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entitynumber5 · 3 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Sasha James & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood & Tim Stoker Characters: Sasha James, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Martin Blackwood, Elias Bouchard, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist (mentioned) Additional Tags: Episode: e026 A Distortion (The Magnus Archives), Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Manipulation, Gaslighting, Elias Is Unpleasant, Minor Sasha James/Tim Stoker, Sasha James Lives, Not-Them Sasha James Doesn't Exist, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives) Series: Part 2 of this tired world could change AU Summary:

After a series of encounters, Sasha examines her role in the Archives.

(A sort-of follow-up to "a martyr in my bed tonight").

Because I can’t stop thinking about TMA series 1!!!! During the series 5 final act no less!!!!! Have some Sasha and Tim and Martin being friends and supporting each other (but watch out for Elias). I don’t know what this AU is going to be other than everyone will live. Writing is not coming easily at the moment so I am taking whatever inspiration strikes and running with it!!!

Content warnings: blood, injury, panic attacks, worms, dizziness, disorientation, voyeurism, invasions of privacy, surveillance, manipulation, gaslighting, isolation, mentions of past surgery, needles, trypanophobia (phobia of needles), medical anxiety, dermatillomania, exhaustion, insomnia, brief allusion to self-harm, nausea.

Full text below!! I hope everyone is having a wonderful day <3

From where Sasha is sitting, she can just see through the thin, dirty window that stripes down the centre of the staff room door. There are stickers accumulating along its starboard side: a yellow biohazard warning stolen from Artefact Storage; colourful Pride memorabilia from a building society she doubts cares for the cause beyond June; the logo of the band Tim has been trying to get her into for years. She catalogues each one again, slowly, before looking through the slice of a window to where Martin is standing near the fridge, having a panic attack.

She wonders if he knows it isn’t quite a hiding place, that lonely gap between the fridge and the door. The staff room is not especially ergonomic, trying to be too many things at once, and because of this, there are bizarre breaks between appliances and furniture, spaces too awkward to be filled but large enough to linger in.

Martin lingers.

At first, she worried he’d seen something—a silver worm, burrowing into the bin or even the moulding countertop—or was already assessing this corner as a space that might be suited to a fire extinguisher. He was so calm when she arrived, even though it was six in the morning and her coat was stained with blood. He didn’t look like he’d been asleep, although he had been on edge. Expecting someone. Not her, though. Still, he’d taken it in his stride, wrapped her in one of the blankets they’d equipped the spare room with and led her to the chair in Jon’s office while he made calls. Tim first, then Jon. He spoke calmly to them both, only flinching when Jon snapped about how “there had better be a good reason for this, Martin” before Martin had a chance to explain. Listening to Martin then, she knew he hadn’t been asleep. His voice was lacking that rusty disuse, the weariness from being woken up. He sounded tired, but not that his rest had been disturbed. She wondered if he had been talking to himself in the night when it was silent in the Archives and no one else was around.

And then Jon had arrived. He looked unimpressed but otherwise deliberately neutral when Martin explained that he knew where the first aid kit was in Jon’s drawer, that he had already opened it and helped Sasha with her wound. Tim arrived and made a fuss and went to get coffee because Jon was irritated by his constant pacing and hovering. Martin disappeared. Sasha gave her statement.

Somehow, she ended up back in the open plan office, slumped at her own desk while Tim texts her from the Pret down the road and Jon searches endlessly for Jane Prentiss’s statement and Martin has a panic attack in the break room.

She should have intervened earlier. Intervened when he went to make her a cup of tea, but she had been too tired and disorientated to remind him she preferred coffee, that Tim was already on that particular mission. Intervened when the kettle boiled and popped and Martin went to get the milk from the fridge and something made him stop. A collapse of the calm he had gifted her, perhaps. One moment of intense, stubborn, heart-breaking resilience too much. She watches him breathe too fast. He’s right in front of the door; if someone opens it, they will open it into him. She thinks, I need to get up. I need to help. But she is just too tired.

Her phone buzzes. She manages to pull her eyes away, although the tiny motion disorientates her, and when she gets her bearings—she’s forgotten about Tim. There’s a prickling at the back of her neck, like the sensation of being watched, and she just has time to think not again before she is thrown off track by the arrival of Elias.

At least it’s not Michael this time. Although, to be honest, that thought is not as comforting as she expects.

“Sasha,” Elias says, his voice infused with a concern that makes her skin itch, “Jon informed me you were injured?”

Sasha forces a smile. “Thank you, Elias. For your concern. But it’s nothing serious. Really, I’ll be fine, Tim is actually out right now getting me some—”

“Coffee, yes. You’ll be needing it after such a long night.”

Her inhibitions are lower. She doesn’t have the energy to pick apart this conversation, to remember again and again that she is talking to her boss’s boss. She squints at him. “I, um—how did you—?”

“An assumption. Based on what Jon wrote in his email. You recall me mentioning that he had emailed about your unfortunate encounter?”

“Y-yes?” she replies, but she’s not sure she remembers.

“I came down here to speak to Martin, as a matter of fact, but it’s a good job I ran into you,” Elias continues jovially, “Why don’t you take a few days off? I’m sure you could use some rest and relaxation,”

“Jon already offered…”

“How generous of him.”

“But I—I’m not sure I need—”

“The Archives will be quite alright without you, Sasha,” Elias tells her with an odd smile, “Quite alright indeed.”

Sasha doesn’t say anything. Her head is spinning. She wants Tim to come back right now and diffuse the oddness of this situation with his bulldozer workplace humour.

“Now, would you happen to know where Martin actually is?”

The realisation comes, blessedly, with a moment of razor clarity: Martin. Elias is obscuring her limited vision through the staff room door, but Martin hasn’t left yet. The certainty that Elias knows this, somehow, grips her like a hand around the throat. He smiles placidly at her, but there is something cutting in his eyes, something that knows far too much.

“Nothing untoward, of course,” Elias adds, “But he has been going through a rather rough time lately and I wanted to check in with him. Jon has asked me to replace the fire suppressant system with CO2 in case of any future worm infestations. I thought that might also put Martin’s mind at ease somewhat. You know what he’s like.”

Sasha forces herself to meet Elias’s eyes. To not look over his shoulder, to give him any reason to even glance into the staff room. “He’s with Tim.”

Elias’s smile twitches. “Is that so? I could have sworn I saw him down here only a moment ago.”

Sasha continues to look him in the eye. She knows that the only way to look through the staff room door, the only way to catch a glimpse of Martin, would be from her desk chair, from the exact angle she had been sitting in. She had tested this. She used this particular trick when Jon was trying to hide from them all but she needed to ask him something.

Elias hasn’t seen Martin. And yet. It snags at her mind, her logic, that subconscious but vivid sense of wrongness.

“He’s not here,” Sasha says, “But you could tell me how the CO2 system works. In case one of us needs to activate it.”

Elias’s smile falls a fraction. “Another time, perhaps.”

“Another time,” Sasha echoes, trying to hold this as a promise in her mind. She feels like she needs to know. She understands now, the way Martin has sharpened himself in anticipation of an unavoidable future. He is not different, but he is not the same. None of us will be, she thinks. And it scares her how naturally that thought comes, as if from somewhere deep and unknown that she would not be able to conjure on demand.

“I’ll leave you to recover,” Elias says with false grace, “Take all the time you need.”

Sasha summons an insincere smile and hopes he doesn’t realise how desperately she wants him to leave. He turns and walks from the Archives without a glance in the direction of the staff room, but Sasha gets that same impression that he knows Martin is in there. Knows why Martin is in there.

She wraps her hand around the desk and uses it to leverage herself up. But the change in elevation is immediately a bad idea, and her wheely chair has a mind of its own, spinning away before she can throw herself back into it. She stumbles, spots cartwheeling across her vision, and she thinks she is about to fall when a hand closes around her elbow.

“Whoa, steady there, Sash,” Tim murmurs. He slides the coffee holder carelessly onto her desk and puts his other arm around her, steadying her further. “You okay?”

“Tim,” Sasha says, still dizzy, “You’ve played poker, right?”

Tim huffs a small, confused laugh. “Let’s get you sitting down again.”

By the time he’s herded her chair back to the desk, still with one hand holding her steady, Sasha’s vision has cleared. She sinks gratefully back into the chair and grapples for the coffee holder, dragging it across the desk. There are four takeaway cups. She has no idea which one is hers. She wants to drop her head against the desk and sleep.

Tim crouches beside her chair, one hand soft against her forearm and the other shifting nervously at his side. He looks up at her, earnest and worried. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” she says.

“Sasha.”

“Poker. I need to ask you something about poker.”

“I’ll tell you all about poker once you’ve—”

“No, tell me now,” Sasha insists, “While I remember.”

“Alright, alright. What do you want to know?”

“Tell me what people look like when they’ve shown their hand too early. You know, when they’ve—they’re winning but they’ve just told everyone they’re winning.”

“I mean, I just used to play in my college’s basement. And the others were all set on spending daddy’s money, so it wasn’t like anyone really cared if they gave the game away.”

Sasha groans. She brings her hand to her face, rubbing at her eyes, which feel heavy and sore. “Tim, just… humour me.”

“They looked smug, but…” Tim thinks for a moment, his thumb brushing against the inside of her wrist. “Still smug, that’s a hard foundation to shake, but like for the first time in their life someone’s seeing through them. Is that—was that what you needed to hear?”

Sasha drops her hand and smiles tiredly at him. “Yeah. I’ll… I can try and explain, but…”

“Later, yeah?”

Sasha sighs gratefully. “Later.”

Through the door, Sasha sees Martin trying to steady himself. Deeper breaths, shaking out his hands to dispel some of their trembling. He tips his head back for a moment, squeezes his eyes shut and seems to try forcefully summoning some semblance of calm.

“This one’s yours,” Tim says, placing one of the coffees in front of her, “I got the barrister to put extra caramel in there for you.”

“How sweet. When’s the wedding?”

“Psh,” Tim says with a flick of his hair, but there is a seriousness in his eyes that doesn’t match his words when he continues, “I have eyes only for you, my dear. And oh, would you look at that? I’m already on one knee! Sasha James, will you do me the honour—?”

Sasha rolls her eyes. “Get up.”

“As you wish.” Tim winks before he stands.

“Can you go and check on Martin?”

“But I’m currently in the process of checking on you.”

“I’m fine. Martin’s having a panic attack in the staff room.”

Tim whips around before Sasha can tell him to be subtle about it, but it’s not like he can see through the door at his angle. “Oh, shit.”

Sasha leans slightly in her chair. Martin is no longer in view. He must have moved away from the door, which is good. Tim won’t crush him when he opens it. “Go now or he’ll open the new milk for no reason.”

“Oh, god, not the new milk,” Tim gasps.

“Tim.”

“Look, I’ve—we spoke the other day. About the panic attacks. He says he prefers to be alone for a bit, afterwards.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

“I don’t know,” Tim replies with a small, almost imperceptible flinch, “But Sash, you’re still covered in blood. Can I—will you let me check if you need stitches, at least?”

“Martin already looked at it,” Sasha replies, her tongue loosened by exhaustion and blood loss, “Did a pretty good job considering he never actually completed his first aid training.”

Tim smiles, half fond, half admonishing. “I am not letting you near Jon right now. There are some things he really doesn’t need to know.”

“Jon asks me to ‘free up’ official records and whatnot. It’s not like he doesn’t know,” Sasha replies. But she pauses for a moment, defensiveness eclipsed by guilt. “That one was accidental, though.”

“Finding out or letting it slip?”

“Both?” Sasha tries. Tim looks dubious.

“Right,” Tim announces, moving on, “Can I go all nurse Stoker yet?”

“Fine. But you’re checking on Martin afterwards. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Sasha eases off her coat again. The grey wool is stained and she is sure no amount of dry cleaning will get it out, besides the fact that she doesn’t want to weather the awkwardness and anxiety of having to explain it to them. Michael’s hands—talons?—had ripped a neat but gaping hole in the shoulder and sewing has never been her strong point. She could ask Tim to do it, she supposes. But it looks like a lost cause where it droops to the floor beneath her desk and comes to a mournful, final rest.

“I liked that coat,” she sighs.

“I’ll get you a new one,” Tim murmurs distractedly, now fully focused on his task, “Anything for you.”

Sasha grits her teeth as Tim carefully peels away the gauze Martin had applied earlier to inspect the wound beneath. She can feel the wound is clean, almost surgical. It throbs in a similar way to the incision on her lower back when she’d had a mole removed a few years ago, although there was no anaesthetic this time, no warning. Behind her, she hears Tim inhale sharply when the entire gash comes into view.

“That looks deep,” Tim says sympathetically.

“It’ll be fine.”

“I think you need stitches.”

“I don’t need stiches, Tim.”

“To be fair, Sasha, you can’t see it. I can take a picture or something. It’s deep. And it can’t hurt to check, can it? Just in case.” Tim pauses, taking a trembling breath. “Humour me.”

“You know I don’t like needles,” Sasha mutters.

“I know.” Tim’s voice is so warm, so reassuring.

“I really don’t like needles.”

“I’ll hold your hand.”

“What about Martin?”

“He can come with us.”

“He doesn’t like hospitals.”

“Do I want to know how you know that?”

Sasha glances at the door again. She still can’t see him. She wonders if he’s okay. If he has forced himself to go back to making tea, if he is composing himself so they won’t ask when he steps back into the office. “I was watching Gray’s Anatomy the other day on my break. I asked if he wanted to join me since he was looking sort of lonely, but he said he could never get into those kinds of shows, never liked anything to do with hospitals. I mean, I kind of had to force it out of him. I think he would have sat and watched it just to avoid offending me otherwise.”

Sasha knows from Tim’s silence that he knows something she doesn’t. She forces herself not to push.

The staff room door creaks open in a way only Martin can seem to manage—so quiet, so deliberately quiet they wouldn’t hear if they weren’t listening. Martin himself steps out, looking washed out and red-eyed. He doesn’t look like he’s been crying, but he does look like he’s rubbed at his eyes, scratched slightly at his cheeks. He musters a small, shaking smile for them both, a cup of tea in each hand. The surface of the tea ripples with the lingering motion of Martin’s hands.

“Hey, guys,” Martin says quietly, “Oh, Tim, I didn’t realise you—I didn’t make—but you can have this one. It’s got sugar in it. But I know you don’t mind sugar sometimes. Although it’s the mug with the—”

Tim moves around the desk so he’s hiding the coffee cups behind him. “Oh, no, you keep it, mate. It’s your tea. And you look like you could do with the caffeine.”

“Yeah, I need to get on with some follow-ups or Jon won’t exactly be happy with me.” Martin’s smile is still wan, still too small. “And I don’t want to fall asleep at my desk again,” he adds with false cheer.

“Didn’t Jon tell you?” Tim says cheerfully. Sasha marvels, for a moment, at his ease. She knows he is good at this—at seeming happy even when he is not—but her heart hurts at the ways life has forced Tim to lie. “We’ve got the rest of the day off.”

Martin frowns. The smile falls away quickly, as if grateful for the excuse. “We do?”

“Yeah. It’s a workplace rule.”

“About?” Martin says, dragging the word out in nervous curiosity.

“Traumatic events,” Tim replies seamlessly, “I’ll get you the employee handbook if you—”

“As long as we don’t get in trouble.” A humourless laugh from Martin. “As long as we don’t get in trouble, I’ll take it.”

“Why don’t you go and rest a bit? I know you had an early start with all the commotion this morning.” Tim gives Martin a gentle, encouraging smile. Sasha can only see it in profile, but she knows it well enough herself to grasp the full picture. “I’m going to take Sasha to A&E just in case she needs stiches, okay?”

“Oh.” Martin’s lips tremble almost imperceptibly. “Oh, Sasha, I—I didn’t know—I thought maybe it—I’m sorry. I really should have checked better, I—”

“Oh, Martin, no. No,” Sasha interrupts, as gently as she can, trying to mirror Tim’s calm, “You did a great job. Tim’s just being a mother hen.”

“You know me,” Tim adds merrily.

Martin looks even paler with guilt. “I can come with you. If you need someone to—I can tell the doctor about the first aid earlier if they need to know the details—”

“I’ll be fine, Martin,” Sasha tells him, “And Tim’s right. Go and sit down, at the very least. I woke you up far too early this morning.”

Martin looks almost like the words Sasha is thinking are on the tip of his tongue: I wasn’t asleep. But he offers another blank smile, a valiant attempt, but there is something deeply sad and guilty around his eyes. “Keep me updated?”

Sasha smiles. “Of course.”

“How about I come and let you know when we’re leaving? I need to let Jon know before we go, anyway, and Sasha’s not in a rush to go near any needles,” Tim offers.

Sasha wishes her desk wasn’t enclosed so she could kick Tim. Martin just nods and begins walking away, almost ghost-like, still holding both cups of tea as if he doesn’t know he is in possession of them. Sasha wonders when he will notice. If he will punish himself for it in some hidden, devastating way.

Like refusing to sleep under the guise of keeping watch.

“God,” Sasha murmurs, “I really—I feel awful.”

Tim watches the shadowed hallway Martin disappeared through. “I’ll talk to him. And you have nothing to feel bad about. You couldn’t help waking him up and it’s not like you were feeling—”

“It’s not that.” Sasha chews at her lip. She almost doesn’t want to tell him, even though she knows he won’t judge her. That almost makes it worse—that she shouldn’t be forgiven, but she will be if she speaks it aloud. “I was—I kept trying to make it logical in my mind. Jane Prentiss, the worms, Martin’s encounter. I realise now I was just trying to make myself feel better, but I kept telling myself that if she was really a serious threat, Martin would be dead. But, Tim, he’s—he’s far more resilient than any of us give him credit for, and I’ve been a complete—”

“Sasha,” Tim whispers, brushing his fingers against her knuckles where she’s clenching the desk again, “I understand. I do.”

“I guess I’m just a bit shaken by it all.”

“I know. We all are. But it’s going to be alright. I’m going to do everything in my power to make it alright.”

Sasha meets his determined gaze. “Me too.”

“Right, I’ll text Jon and tell him where we’re going. He’ll be elbow deep in statements somewhere and very grumpy if I interrupt.”

Sasha musters a weak laugh. “Don’t be mean. He was nice to me. I think he was worried.”

“Jonathan Sims? Worried?”

“Tim.”

“No,” Tim assents with an apologetic smile, “To be fair, it’s been a stressful few months. I know he cares. I just wish…”

“He’d show it a bit more?”

“Yeah. Just a bit.”

Sasha sighs. She gives Tim a weak push. “Please go and check on Martin. Don’t make me ask again.”

“Okay, okay, but…” Tim smiles, almost shy. “Can I kiss you?”

Sasha taps her forehead, just once. It’s a familiar, well-worn routine by now. Tim lowers his lips to her hairline, places a gentle kiss where she indicated and then moves away from her desk. He smiles, a genuine, real smile—nothing behind or beneath it. Uncomplicated, complete. She returns it.

“I’ll be back,” Tim warms in an overly-dramatic voice as he hurries away to check on Martin.

Sasha sits alone at her desk and thinks, incongruously, about fire extinguishers.

When the Archives are under attack, when Jane Prentiss roams hissing and writhing through the rooms and halls where she used to laugh with people she no longer knows are alive, Sasha doesn’t go to Elias.

When she finds the fire suppressant system, when it takes her nearly ten minutes to work out the wiring and the code and the mechanism, she is almost sick with the fear that she is too late.

When she finds out she was right on time, she weeps.

And when she looks at Jon and Tim’s scars, when she notices the shadows beneath Martin’s eyes, when she faces down her own nightmares about a siege that could have been so much worse and yet wrought so much damage, she still cannot help but think she dodged a bullet.

It’s a stranger of a feeling. The certainty of it is new and unsettling. But it doesn’t leave her, this sense that she escaped something intended for her. She cries with fear when she hears fire alarms, close or far, and finds herself intensely, unexplainably grateful.

#anyone else think about how hard Sasha's encounter might have been for Martin or is it just me #also Sasha deserves to be loved and cherised #i miss her #Sasha is aro btw i don't mention it specifically but i adore this hc #i don't even know what this AU is and yet it is the only thing getting me out of bed right now #i want Sasha and Tim to somehow appear in the finale but i DREAD how that might come about #i just miss them so much!!!!#cw blood #cw injury #cw panic attack #cw worms #cw disorientation #cw invasions of privacy #cw surgery #cw manipulation #cw gaslighting #cw isolation #cw needles #cw medical anxiety #cw dermatillomania #cw exhaustion #cw insomnia #cw self-harm #cw nausea #i hope i got all of them but please please let me know otherwise #mostly very brief mentions but i want to be safe #take care of yourselves #<333 #also fuck elias #i'm sorry to subject you to him in this fic

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savvy-califragilistic · 3 years

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Chapters: 1/18 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley Characters: Gerard Keay, Michael | The Distortion (The Magnus Archives), Michael Shelley, Gertrude Robinson Additional Tags: Sannikov Land, Canon-Typical The Spiral Content (The Magnus Archives), Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, I swear to God, the ending will be happy i promise you, we just gotta have the boys be sad for a while, Gertrude Robinson is a bitch and I hate her so much, Gerard Keay Lives, Hospitals, (later) - Freeform, Michael becomes an artifact of the Spiral, Tags Are Hard, Michael Shelley Lives Summary:

“Yes, my compass is in my pocket.” Michael smiles as he pulls it out. “I keep it with me always. I’ll never get lost again thanks to you.”

But he does get lost, and the only proof he ever existed is the small compass Gertrude brings back from Sannikov Land. Gerry clings to the only reminder of their love as he throws himself into his work, sure that he’s finally fallen out of reach of happiness - yet he can’t help noticing the way his luck slowly begins to improve, or the strange, twisting colors lurking in the corner of his eye.

#tma fic #tma #gerry keay #michael shelley #the spiral

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indigoire · 4 years

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TMA characters I love beyond reproach, can do no wrong in my eyes, even if they're a little evil and or dead:

Gerard Keay. Best goth boy, emo of my heart, should probably touch up his roots in the afterlife. Was doing his best before he got got by The End. Nothing but respect for Our Gerry.

Michael Shelley/Distortion: is Michael an avatar of a Fear Entity? Yes. Did Michael originally start as the sweetest kid ever? Also yes. Does Michael's laugh make me happy? Extremely yes. Toss this in with a dash of helpfulness and I am very very fond of this genderless being.

Melanie King. Plays by no man's rules! Smart bitch who knows how to get shit done! Tried to stab Elias because she's an icon. Has made everyone in the archives cry at least once, and yes, that probably also includes Elias. Is a wlw, though I haven't quite reached this point in the podcast yet. Got shot by a ghost because she's the most interesting woman in the world. Melanie King I care you.

Basira Hussain. The only cop I trust (thank god she quit early on tho). Her deadpan voice is amazing. Also a fan of getting shit done. Lives my dream of getting a job and spending the whole time at said job reading and gossipping.

Georgie Barker. NO FEAR! Owns an adorable cat. Actually believes in being friends with her exes and I respect her for it. Has my second choice dream job about talking about ghosts and paranormal things from the comfort of my home studio. Also apparently a wlw, hell yes.

Martin Blackwood. I ADORE this fussy, worried, anxious, clumsy, sensitive, STRONG man. He WILL outlive us all, he WILL be strong but soft at the same time, and he WILL use the power of love to save us all. Maybe the real treasure was the love and respect for Martin we found along the way.

Jonathan Sims. Listen. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that snarky British assholes aren't my bread and butter. I know he falls into "no one can like the protagonist" syndrome, but I think Jon is pretty fucking great. He's also kind of monstrous, and I love monsters. Needs way more respect than he gets. He's done dumb things but he also doesn't sleep, and I know firsthand how that fucks with your head, so really we should be happy he even remembers names from prior statements. Really wish he'd try some self care too.

Special mention goes to Tim Stoker, who apparently goes out with a bang. Taken from us before he could reach full snark. Told Elias he'd see him in hell. RIP bi-con, keep thotting it up in heaven king, etc., etc.

#tma #tma shitpost #idk if I should tag this with spoilers but this is all mid-season three stuff #I know a lot of the shit that's gonna happen so *shrug*#btw this is not ranked this is in no particular order #Martin rises and falls in the ranks as I grow fonder of each new character--and then he comes in with something that makes me love him again

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bubonickitten · 4 years

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MAG 167 spoilers

I am once again back to obsessing over Gertrude and Jon as narrative foils!!

And just – the narrative does such a great job of using that foil to illustrate Jon’s neverending struggle with his own humanity. Because although Gertrude didn’t embrace her Archivist powers in the same way that Jon sometimes does, she was arguably monstrous in her own way -- in ways that Jon ultimately isn’t.

I keep thinking back to Jon’s conversation with Gerry, in particular this bit:

GERARD: Well, she could make people tell her stuff, sometimes. They’d suddenly get real talkative, and lay out whatever she needed. She didn’t do it often though. I don’t think she liked it.

JON: Oh, er, I can do that, too.

GERARD: Huh. Do you like it?

JON: I – I don’t know. I never really thought about it. Yes, I… I suppose I do.

GERRY: Hmmm.

I think after his coma, Jon has a much more negative view of his abilities, but early on, he admits that there’s a part of him that does like being able to compel people. It fits, honestly – of course someone like Jon, so intolerant of mysteries, so prone to overthinking, so full of questions and so voracious for answers, fresh out of a paranoid episode that left him unable to trust any answer that anyone offered him, would like having the option to ask a question and receive a guaranteed answer and to know that the given answer was the truth. At least until he no longer has control over it, finds himself accidentally compelling people and unable to stop knowing things even when he doesn’t want to.

But even if Gertrude was further from the supernatural aspects of the Archivist role, she was still ruthless in her crusade. Her conviction and boldness made her a badass, certainly, but at what cost? The answer depends heavily on how you feel about utilitarianism as an ethical philosophy.

Gertrude Robinson would have a clear answer to the trolley problem and not apologize for it. Jonathan Sims would agonize over all the potential choices and outcomes until he’s paralyzed with indecision. (Annabelle Cane knew exactly what she was doing when she gave him that statement about the nature of free will in a moment where he was struggling so profoundly with self-doubt.)

People are always comparing Jon to Gertrude, telling him that he’d be better off behaving more like her, urging him to accept the premise that ruthlessness is a strength in a world that offers only fear and pain, and that humanity is a weakness and a liability that he doesn’t have the luxury to indulge.

And in Season 4, he tries that philosophy on for a brief while. The Eye drives him to compel people to tell their stories; he starves if he doesn’t obey that instinct. He feeds the Eye the trauma of innocent bystanders, and now he’s the monster haunting the dreams of his victims. (And, to his credit, that’s what he ultimately refers to them as: victims. He uses that word. That’s significant.)

When Basira witnesses him do that and calls him out on it, Jon replies by pointing out that Basira (among others) told him that he should be more like Gertrude: “She got the job done and didn’t care about the cost.”

Basira responds, “But I thought you did.”

And that highlights the fundamental difference between Jon and Gertrude! He’d temporarily forgotten that – he’d lost touch with that piece of himself, of his humanity. It makes sense; everyone around him saw him as a monster, and it’s hard to believe in your own humanity when no one else does, when everyone around you is building a self-fulfilling prophecy for you.

It takes Martin reaching out in the only way that he can – urging the others to talk to him – for Jon to wake up and admit that what he’s doing isn’t right and that he needs to do something to stop it. He goes back and forth with himself for a bit – Does he have any control? Is he doing it on autopilot? Is the Web influencing him? – but ultimately he decides that, no, he has to hold himself accountable. Helen asks him if he’s sure he didn’t want to do it, and he takes that hard-to-swallow pill and engages in some introspection and comes to the conclusion, Yeah, while supernatural influence is at play here, I made a choice.

BUT if he made a choice, it means that he can make a different choice going forward. He doesn’t have to be the monster that everyone else expects him to be. He doesn’t have to traumatize others in the same way that he’s been traumatized. (And, eventually, maybe he can learn to see himself as Martin sees him.) And he changes his behavior accordingly!

I keep thinking of Jon’s comment on Gertrude sacrificing Michael to end the Spiral’s Ritual:

“I thought moving away from my humanity would have made that seem more acceptable. That sort of sacrifice… But it just makes me sad. I remembered Gertrude’s notebook. We found it alongside the plastic explosives, but it rather got lost amongst the business of… saving the world at the cost of two lives.”

And this comment, from one of Jon’s many navel-gazing arguments with himself over the nature of humanity and how he fits into that:

“Why were we chosen? …Is there destiny here? Bloodlines, and prophecies? Or did we just – stumble into this. Maybe… maybe we’re the opposite of Agnes. Maybe our doubts are exactly what we need.”

What keeps Jon in touch with Jonathan Sims, human and distinct from The Archivist/The Archive isn’t just an anchor/reason (Martin) or his own intense guilt, but that capacity for doubt. I mean, it does feed into his self-loathing and it’s unhealthy for him in a number of ways, but that doubt is also what saves him from fully becoming the thing he fears, in a way?

It’s interesting how that doubt and questioning feeds into his innate curiosity. That incessant need to know, even if his discoveries might destroy him, to go with Gerry’s definition of Beholding, is Jon’s fatal flaw, and it’s what makes him so well-suited to the Eye, but it’s also so very human.

That, along with Jon’s choice to change his behavior throughout the story is, imo, the strongest argument in favor of his humanity.

From where Jon is standing, every other Avatar has become so divorced from their prior self that they barely resemble humans anymore. But the question of free will is nebulous for most of the Avatars.

Some of the Avatars seem to have sought out the power that overtook them, or at the very least openly embraced it. Jude Perry sought to destroy others to make herself feel more alive long before she met Agnes; the Desolation just lent her the power to do so to a greater degree, and she leaned into it. Jared Hopworth was already a bully; becoming the Boneturner just gave him a new way to express that preexisting pattern of behavior.

Some of the others stumbled into it out of sheer bad luck, or in some way attracted a certain power. They were initially afraid, and typically resisted, but eventually were overtaken – or… gave in? Because that’s the recurring question: How much choice is involved?

Take Oliver Banks:

“The thing is, Jon, right now you have a choice. You’ve put it off a long time, but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but still too human to survive…. I made a choice. We all made choices. Now you have to.”

Or Daisy:

“I hate a lot of what I did back then; doesn’t mean I’m not responsible for it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t me.”

Even if some of the Avatars could have done something differently to avoid their ultimate fate, they didn’t necessarily deserve that fate. Helen Richardson could have not opened the door, but opening a door out of curiosity shouldn’t be a punishable offense.

And when the Distortion and Helen ‘become’ one another, it’s interesting that there’s still enough of Helen left (at least at first) for her to feel guilt and doubt over what she’s becoming, in much the same way that Jon does:

“I took a man, wandering the halls of an old tenement…. It was nourishing, but… I didn’t like it. I feel… wrong.”

(Side note: I understand why Jon feels like he can’t trust the Distortion, but it does make me wonder what might have gone differently if he’d maintained an open dialogue with her re: humanity vs. monstrosity, similar to the sort of understanding Jon and Daisy have after the Buried.)

The story has been asking these questions all along, but MAG 167 put it back under the microscope in an important way. It really doesn’t matter as much what Jon is, because what he does is a much better measure of humanity and goodness.

Jon looks at his own choices, looks at Gertrude’s choices, looks at the things that neither of them had control over and looks at the things that they did, and comes to a final conclusion:

No, he doesn’t want to be like Gertrude. Human connections are important. He needs an anchor. He needs companionship. Trust and communication don’t come naturally to him, but it’s worth confronting that vulnerability in the end, because it’s what keeps him in touch with his humanity, with who he is and who he wants to be.

It really complements Martin’s philosophy, too. I’ve gone on and on about it before, but I still think the line that most exemplifies Martin’s character is his response to Simon Fairchild’s brand of flippant, fatalist nihilism:

“I think our experience of the universe has value. Even if it disappears forever.”

It would be so easy for Jon and Martin to just... give up. Give in to self-loathing, to guilt, to loneliness, to a world gone horribly, possibly irreversibly wrong. Early on, Jon is inclined to do just that. He tells Martin that “this is no longer a world where you can trust comfort.” But what does Martin do instead? He comforts Jon. He puts comfort into a world where it seems like none can exist. It doesn’t matter if that gesture is significant in the grand scheme of things -- however you want to define significance on a cosmic level. In that moment, Martin cared, and that mattered to him, and it mattered to Jon, and that fact won’t change, even when they’re both dead and gone.

It’s... really the same stubborn sentiment that Jon offered in the Lonely, and Martin is mirroring it back when Jon needs it most.

They make an active choice to build a relationship, to try to make a change for the better. Even if it ends in failure, the fact that they tried is still significant. Jon looks at how Gertrude lived her life, compares it with his past and current choices, and (rightly imo) comes to the conclusion that, yeah, it hurts to trust and to care, but it’s worth it, and it’s necessary if they want to survive (and, of course, he also doesn’t just want to survive). It’s just... a very brave, very compassionate, and very human way of confronting the end of the world.

#tma #the magnus archives #mag 167 #tma meta #jonathan sims #gertrude robinson #tma spoilers #long post

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thevoidcannotbefilled · 4 years

Note

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 I'M READY

CHIN THIS WAS INSTANT LMAOOOOO

🔥 Send Me One For My Hot Takes (tagging this as #hottakes)

You already know my Elias/Jonah takes, so here’s another one.

Martin! Isn’t uwu soft!!! He’s a bitch and I love him!!! Martin has a high level of sass, that peaked in season 4,but it was almost always there. The more comfortable he was with someone or the more he was DONE the sassier he is. Love him.

Also eliminating those harder edges makes him a far less interesting character. Yes! He believes that we should be happy! Awesome! But he’s going to metaphorically slap you in the face for it. He’s gonna give people tea, sure, but that’s because he’s awkward and doesn’t know how else to make other’s happy, so he’s anxious and gives tea, which is super valid on his part.

Also also, Michael Shelley and Martin are parallels, but as a character without the distortion, he’s just Martin without his bitchiness.

Btw I say bitch in the best way possible.

#hottakes #ask the void #martin blackwood #Gonna try to keep these not all negative #chintastic

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irrealisms · 4 years

Note

001, TMA ?

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character: Jonathan Sims. Yep, I’m basic.

Least Favorite character: oh jeez do I even have one? no, wait, I absolutely do. statement giver in 052. FUCK that dude.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Jonelias, daisira, jonmartin, petermartin, elias/gertrude, in approximately that order.

Character I find most attractive: pre-s4 Daisy. yes, i know, my taste is horrendous. the runner-up is Elias, which isn’t better.

Character I would marry: none of them! not super comfortable with marriage even in the hypothetical.

Character I would be best friends with: I like to think it’d be the Distortion but realistically it/she would definitely devour me. Then again, Michael did say it wanted a friend!

a random thought: This show is so good. Also, I’m terrified for Wednesday!

An unpopular opinion: I honestly don’t know what things are popular/unpopular in the fandom at large and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.

my canon OTP: jonmartin!

Non-canon OTP: ............jonelias.

most badass character: gertrude robinson. definitely.

pairing I am not a fan of: I really don’t know that I have one? I just went through ten pages of ao3 and didn’t see a single pairing that I wouldn’t read.

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): i am Not A Fan of 136 and how Neil Lagorio developing assistive tech that works for him is treated as horrifying; I hope we see more of what the Web was planning in s5 in a way that makes this episode ring better for me.

favourite friendship: JON AND DAISY JON AND DAISY JON AND DAISY. fuck.

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: i want to adopt s4 jon and somehow find him a competent trauma therapist who will believe him about everything.

#tma #wolffyluna

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fearfearer · 4 years

Text

i have caught up with the magnus archives.

when i started listening, i started a text file to note down any thoughts/confusion/analysis/jokes i had as i listened. i isolated a few bits of it into standalone text posts that i already posted, but here is the whole thing, my long-form liveblog

thoughts on the magnus archive as i listen

jonny sims gives an impassioned performance of someone's statement-- a diegetic impassioned performance, as we witness it being interrupted and resuming-- and follows it up with his own judgement of merciless doubt. classic. why the impassioned performance? he's just a nerd. i dearly hope this is the fandom consensus

every episode ends at the perfect volume to which i have adjusted it, and then i start the next episode and it blares in my ears. i think the volume of the intro must be like 1.75x the volume of the rest

*makes a serious effort to listen to and remember the name and date at the beginning of the statement recording* *forgets completely within 2 minutes*

i saw a fanart of gerard keay and learned [1] that he must be a good guy after all, since they drew him lookin cute, and [2] that his name is not, in fact, jared key. what, am i supposed to be looking at the transcripts? understanding names properly? in my defense, jonny sims clearly articulates "Jared" when he says it. maybe i'm not as good at decoding british accents as i thought. [footnote added in later: ok good i'm not the only one who hears "Jared" and thinks "Jared" instead of "Gerard"]

when gerard keay was described as having numerous eye tattoos on his joints, obviously my first thought was, "including the ankle? so he's count olaf?" because that's definitely a way count olaf would disguise his eye tattoo: by tattooing eyes everywhere else too and becoming The Eye Tattoo Guy. anyway this is part of why i was not at first inclined to think favorably of gerard keay

"The first thing about this statement that makes me dubious is that it comes from a fellow academic." if you know shit fuck you

it has come to my attention that there are ships. makes sense... after all, everyone in every fandom is horny af*. i'm not in deep enough to ship yet but naturally i'm keeping an eye on it

*horny af for depictions of intimacy, sexual or otherwise, but mostly sexual

definitely feel like i need to be writing down every name i hear because they're never not cropping back up but for now i'll just let it all wash over me

so sasha has been replaced with not-sasha, huh? pretty sure. though i'm not good at distinguishing voices. but that sounded pretty different, and my listening comprehension wrt that table isn't that bad. <<as time passes i doubt myself more and more on this point but not enough to go back and listen again

"You believe me?" "Yes, I think I do." (smashes button labeled "CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT" and a loud buzzer sounds)

IT'S MICHAEL!!! i hope michael is a long-term good guy... he's not seeming like a good guy right now... he says he's mostly neutral. vaguely recall seeing a tumblr post about michael in the recent past but that didn't give me any hints and i don't remember it well anyway. michael's voice is good though. good laugh

i'm not good at visualizing characters based on descriptions, let alone based merely on their voices, so the only image i have in my head of jonathan is a furrowed brow

i'm on episode 49 and i don't like jonathan's distrust of his colleagues... i don't understand why his immediate suspicion was that gertrude's murder was an inside job. hasn't he just learned firsthand that the institute is not impenetrable? it's not inconceivable that someone could enter and shoot her and leave. especially when it took place in underground tunnels connected to unknown locations.

there's a good Old Lady Voice Combo on episode 62

so agnes montague was heavily cursed... that's my conclusion after episode 67

elias seems to tell jonathan to "get some sleep" a lot. though it IS generally good advice

episode 70, 9 minutes, 41 seconds: jonny sims's cell phone goes off in the background

small brain: ghost ship medium brain: ghost train galaxy brain: dirt train

i wanted to see if there was fanart of michael so i looked it up... i might as well have googled "blonde slenderman"

sweeney todd mentions tally: II

for some reason, hearing michael described this time as "a tall man with curly blonde hair and an unnerving laugh" puts an image in my head without my consent, and that image is chris fleming. now, he's not quite blonde, is he? but that doesn't change my casting decision, which is now set in stone. hope he does a good british accent

"YES i know what a meme is."

why is melanie the first/only one to notice that sasha is now not-sasha? is it because she is experienced in firsthand paranormal encounters (whereas the archivists are experienced in decidedly SECONDhand paranormal encounters, save for the worm debacle)? oh, my question was answered handily in the next episode. ok.

the replacer definitely limits its glamour to everyone except one person just so that it can be amused by the distress and confusion of the one person who can see the truth. that must also be the reason it chooses a completely different appearance. it surely COULD replace a person with their exact likeness; it just uses another face for fun, and to be satisfied that it can get away with it.

this table has appeared in like 10 episodes... Guess It's Crucial

jonny sims yelling while swinging an axe. jonny sims goes through michael's door (eyes emoji)

the idea of the replacer killing jonathan and not even replacing him brings to mind "AT LEAST RIDE IT YOU ASSHOLE"

wasn't expecting to hear from leitner at this point... he's dropping tons of lore here. too much lore. so much is happening. i have to say i kinda like it better when the stakes are not quite so high as this.

so at the end of season 2, tim and martin believe that jonny sims killed this guy, who they probably don't know is leitner... and we the audience believe that elias, now almost certainly a double murderer, has very quietly stabbed leitner to death. do i the audience believe it? i'll keep an open mind for now. things are not always as they seem. except when sasha was replaced with not-sasha, which was exactly as it seemed. [footnote added in later: looks like elias being a double murderer was exactly as it seemed.]

so jonathan sims is the name of the actual guy voicing jonathan sims. it's a cecil situation. so are they someday going to go back and retcon every episode to change his name, like with palmer/baldwin? or does jonathan sims just not mind being a character as well? as long as it doesn't devolve into RPS i guess it's fine. if there's fanart of jonmartin i hope it doesn't depict them as their actors bc that's too close for comfort to RPS

there's been a truly hellish c*ndy cr*sh ad that has played like 40 times between episodes and i'm pretty well convinced to never ever play that curséd game

elias has some serious blackmail for daisy, huh? that's heavy, having police characters in fiction who do extrajudicial killings. life imitates art imitates life

"i'm not on drugs or anything. ...what? i could be on drugs!"

he said "ample opportunity" but like "amplopportunity" with emphasis on the "plop"

it was obviously elias who delivered the statement to jonathan in hiding, because he knew he would record it despite not being at work... bc he's a nerd

so if gerard keay has eye tattoos, does that mean he also serves the uhh the observing or whatever? [verdict arrived at later: no he just has those because he's cool. or because his mom tattooed him. ok almost certainly the latter.]

"what do i feed it?" obviously you feed it filled up cassette tapes, jon... nothing has ever been more obvious

it's okay that jon very stupidly burned his hand to a crisp. you don't need even one hand to turn on a cassette recorder. you can do that with your nose

so if these people who are wax figures serve the desolation, and not-sasha was spending time at the wax museum, does that mean there is a connection between the replacer and desolation? i think that would make sense, since both seem to enjoy making people feel bad feelings. also i'm starting to think that agnes was not actually cursed, but that would mean she burned that guy on purpose after being nice to him... was she just really selfish in that way? using him to experience Dating and mutilating him when he crossed the line, so she punished him as a cruel goodbye? or just building up his hopes so they will be even more fun to burn down when the time comes?

"perhaps doing a bit of mindless filing will help distract you." honestly that is something i would like to do in real life... i do enjoy a good mindless task. though doing mostly mindless tasks 40 hours a week is not a fun time for me lately. but it would be better if i didn't have to listen to bad radio at the same time

what?! the friendly midnight acrobat described in episode 90 sounds totally non-threatening and i hope there's fanart of it. was that gym just jared the bone turner helping people live their twisted athletic fetishes?! [footnote added in later: YES! god i hope people draw these turn-boned creatures optimized for their gymnastic of choice. show me a person who remade their body specifically for the balance beam]

so the power endowed in the archivist by the viewening is that when you sit them down across from someone they want to interview, that someone will invariably spill SOME beans and think it was their idea. maybe? [footnote added in later: yes.]

ok so Michael "The Distortion" Michael, of fractals and golden ringlets, has specifically tormented this other michael, lichtenberg michael?

jon is clearly moved to ask questions by an external force because he's a sensible guy who would not try to ask questions when daisy is holding a gun on him

i think basira has precisely the same accent as estelle... or maybe just a similarly staccato way of speaking (or of line-reading)

[episode 93] elias: (holding jon's face between two pieces of bread) what are you? jon: (sigh) the archivist...

well, they did something i didn't expect them to do with this show: create a compelling in-universe reason for jon to read statements aloud. because obviously until now there was none.

jon did the cockney accents. (insert emoji for indescribable feeling)

here's the purpose of the pit: if we all climb in the muddy pit together at night, the earthquake will only jiggle us gently and no one will be inside collapsing buildings to be crushed. it's only logical

ok i was gonna say this before but why is jon still at georgie's house??? he's not on the run for murder anymore, right? he has an apartment with all his stuff in it, right? [footnote added in later: i still don't understand why it was like this.]

i will confess that usually once the credits start to roll i zip to the next episode, but this time i zoned out a bit and it's really funny that jonny sims reads out "Rate and Review Us Online" in his archivist voice

a third michael. this one is probably already dead though. unless distortion michael takes over this guy's body or something. oh, jon came in at the end of the episode to say precisely this.

was episode 100 mostly improvised? if so, that would be appropriate. but i wouldn't put it past them to write every stuttering bit of those four statements

MARTIN...................................................................................................................................................... (typed this as martin gave some of his own money to the lady who expected payment for a statement)

i'm skipping 100.1 through 100.5 for now... just for now.

ok so michael is michael but not lightning mike michael, and two of these michaels are dead, but one is something that has never been alive nor dead. got it

everyone's morality is much more gray than i at first anticipated. the only people who seem to be solidly and earnestly on the side of good, as much as possible, are jonathan and martin and basira and georgie and maybe tim?

so michael just died and was overtaken by pseudo-helen? neo-helen? ok. that's kinda too bad, as i enjoyed michael's terrible laugh and unpredictability. but the feeling of michael being revealed as having been michael shelley feels somewhat similarly disappointing (but a bit less staggeringly groan-inducing) to when the mysterious koro-sensei in assassination classroom was revealed to have been a twink in his past. because of course he was. (that's when i stopped reading that manga. too precipitously dumb to sustain my suspension of disbelief.) it's like, ok, you had an interestingly mysterious character going on, but having solved the mystery, what interestingness is left? not much. fortunately this was resolved by promptly ending the existence of this michael and instead introducing new and improved helen

ooh martin has the asky ability too huh? nice [footnote added in later: he only used it this one time, and i'm wondering if they did that and then forgot and decided that jon is actually the only one with asky ability.] [[another footnote added in much later: How did i manage to mistake jon’s voice for martin’s voice? How?]]

the way martin said "kumo ga tabeteiru" in episode 110... alexander j newall does not watch anime

"I'm a book." ~Gerard Keay, 2017

it was a few episodes ago now but i noticed that when jon clearly articulated "Jared" referring to gerard, elias was like "Jared? you mean Gerard Keay?" (pronouncing it like "Gerard.") there is definitely a disagreement between these two (actors) about how to pronounce that name

the eye, the spiral, the end, the stranger, the lonely, the desolation, the slaughter, the vast, the buried, the dark, the corruption, the web, the flesh, the hunt.

Q: why would anyone want one of these rituals to succeed? A: it's their fetish. it's their sexual fetish

ok time to make up names for each possible apocalypse. these are the real and true names according to me, who knows such things: the eye - the viewening the spiral - down the drain the end - the really end end the stranger - oh wait we know this one. it's the unknowing. the lonely - the alonening the desolation - Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Lightless Flame the slaughter - world war all the vast - the expansion the buried - the grand lahar (or the Smothering) the dark - the extinguishment the corruption - the Great Rot the web - the spidening the flesh - the smorgasbord (or the Eatening) the hunt - come and get it

gerry said there was no dark god of indigestion, but i can tell you from personal experience that there is. though it's true that there is also fear involved, so maybe no separate pantheon is necessary

i sense that there is a battle between people who say it like "gotta get myself oriented" and "i feel disoriented" (as feels correct/natural to me) and people who say "gotta get myself orienTATed" and "i feel disorienTATed," and this podcast falls SQUARELY on the latter team. they've said it like 20 times

idk why he has to be such a dick to helen. jeez

the guy who coded his mind into a computer, which of the 14 was that? the corruption? the stranger? gotta be the corruption, but that doesn't fit perfectly with its rot/bugs aesthetic...

speed -> speeding -> sped. heed -> heeding -> hed. thus i decree

in my dream i listened to a whole episode of this show, narrated by gertrude, and i was like "whoa this is cool" and i went to write it down but i was still in the dream and writing doesn't work in dreams :( also any successful writing in dreams doesn't transfer to real life paper :( the only snippet i remember: “...in his white mouth, which had known only bread...”

"I, uh..." Jonathan Sims, a thousand times, 20XX

martin's job is PLAINLY to distract elias and elias barges in like "martin. i see you're trying to distract me." and martin's like "maybe i am!"

o, jonny took a breath. that's good

he wasn't hooked up to an EKG or anything? you spend long enough with no heartbeat that they're just like "i guess we can turn this off"

this episode about philosophical zombies sounds a lot like that NPC meme from a year or two ago... and it makes me kind of uncomfortable, the way this person inspects others to determine whether they are True Minds or Impostors based on their emotional expressions, their eyes... because i don't always do the correct or appropriate expressions, and would someone judge me as being a non-person who is trying and failing to imitate human emotions?

i generally don't enjoy ships that have more-or-less explicit canon support, but i can't say jon/martin isn't good

melanie blaming jon isn't right... no one had a better plan to stop the unknowing, did they? (they didn't!) didn't all of them agree on the plan and understand that they might die? (they did!) she's just imposing survivor's guilt upon him because he survived for supernatural reasons. but it's not like he eagerly embraced his new supernaturalness, or even asked for it outright! i think she's being unreasonable. i didn't like her insistence on trying to kill elias either, even though elias is a huge dick. what's with her?

wait, peter lukas is the lonely? (meme where calculations and equations whiz past me)

jonathan baa'd

oh, see. the bullet is making melanie act without reason. i get it now. can't say i think they had the best approach to getting the bullet out, but all's well that ends well (???)

martin is being prohibited from talking to jon >:I martin is on a first-name basis with peter lukas >:I...

martin grumbles, "i don't like being manipulated..." while obviously and continuously allowing himself to be manipulated

jon is afraid of and uncomfortable with what he's becoming, at least to a degree, right? but he seems to be going about his duties (i.e. feeding the eye) with vigor and without reluctance. is he really that motivated by his own desire to know and understand? who is he doing this for? is the eye's influence on him so strong that "doing what the eye wants" seems to manifest as what HE wants to do?

"He'd place it over the one he wore already, and he would larf and larf and larf" (from breacon’s statement... just heard it like this for some reason)

deep water could be the domain of both the buried and the vast, because you could lose yourself in the vast ocean, but experience the physical effects of being buried under thousands of feet of water...

so tom han was an avatar of the flesh but he ultimately died after being tortured by the spiral... right?

"we're not people, though, are we? not anymore." close enough, i'd say.

jonathan has deployed THREE "I, uh..."s in episode 131 alone and i want to smack him in real life. FOUR NOW. JON. JONATHAN SIMS THE REAL ACTOR. LISTEN... quit falling back on your "I, uh..."s. and if they're written into the script i'll punch whoever did that too. total of five in a single episode. never utter "I, uh..." again

i hope whoever's throat is okay after doing bone turner voice for a whole statement.

jonny sure needs saving quite often, doesn't he.

peter lukas being a slightly chipper advocate for becoming a follower of the lonely is very strange

neil lagorio and his whole cinematographic history is made up but they namedropped kevin costner, who is real

VERY, VERY GOOD laugh at 23:44 of episode 136

melanie getting her session recorded... i was doing audio transcription for a while and you'd definitely come across bits of therapy-type sessions that very much seemed like they should have been confidential.

i wonder if the eye ultimately turned its back on gertrude and allowed her to be killed. if jon could survive a collapsing building, could gertrude not have survived a couple of bullets? wouldn't the difference be the protection of the eye? [footnote added in later: of course now i see who turned their back on whom.]

i'm somewhat heartened to learn that agnes montague was, in fact, a heavily cursed individual, though she seemed to have embraced it to a degree... and she wasn't made of wax.

i like that jon now includes helen in his office politics briefing

basira's like "Edmund Halley" and jon's like "Halley's comet?" (like “Hale-ey”) and two minutes later jon's like "Edmund Hally" (not "Hale-y")

"What's this?" "OH... That's, uh... that's... my rib..." "Right." (tiny clunk of rib being set down)

so giving a statement puts a curse on you... or is it "having a statement extracted / being compelled" that puts a curse on you? and the resulting curse, the fear it reawakens, is that good for the eye, or is that good for the powers that initially caused the fear?

well, i heard a homestuck reference in one of the patreon names at the beginning of an episode, and who is surprised? of course, i'm not one to talk

episode 144- the english think their summer is bad... as a professional "hot weather is bad" person, i feel doubtful, because if the sky is grey, it is not as hot as it Could Be, and therefore one should quit one's bitching

first statement about the extinction... interesting. but hearing martin be a jerk to daisy makes me sad :(

the powers never tell avatars exactly what they need to be doing, but that's just concerning the means. the ends are always clear: the power gets fed. and all of the powers feed on fear. also jonny is horny for statements. i hope, but also doubt, that his harmful behavior is at least partially the spider's doing. oh, i see now that it's not. yeah.

jon wants to eat fresh and delicious statements produced just for him, instead of reconstituting the dusty old statements already in the archive

episode 148 - samson stiller gets a crush. but in all seriousness, is he becoming an avatar of the eye but like, not institute-related? is that a thing? i guess that would make sense, but still seems weird

episode 149 - considering ring -> rang -> rung, we seem to have stumbled upon spin -> span -> spun, and the compasses gently span around (9:40)

does martin have loneliness powers now? it's sad that he is getting lonely... as a lonely person, i know.

the lady on TV in episode 150 was just speaking simlish.

i really want jon to overcome his urge to forcefully take statements because i want to be able to root for him still

british podcasts really have a leg up over american podcasts, at least among american audiences, purely based on their interesting and varied accents

i can't say the gravedigger's envy doesn't make me myself feel like going to sleep in the cold dirt forever. but bad depression lately is also a factor, so

jonathan having to settle for reading already archived statements instead of harvesting fresh ones is exactly like a vampire (not the kind detailed in this series) who has to choose between hunting people to suck their blood or drinking bags of donated blood from a (near-endless) stockpile. there's an ethical choice with a clear right answer, but the urge is also understandable

jon following up gertrude's tape with just "fuck" was really good. now he's like "ok martin. let's run away together"

spent all day at work thinking about how i can't fuckin believe the first thing jon did when he heard how to escape the institute was to go tell martin like "there will be a great cost, but... we can elope now"

also if tim was still around jon would tell him the way out and he would do it right then and there, i'm 100% sure. like before jon was finished explaining tim would be like "the eyes? (grabs scissors) got it. (does the deed)"

earlier today i was just thinking that we would almost certainly hear gertrude's death on tape, especially given that we now understand tape recorders are wont to turn on autonomously whenever something important is happening. anyway then i came home and heard gertrude's death on tape

peter, as an avatar of the lonely, is easy to play like a cheap whistle because as someone who clearly hates spending time around other people, he is not keen to the symptoms of being played.

elias is like "you'll have to go into the lonely to get him" and jon's probably thinking "but then at least we'll be in the lonely... ~*~*~together~*~*~"

i think martin's whole thing for most of the series has been that he sounds a little doofy, for lack of a better word, and people constantly underestimate his intelligence. and now he has played peter lukas like a cheap whistle and forced me to realize that by taking for granted that he was being successfully manipulated by peter lukas, i too was underestimating martin... and his pure love for jon <:3c no but seriously i even remember explicitly making a mental note to remember that martin is smartin but it fell by the wayside as my emotions (of sadness that jon and martin seemed to be growing further apart) took precedent

i work a non-verbal job just doing mundane tasks and that gives me all the time in the world to think about things like "if they were to have jon and martin reunite in a tearful embrace, how would you convey the physical contact in an audio format? like, whap? soft thud?"

jon enters the lonely and voiceover peter comes in to try and factcheck the ship

i guess it makes sense that peter would try to do the ritual for the lonely all by himself

did he kill peter by asking him to death? or did peter just self-destruct rather than be forced to answer?

the way jon snapped martin out of the loneliness just by making him look at his face... that's powerful. as a lonely person, i know that the most cry-making thing you can realize when you feel alone is that another person is, in fact, there with you

martin went for a walk and now it's thunderstorming. i wonder if he came back as soon as it started raining and now he's standing nearby invisibly as jon reads the intimidating magnus statement. ...I GUESS NOT

i plan to read through the transcripts of all the episodes (as it’s faster than re-listening, though i might selectively re-listen) so that i may better understand some things and answer some questions in this post that i didn’t ultimately resolve. i can’t say i was paying 101% attention all the way through. also april is very far away

#the magnus archives

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statementends · 5 years

Text

Pulled Apart

Characters: Sasha, Jon, Elias, featuring Tim and... NotMartin

Pairings: None, Gen

Warnings: Non-canonical Character death, The Web, The Stranger, Brutal Pipe Murder mentioned.

Summary: Sasha has spiders in her head, but controlling and manipulating her coworkers doesn’t mean she can’t look after them.

AO3: Link

Keeping Jon on task wasn’t easy. Finding Gertrude had shook him. Sasha couldn’t blame him. After all they’d gone through finding his predecessor was the last straw. Still, she had a job to do, and Jon antagonizing Tim wasn’t going to get it done.

“He’s being a paranoid prat.” Tim grumbled.

“Yeah, but you know how Jon is. He’s not the type ready for an emergency.”

Tim laughed, a bit tense, a bit high. “Yeah. Worms and monsters.”

Sasha smiled at him encouragingly. They were friends after all. Comforting Tim wasn’t so hard, and it worked into the greater web so there was no harm in keeping the peace. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Good luck,” Tim sounded doubtful. She patted his shoulder.

Tim wasn’t who Jon needed to be afraid of.

“I’m heading out,” Martin….

No… Not Martin. She had to remind herself sometimes. She could only just remember him. A large man with a round face and kind eyes. The web inside her trapped the thoughts that the stranger tried to tug out of reality. She was determined to remember Martin. No one else would.

The stranger was thin and pointed and left briskly. He didn’t stay late. He didn’t make tea. He had a confident air and was unconcerned about everything.

She went to Jon’s office. Jon was worse than he had ever been. He knew there was something wrong, but couldn’t name it or know it. The spiders whispered and explained to her why that was so difficult for him. Why it would make things easier for her in the long run.

Controlling her co-workers for a greater plot, well… maybe it was evil. Maybe she was a monster, but she could make things easier for them. Kinder.

“Jon?” She asked softly.

He fumbled with his tape recorder quickly clicking it off.

“Sorry, yes, I was just… finishing up. Did you need something, Sasha?”

“I need you to go home Jon,” She said. “You slept here last night.”

He jolted. “How do you know that?”

“You’re in the same clothes as yesterday.” She pointed calmly at his rumpled shirt.

“I--I was working late.”

“And you need to leave Tim alone.”

“Tim?”

“He’s not doing well after what happened.”

“He’s been angry…”

“He’s been hurting,” Sasha corrected. “And he doesn’t know how to deal with what happened.”

Jon looked caught out. “Well… I don’t have any answers for him.”

“Jon, you don’t need to have answers.”

He looked at her sharply. “That-- yes I do. Yes I do. That’s why--I need to know. I found something. A letter in the rubbish bin--”

“Jon,” Sasha interrupted. “How can I prove to you we won’t hurt you?”

“I--I don’t think that you’ll--”

“I know you think one of us murdered Gertrude. Jon, I’m not going to ask you to trust me. I know that’s hard for you right now, but let me help you.”

“What were you doing when she was murdered?” His voice went low and… there was something behind it. Like a thread tugging her towards the web. But it wasn’t spiders on his tongue.

“I haven’t the foggiest. But if it helps I’ll find out.”

Jon’s shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry,” He mumbled. “I just… I can’t.”

“Here, I brought you some tea. Drink that and then go home. You’re exhausted.”

Jon gazed at the cup frustration welling. A memory. Maybe he could almost remember Martin.

“It would be Martin,” He had said to her.

He held an axe in his hands standing in front of the table.

“Jon!” She yelled. He gave her a vicious look and tried to bring the axe down. With no other choice she reached out and caught his wrist in a string. Jon shook. He was terrified now.

“You’re one of them.” He said. “You’re a… a spider. Just like--”

“I’m not going to hurt you Jon,” Sasha said. “I’m trying to save you. If you break that table you’ll release what’s holding that thing back.”

“It--it took Martin!” Jon shouted. “And you knew. You hid it.”

“I didn’t want you putting yourself in danger, Jon. I’m not your enemy.”

“You’re a monster.”

She winced. Takes one to know one probably wouldn’t be the best strategy in this case.

“I heard the tapes. He… I don’t remember him. I don’t recognise him. He sounded...so lost and I hated him. Why would I hate him?”

There were angry tears in his eyes.

“I don’t think you did,” Sasha said softly.

“He lied on his CV.” Jon went on. “I went to see his mother, about some lie he had written her about. She hadn’t seen him since… since Prentiss. She laughed and asked if we finally found out he was scamming us. I--it always drove me crazy his Latin translations. He didn’t seem to know how to format things properly, but he had never known, he was just trying to get by with a sick mother and I disliked him because I thought he should know better--and I don’t even remember him. Just… just the impression on a few cassette tapes.” He was babbling now. His arms were still strung up by her web holding up the axe.

“How long?” he asked suddenly.

“How long?”

“How long have you been one of them?”

Sasha sighed. “Since Prentiss.”

“How many people did we lose that day?” His voice broke a little. “Is Tim--?”

“Tim’s human. Just… angry and a bit broken. Jon, if I let you go will you put the axe down?”

“Is it yours? Did you bring it here so that it would--”

“No,” She shook her head. “I didn’t… we didn’t bring it here, and if you break it then the thing pretending to be Martin will be free to kill us all. Right now it’s trapped, tethered.”

“How can I trust you?”

“I’m still me, Jon.”

“Have you used your powers on me before?”

“Not until now. Will you let go of the axe, Jon?”

He nodded.

She let the threads fall.

He slammed the axe down hard on the table.

“Damn it.” The person living in the tunnels had somehow cut her off. NotMartin was trapped, but she was separated from Jon. “Hey, help me out,” She called to the spiders that had claimed the tunnels as their own. The spiders skittered to her and then proceeded down the tunnel in droves. She followed them. Her senses were messed up in the tunnels. There was no controlling the buried in its own domain.

She finally found the trapdoor back to the archives and lifted herself out. She heard metal hitting flesh coming from Jon’s office and ran to it. She was sure NotMartin had been trapped but--

Elias stood over the ruined body of a man holding a pipe. He was covered in blood.

“Ah,” he breathed heavily. “Sasha. Good. We should chat.” He threw the pipe aside and moved past her. “Quickly now, Jon’s going to come back any moment.”

“You--” Elias… had…

“The Mother of Puppets and I have an understanding. If you don’t want to break that understanding follow me to my office, now.”

She felt her own webs tugging. The Mother’s guidance. Damn. Damn it!

She followed Elias into his office. He threw his bloodied coat to the side. “Well, that could have gone better.”

“What are you? I thought…”

“The Web is very good about moving the players on the board. The Eye is good at knowing who the players are.” Elias said. “I know you’re here to make sure things continue on schedule. I don’t have a problem with that, but it will be hard to convince Jon of your loyalties knowing what you are now. He has a thing about spiders.”

“What’s Jon going to think when he sees that body in his office?” Sasha asked coldly.

“He’ll run. He’ll know it was me and think I want to kill him.”

“Won’t the police suspect him?”

“I’m not worried,” Elias shrugged. “Jon needs to go learn some lessons. We can keep the police at bay for a little while I’m sure. I know you’re going to help me Sasha, so I won’t ask.”

“I’m going to help my friends,” Sasha corrected. She felt it. Hate curling in her stomache because he must know he had to know about everything that had happened. He could have protected them from Prentiss properly. He could have saved Martin. He could have saved her. He had just watched.

“Control is the Web’s expertise. Not mine.” He plucked the thought from her head. “If the Distortion doesn’t keep him, Tim will be back soon. He’ll probably need some help.”

“That’s it?”

“Now we both know where we stand with one another. I think that’s enough for one evening. I need to--”

“Destroy evidence?”

“You’d be helpful in that, but I won’t ask you to do it.”

“Good.”

Sasha turned and walked out of the office. She went back downstairs to the archives just in time for Tim to burst through a door that had never been in the archives before. He panted looking behind him, terrified.

“No, no, Helen!?” He called out.

“Tim?”

“Sasha! Sasha we need to get out of here now, that--that Michael. It--oh… oh god.” He looked in through the open door of Jon’s office, seeing the corpse.

“He--I didn’t think… I thought he was getting better.” He stumbled over his words.

She hated getting tangled in someone else’s web. Elias had been setting things up for a long time though. She took Tim upstairs to the breakroom and called the police.

She was going to have a hard time convincing Jon to trust her. Right now she just needed to keep everyone left together.

“I’ll make you some tea,” She offered.

#tma #the magnus archives #sasha james #jonathan sims #the Archivist #web!sasha #fanfiction

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jashasedai · 5 years

Text

Tame AU: Pose

Author’s Notes:

After the Racing Drivers are freed, they take their match’s last names.

Pose

Alternate Universe- Tame Racing Drivers

http://jashasedai.tumblr.com/post/151392469153/summary-au-tame-racing-drivers

Fandom- Formula E, Formula 1, Motocross, MotoGP, WEC, Indycar

After they are freed, Andre Lotterer’s Merlin, and Stoffel Vandoorne’s Seven have both taken up photography as a hobby. They decide to showcase the things Racing Drivers have always kept hidden

Tags: Formula E, Formula 1, Motocross, MotoGP, WEC, Indycar, AU Tame Racing Drivers, Alternate Universe, slavery, abuse, scars, tattoos

Other featured characters

Ricky Carmichael’s Ratchet(NASCAR driver, most winning motocross/supercross rider of all time, 25x champion(most winning RD/RR of all time)

Mark Webber’s Rabbit(Formula 1, WEC Champion)

Max Chilton’s Freeza(Formula 1, WEC, Indycar) and Alexander Rossi’s Xerxes(Formula 1, Indycar)

Niki Lauda’s Grad(Formula 1 3x Champion)

Dani Pedrosa’s Duende(MotoGP)

Alain Prost’s Professor(Formula 1 3x Champion)

Maria de Villota’s Lucir(Formula 1)

Jean-Eric Vergne’s Jev(Formula 1, Formula E Champion), Jenson Button’s Sugarboy(Formula 1 Champion), Nico Hulkenberg’s Hulk(Formula 1), Paul di Resta’s Sweep(Formula 1)

Michael Schumacher’s Shoe(Formula 1 7xChampion)

Story is under the break

Pose

2019

Merlin Lotterer tapped his fingers on the desk and stood up. [I will call the journalists. I will speak with the woman at the magazine. I want to do it.]

Andre didn’t like the idea. He could see that.

It made him feel afraid.

It made him feel hurt.

[You do not have to help me.]

Andre cringed. [I do not want to....] He looked down into the coffee mug in his hand.

Merlin smiled at him and rested his fingertips on Andre’s shoulder. [It is alright. You do not have to.]

Andre nodded.

Seven Vandoorne clutched his stonework mug in both hands. There was mist coming off of the water. He was wrapped in a warm knit blanket. The coffee steamed. A long way off, a waterbird called.

[Will you do a self portrait? Of you, this time, not of me?] Stoffel asked.

One side of Seven’s mouth curled up.

He nodded.

[What kind of pose do you feel comfortable with?] Seven asked.

Ratchet Carmichael held his elbows to his sides and shrugged. He wasn’t really looking at Seven, he was looking off set, where Ricky was standing.

[Maybe this would be easier if it were just us,] Seven suggested.

Ratchet didn’t move.

His match took the hint. He picked up his jacket. [I will be outside when you’re ready, bud.] Seven waited until the studio door clicked closed.

The atmosphere became less tense.

[Maybe we can just start with some…]

Ratchet had turned around. He was yarding his shirt up over his back. The neon green came up off the dark cloth of his pants, exposing pale pink skin, sprinkled with orange freckles. Except for the deep, white, rigid scars that criss crossed his back from his ribs to just below his shoulders.

He dropped the green jersey on the ground and dropped to his knees. The toes of one bare foot touching the pad of the other.

He laced his fingers behind his neck, and drew them up the back of his head, until they were clear of the faded black barcode in the shaved smooth patch behind his right ear. He pulled his head down, with his hands, so only a little of the red orange hair was visible above his fingers.

His back arched, like he was in agony.

‘Can you show me like this?’

Seven took the picture.

[Are you ready?] Merlin asked.

Mark Webber squeezed Rabbit’s hand again and stepped out of the shot.

Merlin took his time adjusting the light properly, so it did not reflect off the X Ray sheet. Rabbit’s shirt was a little lighter than true Dark Blue, but it looked wonderful through the viewfinder, against the rich grey background and the black and white of the X Ray.

[Look into the camera, good. Now look at the tape on the floor. Think about when this happened.]

Rabbit’s face twisted from it’s usual statuesque calm, into a wide mouthed grimace. His eyes clenched shut.

The tendons in his neck stood out, like he was screaming. The shaved skin behind his ear tensed. His whole body tensed.

[I HATE THIS!]

His hand clenched tight around the X Ray, white lines shining across the black background and pale grey of his bones, where the medic had wired the teenage stallion’s broken jaw shut.

Merlin took the picture.

[It is alright. Be proud.] The White mare, Freeza Chilton, coaxed the stallion.

Xerxes Rossi tugged his black t-shirt lower, though his black shorts were perfectly decent, covering his legs to mid thigh.

[Put your right hand on my right shoulder,] She told him, [And your left arm around me, with your left hand just below the right.]

It was strange, sending all his instructions through her, but Seven was having no luck getting Xerxes to pay attention to his directions long enough to get posed. ‘Please ask him to move his leg farther to the side, so I can see his full tattoo,’ He sent to Freeza.

‘Now straighten your back and tighten your belly.’

She followed his direction.

‘This couch is tickling me,’ Xerxes commented, moving out of position to touch the antique velvet.

Freeza revved and he moved back into place.

He rested his chin on her shoulder, his mutilated hands still scarred, even after the surgeries that had been done to repair them. He sat behind her, with his right foot flat on the floor, left leg up on the couch with his ankle under his right knee, leaning forward against her back. His shorts displayed the tattoo over his right thigh. She sat against his shin, back straight, her knees together and her hands on them, framing the cesarean scar across her lower abdomen, visible between the white crop top and the white yoga pants she wore.

They sat sidelong to the couch, facing the wall to Seven’s right.

The final picture would be black and white, except for the pink of her scar, and the scarlet and green of his tattoo.

Their barcodes were starkly visible.

[Now look at me,] Seven instructed.

Both of them turned vivid eyes on him. They would remain colourless.

Seven took the picture.

The couch Merlin chose was modern. White. With sharp lines. It looked like something Andre would have in his home. Unembellished. Efficient.

Merlin thought it looked uncomfortable.

He thought it looked like a stable felt.

[Do we sit here?] Niki Lauda asked.

[Yes, please,] Merlin said. [Grad to my left. Niki to my right.]

They sat.

[I would like to take several pictures. I would like Grad to look towards that wall.] He pointed at the wall beyond Niki. [Niki, please look at the wall behind the camera.]

Niki looked towards him. He had bright blue eyes.

Grad broke into a grin. The laugh wrinkles around his eyes, green without the contact lenses, distorted when they reached his scar. He had no barcode anymore, though a dark smudge showed where a corner had been.

[When you are comfortable, please take off the hat, Niki,] Merlin said.

He looked sideways at his partner, with whom he’d shared his whole life, and took the red baseball cap off his head.

Grad giggled again.

Niki’s face broke into a wide smile as well.

Merlin took the picture.

[Do they hurt you?] Seven asked.

[Yes,] Duende Pedrosa answered. [The losses hurt more, though.] He grinned.

Seven looked down at the little Rider stallion’s frame, covered in only a tight pair of rust orange shorts. His tan muscles were interrupted by pink, puckered lines at every large joint.

He turned his head so his barcode was apparent, and raised his arms in the classic bodybuilder’s pose, flexing, so his heavily muscled body looked as hard as the farings of his motorcycles.

[I am too strong for pain to stop me.]

Seven took the picture.

[I want you to tell me about that day,] Merlin said.

Professor Prost looked down at the black and white photographs on the table in front of him.

They looked like pictures of war.

Hallways, littered with bodies.

[When we woke up, it seemed just to be morning,] The old stallion, said, [We did our routines. No one knew it would be anything different.]

He told the story of the day.

[Then Alain came, and we all went outside, I left them.] He ran his hand into his curly, thinning, hair. It exposed the barcode he still wore hidden.

Tears dripped onto the photos.

A loss deeper than any physical amputation.

Merlin took the picture.

[Are you sure you want me? I am not...important…] The blonde mare’s hair was beginning to grow out after her confinement. Her health hadn’t fully returned.

[None of us were treated like we were important,] The older mare told her. [This is something that should be seen.] She smiled a sad smile. She brushed her hand through the other mare’s hair.

The hair had grown unevenly around her scar, but Lucir was certain she wanted it cut, to show the scar better for the photoshoot. Ochre, the Yellow mare who had come along to support her, trimmed the hair with scissors.

She was careful to keep the cut strands from catching on the scar that continued down Lucir’s scalp, over her forehead, across the warped skin where her right eye had been, and back across her cheek. It fell, so blonde it was nearly white, onto the hairdresser’s plastic cape and slid off onto the floor. She brushed the hair off, and wiped with a damp cloth. She removed the cape, letting the rest of the hair fall, unheeded onto the floor. She moved off the set.

Lucir hunched on top of the barchair where she’d been given the haircut, with her bare heels hooked on the highest rung.

Seven examined the scene through the viewfinder. The mare looked scared, cold, exposed.

[The paper,] He said, as he realized she wasn’t holding it.

Ochre brought the paper and handed it to Lucir.

[Look to your left, please,] Seven said.

He made certain both her barcode and scarred eye were clear.

He let the camera focus, and made sure the words on the paper were clear. They were small, but the larger letters across the top, Certificate of Death, and the name of Lucir’s match would be legible to anyone who saw the full page photo.

[This is going to hurt,] Seven said, [But we want to show your emotion.]

Lucir de Villota nodded, unlocked her jaw, and got ready.

[What did you feel, when the handlers told you Maria was found dead, Lucir?]

The mare’s grind of agony expressed itself in her whole body.

Seven took the picture.

[Did I look that way?] Jev Vergne asked Jean-Eric.

Jean-Eric frowned and nodded.

They stood inspecting the large photograph projected onto the back wall of the set.

The picture was from the investigation FIA had done, after Jev had blacked out from hunger and fatigue on the weekend of a Grand Prix.

It showed a stallion, skinny beyond recognition, muscular, but with barely enough body fat to survive. Beside it, sized to match, was another, and 3 more after that.

In the studio, Rabbit Webber was standing beside the snack table, one arm crossed and the other holding up a plastic cup. Sugarboy Button was filling up a plate with ham spirals.

Hulkie Hulkenberg and Sweep di Resta were standing in the corner, whispering.

Of all of them, the change in Sugarboy was most dramatic. The younger stallions in the pictures from 2013 and 2014 looked emaciated. Sugarboy and Rabbit looked lean and stringy. Now Sugarboy looked like Hulkie’s namesake. He was muscled like a healthy tiger. Of all the pictures, Sweeps was the saddest. The naturally tall, blade thin stallion looked skeletal. He was pale. His ribs were showing. His stomach didn’t look trim, it looked empty.

Now Sweep was a fit young stallion, they all were.

[Everyone please get in line,] Merlin called.

The stallions lined up in front of their before pictures.

[Everyone smile,] He said.

The group of well fed stallions smiled.

Merlin took the picture.

‘I will not let you fall,’ Seven sent. He scooted closer, keeping a firm arm around the older stallion’s ribs to keep him steady. The soft comforter he’d laid on the carpet, to protect the stallion’s skin from any rubbing on the unpleasant surface, was becoming disarrayed, but he couldn’t move to fix it.

The camera was set up on a tripod, with the viewfinder pointed towards them.

Shoe Schumacher sent a feeling of amusement. ‘I trust you.’ He felt relaxed in Seven’s arms.

Seven had thought through a few positions, but decided that the best one was with Shoe facing mostly away from the camera, but not so far that his face could not be seen. He had to lay up against Seven’s chest to do this, his legs stretched out behind him, towards the camera, their depleted muscle looking unnaturally thin in the foreshortening.

They looked at each other, face to face.

The low cut shirt Shoe was wearing revealed the star shaped scar at the back of his neck, where the handlers had punctured his spinal column. His thinning hair stopped short at the place where his barcode had been burned off, leaving a pale scar and no evidence that he was who he was.

The scar on Seven’s jawline shone white in the light he had chosen.

The mirror behind them reflected the scars that ran just to one side of Seven’s barcode, up behind his ears. The caption of the picture would explain the paralysis, and the numerous surgeries Seven had gone through, to change his face from matching Michael’s son, to matching Stoffel Vandoorne.

He smiled at Shoe.

Shoe looked determined.

Seven took the picture.

Andre examined the article.

Hidden Wounds: The stories behind the scars of the Stigs you know and love.

Duende’s flexing was an excellent cover photo. His career had been notorious for injuries, and he looked triumphant.

Seven Vandoorne’s photographs were primarily black and white. The one with the Indycar mare and stallion, and the slight touch of color was very moving.

Merlin’s pictures were in color, and made more use of background and props. Andre’s heart caught at the picture of Maria de Villota’s mare. He remembered that crash, vividly. Most of the matches assumed the Racing Driver couldn’t have survived, that Maria’s passing was in response to sadness.

The loss of a match perfectly encapsulated what Merlin had told Andre he wanted to show everyone with this series of pictures. Seven had focused mainly on scars that the public had not been aware of, but Merlin showed the heartbreak of growing up as a Racer, up against impossible odds. Losing things that humans could only barely comprehend.

That was what he was showing, here.

Then Andre came to the two page spread.

The paralysed stallion, and the stallion denied his chance to ever be one.

[It was a team effort,] Merlin said.

Andre looked up with tears in his eyes. [I am so sorry you all had to endure this.]

He opened his arms.

Merlin took comfort in them.

[This is your best work,] Stoffel said, closing the magazine. He set it on the table beside his patio chair. [I am SO proud of you.]

Seven turned from the summer sun setting over the lake.

He stepped away from the rail, and settled on his knees, between Stoffel’s feet. [I did it for you.]

Stoffel smiled. The smile for when he was uncertain.

[I wanted you to understand.]

The uncertainty went away.

‘Thank you.’

Seven laid his head on Stoffel’s knee. ‘I love you, and I just want us to be together. I want to be matched with you. I am glad I am matched with you. Those stallions Merlin showed when they were hungry, they are better, now.’ He lifted his head. ‘I am better, with you.’

Stoffel got down on the deck with Seven. He hugged his Stig. ‘I love you.’

Seven took comfort in this.

#AU Tame Racing Drivers #Formula 1 fanfic #formula e fanfic #motocross fanfic #motogp fanfic #scars #physical abuse #fanfic

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