’s resigned to that, but he hasn’t yet gotten it through his head that there are people who will accept him regardless.” She sighs. “My original point was that he doesn’t have the same physiological needs that most people do. But he still does need to sleep from time to time. Sleep deprivation clearly takes a toll on him.”

“Figures,” Martin huffs, blowing hair out of his eyes. “He’s always treated sleep as optional.”

“Yeah,” Georgie says with a laugh. “He’s operated on a bare minimum of sleep for as long as I’ve known him. Part casual self-neglect, part allergy to the general concept of resting, and part legitimate insomnia. I told him more than once he should get evaluated for a sleep disorder, but… well, you know Jon. And now that he really does need less sleep than the average person, of course he’s pushing the limits even further.”

Martin looks down at Jon and thinks, as he has countless times before: He really does make it so damn difficult to take care of him.

It’s simultaneously heartbreaking and frustrating, even irritating at times – but somehow, whenever Jon doubles down, it only makes Martin do the same. It’s become such a familiar dance, a challenge even, and more often than not, Martin wins those contests of will: badger Jon persistently enough, strike just the right balance between expressing worry and wagging a finger, and eventually he’ll agree to take care of himself. In the beginning, he would grump and roll his eyes and drag his feet; as time went on, though, he became more receptive to it. Some days, he even seemed to enjoy – albeit in a guarded, almost shy way – being cajoled into sharing lunch or tea or conversation.

Unthinkingly, Martin brushes a lock of hair away from Jon’s forehead, damp with cold sweat. Wishes he could smooth the tension away as easily.

“Did you two talk about things?” Georgie asks.

“Some of it.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I…” Martin bites his lip. “I feel like I shouldn’t want to, but I – I sort of do?”

“Well. I have some time to listen.” Georgie takes a seat towards the foot of the cot. “How’d it go? Bearing in mind this isn’t the tunnels.”

“It’s… a lot.”

“Mm. I can imagine.”

“I mean, he…” Martin runs a hand through his hair with a disbelieving, nervous chuckle. “He told me he wants to grow old with me?”

“He said that?” Georgie laughs outright. “God, he’s gotten even more saccharine than I thought.”

“It’s just – not something I would have ever imagined him saying? To anyone, let alone me.” Martin can feel his palms sweating now; he rubs them on his trousers, hoping to dispel some of the clamminess. “He just seems so… changed.”

“He is, but… maybe not as drastically as it might seem. Rather, this is him, just – without all the walls.” Georgie chuckles, shaking her head. “And less of a filter, apparently. Sorry.”

“Sorry?” Martin repeats, perplexed.

“He’s dumping a lot on you all at once. I can talk to him, if you want. Tell him to slow down, give you some space to process it all.”

“I… I don’t…” Martin pauses, coming up against an invisible wall between a daunting realization and the explicit acknowledgment thereof. He makes several abortive attempts at speech before he manages to voice the confession: “I don’t think I want him to?”

Left to himself for too long, Martin can feel himself start to come unmoored. The truth the Lonely is so loathe to have him accept, let alone speak aloud, is this: he doesn’t want that to happen. Not anymore. Being in the presence of others, actively taking part in a conversation, seeking comfort in touch – all of these things still feel grating, unnatural even, but a return to solitude frightens him in a way it hasn’t for months. It’s an old terror, one that he had become numb to since accepting the Lonely’s embrace. Now, it seems to have returned with a vengeance. The lingering, ambient discomfort that comes with human connection is quickly becoming preferable to that looming fear of absence.

Still, though…

“It feels like – going against my nature, every minute I spend talking to him, to you, to… anyone, really. I think I just… forgot how not to be alone?”

On some level, Martin wonders whether he ever knew in the first place. He’s had friends, certainly, but every relationship, no matter how ostensibly reciprocal, has been laced with an undercurrent of insecurity: a loud, nagging voice in the back of his mind, reminding him of the consequences should he allow himself to be too much or not enough. Always primed for rejection, he strove to make himself pleasant, to make himself useful, to make himself accommodating and unobtrusive and easy. Sometimes, he felt like an impostor, fooling people into believing that he was worth keeping around. He was always counting down the moments until someone would see through the façade to the inadequacy within, realize he wasn’t worth the trouble, and leave him behind.

“The Lonely… I don’t think I want it anymore,” he says, “but it feels – wrong, to leave it behind. Not me, somehow.”

“Hmm.” Georgie drums her fingers against her chin. “I can understand that. Isolation can become so habitual that it starts to feel like home, and anything trying to break through feels like an invasion. You start to feel safer alone, and you deny those moments when you catch yourself wishing things were different, because loneliness has become such a part of you that you don’t know who you would be without it.”

“I… yeah,” Martin says, taken aback by having it laid out so succinctly.

“In my experience, it helps to remind yourself that your brain is lying to you when it tells you you’d be better off alone. In your case, I guess it’s your brain and a supernatural fear god or whatever, but… unless you’re keen to fight a god, it might be best to start with your brain. That’s something you actually can exert some control over, with enough practice. And I think it might make it harder for the fear to get to you if you’re not trapped in the kind of mindset it thrives on.”

“I guess,” Martin says, looking off to the side. Once again, he rests his arm on the cot, his hand mere inches away from Jon’s, sheet still clenched tightly in his fist.

“But you don’t have to take it on all at once,” Georgie says. “If you have to set boundaries, Jon will understand. And even if he didn’t, you still have a right to enforce them. Not to sound cliché, but you shouldn’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”

The problem is, of course, that the concept of putting himself first is as alien to Martin as the idea of being… well, not lonely.

“I can hear the cogs turning,” Georgie says with a gentle smile. “Look, it’s easier to accept a concept intellectually than it is to actually apply it to yourself. There’s a learning curve. But it’s a lesson worth learning. Took me way too long to learn it myself. If it helps, start with – to use another cliché – ‘put your own oxygen mask on before helping others with theirs.’ Then you can move onto practicing self-care without feeling guilty.”

“What are you, a therapist?”

“Nope. I’ve just had several years of experience being on the receiving end.”

“O-oh. Uh, sorry –”

“Don’t be. It’s not something to be ashamed of. Anyway, at this point, I could probably fill out CBT worksheets in my sleep. With enough practice, it does start to become intuitive.” She shrugs. “Anyway, you can’t fix Jon, and I don’t think he expects you to. You can support him, you can care about him, but you can’t make him better. That’s true in any relationship, but… well, obviously it’s – a bit more complicated in this case.”

“I just… I want him to be okay, and I don’t know how to help –” Martin startles when Jon kicks one leg out violently, entangling himself in the sheets as he pulls it back and curls into himself again. Martin lowers his voice. “He – he was so starving he passed out, Georgie, he wasn’t breathing and it was like the hospital all over again and – and I don’t think I have any other stories I can tell that would count as statements –”

“Wait, you gave him a statement?”

“Y-yeah.”

“I thought he didn’t want –”

“I don’t know if he would have agreed if he was conscious, but he… he wasn’t waking up, and I didn’t know what else to do,” Martin says pleadingly, watching Georgie carefully to gauge her reaction. “He needed a fresh statement. Old statements aren’t enough, and he said new ones cause nightmares regardless of whether he takes them in person or not, so we can’t just give him new written statements that come in, and I – I don’t know what we’re going to do if he gets that bad again.”

Martin remembers the look in Jon’s eyes: glossy, glazed and almost luminous with an alien sort of hunger, but shot through with a terror more devastating than Martin had ever seen from him. The unflinching intent with which he hurt himself; the erratic rhythm of his breathing; the way his dilated pupils swallowed the irises just before he fell unconscious. He was lost to the world in those moments, alert but unresponsive, seemingly unable to hear a word Martin was saying.

And the abject horror on his face when he commanded Martin to stay away…

“He was… he was so scared. Of himself. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but he – he can’t think straight when he’s like that.”

“Shit,” Georgie says, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“I think working in the archives gives some immunity? I’ve given a few statements, before we knew how all this works, and he never showed up in my nightmares. Tim’s or Sasha’s, either, as far as I know. And I actually… well, I don’t actually mind giving him statements, to be honest? It’s – hard, to relive it, but it’s… cathartic, too. To get it all out, to be able to actually – describe it in words. Maybe I’d feel differently if I came in off the street – or was approached – and I didn’t know him, and wasn’t protected from the side effects, but – as it is, I would be fine giving him statements when he needs them, and that’s not – that’s not a huge sacrifice on my part, is what I’m saying. But I don’t… I don’t think I have any more stories to give.”

“Okay,” Georgie mutters to herself, rubbing her temples. “Okay. We… we’ll figure something out. Obviously, Jon needs to be part of that conversation. Maybe Daisy, too – Jon seems to trust her.”

“Why would he trust her?” Martin asks, incredulous, almost incensed. “She kidnapped him. She – she slit his throat, she was going to –”

“I know. I don’t really understand it either. But supposedly she’s changed a lot, and she’s an Avatar like he is. I get the feeling he might want her there.”

“Fine,” Martin says in a clipped voice, even though fine seems like a wildly inaccurate descriptor to him. “What about Basira? And Melanie?”

“Melanie… with Jon’s permission, I’ll invite her, just so she’s not out of the loop, but I doubt she’ll take us up on it.” Georgie frowns, rubbing her jaw absently. “As for Basira… I don’t know. Something Jon said…”

“What?”

“I’m…” Georgie pauses, tilting her head from side to side as she deliberates. “Concerned. About how Basira might approach the situation.”

It takes a few seconds for Martin to work out the implication. When he does, he pales, mouth going slack.

“You – you don’t think she’d hurt him?”

“I don’t think so,” Georgie says haltingly, “but there’s a chance she might put the option back on the table if she thinks he’s too dangerous. She wouldn’t like it, but… well, she seems utilitarian. I think she’ll do whatever she thinks she needs to do. And even if she doesn’t threaten him directly, I still…” She sighs. “Jon’s not in a good place right now, mentally. Frankly, I worry about exposing him to anything that might encourage a better-off-dead mindset, even if it’s just… perceived condemnation.”

“God, this…” Martin laughs, high and stressed. “This entire situation is…”

“I know. But we’ll figure something out. And in the meantime, make sure to take care of yourself too, alright?”

“Yeah,” Martin says, only half-listening.

“I mean it. Jon cares about you. He wouldn’t want you to run yourself into the ground on his behalf.”

Before Martin can respond, Jon jumps in his sleep again with a strangled gasp. Flinging one arm out, his hand brushes against Martin and seizes a fistful of his sleeve. Tightening his grip, he tugs on Martin’s arm to bring it closer, practically hugging it in a vice grip. Almost instantly Jon calms, tense muscles relaxing, pained expression going slack, a relieved sigh shuddering out of him as he nuzzles into the crook of Martin’s elbow.

Martin can feel his cheeks burning. He shoots a preemptive glower in Georgie’s direction, daring her to laugh – but she only smiles.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” she says, rising to her feet. “Text me when he’s awake, will you?”

“Y-y-yeah,” Martin stammers. “I’ll – I’ll see you later.”

He barely notices her departure, instead staring down at Jon with a vague sense of wonder. Jon holds fast to him like he’s a lifeline, and Martin can feel him breathing warm and steady through the fabric of his sleeve. The cold sweat on his brow seems to be evaporating now. Martin shifts his position to more fully face the cot. As he reaches up with his free hand to brush away the hair clinging to Jon’s forehead, a slow, shy smile begins to spread across Martin’s face.

It won’t be long before Jon succumbs to another fit of tossing and turning, but in the meantime, Martin simply watches him with faint awe and renewed affection. He’s never seen Jon look so at peace, and he takes the opportunity to memorize the sight.

When another shard of the Lonely shatters and crumbles away, Martin is too preoccupied to note its passing.

With a startled yelp, Jon sits bolt upright. Gulping down air in deep, ragged breaths, he looks wildly around the room, not taking anything in: it’s all visual noise, smudges of loud colors and sinister shadows, all of it closing in and bearing down on him.

Something next to him – close too close too close – moves abruptly, rising up and looming over and settling down beside him. Jon cringes away, only to find that his legs are pinned together by something, restricting his movement, and there’s dirt in his mouth, and dirt in his throat, and dirt in his lungs, and he cannot breathe, cannot breathe, cannot breathe, cannot breathe –

“Jon,” comes a voice – somehow both close and far away. “Listen, you’re – you’re okay, you’re safe.”

Trapped in that liminal twilight haze between sleep and waking, Jon gropes blindly for a handhold, an anchor, something real and solid and –

His hand collides with something soft, warm – wool, his mind supplies, and then:

…wool is able to absorb nearly one-third of its weight in water…

He shakes his head to chase away the stray scrap of trivia, digging his fingers into the fabric to ground himself.

“It was just a dream,” says the voice again – a kind voice, a safe voice – and Jon takes a shuddering breath, like a drowning man clawing for air.

Then a hand closes over his, and that light pressure is enough plunge Jon right back below the surface. He thrashes violently, desperate to break away from the throbbing litany of too close cannot move trapped held pinned in place screeching metal crushing in and down and down and down and Karolina beholds her encroaching fate with tranquil acceptance and the Archivist feels her skull crack and her chest cave in and her lungs collapse and still she smiles and she watches as the Archivist flails uselessly for an escape that does not will not cannot exist and the door bulges and splinters and explodes inward and the deluge rushes in and the Archivist is drowning, drowning, drowning –

The hand draws back, the pressure lifts, the train car finally collapses, and the last remnants of hazy sleep begin to disintegrate.

“S-sorry, I didn’t mean to – it’s – it’s just me, Jon.”

“Martin?” Jon chokes out, tightening his grasp on Martin’s jumper – wool, warm, soft, safe – still bunched in one hand. He reaches out his other arm to find a second handhold.

“Yeah. I – I won’t hurt you.”

Safe.

“I know,” Jon says groggily. The tension drains away and he sags against Martin’s side, breathing in slow, deliberate swallows. “’M sorry. Dream.”

The first time he’s slept, truly slept since leaving the hospital, and of course it had to be while Karolina Górka was dreaming. Of course.

“Do you… want to talk about it?”

“Buried,” Jon mumbles, face partially burrowed in Martin’s shoulder. Self-explanatory, he figures.

“Oh,” Martin says in a broken whisper. Jon opens one eye to see an expression of helpless pity on Martin’s face. “That’s…”

“’S okay,” Jon assures. “I’m okay.”

Reluctantly, he releases his hold on Martin and leans away. When he stretches – partly out of habit, partly to reassure himself that he can – there’s still something pinioning his legs. A spark of panic tears through him before he realizes that it’s just the sheets, tangled hopelessly around his lower half. With some difficulty, he manages to extricate himself and kick the blankets away.

“How long was I out?”

“Couple hours.”

“Have you just been sitting here the whole time?” Jon frowns apologetically. “You could’ve woken me.”

“Wake you when you were actually sleeping for once? Uh, no. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Jon says simply. “I’d like to know how you’re doing.”

“I’m – fine,” Martin says. Jon raises an eyebrow. “Really, I – I am. I’m more worried about –”

“Me, I know. And I’m worried about you. I… don’t think you’re just ‘fine.’” Martin gives a noncommittal grunt. “I really would like to know where you are in all this. How you’re faring. How I can help.”

Martin remains silent, lips pressed tightly together as if to seal them.

“I know I was – distracted, earlier, but I… I really do want to help,” Jon tries again. “Please let me help?”

Something finally gives and Martin slouches with a sigh.

“I’m… still trying to figure it all out,” he says slowly. “I don’t know what I’m feeling most of the time, besides… worried, and…”

“Lonely.”

“Yeah,” Martin says with a wistful smile.

“You don’t have to be,” Jon says quietly.

“I know.”

“I’m not – I’m not trying to –” Jon sighs. “I just… I need you to know.”

“I know,” Martin says again.

Jon bites back the nagging impulse to ask all the questions itching on his tongue: Have you decided what to do about Peter? How Lonely are you now? Do you need closeness or distance? What should I be doing, or not doing? What can I do to take care of you? Where do we stand?

What do you see, when you look at me?

Jon looks away and shuts his eyes.

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that, by the way. It wasn’t my intention to frighten you. Or to…” He swallows, fighting back the nausea rising in him. “To compel you.”

“It’s alright –”

“It’s not,” Jon says brusquely. He makes a conscious effort to soften his tone before he continues. “I don’t want to be the thing that frightens you.”

“You’re not,” Martin says with a bemused frown. “I know you didn’t mean to use your powers on me.”

“You were afraid. I could…” Jon closes his eyes again and forces himself to say the words. “I could taste it.”

And the Archivist in him savored it.

“I wasn’t afraid of you, Jon. I was afraid for you. You looked terrified, and in pain, and you were hurting yourself, and I didn’t know how to help, and then I didn’t know if you were going to wake up, and… that’s what scared me.” Jon’s skepticism must show on his face, because there’s an intensity to the words when Martin reiterates: “Not you. Never you.”

“Never say never,” Jon says with a brittle, self-deprecating smile.

“I’m serious, Jon.”

So am I.

“I… I think we need to talk about where to go from here,” Martin says after a moment, averting his eyes.

“I agree.”

“You do?” Martin looks back to him, blinking in surprise.

“Yes,” Jon says, adjusting his position to sit cross-legged and pivoting to face Martin fully. “The others need to know what happened. I can’t be trusted not to hurt anyone –”

“No, that’s not what I –” Martin sighs. “I’m worried about what could happen if things get that bad again.”

“That’s what I’m saying. I came dangerously close to – to relapsing. We need some plan in place, some way to keep me contained so that I don’t –”

“Stop, stop, stop,” Martin says, holding up a hand. Jon tilts his head, bewildered. “I’m not – I’m not talking about keeping you contained, Jon. I’m worried about you. This goes beyond a compulsion you can beat with enough willpower. You were starving. You… you could have died.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Exactly! We don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”

“Well, yes, but –”

“No ‘but.’ There has to be some way to keep you fed without hurting anyone. We just need to –”

“Martin, terror and suffering is the entire point. That’s what sustains it. Mine, my victim’s, doesn’t matter as long as it hurts.” Jon laughs, hollow and bitter. “It’s not like there’s an ethical way to – to harvest trauma –”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Martin says fiercely, “and I’m not ready to just give up. I would hope you aren’t, either.”

“I…” Jon busies himself with tucking a flyaway lock of hair behind his ear, using it as an excuse to break eye contact.

“Please, Jon.”

Martin takes his hand, prompting Jon to look up again. A familiar guilt rises up in him, shame at always being the one to put that expression of desperate worry on Martin’s face.

It’s enough to make him agree, albeit in a whisper, “Okay.”

“Right,” Martin says, giving Jon’s hand a brief squeeze. “Georgie and I were talking while you were asleep. She wants to be part of the discussion, so long as you’re alright with it.”

“Of course. We should probably tell Daisy and Basira as well.”

Martin appears to hesitate.

“I was thinking the three of us can meet first,” he says carefully, “and then we can open up the discussion after.”

“Why?” Jon observes the slight concavity that forms as Martin chews the inside of his cheek. “Martin?”

“Georgie’s worried about Basira’s reaction,” Martin says abruptly, “and honestly, so am I.”

“She needs to know.”

“I – I know, it’s just…”

“We have so few allies; we can’t afford secrecy and mistrust. And…”

And of all of them, Basira is the one Jon can trust to do what must be done if things go wrong. If he goes wrong.

“Basira is a strategist,” he says. “She’s good at viewing a problem from multiple angles, considering all the variables, predicting potential solutions and outcomes and then weighing them with a… pragmatic eye.”

“The pragmatism is what worries me.”

“I want her there,” Jon says simply.

“Okay,” Martin says, but Jon can tell he’s not thrilled about it. “What about Daisy?”

“Yes,” Jon says, not missing a beat. At that, Martin somehow manages to look even less thrilled.

“And Melanie?”

“I… I’m alright with her being there, but I don’t want her to feel pressured. She’s dealing with enough as it is.”

“Okay. I can let everyone know, but I think you should get some more rest before –”

“No.”

“Jon –”

“I need to confront this now. While I’m still… in my right mind,” Jon says, plucking absently at his sleeve with his free hand. “Sober.”

For a brief second, Martin looks ready to argue, but then he capitulates with a sigh.

“Okay,” he says, releasing Jon’s hand and standing up. “I’ll… round everyone up, I suppose.”

“Thank you,” Jon murmurs.

Martin glances back several times as he leaves the room. Jon waits until he’s out of sight before he puts his face in his hands, sighs, and tries to brace himself for a conversation he dreads almost as much as the Coffin.

A short time later, the group – minus Melanie – convenes in the tunnels, five chairs arranged in a loose circle with a sixth left empty off to the side. Sitting almost directly across from Jon, Basira watches him with eyes narrowed, arms folded, and mouth pressed into a firm line.

“What do you mean you ‘almost’ relapsed?”

“Martin suggested reading a new statement that came in earlier this evening,” Jon tells her in a straightforward near-monotone. Pushing through the discomfort it brings, he forces himself to meet her eyes when he speaks. “I agreed, without informing him that reading a fresh written statement has the same repercussions that taking a live statement in person does. I was going to feed, knowing that it would hurt an innocent person.”

“But you didn’t,” Martin says emphatically. “You stopped yourself.”

“Only because Helen pointed out the cognitive dissonance. Took a monster to remind me not to be a monster.” Jon scoffs. “Even then, I almost did it anyway.”

“But you didn’t,” Martin repeats.

“What about next time?” Basira asks, unimpressed. “When you get hungry again, what then?”

“That’s what we’re here to discuss,” Georgie says, assuming the role of mediator the moment she notices Martin’s scowl deepen. “We need to find some way to keep things from getting that bad in the first place.”

Thoroughly unnerved, Jon squirms in his seat. Basira has had him pinned under her stare for several minutes now, and she seems unlikely to cut him free any time soon. But what right does he have to object to scrutiny, given what he is?

“What did you do with the statement?” Basira demands. “The one you were going to read?”

“I… asked Martin to burn it.”

Her eyes flick to Martin. “And did you?”

“N-not yet –”

“Burn it. As soon as we’re done here.” She shifts her attention back to Jon. “Is there an alternative to new statements?”

Jon doesn’t miss a beat when he answers, matter-of-fact: “No.”

“Jon,” Martin and Georgie say simultaneously, with the tenor of a reprimand.

“I’m not – I’m not trying to be difficult,” he replies, finally breaking eye contact with Basira to look down at his hands. “It’s just… reality. I’m an Archive dedicated the curation of statements – of fear.”

“You never actually explained what that means,” Basira says. “You being the Archive.”

“It’s… hard to put into words.”

“Try.”

Jon sighs, taking a moment to collect his thoughts.

“The Archive is more than – paper and files and tapes. The reason it needs to be housed in a living mind rather than a mere building is because the statements themselves have a living quality to them.” He crosses his arms, brow furrowing as he struggles with his phrasing. “They need to be immersed in a steady supply of fear. A shelving unit, a filing cabinet, a hard drive, a cassette tape – those can’t provide the ideal habitat that they need to thrive. The Archivist is –”

“– simply a battery, a ready source of constant terror –”

He cuts the Archive off with a frustrated snarl, digging his fingernails into his arms.

“Hey,” Georgie says gently, “you’re alright. Take your time.”

Jon has to spend a few minutes counting breaths before he feels ready to try again.

“What I was –” He cuts himself off preemptively, half-expecting the Archive to intrude again. Once he realizes the words are his own, he clears his throat to recover from the false start. “What I was trying to say is – without a living consciousness to contextualize them, the statements are just… stories. When I consume a statement – read it, hear it, doesn’t matter – I See the events play out through the victim’s eyes. My lived experience of it is essential to the recording and preservation of the story. I need to be able to recall how it feels, not just summarize the major points of interest.” He sighs again. “And… that’s also the point of reliving the events in the nightmares. All of it is to keep the memory fresh. To keep the story – the fear – alive.”

When he looks up to see all four of them staring at him, he begins to rub his arms absently, increasingly self-conscious. He can feel the semicircle grooves leftover from where his fingernails cut into the skin.

“So… yeah,” he finishes awkwardly. “The Archive is defined by the statements and the fear that embodies them. The Beholding always hungers for more, and the Archive is a… a receptacle for all of its knowledge. The continual curation of new statements is what sustains it. Without that, it withers.”

“And dies?” Basira asks.

The question isn’t unkind, per se, simply businesslike: an eagerness to discover an answer heedless of whatever messy emotions it might elicit. Jon understands that impulse all too well. Not for the first time, he wonders whether Jonah had a secondary, hidden motive for recruiting Basira: a backup Archivist, in the event that his first choice be unable to endure the process.

“I still don’t know if it would physically kill me,” he replies, “but the hungrier I get, the more I forget myself. I’m liable to do things that I wouldn’t normally do, monstrous things.” He huffs. “And at the same time, giving in to that hunger will also make me more monstrous over time. It seems like… either way, I – I can’t avoid losing sight of… well, me. The human part of me. Whatever’s left of it.”

And wouldn’t losing himself be a death of sorts?

In a way, Daisy died the moment the Hunt recaptured her. What she became was her, undoubtedly, but only a small piece of her. The creature that Basira eventually killed… it was an echo of all the hated, feared parts of herself that Daisy had tried so hard to starve out. The rest of her – all the things that altogether made her Daisy – had long since been burned away.

If Jon didn’t manage to find a way out of that doomed future, he suspects that his ultimate fate may have been similar: all the fragile scraps of himself that still belonged to him, every sliver of personal identity, every shred of humanity crushed and buried beneath an ever-swelling ocean of dispassionate knowledge. The Archive would have carried on expanding and curating until, one day, it would have either collapsed under its own weight or simply run out of things to catalogue, then to waste away – but by then, it would have borne no resemblance to the original owner of its ravaged vessel.

Some endings play out in merciless increments. Jon has witnessed – has caused – more than his fair share of pointless, drawn out suffering. It would have been only fitting for his end to follow a similar path.

“Well, shit,” Basira mutters.

“What about statements given consensually?” Martin asks tentatively. “The one I gave you seemed to satisfy the Archive, or – or however you want to call it. And in the past when I’ve given you statements, they never gave me nightmares, so…”

“Anyone aligned with the Eye has a measure of protection from the Archivist,” Jon answers. “I was never privy to Tim’s or Sasha’s nightmares, either. Once Melanie and Basira started working here, their dreams were cut off from me as well. And… last time, Daisy ended up signing an employment contract after returning from the Buried. Same result.”

“Is it just the archival staff, or any Institute employee?” Basira asks.

“I… don’t know,” Jon says thoughtfully. “If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that it’s restricted to those most strongly connected with the Eye. Archival assistants, primarily. Possibly the research department, or at least those individuals who are the most… compatible with the Beholding, so to speak, though I’m not positive.”

Now that the question has been posed, Jon craves an answer.

“But – but experimenting isn’t worth the risk,” he says, mostly in an attempt to dissuade himself from pursuing the matter any further. He’s pleasantly surprised to hear the confidence in his own voice.

As if satisfied with that answer, Basira gives a tiny nod. Jon doubts it’s meant as a vote of confidence or as approval, but her posture does relax somewhat. He doubts that she trusts him by any stretch of the imagination, but for the moment she seems to have decided that he isn’t an imminent threat, at least.

It feels remarkably, disconcertingly like passing a test he didn’t realize was in progress.

Georgie’s eyes are fixed on the floor, her chin propped in her hand and a contemplative pout on her face. Martin has his lips pressed together, as if biting back an objection. Daisy is the only one looking directly at Jon. She hasn’t said a word since Jon gave his confession, but now her head cocked slightly to the side, as if she's weighing her words.

“I have a lot of stories from my Sectioned days,” she muses. “I could –”

“What would you say if I told you that you should go hunt a few monsters?” Jon says immediately.

“I…” Daisy stalls for a moment, and then gives a resigned sigh, understanding. “I would be worried that I wouldn’t be able to stop at a few,” she says grudgingly. Her shoulders slump as she adds, “Or at monsters.”

“Exactly.”

“But wouldn’t it be different?” she asks, perking up again. “The prey doesn’t consent to the hunt. The fear is taken, not freely given. But a statement – that can be consensual.”

“The Hunt cares about the terror of the prey in the moment. The Eye cares about the terror of the victim in the retelling. The consent aspect is only relevant in terms of whether and how it influences the fear. The fear is all they care about, and I doubt anything benign can come of consuming the fear our patrons want, consensual or no.”

“Do you remember what I said about harm reduction?” Georgie has been sitting quietly with her thoughts for so long, Jon startles at the sound of her voice when she rejoins the conversation. “We need to keep you from getting so hungry that it changes who you are, and new statements are the only way to satisfy that hunger. Correct?”

“Well, yes, but –”

“No ‘but.’ According to you, right now your options are statements or starvation.”

Struck with a fleeting impulse for petulance, Jon has to swallow a biting retort. It’s an old habit, hackles rising at having his own words turned against him – something for which Georgie has always had an aptitude. Between an impressive memory, an analytical nature, and a tolerance for confrontation, she’s never been shy to speculate on what’s really going on in Jon’s head at any given moment. That ability to dissect his motivations and insecurities and cognitive distortions – it used to feel like being flayed alive, all the vulnerable bits of him exposed and shoved under a spotlight.

It’s probably fair to say that his inability to weather that level of scrutiny was a big factor contributing to their eventual breakup: his guarded nature was incompatible with her more straightforward approach to relationships.

“I realize it’s not ideal,” she’s saying now, “but taking statements given with informed consent seems like the most ethical choice.”

“It isn’t just unideal, it’s – it’s –” Jon puts one hand over his eyes, rubbing his forehead and fighting back the urge to shout. “This isn’t a solution.”

It’s still feeding the Eye. It’s still capitalizing on other people’s trauma. And the stories Daisy has to offer… Jon has to wonder how many of them feature Daisy as a victim or a bystander, and whether those outnumber the ones where she herself is the object of fear. He’s taken statements from Avatars before. Some of them were indeed stories of experiencing fear firsthand. Others, though… the fear threaded through the statement came not from the teller, but from their victims.

Jon isn’t keen on siphoning off the secondhand terror of Daisy’s prey. Maybe he can’t afford to be picky, but if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that lines have to be drawn somewhere.

“We can keep looking for a better alternative,” Georgie says, “but for now… think of it as a stopgap measure.” Sensing Jon’s continued aversion to the idea, she continues: “If your own wellbeing isn’t enough to convince you, consider how you starving would affect other people.”

“It might make me more dangerous,” Jon says quietly.

“I mean – maybe, I guess? But that’s not what I meant.” At Jon’s blank expression, Georgie sighs. “When you suffer, it hurts more than just you. You have people who care about you. They’re sitting with you right now.”

“Still, I – I can’t ask that of –”

“Oh, come off it, Sims,” Daisy says, rolling her eyes. “You crawled into hell to drag me out when all I’d done was treat you like prey. And even after seeing what it was like, you went back in and brought me back a second time.”

“Yes, but –”

“If I sign a contract to work in the archives, it’ll stop you showing up in my dreams, right?”

“Yes. I’m – I’m sorry, again, about –”

“And it’ll keep new nightmares from cropping up if I give you more statements?”

“Well, yes –”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Jon opens and closes his mouth soundlessly several times.

“I – I – I don’t want you to sign yourself over to the Beholding just so I can – treat your memories like a – like a snack” – Jon flings one arm out in a sweeping gesture, supplementing the disgust with which he says the word – “without facing any consequences!”

He looks around at the others, arm still outstretched in the air, waiting for someone to back him up on this. When no one does, he huffs a bewildered chuckle and withdraws his arm to comb his fingers through his hair instead. Why is he the only one making a fuss about this? He thought he could count on Basira at least to raise an objection, but she’s just staring off to the side, apparently lost in thought.

“I was already considering signing a contract anyway,” Daisy says. “Basira said you had a theory that the Slaughter’s effects on Melanie were slowed by her connection to the Eye, yeah?”

“Yes,” he admits cautiously.

“We were thinking – maybe it’ll do the same for me with the Hunt.”

“Did it help last time?” Basira cuts in, as if she’d never tapped out of the discussion.

“I’m not positive,” Jon hedges. “It was a theory we’d considered, yes, but it’s not like we had much of a sample size to test that hypothesis.”

He wishes he’d thought to ask these kinds of questions after the world ended, when he actually had a chance of getting the answers. In his defense, he had a lot on his mind – and it’s not like he considered the possibility of coming back in time to actually make use of that information.

“And it didn’t entirely silence the call of the Hunt,” he adds, looking back to Daisy. “You still deteriorated the longer you refused to answer it.”

“Hm.” Basira’s contemplative expression returns as she withdraws to commune with her own thoughts again.

“Well, it’s not like I’m going anywhere anyway,” Daisy says with a shrug. “Basira’s trapped here. So are you. And I don’t think I can be trusted to leave here without giving in to the Hunt again. I have nothing to lose by signing a contract, and…”

Her eyes gravitate towards Jon’s throat. Mechanically, he reaches up to adjust the scarf around his neck, to ensure the scar there is covered. At the guilty expression on Daisy’s face, Jon has to look away.

“If it can help,” Daisy continues, “then I think telling some stories is the absolute least I can do after… everything.”

“How many do you have, do you think?” Georgie asks, once again settling into problem-solving mode.

“Don’t know. Several. A couple dozen? Maybe more, depending on how far we can stretch the definition of a statement.”

“I have a handful as well,” Basira says, her tone wholly unreadable. “Not many, but… a few of the things that happened while you were dead should count as statements, I think.”

“I – I couldn’t ask you to –”

“I’m not offering; I’m just inventorying all the options on the table,” Basira says with an air of finality.

Curiously, Martin seems to tense at Basira’s words, shifting restively in his seat and looking askance at her.

“How much time does that buy us, do you think?” he asks, throwing brief, surreptitious glances in Basira’s direction. “How long would a few dozen statements last you?”

“I… I don’t know,” Jon says, still altogether uncomfortable with the idea. “If I ration myself, then – a while, hopefully? Hypothetically? But…”

He’s loathe to elaborate, but when did keeping secrets and denying reality ever help?

“Last time, it kept getting progressively worse. I needed to feed more and more frequently in order to stave off the hunger. The side effects of abstaining grew more severe. I want to hope that it will be different this time. Maybe giving in to the hunger in the first place only encouraged the Archivist’s… evolution. Whet my appetite. It’s possible that refraining from hunting will… I don’t know, slow the process? Maybe? B-but at the same time…”

He trails off, lips parted, unable to say the words.

“Jon?” Martin prompts gently.

“It’s… I’m sorry, but I – I have trouble being optimistic about it. Coming back didn’t… it didn’t reset the Archivist’s progress. I’m the product of what I’ve done up to this point, even if I’m the only one who remembers any of it. I still have all the marks. And… the Archive fledged and thrived in the apocalypse.”

“Meaning?” Basira leans forward, watching him intently.

“The Archive is accustomed to a feast, not a famine. Millions of statements filtering through every moment without pause. Even when humanity started dying off – when there was less and less fear to go around, when even the monsters started to decay in that place – the Archive was still sated, because I could See everything. No matter how few and far between those pockets of terror became, as long as fear was being suffered somewhere, the Archive had a steady source of sustenance.”

It wouldn’t have lasted forever, of course. Everything has an ending. But that had still been a ways off when Jon left that place.

“I probably would have been one of the last things standing, by the end,” he says softly.

“And you think the hunger will be worse this time because you aren’t used to being hungry,” Basira says.

“More or less,” Jon mumbles, shamefaced. “Coming back to the past, to now… there was no transition between plenty and want. I – the Archive – was just… dropped into a – a habitat it was never adapted to survive in. It’s like a… like a non-native species, as far as this reality is concerned. Like taking a fish out of water and expecting it to evolve lungs on the spot.”

“Hm.” Basira cups her chin in one hand, running a thumb slowly over her lips as she thinks.

“I plan to ration myself as strictly as possible, of course. I just want to establish the possibility that things might – escalate, at some point.”

“If it comes to that, we can deal with it then,” Georgie says. “In the meantime, we should just…”

“Take things one crisis at a time?” Jon tries to temper his bitterness with a weak smile, without much success.

“I mean, yeah, basically,” Georgie says. “But in order for this to work, you need to be honest with us.”

“I – I am, I –”

“I’m not accusing you of lying, Jon. I just mean… well, you have a long history of ignoring your own limitations, and –”

“You’re not good at taking care of yourself,” Martin interjects. His cheeks go pink and he tosses an apologetic glance in Georgie’s direction. “S-sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No worries,” Georgie says. Martin looks uncertain until she grins and, still making eye contact with him, jerks her chin in Jon’s direction. “By all means, go on.”

Emboldened, Martin turns his attention back to Jon, who meets his eyes with no small amount of apprehension. If Martin is intent on compiling a laundry list of examples of Jon’s poor self-care – and judging from that worryingly familiar look on his face, he is – then he has ample material to choose from. Jon barely has time to brace himself before Martin launches into his lecture.

“You used to forget to eat. You never took lunch unless I hassled you. I had to nag you to go home at night.” He’s counting off on his fingers now, Jon notes with dismay. “You went through most days fueled by a maximum of four hours of sleep and frankly alarming amounts of caffeine. You insisted on coming back to work, against medical advice, immediately after almost being eaten alive by worms.”

Jon opens his mouth to speak – and promptly shuts it again when Martin gives him what Jon can (with equal amounts of affection and dread) only refer to as that look.

“You could barely walk. I had to threaten to forcibly remove you from the building before you agreed to go home. You spent the next several weeks sneaking – hell, limping around down here” – Martin makes a sweeping gesture with his arm – “where we found your predecessor’s murdered body, and –”

“Yes, yes, okay,” Jon interrupts, hands flapping anxiously. “I get your point.”

“I also had to threaten to withhold the Admiral from you in order to get you to go to the clinic to have your third-degree burn treated,” Georgie chimes back in. Jon glares at her; she looks far too entertained by the proceedings.

“I was – I was on the lam,” he protests. “I couldn’t exactly go waltzing about in public.”

“But you were perfectly willing to go chasing down Avatars, apparently.”

“I…”

“Oh,” she adds, “and today was the first time you actually slept since you woke up from a coma.”

“I was asleep for six months,” Jon mutters, arms crossed, bouncing one heel against the floor. “I think that more than makes up for –”

“You tried to pass off a stab wound that required five – five!” – Martin holds up five fingers for added (and unnecessary, in Jon’s opinion) emphasis – “stitches as an accident with a – with a bread knife.”

Somehow, Martin manages to sound as indignant now as he did on the day it happened.

“That was several lifetimes ago,” Jon says primly. “At some point you have to let me live it down.”

“It hasn’t even been two years!”

“Seriously, Jon?” Daisy, who has been hiding a smirk behind her hand throughout the entire exchange, finally fails to contain her stifled laughter. “A bread knife?”

“I – I panicked,” Jon says weakly, cheeks burning. “Martin cornered me in the breakroom and it was the first thing I saw, and I just –”

Martin starts in again. “You were actively exsanguinating –”

“Th-that – that’s an exaggeration,” Jon sputters, watching Georgie out of the corner of his eye to gauge her reaction. She’s shaking her head with a faint smile, and Jon… well, Jon supposes that playful scorn is preferable to actual scorn.

“– and you refused to let me take you to the clinic until I threatened to call an ambulance,” Martin finishes.

“I was –” Jon twists a lock of hair around his fingers as he scrambles for some way to save face. “I would have been –”

“I think it’s safe to say you have no sense of self-preservation,” Basira says, and even she has a hint of amusement in her tone now.

“They have a point, Sims.”

“Et tu, Daisy?” Jon says, hoping to garner a laugh – or, failing that, at least halt the relentless bombardment of admonishments. Daisy simply raises her eyebrows and folds her arms, unmoved.

“Do I need to revisit some of the things we discussed in the Coffin?”

“No,” he says sullenly. When no one else speaks, he continues, somewhat irately: “Are we quite finished with the roast session?”

“For now,” Georgie says. “The point is, don’t run yourself into the ground just to test the limits of what you can endure.”

“And don’t let rationing statements turn into just another way to punish yourself,” Martin says sternly. Then he bites his lip, speaking gently now: “You… you deserve better than that.”

I really, really don’t, Jon thinks. Having no desire to unleash another lecture, though, he keeps the contrary comment to himself.

“Besides, letting yourself get that bad probably makes things worse in the long run,” Georgie says. “Like walking on a sprained ankle. Maybe you can endure the pain, but the longer you ignore it, the more likely you are to cause even more damage, and recovery takes longer than it would have if you’d just attended to it in the first place.”

“Speaking from personal experience, are we?” Jon allows a hint of retaliatory smugness slip into his voice.

“Yes,” Georgie says, rolling her eyes. “That ankle is still weak. Which is why you should listen to me. Just… try to care about yourself even a fraction of how much others care about you, alright?

Jon sighs. “Point taken.”

“You can trust us,” Martin says.

“I – I know that. I do trust you. I’m just…” Afraid. “I don’t want you to –”

“– mark me out as something other –”

“– getting used to people making polite excuses not to look at me –”

“– it wears you down to be someone whom nobody wants to see – I called out again and again but nobody came –”

Frantic, he covers his mouth with his hand to halt the recitation; the words continue to pour forth undeterred, albeit muffled and likely – hopefully – too indistinct for the others to understand.

“– I remember shouting, recriminations, and I was abandoned –”

“– no one to blame but my own stupid self – blundering in where I had no right to go –”

A flash flood of restless energy breaks through the dam and then it’s racing through his veins, filling his mouth and his mind with white noise. He kicks one foot out and brings it stomping back down to the ground in a burst of sheer infuriation and near-panic. A crawling sensation travels up and down the length of his spine, a parade of feather-light pinpricks reminiscent of thousands of scuttling spider legs.

The slight whimper that works its way up his throat is thankfully stifled by the hand still pressed to his lips.

“Breathe through it,” Basira tells him.

Irritation flares to life at the reminder, but Jon forcibly snuffs it out before the spark can catch. Basira is only trying to help – and in a way she knows has helped before.

He breathes.

A frustrated noise – something between a snarl and a whine – spills out on his exhale, and he presses another hand atop the first as if it can render him entirely soundless. Before another wave of self-directed fury can take him, Jon coaxes himself to take another breath in through his nose. And another. And another, counting up until the pressure behind his eyes lets up and the static clears from his thoughts – at which point, he’s forced to confront the four pairs of eyes playing patient audience to his outburst.

Like a toddler’s tantrum, he thinks acidly, burning with humiliation.

“Sorry.” Although the scathing edge to the word is reserved solely for himself, he takes another breath before speaking again, lest the others assume the ire is directed at them. “Sorry. I’ll try to control it better.”

“It’s fine, Jon,” Martin says. “We know you aren’t doing it on purpose.”

“Anyway,” Basira says, her peremptory tone indicating a return to the subject at hand, “can we all agree that this is the best strategy for now?”

Jon looks down, tracing the weave of his scarf, focusing wholly on the texture of fabric against fingertips in a vain attempt to distract from the pins and needles still skittering across his skin. It takes a moment before he registers the silence. When he looks up, the others are staring at him. Basira raises an eyebrow, clearly waiting for his response.

“Even if I do agree to this,” Jon says warily, “I still – I know it’s a lot to ask, but I still need to be monitored for any signs of…” Although the question is meant for all of them, Jon shifts his gaze to make direct eye contact with Basira as he asks it. “Can you let me know, truthfully, if I – if it looks like I might… if you think I’m a danger?”

“Jon,” Martin sighs, “you’re not –”

“Yes,” Basira says decisively.

Martin glares at her, his mouth falling open with a combination of shock and protective outrage. Jon recognizes that expression, and he jumps in before Martin can get a word out.

“Thank you, Basira.”

Now Jon is the target of Martin’s glower. He looks offended, betrayed almost, as if Jon took Basira’s side in a dispute between the two of them. Again, though, Martin doesn’t get the chance to scold.

“Alright then,” Daisy says, stretching. “It’s settled. You” – her eyes swivel to Jon, their piercing intensity prompting him to sit up at attention – “come to me when you’re hungry.”

“Before you cross the boundary into ‘starving,’” Martin says, carving out an opportunity to chastise despite the interruption.

“Consider me a vending machine of horror stories,” Daisy quips.

Jon grimaces and rubs the back of his neck. “Do you have to describe it that way?”

“Oh, quit grousing.” With a flash of teeth, a wolfish grin spreads across her face. “What, would you prefer I write up a menu?”

Her expression turns solemn when Jon winces and looks away.

“Sore nerve?” she asks, suddenly and uncharacteristically delicate.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” The question is nearly inaudible, Jon’s eyes fixed on the floor.

“I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t.”

Fearing his voice might crack if he tries to speak, Jon bites down on his lip and tucks his chin to his chest, letting his hair fall to hide the others from view. He shuts his eyes for good measure and swallows hard, determined to head off the tears threatening to gather.

“Hey.” Daisy stretches out a leg and kicks his foot gently. It’s enough to make him raise his head cautiously. “I was just teasing. Really.”

“I –” It comes out as a croak. Jon clears his throat and blinks several times to dispel the stinging pressure in the corners of his eyes. “I know.”

“It is… so weird to see you two like this,” Basira says with an air of baffled wonder.

Jon notices Martin fidgeting restively out of the corner of his eye. When he looks directly at him, he sees Martin glaring at Daisy with a mixture of worry, suspicion, and resentment.

It isn’t surprising; he never really did forgive Daisy for what she did to Jon. Neither did Jon, for that matter, but… Daisy was so changed after the Buried, it was difficult to see her as the same person who dragged him into the woods. She was, undoubtedly – she was the first to admit that – but she was remorseful and wholly dedicated to changing her behavior, even knowing it might well kill her. She never asked for forgiveness, never denied the harm she’d caused, never tried to justify or shirk responsibility for her actions.

What she later became… there was nothing left of the Daisy who he’d come to see as a friend. For that Daisy, being reclaimed by the Hunt was a fate worse than death. Worse than the Coffin, even. She would have preferred to die as herself, and on her own terms – and the Hunt stole even that ounce of humanity from her. It made her forget that she didn't want to be a Hunter.

Jon dreads watching her waste away again, but not nearly as much as he fears the Hunt devouring her whole.

“People change,” he says, looking from Martin to Basira, hoping those two words can convey all the things he cannot say. They both look unconvinced, albeit in slightly different ways.

The silence drags on uncomfortably long until Georgie claps her hands on her knees.

“You never answered the question, Jon. Are you alright taking statements from Daisy? At least until we can find a better solution?”

“I…”

He glances around the circle, looking at each face in turn, trying to discern their opinions on the matter. Daisy gives him a reassuring nod. Martin has an almost pleading expression on his face, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth and wringing his hands in his lap.

Basira is… entirely inscrutable, much to Jon’s dismay. He didn’t expect otherwise, but he still wishes he could get a read on her, determine exactly how she categorizes him now. Probably not as a trustworthy ally. At best, perhaps she sees him as human enough to be suffered to live, but on thin ice and under probation. At worst, she sees him as an irredeemable monster and is simply keeping her opinion to herself for the time being.

Or – no, the worst might be what he was to her last time. She saw him as a monster, yes, and was fully prepared to put him down – like a rabid animal, he thought when confronted with that wording – if he became too much of a danger. It was comforting to know that Basira wouldn’t let sentiment get in the way if he had to be stopped. Less comforting was how she saw him as an asset: a dangerous tool to be used and then locked away once he’d fulfilled his purpose.

Granted, he gave Basira permission to use him – asked her to, in fact. It would be unfair to resent her for taking him up on an offer that he himself put on the table. If his powers could be used to help for once, he was fully willing to sacrifice his humanity to do so. After all, he was already too far gone, he figured – and everyone else seemed to agree.

Georgie certainly seemed to think so. Melanie told him outright that he came back wrong. He had likewise interpreted Martin’s avoidance as a comment on his having changed for the worst, at least initially. And he knew from the moment he woke up that Basira saw him as something other, as something more akin to the monsters they were fighting rather than an ally. He understood why they all felt that way, agreed with their assessments even, but it was soul-crushing nonetheless.

But even if he couldn’t have – didn’t deserve – trust or companionship, he still needed a reason, something to justify choosing not to die. If being wanted wasn’t an option, the least he could do is avoid being a burden. An annoyance. If approval wasn’t on the table, at least he could convince people that he was worth keeping around. And hadn’t that approach always been second nature to him? In a way, he didn’t tend to seek affection so much as try to avoid rejection.

Ultimately, though, pursuing that strategy started to feel sickeningly familiar. It wasn’t until much later that he realized why: between Jonah and the Beholding – and in all likelihood the Web as well – he’d grown accustomed to being seen as a means to an end, and that made it all the more difficult to see himself as a who rather than as a what. It’s a distinction he still struggles with – particularly during those times when the Archive makes its presence known.

He might not have much right to ask for trust or approval, but that doesn’t change the fact that he craves it – perhaps from Basira most of all. If even her opinion of him can change… well, it would go a long way in helping him to believe that he really does have a chance.

“Jon,” Basira says, snapping him back to attention.

Shit. How long has he been staring?

“We need an answer,” she continues.

Jon can’t help but wonder if this is another test. If he agrees, will she see it as further proof of his inhumanity, as evidence that he isn’t trying to resist? If he refuses, will it make her suspicious, lead her to believe he plans on going hunting instead? He’s never been skilled at reading between the lines, at interpreting social cues, at deconstructing the unspoken. The best he can do is ask questions and guess blindly as to the right way to respond – and agonize over the repercussions should he get it wrong. Basira has a way of making that already difficult process even more intimidating.

“Jon,” Basira repeats herself, growing impatient now.

“O-okay,” he says quietly. “It’s… worth a try, I suppose.”

She gives a curt nod. As always, it gives him no insight into her thoughts. He has no time resume brooding, though, as Martin draws his attention with an audible sigh of relief. When Jon glances at him, Martin graces him with a smile – small, almost shy, but genuine. Jon tries and fails to mirror it.

Apparently finished with Jon for the moment, Basira turns her attention to Daisy.

“Come on,” she says, rising to her feet and tapping Daisy on the shoulder. “It’s time for your exercises.”

Obediently, Daisy starts to stand, only for her knees to buckle beneath her. Basira is there to catch her.

“Been sitting too long,” Daisy grunts, embarrassment coloring her cheeks.

“Can you manage the ladder?” Daisy shakes her head, flushing darker. “That’s fine,” Basira says, though Jon thinks he can detect a hint of fear – maybe even melancholy – in her tone now. “Let’s just… walk for now. Wake your legs up.”

The two of them start off down the tunnel, Basira supporting half of Daisy’s weight as she staggers forward.

“Jon?” Georgie says softly.

“Hm.”

“Try to cut yourself some slack, yeah?”

Jon really can’t afford to do that, but saying so will only start them talking in circles again. Martin leans closer and places a hand on Jon’s knee.

“Hey,” he says, looking Jon in the eye with overwhelming sincerity. “We’ve got this, alright?”

“Alright,” Jon responds, and wills himself to believe it.

The three of them exit the tunnel in silence. It isn’t until Jon hoists himself through the trapdoor – Martin assisting in pulling him to his feet – that one of them speaks.

“Oh,” Georgie says, looking at Jon, “by the way…”

“Yes?” Jon says, apprehensive.

“Melanie asked me to tell you that she’s ready to talk, whenever you are.”

“O-oh.”

“I know it's not a great time –”

“No, I – I think I…” Jon nods. “I think I’m ready, too.”

“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” Georgie says hurriedly.

“I really am okay to –”

Martin looks ready to object, but Georgie gets there first.

“Okay, correction: it won’t be tonight,” she interrupts, fixing him with a stern look now. “You’ve had hardly any rest since coming out of the Coffin. I think you should get some actual sleep tonight. If – if – you’re feeling up to it tomorrow, we can arrange something then.”

“Fine,” Jon sighs. He knows better than to argue with the combined tenacity of Georgie and Martin.

And he has to admit, he is rather tired.

A little over a half-hour later, Martin and Jon are back in Document Storage.

When he suggests Jon go to bed, Martin is prepared for a protracted argument. Jon acquiesces surprisingly quickly, though, his only condition being that Martin get some sleep as well. It takes slightly longer to convince Jon to take the cot. Martin pulls up a chair and sits at the bedside, refusing to budge as Jon makes his counterarguments. Eventually, though, Jon starts nodding off mid-protest. It’s only a matter of time before he begrudgingly gives in – but not before demanding that Martin take the better blanket. With an amused shake of his head, Martin agrees to the compromise.

Jon slips between the sheets, Martin leans back in his chair, and for a long moment the two of them watch each other in silence. Jon’s hand rests near the pillow, fingers crooked loosely, palm turned up like an invitation. Martin has the sudden urge to reach out and take it.

Another minute passes before Martin realizes that… well, that’s a thing he can do now, isn’t it? What’s stopping him?

Slowly, tentatively, he extends his hand, lets it hover uncertainly above Jon’s, fingertips barely brushing. He applies the slightest pressure, giving Jon every opportunity to pull back. He doesn’t. Jon interlocks their fingers, curling them over in a firm grasp, and peers up at Martin through his lashes with mingled uncertainty and hope.

“Is this okay?” Martin asks quietly.

As answer, Jon lets out a contented sigh, eyelids fluttering closed as a sleepy smile spreads across his face.

“'Course,” he mumbles, already drifting off. “Always will.”

Martin will follow not long after, slumping precariously to the side, head lolling onto his shoulder, and hand still held fast in a warm, sure grip. It’s a posture that will undoubtedly leave him sore by the time he wakes up, but that discomfort will be overshadowed by the way he feels in these shared, quiet moments: seen, accepted, wanted, embraced.

Anchored, he thinks – and for the first time in months, no thoughts of Loneliness shadow him as he falls to sleep.

End Notes:

Jon: *feels safe for the first time in a literally unmeasurable amount of time and promptly passes right back tf out* Martin: oh no he’s cute

Jon's gotten a SNACK and a NAP now. I hope you're all happy. :P  (Just kidding. Every time someone tells me to let Jon have a nap, I am also @ing myself - and Jonny Sims - with the exact same demand.)

(On that note, I find it funny that as I was writing this chapter and finally giving Jon the nap he deserves, he was ALSO finally getting the nap he deserves in canon.)

Citations for Jon’s Archive-speak are as follows: MAG 135; 130/067/066; 032/037.

Next chapter: Melanie gets some actual screentime again!!

[lovelylogans]

I 100% want to follow you down this path, please tell us the thoughts. The books were a source of frustration for me, because I knew there was a good story and characters in there somewhere, they were just fighting against the (and I say this with the knowledge that these are his only books I've read and I haven't even read these books in such a long time) shitty author. I would very much like to hear any and all rants, and I'm also excited that you liked Iggy! Iggy, Nudge and Max were good

oh he absolutely hired ghostwriters and that’s the reason the books are so inconsistent in plot, there was never a cohesive story except for the first two/three books. the story could have been So Fucking Fire but james MORON patterson said “moneyyyy” and decided to keep FUCKING going to the point where there is a SPINOFF SERIES that i REFUSE to read because i put myself through “nevermore” AND “forever” MULTIPLE TIMES there is NO WAY you can come back from THE APOCALYPSE?????? bro the world ENDED it’s a NUCLEAR WINTER they are STUCK UNDERGROUND

but yes. Opinions. 

look, i go into all this with the full knowledge that “james patterson” didn’t even care enough about the continuing arcs of plot to decide if his heroine’s hair should be blonde or brown (it switched several times; one time i went through and counted how many times it changed, and it was in the double digits) but I Care so here we go

uhhhh, maya/dylan was right fuckin there. it was RIGHT fuckin there and he didn’t even???? IT WAS RIGHT THERE!!!!!!! IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD!!!!! THE REJECTED CLONE AND THE “PERFECT” CLONE THEY WERE RIGHT THERE AND I CAN’T EVEN REMEMBER IF THEY EVER MET

maya and dylan both deserved better, in terms of storytelling AND the hate they got from the fandom. dylan was nice, y’all are just mean

except for the part where max was understandably upset by fang leaving and dylan started calling her pathetic for Taking A Breather and Sitting Down In A Tree? fuck that. let the girl have emotions, she was fifteen

ari’s whole arc is HEARTBREAKING, however the fact that they just. brought him BACK from the dead and cloned him SO MANY TIMES let the poor seven-year-old rest in PEACE, PLEASE,

max should’ve been the one to murder jeb batchelder. also when they cast the movie, jeb batchelder’s particular Brand Of Evil can only be achieved by a white man

on the note of casting—max (and the martinezes) are latina, fang is described as “olive skinned” and dark haired so he’s likely also a poc, nudge is black. i watched the jenna marbles movie and like. max is bleach blonde in that movie. maximum “i cut my hair off with a kitchen knife” ride is bleach. blonde. when she is in HIDING in the MOUNTAINS. also ella and dr. martinez, i’m pretty sure, were played by white women, which, :/.

similar to jeb, angel has to be cast as the most White, curly blonde haired, blue-eyed little girl, like the most Innocent looking child possible, because her downfall is straight out of a horror movie. liked her in the first book but by now i would punt her across a football field

iggy was subject to so much ableism. he’s the same age as max and fang and yet he’s lumped in with the rest of “the kids” because he’s blind, he was left behind in the first book with the eight year old when the eleven year old got to come along, and iggy’s character overall deserved better. they describe his wings maybe once in the book and basically all his powers have to do with “regaining his sight” which has some FUCKING YIKES undertones

nudge was subject to Internalized Misogyny from max (which ofc was misogyny from the author) bc she liked to shop, and she enjoyed fashion and pretty things. i adore nudge and she deserved better and you know what, her wanting to stay in a human school and be “normal” was valid of her she was eleven

gazzy’s only personality traits being “farts” and “explosions” ....buddy i’m so sorry you deserved a bit more solid characterization you got flanderized so bad

liked fang but where the fuck did his “immortality” genes come from. legitimately what the fuck. mans DIED a couple books ago and now he’s iMMORTAL?

this bitch.... god him running away? the Letter kind of kills me but also like. bitch. your girlfriend is destined to save the world. she can handle herself. 

in retrospect it was the Most Gen Z Thing Ever for fang to run a blog. if they wrote the books today he would be doing tiktok dances in front of itex blowing up prove me wrong

angel was super overpowered. the mind-reading, mind-controlling, breathe-under-water, talks-to-fish, shapeshifting six year old also gets to be the one who saves the world when the WHOLE BOOK has led up to MAX saving the world??? right. yeah.

no seriously angel was FUCKED UP do you remember the way max REACTED to the chip in her arm in book 1/2 on the beach, and angel STILL KEPT PRETENDING TO BE THE VOICE?????? WHAT???????

the voice could have also been cool but that was fucked up, as was the rest of the plot.

NO SERIOUSLY DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN ANGEL STRAIGHT UP SIDED WITH GUNTHER-HANS AND POINTED A GUN AT MAX SHE WAS SUPER FUCKED UP

snot bubble. SNOT. BUBBLE. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT. THE FUCKING SNOT BUBBLE SAVED THEIR LIVES. WHAT.

i’m probably gonna think of more tbh but that’s what i’ve got right now

[cuntess-carmilla]

Thank you. I was thinking about this all of today and then some other stuff happened (I had to sprint but I needed to stop almost immediately, and near the end of my work shift my shoulders just gave out and made me want lie down and cry) but I still felt a lot of trepidation because I felt like I might be taking up space others needed.

Like, I have ADHD which is technically disabled but since it’s not, say, autism I didn’t feel right identifying. I keep defining myself in relation to other, “worse-off” people than fully able-bodied or nt people, and I feel ashamed for thinking I’m “that bad” to call myself disabled, since I’m able to do a lot more with minimal blowback, and I pass fairly well.

I think it’s something I have to get used to, especially as I had to give up on sports or certain activities I love and getting my issues medically checked out during a pandemic is slow-going. (And certain issues make it hard for me to fix others, etc)

Again, thank you for your thoughtful response. I really needed the validation. I don’t know if I’ll ever ‘improve’ but it’s nice to know that I’m not... faking it?

I'm so sorry your day went like that, it sucks so bad to have your body betray you like that when you need it to behave most.

Now, you can disagree with me on the following (which is fine), but to me ADHD and autism are the exact same thing being given different names depending on a variety of factors, including bias from professionals diagnosing us and whichever one is "trendier" to diagnose at the time. They have the same symptoms. No person who considers themselves ADHD wouldn't perfectly fit the criteria for autism, and no person who considers themselves autistic wouldn't perfectly fit the criteria for ADHD. This doesn't mean you have to start calling yourself autistic. If you've found better resources, and communities that fit better with you through considering yourself ADHD, that's great and no one should take that away from you. I fit the criteria for ADHD too, but I feel more at home in autistic spaces, I have much better affinity with autistic politics and activism, and feel that my needs are better addressed through the autistic label.

(I'm not offended jic) Not to mention how autism is a spectrum, so a lot of autistic people, such as myself, can mask very well, but we're still autistic, so if the internalized ableism that's been pushed onto you makes you measure yourself against how much better or worse you have it than autistic people... Which autistic people, sweetheart? No autistic person is like another. My siblings and I are all autistic, we were raised more or less similarly by our parents, our parents are autistic as well, and we all express our autism in wildly different ways, with different levels of impairment in different areas.

You probably already are aware of this but I'll say it anyway just to reinforce it: you are you. You shouldn't define yourself in unfair comparison to others. Even if someone does objectively have it worse than you, it doesn't mean you're not disabled, it means that, as disabled people, both of you have different impairments and needs, which is NORMAL. No two disabled people have the exact same needs or levels of impairment. All in my household except my dad (who has arthritis instead 🤪) have the same 3 chronic illnesses. We share DNA, we coexist in the same environment, eat the same food more or less, and, much like with the autism, our illnesses express themselves in different ways. MCAS is barely a problem for me unless you consider that next time a bee stings me I'm literally going to die and we have a bee hive we legally can't remove 🙃. MCAS affects my brother even less, but it affects my mom and sister so badly, especially my sister. That's just one example. So, yeah, it's time to deconstruct the notion that your disabilities must be as bad as other people's to count. You count, you still deserve help and a community of people who'll truly understand you.

All of that said, I'm so glad I could give you the validation you needed. I'm so glad you know now that you're not faking it. It's a horrible feeling that too many of us experience.

[thechildoflightning]

Advent

Title: Advent

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Pairings: none

part of the jksf series

~~~

Prompt: 

Heyyy. For your oneshot thing, could you give us some Logan angst please??? Love you babey ~@justgr8

Summary: 

Tradition has always been vitally important to Logan. Routine keeps him balanced and feeling safe. But tradition can change. When treated carefully, and with communication, change to tradition can be navigated. It’s too bad that Logan’s family isn’t willing to put in that effort.

-

Or: Logan’s autistic. His family likes to ignore this fact.

Warnings: Ableism, Internalized Ableism, Meltdown, Breaking Traditions

[ao3 link]

~~~

Advent

It was Logan’s freshman year of high school when he realized that this was going to be the last time his family did advent box. It hit him hard, a striking dull pain in the middle of his stomach.

When he thought of Christmas, Logan didn’t just think of Christmas. No, Logan thought of each of the little traditions that followed the season. They had always been of importance to Logan. His family did them every year. It was tradition, it was routine, and Logan couldn’t break that. Or he couldn’t break it without having a meltdown, usually more than one. 

But as he and his sister had gotten older, most of the traditions had faded or bled away without much care and no one has seemed bothered by it. Accept Logan.

Advent box is one of the few things they had kept.

Every day, in the evening, they opened the box. It contained a chocolate or a small toy or something of equal value. It was silly and somewhat pointless and Logan didn’t quite get why he cared. But he did. He cared so much.

Which is why this year had to be perfect.

Veera was going off to college next year. Logan and her have always traded off days opening the box. Maybe they could continue when she was gone, with just Logan opening until she got back from break and then they could open them together?

Logan had thought about solutions and work-arounds and how to continue forward, but he doubted his parents would see it the same. So he tested his theory.

Off hand he mentioned something about advent box next year and then he watched for the signs.

His mom wouldn’t look at him. Odd, because she was always trying to get him to meet her eyes. She chuckled and gave him a non answer. Also odd because it was a simple remark that Logan had made. His father had patted him on the shoulder (which Logan didn’t like but was normal behavior from him) and then he had said “we’ll see,” which also didn’t make sense considering Logan hadn’t actually asked a question, just made a comment. It didn’t line up and Logan knew they were lying.

Or not lying exactly, but he gathered that it was very likely they would not be doing advent box next year. Hence the stabbing feeling in his stomach and also why this year had to be perfect.

Not all the boxes were opened on the right days. Logan thought that this would have bothered him if it wasn’t also routine for his family to forget or get busy on some nights.  But three days leading up to Christmas (the last day on the box) and they had six days to make up for. Which was a lot.

They decided to do it now, right now, as Logan was preparing himself breakfast in the morning. They usually did it in the evening and if he thought about that too much his hands start itching. Logan’s parents- who were also in the kitchen- insisted that he called down Veera. Logan gulped but nodded. It needed to be perfect and sure it was morning which wasn’t Right, but it was also Logan’s first weekday off from school and routine was already thrown to hell so what was one more thing?

Plus if they didn’t do it now they’d probably forget and they wouldn't do it tonight and then they’d fall more behind and wouldn’t get it done by Christmas. And true, why they had fallen behind before they had never actually failed to complete it. The burning sense of that Wrongness beat out the Wrongness of doing it in the morning, so Logan rushed over to the foot of the stairs.

“Veera!” he called up towards her, “Veera! Advent box!”

She didn’t respond. He frowned and tried again. Still no response.

He turned back to face the kitchen.

“Is Veera here?” he asked his parents.

“Yeah, and Caleb too,” his dad replied.

Logan frowned and called again. They’re was once more no response, though he could see the cracked door so if they were there they should be able to hear him. He looked over at the front door and checked the shoes. Caleb’s converse were there. (He had bigger feet than Logan and Veera and Logan’s parents didn’t wear converse so they were easy to distinguish).

He was about to shout once more when Caleb exited the room.

“Hey Logan,” he greeted, making eye-contact with Logan.

Logan looked down immediately and nodded.

“Hey,” Logan replied, “Veera coming?”

“Yeah, she’s trying to do this thing with her hair.”

“Okay,” Logan left the foot of the stairs and returned to the kitchen, leaving his sister’s boyfriend. Once he had entered the kitchen, he made his way to the advent box. It was an odd number day. That meant it was his turn today. 

He was vaguely aware of Caleb and his parents moving to join him around the box as he counted out everyday and tried to remember what had been in each box previous.

When he finished he turned to face them. Still no Veera.

“It’s your day Logan,” his mother said, “Why don’t you open it?”

“I know it’s my day, it’s an odd day,” Logan said, “And I’m waiting for Veera, we can’t start without her.”

Everyone had to be there for advent box. It was a rule.

“Logan why don’t you just-”

Logan’s mother was cut off by his sister appearing in the kitchen and sliding over to join them.

“I’m opening it,” he announced, to make sure he had everyone’s attention. He opened it to reveal a paper. The paper had a brand name on it, which meant that it was a toy, but had been too big to fit in the box. He held up the paper expectantly towards his mom, but didn’t turn to face her.

“There’s a paper.”

He saw her nod out of peripheral vision and she turned to get whatever the toy was. She handed the bag over to Logan first. That was also tradition. Logan was the one who had opened the door so he got first pick. Whoever opened the door got to choose first. It was a rule.

Logan peered inside to see sticky hands. He wondered briefly how they had not fit, considering they were quite small. They should have been able to fit in the box. He picked at one and realized it was due to the packaging. It was unnecessarily large, and his mom probably hadn’t wanted to unpack them for fear of losing their stickiness.

“What is it Logan?” his sister asked, and Logan recognized the impatience at her voice. 

Still considering the packaging dilemma, Logan held one up to show her. 

“Oh cool,” she said. 

Logan thought that was funny. Usually she’d make fun of childish stuff like this. But advent box always had this sort of stuff and it was also tradition to not care how silly it was. It was sort of backwards but it also meant that his family wouldn’t be mean to him about liking childish things, so Logan was okay with it.

He laughed a bit though, because it was funny.

His sister scowled at him and snatched the bag from him. He let her. It didn’t matter anymore. He had his sticky hand. She passed the bag around as he slowly unwrapped his own. It plopped into his hand and it felt horrible. Logan immediately dropped it.

“Logan, don’t let it fall on the floor, it’ll get dirt on it,” his mother chided.

Logan struggled to process her words for a minute. His hands still felt gross. He wanted to move them, to get the feeling off. He wasn’t supposed to flap them though. But maybe just once? It wasn’t like he was flapping them for a bad reason, he just wanted to get the sticky feeling off of it.

He flapped the hand that it had touched and then slid the hand against his pants, hoping his parents wouldn’t notice. He thought his mom was maybe watching him, so he put his hand in his pocket. With his other he was forced to pick up the sticky hand again. His mom had told him to, and she wouldn’t take nicely to Logan ignoring or refusing her.

So he picked it up, holding it as lightly as he could with the least amount of his skin touching it. He tried not to wince. His mom turned away and unwrapped her own sticky hand. 

In response, Veera shot her sticky hand towards her mom. Mom threw hers at Veera in return and then chaos broke loose. The four other members in the house started darting around the kitchen trying to hit each other with the sticky hands. Logan watched them and rocked forward on his feet.

Even Caleb- who was still hesitant to join in a lot of the family interactions- was participating. A moment later they died down a bit and came back over to the advent box, still flinging their hands gently at one another.

Then Veera flung hers at Logan.

It hit his clothes thankfully. Logan didn’t know what he’d do if it hit his skin. Probably scream, and he didn’t think his family would like that very much. He grinned a bit, because Veera seemed to be playful and it wasn’t all that common that she was nice to him. In fact, usually she was quite mean, snapping at him and making rude comments. His parents said that it was college stress and Logan was over exaggerating. Sometimes they even said it was Logan’s fault.

But she seemed happy now. Logan, not wanting to miss out on the rare opportunity, flung his sticky hand back. 

It hit Veera’s hair.

She immediately screeched and wrenched away.

“Logan!” she said, “You’re going to mess up my hair! Don’t do that!”

Logan shrugged and turned to hit Caleb instead. Caleb was looking at him and didn’t react to the sticky hand. Logan frowned and looked back over to his sister. She was glaring at him and desperately messing with her hair.

“Oh, I’m really sorry Veera,” he said, “I didn’t mean to mess up your hair. I won’t do it again.”

She continued to glare and Logan realized his parents were too. He couldn’t help but feel he did something very wrong. He set the hand down. He didn’t think his mom would complain if he chose not to participate andymore. 

Caleb kissed Veera’s cheek and whispered in her ear. She sighed and continued to scowl, but stopped messing with her hair. She seemed okay now. Logan thought so at least.

“It’s your turn to open advent box,” he said.

“Logan you can’t just hit people in the face.”

Logan knew that. Of course he knew that. It’s not like he had been trying to. Plus he had hit her hair anyway. He got that that wasn’t okay, but he hadn’t meant to.

“Everyone was throwing the hands around,” Logan said in an attempt to explain. Everyone was throwing them around. They weren’t very accurate. One was bound to hit someone in the face eventually. It just happened to Veera by Logan’s hand. It wasn’t on purpose and Logan knew it wasn’t okay. He had apologized. “It’s your turn to open up advent box.”

Veera scowled and pushed forward, opening the box. It was chocolate in it. Logan quietly took one from her when she offered them forward. He unwrapped it and ate it and watched the others around him do so as well.

Logan still hadn’t eaten breakfast. He was in the middle of making his when they started. His skin itched.

It was Logan’s turn. He opened it. It was also chocolates. He pocketed his this time and passed the rest out. As he was doing so, another mini fight with the sticky hands broke out.

“It’s your turn Veera,” he mentioned. 

She sighed, stopped her fighting, and pushed forward. She opened the box and then moved back without glancing inside. Caleb whacked her with his sticky hand. She laughed and tried to whack him back but hit dad instead. Seconds later and they were racing around the kitchen once more, having fun.

Logan smiled at them and didn’t join in. They seemed to be having fun. He’d probably ruin it.

He looked in the open box and pulled out a couple of pull back race cars. They were tiny and cheap and they were in advent box every year. Logan sat them down. 

Since it was Veera’s turn, she got to choose first. But she was playing and having fun and his whole family seemed to be enjoying themselves, so Logan let her be. She could choose the one she wanted in a minute, that was fine. Logan could wait.

“Hey Lo,” Veera called, “Go ahead and open the next box!”

Logan froze.

He couldn’t do that. Veera hadn’t chosen which car she wanted yet. She had to choose first before moving on to the next box.

“You need to pick which car you want first,” Logan called back.

“I will in a minute, just open the new box,” Veera said.

“I don’t want to be rude,” Logn replied. Because he didn’t. That’s why the rule was in place. It let the person who opened it choose first, which was polite. Logan sometimes struggled to know what was polite and what wasn’t, and his family often got upset with him about that. But this was an established rule that Logan knew was polite. He could at least follow that.

Being rude was mean and Logan didn’t want to be mean. So he’d wait for Veera.

“Just open the stupid box,” Veera said, coming back over to the advent box.

“Choose a car first.”

“Just take one Logan,” she huffed.

“You’re supposed to choose first,” Logan said, because that was a rule.

“Gosh,” she huffed, “See this is why I hate doing things with you. This is why nobody likes you Logan. You’re making this into such a big thing it doesn’t even matter.”

“I’m j-”

“Here, whatever, I’’l take the blue one you can have the green. Let’s move on now, come on. Open the new box, god Logan.”

Everything was going to fast. Logan stood, blinking for a moment as he tried to process her words.

Logan’s parents stepped forward, recognizing the increasing tension in the room.

“What’s going on here?” his dad asked.

“Logan’s making a big deal out of nothing,” Veera said, rolling her eyes. She stepped towards Dad, “Logan wouldn’t open the new one until I had chosen which car I wanted. Which is just-” she huffed, “So I chose one but he’s still not opening the box.”

His parent frowned.

His mother spoke, “Logan why don’t-”

“I wasn’t trying to not open the box!” Logan protested, finally finding his words. Veera was making him the enemy again and maybe if he could just explain… Because he wasn’t being bad, he wasn’t! But they were frowning at him like he had been but really he was just trying to be polite like they wanted him to be.

“Logan-”

“Veera opened the box with the cars. And if you open the box you pick first. That’s the rule. It’s polite. We do it so we’re not mean. And I’ll open the box now in just a minute- I just wanted to clarify what I was doing. I wasn’t trying to make it a big deal, I-”

“God Logan,” Veera huffed.

“Logan why don’t you just open the box. You’re making this more difficult for everyone involved.”

How was this Logan’s fault? Everything was moving too fast. He didn’t know how to keep up.

Logan’s eyes felt strange and his whole body itched and he could still feel the sticky residue on his hand. He wanted to flap his hands and get it off. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream.

His parents wouldn’t be happy if he did those things.

He looked at the advent box. He wanted this to be perfect. It was the last year.

(That felt so Wrong).

Logan felt worse. He frowned, looked down at his feet, and with the little energy he had left, he exited the room. 

(Better to leave now with his family just a little upset than to have a meltdown in front of them, causing them to be extremely angry with him).

He could vaguely hear Veera’s complaints behind him.

When he got to his room he threw the stupid pullback car that was still in his hand at the wall. Once he had done that- and kicked his desk for good measure- he immediately got into his bed and cuddled the blankets around him. They were the thickest ones he had. Then, he opened his mouth and shoved a pillow in it.

He began to scream as loudly as he dared, muffled by the pillow. He cried too. He cried a lot.

His brain waged war with him, outlining everything that was Wrong and it all felt off and Logan was falling to pieces and nothing felt right and Logan didn’t know how to fix it.

He wondered if this was his fault. 

He had probably done something wrong again, broken another rule.

But he was too tired to think about that and his brain didn’t like him right now so he screamed and cried and bashed his hands against the wall.

(He made sure to stay quiet enough that the rest of his family wouldn’t hear him, even though that made his body itch unpleasantly).

Eventually, he tired himself out and stopped crying. He was exhausted. His brain had trouble thinking and connecting and his eyes grew heavy even as he kept crying, pitiful whimpers interrupting the tears every so often. He felt himself starting to nod off.

The last thing Logan heard before he fell asleep was his family laughing the other room, presumably playing with the sticky hands once more. Enjoying themselves. Without Logan.

That was also a tradition, his family only enjoying Family Time without him. And he hated how that felt Right.

~

Taglist Below

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@mewithanie @eddies-spaghetti​ @lemonyellowlogic @savioursailor @goldteethandacurseforthistown @you-betcha-weirdo

[arodrwho]

fic i would like to write at some point:

jonathan archivist autisms autistically (feat. low empathy, probably 5+1)

jonathan archivist aromantics aromantically (feat. qp w/martin)

jonathan archivist romances aromantically (feat. georgie)

jonathan archivist Stares Too Much (5+1 fic, probably)

listen all the “jon hates eye contact” bits n bobs i keep seeing in fic are all well n good & i support them but also listen. listen. he’s a Staring Autistic(TM)

people find it very off-putting & file it under “reasons he’s a goddamned bastard”

unless of course emotions are being had, in which case eye contact goes straight out the window

which people also like to file under “reasons he’s a goddamned bastard”

jonathan archivist & the terrible horrible no good very bad day (feat. a truly obnoxious amnt of h/c)

snapshots from an everyone-lives au

consider: martin is autistic (& adhd) & he knows this very well. jon is autistic & has absolutely no goddamned idea. no earthly clue what-so-fucking-ever. martin can tell that jon is autistic, and for quite some time labors under the misapprehension that of course jon must know jon is autistic, & might know about martin aswell. mild shenanigans ensue? jon finds out at some point. cue.. more shenanigans? and conflict probably because of course jon is absolutely MIRED in internalized ableism

but rly the entire concept here is an excuse for: martin extends his quiet attempts to Take Care Of Jon to include autismspecific things

related note--i’m imagining martin having some very quiet distress after realizing that jon just kinda.. doesn’t stim? apart from grinding his teeth sometimes & maybe rubbing his fingers on his desk or his papers?? like Bro Are U Okay

time travel fic would be rly fun but i never have the patience for that unfortunately

...........what if i give someone The Shitty Hands

....it’s jon. jon has the shitty hands. sorry jon

.......oooo or it could be martin

...............fuck it. it’s both. it’s both now. hell the fuck yeah

so Shitty Hands Fic is a concept that exists now. i’m thinkin it’s winter, it’s chilly in the archives because reasons, martin catches sight of jon wringing his hands & cracking his dumbass knuckles on multiple occasions & he is to himself like “ah. the same of hat” & sometimes quietly brings jon tea bc of his hands more than bc he’s worried jon won’t consume anything otherwise--wants him for to have. hot drink for hands. soothe the anger bones. also probably for a secret santa gift--fingerless gloves, no? or handwarmer. either/or

heck ye

TO CONCLUDE:

i need to finish my relisten so i can ahve a better sense of the characters so i can attempt one (1) of these concepts bc i’m want them

[talesfromacrip]

some thoughts:

I don’t feel well some days. I feel so lost.. I’m starting to disassociate again at times and it doesn’t help. I start feeling absolutely worthless, sad, frustrated. emotional whirlpool alert  so fucking overwhelmed nowadays and I act like nothing is going on sometimes bc I hide shit easily. I shouldn’t and I know, but it’s so damn repetitive. like a fucking carousel of absolute madness and I got a one way ticket to ride

there is so much chaos going on; everyday and I hate that I cannot do anything about it. I can, but not to the extent I’d like

feel so useless

sure, I can help in some ways, but not as much as I’d like and it irritates me. my internalized ableism has kicked in at a high bc of all this shit. I cannot stand it and myself in the process. I do to an extent, but holy fucking shit

all the dreams I’ve been having, snarky comments, yelling, drama. I’m, tired of it. I want out but I can’t even go o u t or get much less. I feel trapped. not only in my own house, but own my damn body

can’t go anywhere and I honestly don’t know if I ever will now. so damn tired and sick of this shit, but I won’t say it until my kettle squeals and what do ya know.. it did

I have to put up with some silly ass shit everyday. all the darn time

it’s just, annoyingly difficult to handle and adds more to my stress.. it is what it is though ya know. I hate saying that but idrk how to replace that without sounding like an ass

———

I’m concerned about Jolene and her eyes. she needs surgery for her cataracts and it’s really fucking expensive. like, 3 to 5 thousand big. We might be able to do one, but we don’t really know for sure yet. lots of smaller issues have been coming up and it gets in the way.

we can’t continue buying her eye drops forever. it could either do nothing much in the end or ruin her eyes completely. don’t want that for her at all.

I’m not stable enough to handle the death of another dog if something bad was to happen to her. we barely lost malibu in february and that wasn’t long ago. feels like years now as I write this tbh. It hurt my parents so much as well and they still feel it. 

———

I love my little family a lot and all, but sometimes it’s, alright. has it’s, moments ya know. I’m thankful that we’re getting along with each other more (er trying) than years before though.

There’s not much yelling or anything, but there are still those days that just, happen. Can’t be helped in the environment I live in. drains my battery so much. I just don’t know what to do sometimes anymore. I do, but I cannot act on them. I can talk, but that could lead to some hard times

sucks, yeah,but ya gotta put up with it or I do at least till whatever time I’m free from here. which I don’t think is ever,but we’ll see

I’ve been teaching them about ableism, occasionally how I’ve dealt with it and the internalized ableism that followed me and still does when I can.  My dad is all for this,but he still messes up when he has a dumb fit. My mom still struggles about the whole thing at times.  It’s not her fault. she is at least learning and trying too which I’m pretty glad about. occasionally though, I just don’t know if it’ll fully happen, but it is slowly. counts

I have to calmly deal though obviously, even if the comments set me straight off and give me the biggest migraine to date. also, intense jaw pain at times bc I don’t want to start yelling or crying. so I just clench and try to cam down my breathing so I don’t go full freak mode.

Shit like, who did this? you smoke too much, it’s all in your head. you and that word. do you think someone else will deal with this? why don’t you just leave then if you don’t like it here.. blah, blah. The usual  parrot babble I’ve always heard growing up and shit.

This is the reason why I don’t want anyone to know much about my parents in the first place and how they really are. Eventually they’re gonna, but holy fuck.. it’s, just not a fun experience/time I tell ya. embarrassing

when I do, it just, gets worse it seems. No one is gonna want to deal with me or my parents. I can barely deal with myself at times. ugh. mostly my parents or maybe me? both?? I don’t even know for sure. that’s how razzled i am about thissss

I’m gonna end up by myself and die alone by myself as the kids say. I’m probably not but who fucking knows. 

I’ve meet people like that towards me though?? I’m affected by it and it hurts. Trying to deal. working but it gets to me on some days as some other problems do.

what if they act the same way she does, them?? then what am I supposed to do? maybe they won’t? sigh, I don’t know anymore.  I do, but I don’t want to dwell on it so much. sigh

———

I’m sorry if it seems like I’m being an asshole lately these past few weeks, months, years? weeks though

I’ve been pretty stressed for awhile as I’ve said probably a million times and I’m trying my b e s t to hold it in, but it’s just been spilling out occasionally

I’ve noticed at times even if some have and I���m so sorry..

it’s difficult to bring up these issues and I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day ya know. even though it’s good too, say how you feel. I just struggle with it like an ass clown at times from how overwhelming it can be at times.

doesn’t seem like it bc I’m g o o d at hiding my ‘motions.

I’m or was, am? at my limit

I’m trying to "hold it together" which bugs me even more, but what can I do? obviously tell someone like I said, but i don’t like dumping my problems on people; especially now and idk how to really talk about it without me soundin.. u p s e t. it’s been constant though and I’m struggling. Trying though

I always have to though; keep it together, so everyone else doesn’t feel so down like they do with their issues. it’s such a tiresome thing, but I don’t like them being sad. I know they don’t like me either and I neglect that at times.

I’m tense about things and I just, can’t bother anyone to explain much bc everyone is "so busy" even during this time bc they have better things to do, but who knows.

I don’t want to bother anyone with my internalized ableism problems as always.. they’re getting a bit worse, the hell am I gonna do?

they can’t do anything anyway and it’s not anyone’s fault. i know they want too, but what is there to do?

idk, I just don’t want to continue brushing it off or lying about how I’m feeling and I do. Trying as much as I can to not be like that though. glad to have some reassurance in this as well.

[ilovemygaydad]

punk!patton is adopted by single parent logan part 2/?

part one - part three - part four - part five - ao3 version - masterlist (includes asks)

pairings: eventual moxiety, eventual logince

warnings: swearing, lots of emotions, anxiety, worry, panic attack mentions, patton’s an asshole (both intentionally and not), a tiny bit of accidental ableism, hurt feelings, food mentions, possibly something else

***feel free to send me questions or comments! i’ll answer them to the best of my ability, and everything is tagged under “punk!patton au”

here we go babey

for the entirety of his week-long suspension from school, patton just contemplates these icky, weird feelings that he’s having

because he thought that he’d gotten rid of them, but the way that he tried to protect virgil obviously proves something different....

before that day, he’d never tried to protect anyone before

it was patton against the world through and through 

but then this... this boy in these pastel clothes shows up, and suddenly patton wants to protect him!

like what the fuck?!

he decides to pretend that these emotions don’t exist because feelings are too much fucking work

so he goes back to school like nothing happened

which goes totally fine because virgil doesn’t attempt to talk to him for the entirety of their first block

when the bell rings, however... virgil pretty much slams his hands on patton’s desk before he can get up, leaning in with stern expression twisting his normally soft features

(which is only accentuated by the still-fading black eye that virgil mostly covered up with concealer...)

“are you okay?”

and patton is just taken aback by how forward virgil is being--especially since he’s wearing a light blue skater skirt and gray long-sleeved crop top, which is not the epitome of sternness, and pat stutters out a shy “yeah” before virgil goes off on a tiny rant

“that’s good! i was really worried that you’d gotten in a ton of trouble with your dad for swearing at those parents, and i had no way to know if you were okay, so i kind of freaked out for the whole week. and, like, i’m really sorry that i got involved because it ended up getting everyone in super big trouble--especially you--and that kind of sucks. so, yeah, sorry.”

patton hadn’t been listening since the word “worried,” as he’d become entranced by virgil’s color-shifting lip gloss. he sees pinks and blues and purples as virgil talks, and he leans in just slightly to get a closer look

and it’s absolutely NOT because virgil’s lips look so pretty and soft pshhhhhh no

virgil notices that patton’s staring at him with furrowed brows, and he realizes that he’s looking at the lip gloss he’s wearing, and he sort of

freaks out...?

he flinches back and covers his mouth with his hands in one of his familiar bouts of self-doubt

“why are you staring at my lip gloss? does it look bad?” he rushes

and patton’s like

????????? what?????

no???????

and in an unexpected turn of truthfulness, patton says, “no, it looks really pretty.”

and for some reason, there’s a weird, fluttery feeling in patton’s chest when virgil takes his hands away from his face and smiles

[john mulaney voice] now we don’t have time to unpack all of that!

luckily enough, patton is saved from having to deal with the emotions when the warning bell for passing time rings, and both teenagers rush to scoop up their things and go to their next classes

even luckier, patton doesn’t have his next three classes with virgil, so he doesn’t have to think about his--gross--emotions

but then

lunch time rolls around

and patton hadn’t prepared for how absolutely fucking awful that mess would be!

as soon as he walks into the cafeteria, he’s accosted by so many noises and smells

he tries to leave, but the lunch monitor tells him that the kids aren’t allowed to leave once they enter until the end bell rings, which is such bullshit, but patton really doesn’t need another tick on his permanent record

clutching the brown bagged lunch in his fist, he scans the cafeteria for somewhere to sit and finds virgil sitting at an otherwise empty table near the trash cans

with a groan, patton makes his way over and plops himself across from virgil, who squeaks at the sudden companion and nearly drops his phone to the floor in surprise

“do you not have a lunch?” patton asks, choosing to ignore the fumble

“ah, no. i can’t eat the school lunches because i have celiac disease, so i usually just sit here on my phone”

with probably more force than necessary, patton tore the top off of his lunch bag and pulled out an apple, holding it out to virgil as he ordered, “eat it”

virgil hesitated for a second, but ultimately took the apple and bit into it, wincing as lip gloss got all over the skin

patton smiles gently and says a quick thanks to virgil before digging into his own lunch

they exchange a bit of banter, and all is going well and good until patton gets curious

“why do you dress like that?”

virgil freezes in his spot, and an emotion flashes on his face that patton deciphers just a few moments too late

“i--i’m sorry, i’ve got to go!” virgil mutters, leaving the half-eaten apple on the table and running from the cafeteria, ignoring the angered shouts of the lunch monitor

patton only spends a few seconds staring at the doors that virgil ran out of before he turns back to his lunch and shrugs. it’s not like he was really that into making friends at school. and he was already planning on sitting in the library for lunch

he didn’t care

he really didn’t

he didn’t!

patton pretends not to notice the fact that virgil’s name is called in several of his last few classes, but the quiet boy isn’t there

later that night after dinner, logan is sitting at the kitchen table grading some homework assignments from his first graders

“grading” being used very lightly. he was mostly looking to see if they actually followed the minimal instructions on their writing sheet

but then the doorbell rang, which was confusing for logan because he wasn’t expecting any visitors

he walks the few meters to the door and opens it

standing outside is a man in a slouchy hat and very... colorful clothes

“hi, are you logan summers?” the man asks in an odd accent that logan can’t place

“yes, and you are...?”

“roman sanders. my son, virgil, goes to the same school as patton”

and logan is internally going oh shit what the hell did patton do now

on the outside, he simply says “do you want to come in? it’s a bit chilly, and i’d rather not cause a draft.”

roman nods and steps inside, and logan closes the door. he leads his “guest” to the living room where they can talk in comfort.

“did patton do something to virgil?” logan blurted out as soon as they were seated

“sorry, can you repeat that? you were talking too fast for me to read your lips.” roman gave a lighthearted laugh and took off his hat to reveal a mess of brown hair that didn’t quite cover the bright red hearing aids that wrapped around his ears

which would explain why his speech was different. he couldn’t actually hear what the sounds were supposed to be like

logan felt like an idiot

“my apologies. i just asked if patton did something to upset virgil. he isn’t the most... gentle person.”

roman’s smile turns to a grimace “virgil called me in the middle of the day to ask me to pick him up from school. i was lucky enough that all of my patients had scheduled for the morning, and i was able to get to the school without feeling guilty about cancelling someone’s session last minute. when i got to the school, virgil was sobbing. virgil likes wearing gender non-conforming clothing, and apparently patton asked why he liked to dress the way he did, and it spooked the poor kid. i was hoping to clear some things up so virgil would feel better.” (roman is a therapist)

logan

well

he was kinda pissed

patton of all people shouldn’t be judging others for dressing against the norm, since he did the exact same thing!

he quickly excused himself and dragged (figuratively, though he would have resorted to fireman carrying the teenager if he’d refused) patton to the living room to talk to roman

introductions happened blah blah blah and roman asks what patton did to upset virgil

and patton’s like “i was curious about his clothing style????”

roman kind of just narrows his eyes at patton and says “i want to know exactly what you asked before i make an assumption on what to do. words can trigger emotional responses depending on the person, especially with added influence of tone.”

logan will never admit that he’s surprised at how intelligent this man is

and how he’s a little bit attracted to him

and patton being patton said, “i just asked, ‘why do you dress like that’ and he got all upset! it’s not my fault he got offended by my curiosity”

logan pinches the bridge of his nose, and roman pulls out his phone

“we’re calling virgil, and you’re going to apologize to him”

roman starts a facetime call with virgil, and signs “hey, starlight! i have someone here who wants to talk to you.”

virgil both audibly says and signs “who?”

it sounds like he’d been crying

roman turns the phone so that it’s facing patton, who just crosses his arms and turns his face so that he doesn’t have to see virgil

“patton,” logan says in his Dad Voice. “apologize”

and then patton glances at the screen and sees virgil’s red nose and the tear tracks down his cheeks and how bad virgil looks, and he breaks

his voice is quiet and shy as he says “i’m really sorry for upsetting you. i was just curious as to why you chose such a unique style in an often unforgiving environment. i should have worded my question better”

patton peeks over at virgil, who seems to contemplate the apology for a few seconds before saying “i forgive you” with the tiniest baby smile that makes patton’s heart melt

and they both kind of seem to forget their dads are there until the phone is turned back to roman, who took the smiles and not speaking as a cue to take the call back

“i love you” he signs to virgil

“love you too,” virgil says (and presumably signs) “but please don’t hunt down every person who hurts me and do this. you’re lucky that i didn’t catch you, dad, because i would have kicked your ass before you would have left the house”

roman smiles, and patton lets out a surprised laugh because he didn’t think that someone as cute as virgil could physically swear

“dad, can you give the phone over to patton and let me talk to him in private for a few minutes?”

roman hands the phone over and follows logan into the next room (where logan definitely isn’t eavesdropping and relaying all of the information to roman)

“so,” virgil starts as soon as patton gives him an all clear “i wanted to explain to you why i dress the way i do even though it’s really simple: i just like the soft fabrics and colors. they make me feel much happier than when i tried to fit in with the other kids by wearing hypermasculine clothing.”

“that’s valid,” patton says because he doesn’t really know what else to say

“why do you dress in all dark colors and edgy clothing?”

patton hadn’t thought about virgil reversing the question on him, but he feels compelled to answer

so he does

he talks about his life at the orphanage and how he shut himself off from the world. he knew that people didn’t like him for his emotions, so he just tried storing most of them away and pushing others out of his personal space. he lashed out so easily because he was lonely but didn’t know how to properly express his emotions

and by the end of the explanation, virgil is a little teary, and he says “patton, you are far more lovable than you think. i’m sorry that the world told you otherwise”

and now patton is crying a bit, and they kind of just sit there for a second and take in their emotions

for once, patton doesn’t try to mash them down

the parents come in a few minutes later when the kids calmed down, and roman took his leave, but patton doesn’t forget to say goodbye to virgil first

and he’s actually kind of looking forward to seeing virgil the next day, even though he won’t admit it

to be continued in.... PART THREE

okay so here’s the thing fam... so many of you asked to be tagged that i don’t know if i’m going to be able to fit everyone. literally. SO if your name isn’t on here, or you notice someone whose name isn’t on here that asked, i’m sorry, but i literally can’t do anything about it. it will take me years to tag everyone even with infinite tags. the amount of love this has received is great, but i am human

tag list: @residentanchor @eeveeawesome @xionical @absolutesandersidestrash @stormcrawler75 @musikasworld @ironwoman359 @a-weirdo-with-a-computer @thegaypotatoroyalty707 @darkrainbow333 @ravenclawunicorn1 @noahlovescoffee @whymustibedraggedintofandomhell @romansleftshoulderpad @still-waiting-for-cookies @emounicorn2006 @lana--22 @angels-ofthe-sea @demonickittykat @lonelysoul43 @the-virgil-mary @five-second-cookies @noisywolfbatbakery @band-be-boss-blog @heck-im-lost @lamp-calm-sanders @patton-e @knightofbloodcancer @cloudchaser7 @really-sleep-deprived-nerd @era-eclipsed @khadij-al-kubra @anxiousmorality @are-you-really-sure-about-that @today-only-happens-once @notalwaysthevillian @backatthebein @sunshineandteddybears @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @emo-sanders-sides-loving-unicorn @dodos-in-damnation @some-lost-meme-boi @dead4sevenyears @spookyingarbageisland @the-poison-apple-of-art @radioactivehelena @the-melody-of-eliza @im-a-mess-aaaaaa @whycantihavemorethan32characters