Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Martin dreamed that night of opening the door to the Archives and walking down slimy cement steps, stopping in front of a wood oak door. The door had a plaque in front of it, reading in embossed letters ‘THE ARCHIVIST’. He looked down at his hands, only to find himself holding a mug of steaming tea. The mug had a kitten on it, with the word ‘CAT-FINATED’ underneath. It was quite cute. 

He reached out with his left hand and twisted the brass knob, gently pushing the door open. The room inside was dark and dim, lined with shelves crowded with filing boxes, endless stacks and stacks of paper. It loomed above Martin’s head, shadows nipping at his heels, and in the center of the room was an imposing oak door with a tall, slight, unspeakably handsome man sitting behind it. 

The man was unfamiliar. Strikingly handsome, exactly Martin’s type, he had curly natural hair that puffed around his head in an uncontrolled cloud. His face was narrow and thin, elbows jutting out like bones, and he was dressed in a shabby and overly large tweed jacket, grey slacks, and soft wool jumper. He was graying at the temples, and he appeared to be asleep at his desk, chin bent down to his sternum. 

Martin crept forward, gently placing the tea at the corner of the desk. It was crowded with papers, a clunky computer shoved in the corner and a small stack of notebooks laid over a collection of pens to stop them from rolling away. Small glasses sat folded on top of a crumpled take-out box. The scene was charmingly domestic - some kind of historian or researcher, falling asleep at his desk. Martin felt a burst of warm fondness bloom in his chest, as if the man was an old friend who he was always happy to bring tea to. 

And, well, he was rather handsome. Before he could think about it too hard, because some part of Martin was aware that this was nothing but a dream, he reached out a hand and brushed one errant curl from the man’s face. There. Perfect. 

The man opened his eyes, and Martin was struck with a unique and bone-deep horror, because the man had no eyes. They had been scooped out, roughly and unprofessionally, as if with a spoon. Empty eye sockets, oozing yellow pus and lined with viscera, gazed sightlessly in Martin’s direction, and the man’s mouth gaped open slightly. Martin jerked his hand back, clutching it to his chest, sucking in a breath as his heart jumped five beats in his chest. 

Then the man that should not have been alive at all spoke. 

“Help me...help me…”

For some reason, although Martin was more scared than he could handle, although his hands were trembling so much the thick tea spilled over the side of the mug and fell on the ground, sizzling and eating through the hardwood, he leaned in. He didn’t run away. Since when did Martin Blackwood not run away? 

“What’s wrong with you? How can I help?”

“Help me,” the man moaned, as black ichor oozed from his unintelligently gaping mouth, “help me.” 

“I don’t know how,” Martin confessed, frantically hissing as the splotches of acid tea sprayed onto his shoes, quickly eating through the leather. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong -”

The horrible, pathetic creature, so desolate and lonely, moaned again. It was a terrible sound. Lonely and despairing, like an animal mourning its child, but it held echoes of something unearthly and wrong. Like nails across a chalkboard, it was uncomfortable and disturbing, but it was so sad too. 

“I can’t remember my name,” sobbed the creature that must have been The Archivist. “Help me, Martin.”

“Okay!” Martin yelled - half out of pity, half just because he wanted it to shut up. “I’ll help you! Please, please stop making that sound!”

Then the creature screeched, a horrible sound that vibrates your bones out of place, and Martin felt his eardrums rupture. He screamed too, losing grasp of the tea, barely cognizant of the way the mug shattered on his floorboards and spilled poison tea all over the floor. The creature mourned itself, cried out in desolation over sustaining an existence that was so anathema to everything good and kind, and it wrapped Martin up in its sorrow until it was him and he was it and there was no longer any meaningful difference. 

Martin felt a ghost-like spectre of fingers clasp around his own eyeballs, ready to pluck them from their sockets, shrill caterwauling bursting Martin’s ear drums again and again, and it wasn’t until he realized that it was nothing but his alarm that he was able to wake up. 

Martin woke up shaking in fear, forgetting for a brief second where he was, but all that awaited him was his small, narrow bed in his cramped flat. He had a vague sensation of terror, of black ichor and acid, of a premonition, but the more he tried to hold on the more the dream slipped through his fingers, and by the time he had grabbed his dream journal and pen on his nightstand it was gone. 

He sighed, placing the book back down on the bed and silencing the alarm. Martin fully believed in significant dreams, but you had to remember them for them to have any real meaning. He had always liked the poetry of it, the faint skimming of your fingers over the inexplicable. Guess it wasn’t to be today. 

It wasn’t until he washed his face, brushed his short hair, pissed, and opened up his cabinets in his kitchen to find his favorite mug of tea that he saw the CAT-FINATED mug that had guest starred in the dream, and the memory hit him like a mack truck. 

It was almost exciting. Nightmares that were eerie and desperate were fascinating. Maybe the handsome man was a lost, drowned spirit? A murdered soul, left to wander the Earth bound by chains? How spooky! This would make a great story idea. 

It would be a tale of love, Martin decided, as he ate toast with one hand and scribbled in his ideas journal (‘Think Happy, Be Happy!’) with the other. Definitely a love story. The hero has a unique empathetic talent, able to read the latent feelings and thoughts from other people and things. His job is as a ghost hunter, using psychometry to read the lives of ghosts and help puzzle out their past so they can move on. The love interest would be a ghost trapped within the walls of an old manor, desperate for connection, yet not quite ready to move on…

That had always been a talent of Martin’s. To grow so wrapped up in the story or the language or the idea that he could forget the fear or the unhappiness. Martin had borne many sad years just like that, just by keeping his mind pleasantly somewhere else. It was a very healthy coping mechanism that always worked. 

But, Martin thought as he burrowed into the packed sardine tube that natives called the London Underground, the Institute never took any Statements that were just spooky dreams. Tons of those didn’t make sense. It was definitely nothing supernatural. But it was fun to think that it could be, that maybe there was a chance, in some other world…

Oh, well. Life was boring when you were a research assistant with the Magnus Institute. Martin wrote some story ideas on his phone, letting his mind settle into the easy routine of the commute. Get ready for another boring day. 

“Transferred?!”

“Yep! Starting right now, we are the newest archival assistants.” Tim carefully slotted his laptop and case into the box, far more casually throwing in his collection of stress toys. Tim made a big show of how relaxed and laid back he was, but sometimes Martin felt as if he had a lot of pent up anxiety. Or pent up...something. “Got the call from Rosie this morning. You, me, Sasha James.” He grinned broadly at Martin, like a shark. “I hope your will’s written out.”

Martin felt his stomach drop from underneath him. His head was swimming in cotton fog. Transferred. With no warning. What had he done wrong? If they hated him so much why didn’t they just fire him? Oh, god, they found out about the CV. But there was no way Tim and Sasha had lied on their CVs - what had they done wrong? It was hard to imagine Tim doing anything wrong period. 

“Who’s going to take care of my Mum,” Martin whispered. 

Tim didn’t look sympathetic. He looked a little manic, actually, tossing his earthly possessions into the cardboard box and hoisting it up. Martin politely did not notice how ripped he was. Tim definitely noticed Martin not noticing, but instead of teasing him about it he just put a flattened box on Martin’s own desk for him to pack up too. Martin slowly began arranging his potted plants, books, and secret ‘How-To’ manuals inside, taking extra care with his snacks and mug collection. He would need them in the coming days. 

The research assistants around them didn’t look sympathetic either. They weren’t even looking at him, all bent over their own desks working studiously away. It was like Martin and Tim were now the untouchables, no longer acceptable for polite society. Pity was definitely lurking behind some of their expressions, but a profound sense of relief was tangible. At least it was those guys. Not us. 

Well, Martin thought spitefully as he finished packing up his box and hoisted it up, someday it would be you. Then you’ll regret not showing a little bit of empathy. 

They trudged their walk of shame through the open office plan, through the crowded hallways lined with eye shaped windows that Martin had always found just a bit gauche, towards the desolate and murky stairwell that lead to the basement. Tim kept up an inane running commentary the whole time, wondering if it was possible to get out of their contracts by being turned into vampires. He only stopped talking when they walked out of the stairwell and almost walked straight into a six foot tall woman with long, curling hair down to her back, easily carrying three boxes with one hand. She looked just as manic as Tim, but far more sincere about it.

“You lads got the email too, then?” Sasha asked, grinning broadly. Martin knew her - well, not to brag, but he knew basically everyone - but it was as distantly as he knew everyone else from Artifact Storage. That lot was...they were a bit weird. “Wicked, am I right? This is going to be so much fun. Archive assistant!”

“You’re barking mad, James,” Tim said flatly. He lead the team down the hallway, Martin huffing and struggling to keep up with the unfairly long legs of the other two, and Tim elbowed the door open and propped it open so Sasha and Martin could slip inside. “This is a death sentence and you know it. How long do you think we have? Two months? Gosh, even three?”

“Stop whining, Stoker. I’m from Artifact Storage. We eat death curses for breakfast.”

“Death curse?!” Martin squeaked. “Who said anything about a death curse?”

But, as Martin knew full well when the two others gave him an unimpressed look, nobody needed to say anything. Everybody knew. 

The Archives were, in a word, dusty. With an open office plan, four abandoned desks pushed against each other, and bookshelves filled with boxes, papers, and books lining the walls, it looked very much like every other office space in the building. There was a small kitchenette near the front, with a fridge, sink, and keurig, and an ajar door lead to another small hallway. Martin could faintly see three doors in the hallway - one clearly labelled ‘RECORDING ROOM’, another labelled ‘LIBRARY’. It was impossible to make out the label on the last door. The entire space looked straight out of the 70s, with wood paneling and grimy corners, and the dust was so thick in the air Martin had to fight a sneeze. It looked as if nobody had been down here in a long time. 

Which was, of course, true - the last assistant, Emma Roberts, died three months ago. It had taken that long to replace her. Martin wondered how it felt, to sit alone in an office room all day, never interacting, never leaving. Martin himself had barely seen her. Sometimes he used to see her in the cafeteria, huddled in the corner, shoving food in her mouth as quickly as possible so she could escape back to the archives. She had always looked a bit hunted. 

“Home sweet home!” Tim announced, kicking the door shut behind them. It clicked shut with a disturbing finality, like a coffin lid closing, and Martin fought the urge to gulp. “I call the one closest to the door.”

“I call the one closest to the hallway!”

That left Martin with the one awkwardly in the center, across from Tim and next to Sasha. She was unloading a great deal of laptops from the box onto her desk, as well as more Funko Pops of Overwatch characters than anybody really needed. She even had a little bisexual pride flag she put in a cup, which Tim grinned at and pinned up his own miniature bi pride flag on the corkboard divider between their desks. Martin sighed and, embarrassed, took out his own plastic figurine of a penguin swinging a gay pride flag and put it next to his work computer. 

“Hah! Homos have overtaken the Magnus Institute Archives!” Sasha collapsed on her rolling chair, easily spinning around. She grinned fiercely at them, wild hair tangling around her shoulders. “Well, if I’m stuck here with anyone, I’m glad it’s with Stoker and Blackwood. You two are fun. What’s your opinion on arson?”

“Mildly negative,” Tim said hesitantly. 

“Positive,” Martin said immediately. 

Both Sasha and Tim stared at him. Martin flushed. What? He had been a teenager once.

They shot the shit like that for ten or twenty more minutes, waiting for somebody to come down and tell them what to do . So far as Martin was aware, they did have a Head Archivist - he remembered Gertrude, unfortunately - but since she had ‘gotten got’, as Tim put it, by the curse years ago, nobody had ever met her replacement. Surely the Head Archivist was going to join them eventually and tell them the situation. 

“Maybe Mr. Bouchard will come down and explain,” Martin volunteered weakly. “He always seemed to be more involved with the Archives than the other departments…”

Tim silently pantomimed, hypothetically, the act of bashing in someone’s head with a large pipe. 

“Yeah, I’m with Tim,” Sasha said, slipping off her heels and propping her stockinged feet on her desk. “Never forgave the man for ruining the Artifact Storage betting pool of who would be the first to choke the life from Leitner’s beady little eyes. I had at least five hundred pounds riding on me being the one to crack. Personally, I thought it would be Tom. There’s something not quite right about Tom.”

“Did anybody win?” Tim asked in morbid fascination. 

“Oh, yeah. At least three people predicted it would be Elias. Easy bet, honestly.”

“Maybe we can just check the Head Archivist’s office?” Martin suggested, stopping all conversation short. Both of his coworkers stared at him, eyes wide, as if he had just said something either very brave or very stupid. In their workplace, it was frequently the same thing. Martin hunched over a little, feeling like an idiot. “I mean, maybe he was already in, and he just hasn’t heard us talking…”

“How could he not?” Tim asked skeptically. “I bet he works off site or something.”

“We can’t just keep sitting around!”

“Why not?” Sasha said, shrugging. “So what if nobody shows up to give us any work? Then we get to goof off until the curse hits us. Get paid to nap.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tim said. 

But it didn’t sound good to Martin. What about performance reviews? What if they found out that he lied on his CV - alright, granted, to be fired would be a relief and a blessing. But still. He could get his pay docked. He needed the money. Or maybe they feed people without high school degrees to Artifact Storage. He didn’t know what they did down there. 

Besides, they couldn’t just... not have a boss. Or any work. That just wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. If they didn’t have a boss, or any work, or anything to do, then all pretense was officially surrendered, and they really were just waiting around to die mysteriously and horribly. 

And if there was one thing Martin refused to do, it was surrender pretenses. He was not much in the habit of lying to himself, but he was very much in the habit of lying to other people. 

Right. That was that, then. Martin stood up, steeling his expression. He clenched his fists, and with careful clarity of purpose strode towards the door to the hallway and thrust it open. “I’m talking to our boss. This is ridiculous.”

“Wait, Martin, no! You’re too young to die!” Tim said, scrambling up after him. “What’s wrong with just goofing off?”

“Your work ethic leaves something to be desired, Tim!”

“Crazy motherfucker,” Sasha said, immediately following after Martin, as if she was impressed. Tim scrambled up after them, bringing up the tail, as Martin strode with purpose down the hallway. He saw another door that he hadn’t noticed before, unmarked. They would have to explore later. “Do I get your penguin when you die?”

“Yes, Sasha, you can have my things when I perish from knocking on our boss’ door.” God knows his mother wouldn’t want them. Martin came to a halt in front of a likely looking door at the end of the hallway. Likely, because a plaque on the front of the door read in large, embossed letters ‘HEAD ARCHIVIST’.

It was like in his dream. Just like in his dream, actually. A bit...a bit too much like his dream. But it could just be a coincidence. All doors in the Institute basically look the same. Even if the sense of deja vu was unmistakable, and even if Martin’s hand hovered over the doorknob as Sasha started filming him on her phone and Tim called him a moron, he knew that it was just a coincidence. It had to be. 

Martin opened the door. 

The office of the Head Archivist was dark, shadowed and dim, and it was difficult to make out what was inside. Martin could see the outline of bookshelves lining the walls with a desk in the middle of the room and two chairs pushed up against it, just like in his dream, but he couldn’t make out any finer details than that. Probably for the best. Nobody was in here, obviously. Strange that it was unlocked, but maybe they could just walk back and - 

Then Sasha, the absolute madman, flipped the lights on. And they all screamed. 

There was a man sitting behind the desk. Natural hair, tall and lanky and nothing but sharp points and elbows, sitting stiffly and unnaturally still. A piece of paper was in front of him, with an old fashioned tape recorder weighing down the corner. It was almost the man in Martin’s dream, except for one vital aspect - the man was absolutely covered in eyes. 

They opened on his arms, on the back of his hands, trailing up and across his cheeks and disappearing under his high collar. With sick fascination, Martin found himself wondering if he had them in his mouth. He had two eyes in the normal place, with a third large one placed directly on his forehead, and each one was an unearthly shade of fluorescent green. 

None of them tracked the assistants, or reacted to the light. Only the one on the forehead seemed to have any sort of awareness of recognition, following the movement of the assistants into the room. When Martin glanced behind him, he saw Tim looking absolutely disgusted, and Sasha looking on in morbid fascination. 

“Is it…” Tim’s lip curled in disgust. “Alive?”

One of the eyes on his hand blinked. It didn’t answer as many questions as they hoped it did. 

“I’ll give you five quid if you poke it,” Sasha whispered to Tim. 

“You worked in Artifact Storage!” Tim hissed, shoving her forward a little. “You go poke it, you crazy woman!”

But it was Martin who walked up, Martin who stood in front of the desk and the monster. Because it was a monster, undoubtedly - there was nothing human in those eyes, something distinctly unphysical about the way it held its limbs. Like they were being held up by puppet strings, not by its own power. Unearthly and wrong and stinking of evil like rot. The figure was unmistakably putrid and grotesque, like those pictures of the bedrooms of 4chan members. It made Martin want to look away. Something else made him want to keep looking. 

He remembered, in a heavy rush - Martin, help me. Help me, Martin. This creature didn’t even seem like it could talk. But it had talked, and it had talked to him. It had wanted him. Nobody, not even nothing, had ever wanted Martin before. 

Maybe it was that something that possessed Martin to speak. “Uh, sir? My name’s Martin Blackwood. This is...this is Sasha James and Timothy Stoker. We’re your new assistants. I wanted to know, um, if there’s anything...you need?”

The figure didn’t move, didn’t respond. But the eye on the forehead flickered to him. Too late, Martin realized that the tape recorder on the desk was running. Had it been running when they came in?

“Sir?” Martin tried again, lifting a hand. “What’s your name?”

“What are you doing here?”

Everybody but the monster jumped a foot in the air and screamed, whirling around. Elias Bouchard, Director of the Magnus Institute, was standing in the doorway, frowning slightly at all of them and looking around the room with a faint distaste. 

“Mr. Bouchard!” Martin squeaked. “We were looking for -”

“The Archivist? Congratulations, you found it. Everyone out.” Elias stood back, pointedly gesturing for them all to get the fuck out, and everyone quietly shuffled the fuck out in shame. “I don’t even want to know why this door was unlocked…”

They soon reconvened in the main office space, everyone sitting politely at their desks as Elias looked over all of them. It wasn’t the first time Martin had ever seen him in person, but he could probably count the number of times they had met on one hand with fingers left over. He was shorter than Martin remembered, with a lightly lined face and close cropped snow white hair complementing his grey wool suit. He looked...well, he pinged Martin’s gaydar hard, is all he’d say about it. 

“Congratulations on your reassignments. I have taken care to select the most qualified team for this role,” Elias said smoothly. Tim was glaring at him. Sasha was looking at him as if he was a particularly fascinating bug, which was how she looked at everyone. Martin was panicking. “I hope that the adjustment period is smooth for all of you. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make it easier, or if there’s any questions I can answer.” Sasha raised her hand. He ignored her. “In order to make this adjustment as easy as possible, I ask that you all wait for further instruction -”

“Did you really beat Jurgen Leitner to death with a pipe?” Sasha asked loudly. 

“It was self-defence,” Elias said, without missing a beat. “Please don’t interrupt any further. When you file the paperwork for your transfer -”

“Is it true that you shot Gertrude Robinson in the chest five times?” Tim asked, also loudly. 

“Self defence.” Okay, Martin actually bought that. “When you submit your paperwork to HR, please remember to get your previous manager’s signature. Your benefits are slightly different, so -”

“Who’s the Archivist?” Martin asked, and this time Elias actually fell silent. “Is - is something wrong with it?”

“What do you mean by that?” Elias asked frostily. 

Martin gulped. “I just mean - it looks a little...sick?” 

It did look sick. Hollow, unearthly, and just a little pungent. Martin’s beloved cat Snuffles had died recently of a wasting disease, probably the result of an unfortunate encounter with the corruption. How she looked in the weeks before her death, her big eyes that used to be so full of love now hollow and glassy...it reminded Martin of the Archivist. Just a little. 

“The Archivist is being adequately fed,” Elias said, in clipped tones.

“Are you taking it for walks?” Tim asked. “Because I had this dog, right -”

“The Archivist does not need walks,” Elias said shortly. “Do not go into that room again. Do not interact with it. I am going to lock the door to its office, and you are not to go inside it again. Am I understood?”

Everybody nodded, Tim and Sasha more eagerly than Martin.

“Excellent.” Elias huffed a breath, surveying them all with a critical eye. He lingered over Martin, which made him hunch a little. “I have great faith in all of you. You are all talented, capable people, if occasionally annoyances. Hopefully you’ll last...oh, maybe two months this time. Good day, everybody.” He re-doffed his hat, in the most 1950s way physically possible, and nodded at all of them before turning on his heel and casually leaving the room, only looking backwards when he was opening the door to the rest of the basement. “Good luck and all hail the Eye. And I will appreciate it if you all keep Martin away from lighters this time.”

With that mysterious parting shot, all assistants were left alone to stare at each other, with everything and nothing explained, alone in a damp and musty basement. 

Martin hadn’t intended on working as a human sacrifice in a cult dedicated towards worship of a fear entity. It was just that sometimes shit happened, you know? 

Nobody ever really intends on joining cults. You don’t wake up in the morning and go ‘top of the morning to you, Mr. Sun, I think I might join a cult today, tally ho’. It just doesn’t happen. But there is a certain point where, well, nobody’s calling you back on your job applications, and you need to make rent, and you have to take care of old Mum even if she hates your guts. So you fudge a few things on your CV. You start looking at shadier places, which mostly means just evading a lot of MLM scams. And eventually one of these shady places ends up being the Magnus Institute, which you just interview at as a lark, you won’t actually get hired so there’s no need to panic about your qualifications or the job or the fact that you just saw someone sacrifice a goat on your way walking to the interview room -

And then you get hired. And, really, you realize that you never liked goats that much anyway. 

Your rent’s paid, which is nice. You’re eating more than beans on toast. You even save up a bit of money to send back to Mum. Things are going pretty good. Even if all the other employees make a lot of jokes about being unable to quit, they’re just jokes. You don’t want to quit. Then all the employees make jokes about how they’re water turning the wheel of the infernal fear entity that governs all their lives, well, sometimes jokes are a bit morbid and strange and not actually funny. That’s fine. Then finally someone remembers to slip you the employee handbook, and it says on the front page in big letters ‘HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR NEW CULT’. 

That’s when you decide to make the most of your situation. You keep your head down. You realize that you’re a cultist now, and sometimes that’s okay. You aren’t really doing anything too immoral, just some research. You have to wear a weird robe sometimes and say random phrases like ‘All Hail the Eye!’ all the time, but really, you’ll believe anything for twenty five pounds an hour. It doesn’t interfere with your life too much, so you don’t think about it too much.

You’ve heard all the off-color jokes about how the boss is a homicidal maniac, or how HR is literally zombies, or about how everyone in Artifact Storage keeps getting eaten by those evil books by that douchey Leitner guy who lives in the basement and eats rats. That’s fine. Everything’s fine, so long as it’s not your problem. 

Then it is your problem. And you really, really don’t know what to do about it. 

Anyway, Martin’s life wasn’t a disaster and it was perfectly fine. That’s why, after Elias left, he locked himself in the bathroom and had a panic attack. He would have taken the Archival library, but Tim had already called that room to have a violent freak-out in, and Sasha was in the recording room praying frantically for her life. 

They eventually all reconvened in the office space, exhausted and terrified and bored, and sat in silence next to each other. 

“My parents are going to freak,” Tim said finally, always uncomfortable with silence. “First we lost Danny to the Stranger, now they’re going to lose me to the Eye. Or something. This sucks.”

“Hey, I almost got got by the Stranger a few months ago,” Sasha said, faux-cheerfully. “Small world. How’d it happen?”

“He went to a circus. Got free tickets from his uni.”

“Ouch. Rookie mistake.”

“Yeah. He deserved it, but it still hurt.” Tim slumped on his chair, staring absently at the ceiling. “I deserved this too, I suppose. I got too deep into the wrong crowds. Heard whispering about how the Magnus Institute was educational and had cool books . Last time I attempt literacy.” His tone was bitter, and Sasha reassuringly patted his back. “How’d you run into the Stranger?”

“Oh, me and the other girls in Artifacts had a girl’s night and got drunk. Jenny dared me to smash the creepy fuckin’ table, and you know I never turn down a dare,” Sasha said cheerfully. “Good thing I’m a complete monsterfucker, or that could have ended up terribly. I mean, it did end up terribly - she never did the dishes, and was way too needy in bed, so I had to dump her, but you know.”

“Yeah. Good thing.” Tim was silent for a long minute, before casually saying, “After Danny, you know, I thought I wanted to die. But now that I actually know I’m subject to a death curse on the job I can’t quit that’s going to rip me apart in two months or less, I actually don’t want to die. Funny how that works out. What about you, Martin?”

They both looked at Martin, as if he had some cool supernatural encounter to impact, but he was just deep in thought. Or maybe just deep in a memory - in the musty scent of the Archivist’s office, in the way the single forehead eye tracked him, help me, help me, help me Martin. 

“We can’t just give up,” Martin said slowly. “Sure, we might inevitably die. But we will definitely inevitably die if we don’t even try to get out of this. We don’t have any work, right?” Both of his coworkers shook their heads. “So we have nothing better to do than try to get out of this. We have - how long, do you think?”

Both his coworkers looked at each other, and Sasha slowly said, “They tended to last longer under Gertrude. Eric Delano, Michael Shelley, Emma Roberts...I think the longest lasting one out of those was Emma, and she worked here for almost nine years. Since Gertrude bit it, nobody’s lasted longer than three months.”

“Then we have three months,” Martin said, with far more resolution than he felt. He stood up, clenching his fists, and by now both his coworkers knew him well enough to look scared when he got that expression on his face. “We start now. We have all the resources of this Institute at our disposal. We’ll figure out what we have, the enemies we’re facing, and we’ll handle them. We will survive this, if we work together.” He took a deep breath, and as casually as he could, he said, “Maybe the Archivist will help us. I feel like - like it’s the key to this, somehow.”

“Maybe it’s what’s trapping us here,” Tim said, leaning forward, eyes alight.

“Or maybe it’s trapped here too,” Sasha pointed out. “Elias was way too big on us not going in there.” She frowned. “He acted like he knew us…”

“Hannah from accounting says the bloke’s mind reader, I’m not surprised.”

“Oh, Hannah’s a big old gossip.”

“So we’re in agreement?” Martin asked loudly, cutting through the rising argument. “We have to do something?”

Both his coworkers looked at each other, then at him, and shrugged in unison. Not quite a Three Musketeers moment, but it would have to be enough. 

What else could they do?

“Three months.” Martin took a deep breath. “We can do this.”

“Can we do it tomorrow?” Tim asked, raising his hand. “I’m tired. If our boss is a crazy monster demon thing that doesn’t care what we do, I’m going to take a nap.”

“Agreed,” Sasha said, pulling out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from her desk drawer. “Slainte, bitches.”

They were going to die. 

It was strange and incongruous, to spend eight hours at work discussing how to avoid your inevitable death - suggestions ranged from ‘Murder Mr. Bouchard’ to ‘Murder the Eye’, as if that was possible, and quite frankly Martin wasn’t sure if he believed in the Eye anyway - only to ride home on the tube, to buy the same tasty pretzel from the Pretzel Man manning his little cart, to unlock your front door and collapse on the couch as you pull your shoes off. 

The one bright spot in his day, really, was the rare buzz of a text on his phone. It was from the woman he was buying his new kitten from, showing him pictures of her holding the baby and grinning. Martin couldn’t fight a grin too, typing back a smiley face and a note that he was excited to meet her. It would be another week before she was ready to be seperated from her mom, but Martin couldn’t wait. 

His fingers lingered over the phone. If he was going to die in two or three months, was it responsible to adopt a cat? Who would take care of her? What if she starved to death in his apartment alone, mewing pathetically at the door, uncared for and unloved? Would she even know that he was gone?

Martin slowly typed out a text - Sorry, but some stuff came up and I don’t think I can adopt her anymore - before his finger hovered over the send button. He didn’t want to die catless. The last three months of his life might as well be nice, right? The woman he was buying the cat from could just take her back if necessary. She’d understand.

It wasn’t the responsible thing to do. But Martin wasn’t very responsible. 

He deleted the text. Martin wasn’t a pessimist. There was a lot of things that Martin wasn’t. Sometimes it felt like there were more things that he wasn’t than things that he was. 

Martin wrote a few more lines of his new story, trying to sketch out an outline and get a feel for it. It could be good, he knew. Maybe it even would be good, if he could write it. But the story was somehow less engaging now that he knew that the mysterious Archivist was real, that it was a monster with overly long teeth and eyes that blinked, and that it was a creature in pain. He had never really been an RPF fan. 

So he composed some poetry instead as he stirred the spaghetti in the pot on the stove. He kept half an ear on the news - the Cult of the Forgotten Dark was buying new property in London, it seemed - as he absently tried to string words together. 

He ate his food, wondering if monsters ate food. He watched some daytime drivel telly, wondering if monsters enjoyed telly. Wondering about all of the decades of telly he would never get to watch, if he didn’t survive this. He worked on the poem, but it didn’t really get anywhere. 

Retro low wave new wave tape deck, you played your mixtape as I sat on the stoop with my sneakers on the boiling cement... no. 

Retro low wave new wave tape deck, you recorded my words as I spilled my heart to you ...no and also untrue. 

Why were you recording me? Was what I was saying so valuable?

That’s not even a poem. 

Words chased each other like dogs, snapping at each other’s tails, in Martin’s mind as he crawled into bed, but if it was chaos then it was a familiar one, and he was soon lulled to sleep as he tried to think of synonyms for ‘eye’. 

Martin dreamed that night of opening the door to the Archives and walking down slimy cement steps, stopping in front of a wood oak door. The door had a plaque in front of it, reading in embossed letters ‘THE ARCHIVIST’. He looked down at his hands, only to find himself holding a mug of steaming tea. 

The mug had a kitten on it, with the word ‘CAT-FINATED’ underneath.

 It was quite cute. 

Martin got a very, very strong sense of deja vu. 

Then reality hit him over the head like a brick, and Martin frantically threw the entire mug down the hallway. It crashed on the cement floor, splintering with a crack like a gunshot into a thousand pieces, and tea seeped everywhere. It began eating through the floorboards, just like yesterday, and Martin quickly escaped into the Head Archivist’s office. 

Just like last night, just like today, the Archivist sat behind the desk. His skin was clear of eyes, and Martin remembered with a flush just how attractive he was. The gaping pits for eyes were less cute, but nobody was perfect. 

Martin closed the door behind him, breathing deeply and eyeing the Archivist like it was a tiger in a cage. It didn’t ooze anything this time. It just hunched over the desk, elbows propped on the desk and hands pressed against its temples in a move that was remarkably human.

“Um - Mr. Archivist? Sir?” Martin asked hesitantly, stepping forward. It looked remarkably sad. “Listen, my coworkers and I, we need you. We’re your assistants, and the position is super cursed, so we were wondering -”

“Help me,” the Archivist moaned, looking up at Martin. Martin could practically fall into the black holes where his eyes should be. “Help me, Martin.”

“Okay. Okay! I will do that! I just need a wee bit more information.” Martin stepped closer, in the hopes that he could elicit some sort of - something out of it, but all it did was moan again. “Maybe it could be a we help you, you help us kind of thing -”

“It hurts,” the Archivist moaned. 

But Martin found it difficult to be sympathetic. Being ripped apart by evil fear monsters in three months would likely hurt quite a bit too. “Use your words, mister,” Martin said sternly. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

The Archivist’s eye sockets oozed at him sadly. “It cuts me into ribbons. It hurts to think. Martin. Help me.”

“How do you know my name!” Martin exploded, throwing up his hands. “Why are you in my dreams? Are they - are they prophetic? What’s going on? Why are you doing this? Please, I just - I just want to not get eaten! What if I need help too?”

The Archivist swayed in its seat silently, head tilted towards the ceiling, and Martin felt abruptly a little bad for yelling at it. 

Finally, in a hoarse and grating whisper, it said, “I unlocked the door.”

And the revelation was so overwhelming that Martin woke up. 

On his way to work the next morning, Martin took a detour and bought some chalk and some tea. 

The tea was because he could already tell that they would desperately need it. The chalk was because they had found a big, dusty chalkboard in the back of the library behind some sketchy looking shelves. The chalkboard had some spindly writing on it, almost indecipherable and apparently written in some kind of code, and everyone had been so spooked by the reminder that once upon a time real people had worked and lived and drank tea here that were now gone that they erased it very quickly and began writing their own battle plans on it. Sasha took over for this aspect, because she was a very action oriented person, and she had the best handwriting. She said that nuns had beat it into her. 

Because they were all scientists, except for Martin, Sasha began with the hypothesis. Martin and Tim sat obediently at the sole table in the small library, Martin with his hands folded politely on the table and Tim with his arms crossed, watching her scratch out ideas and concepts and research. 

“Fact: No research assistant has survived more than three months since Gertrude Robinson bit it.” Sasha nearly ordered her list in looping cursive that seemed oddly incongruous with the awful contents. “Fact: we are all bound in service to what is probably an infernal fear entity, but might just be a really big extradimensional lobster with a god complex. Fact: our job has no actual responsibilities. Fact: our boss is the physical embodiment of the eye emoji.”

“Don’t forget about my prophetic dreams,” Martin said eagerly. He had been very detailed in his account of last night’s dream. Neither Sasha nor Tim were overly impressed by it, not entirely buying that he had been dreaming of the Archivist since before they were introduced, but they would have to be idiots to dismiss the possibility that Martin could see the future out of hand. 

“That’s under supposistions.” Sasha neatly tapped the supposistion column. “Supposistion: the Archivist is sentient or something in some way. Supposistion: the Archivist and Elias aren’t exactly on the best of terms. Supposistion: it has a mystical, psychic connection with Martin.”

“Why Martin?” Tim asked, quite reasonably. “Out of everyone, why Martin?”

“He eats the most sugar before bed?” Sasha asked, also reasonably. 

Martin, who privately liked to believe that it was because the Archivist knew Martin was the nicest and most friendly research assistant, stayed quiet. 

“Which leads us to the hypothesis!” Sasha said grandly, writing it out over the top of the chalkboard. “All three of us - Sasha James, Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood - will die in three months if we don’t actively prevent it, and that the Archivist may be vital in this plan. Now!” She tapped the chalkboard forebodingly. “Resources. What resources do we have?”

Their resources were, basically, the Archives. They had free reign of that place. Nobody ever came down here, not even the cleaning ladies. They seemed to have greater access to some online files. They had the library full of spooky stuff and the other staff members. They had Sasha’s technological know-how, Tim’s connections, and Martin’s…

“What can you do?” Tim asked, narrowing his eyes at Martin. 

Martin couldn’t help but bristle. “I’m currently the only person who can communicate with the fear monster locked in its office, which will probably come in handy someday.”

“Alright, point taken,” Tim said placatingly, holding his hands up. “Your spooky dreams will be the key to this whole mystery.”

“So, what, you’re the Archivist whisperer?” Sasha asked, less impressed. “Go whisper, then.”

“Wh - not the whisperer - what would I even - no!” 

“Why not?” Tim asked, damnably reasonably. “Worst thing it can do is like. Eat your face.”

“It’ll be valuable data if it eats your face,” Sasha said encouragingly. 

Martin crossed his arms too, sinking a little in his seat. He found himself mumbling, a little embarrassed. “I don’t want to.”

“Sorry,” Tim said, pleasantly with an edge of madness, “what was that?”

“I said I don’t want to.” Martin felt his cheeks burn. “We had a fight.”

“With that thing?” Sasha asked.

“In your dream ?” Tim asked. 

“Game plan!” Sasha said loudly, drawing out a new list. “I’ll try to access Elias’ encrypted files on my laptop. Tim will go through the Archival library and try to see if there’s anything in here that can help us. Hopefully notes from old assistants, that kind of thing. Martin will commune with the monster locked in his office and report back.”

“I don’t think -”

“I thought you said that it was key to everything,” Sasha said innocently. “So you don’t think it’s important?”

“I didn’t say -”

“So you agree we should work on cracking it open like a nut?”

“I’m not a fan of that metaphor -”

“Glad you agree.” Sasha slammed the chalk down on the chalk tray, propping her hands on her hips. “Break, team! Good effort, here!”

What Martin was concerned about, of course, besides the obvious, was that everybody knew Elias had eyes all over the Institute in a very literal way, and him showing up just as they entered the Archivist’s office was far from a coincidence. Martin was a millennial, and moreover a cult member, and as a result he was exceptionally blase about invasions of privacy and the feeling of being watched. All the spyware on their computers, all the highly visible cameras at every corner, the way that the workplace raffles always gave away an Amazon Alexa...Martin found it almost a little comforting. When he mentioned to Sasha that he wanted curry that night, and then his phone brought up suggestions for curry places on his way home, that was just natural. 

But, for the purposes of trying to evade Elias, it was inconvenient. As Tim and Sasha scattered with mission and purpose to fulfill their duties, Tim carefully popping open his top buttons and Sasha grabbing her laptop with surety, Martin felt abject despair at being given the easiest job yet feeling incapable of doing so. 

If he tried to go inside the office again, Elias would show up. Martin was fairly sure about this. Was it possible to occlude Elias’ vision? Not inside the Institute. Maybe he could fall asleep again...but the Archivist was never really helpful in his dreams either. Distract Elias? He’d have to enlist Sasha or Tim on that, and neither of them were important enough to talk to him without an appointment. Maybe he had a magic crystal ball in his office that Martin could steal…

The Archivist’s words, haunted and lonely, echoed back in Martin’s mind. 

Martin took a deep breath and stepped into the small hallway, taking another breath for good measure, and watched his hand move towards the doorknob and twist it open almost of its own accord. His hand pushed the door open, and Martin’s feet walked him inside. 

There was no time to waste. He had no idea how close Elias was. He turned around, closing the door behind him, and sure enough when he looked on the floor he saw a large metal key, nothing more than twisted steel, lying on the floor. He picked it up and slotted it into the lock, twisting it firmly, and pocketed the key. It was only then that Martin realized, as Director of the Institute, Elias likely had a key to every door in the place. Well. Too late now. 

He turned around, and was not surprised to see the Archivist in the same position as yesterday. Sitting stock still and rigid, covered from head to toe in eyes, only the large one on his forehead tracked Martin’s movements. Martin walked slowly closer to the desk, watching the way the forehead eye watched him, his heart hammering in his chest. His palms were sweaty, and he wiped them on his trousers. 

“Mr. Archivist?” Martin whispered. 

The Archivist didn’t respond, mouth slightly open. Martin was beginning to suspect that it wasn’t capable of responding, at least in real life. 

Alright. Alright, Martin could work with that. A soft click echoed through the office, and Martin looked down to see the tape recorder slowly running a reel. Haunted tape deck. Alright. 

On second thought, Martin grabbed a chair and pushed it up under the doorknob. There. That would hold Elias off, at least for a while. 

Martin drew out his phone and used it as a torch, wincing when he saw the eerie way the Archivist’s eyes reflected the light like cats, and began attempting to shift through the papers on his desk. They were all statements, which confused Martin. Everybody knew the vast majority of the statements were crud. Why bother going through them? If the Archivist couldn’t move, speak, or respond, then what was it doing with them?

He quickly scanned the first one. It was on...yep, that was definitely the Lonely. Martin recognized a few key points - the sense of invisibility, the masses of people despite feeling alone, the need to remember loved ones. Judging from the girl’s autobiography, she was a prime candidate too. Looks like the Archivist kept an eye...or many eyes...on the statements that had some semblance of truth to them. Hm. 

All the other papers on the desk were similar, statements that clearly held some aspect of truth to them. Martin recognized the Dark, the Corruption, and a particularly disturbing Stranger one right off the bat. 

Martin carefully stepped around the desk, until he was practically bumping against the Archivist’s chair. It smelled like old wood and musty statues, strongly evoking the sense memory of stepping into London antique shops. Something about its scent screamed its inhumanity to Martin. Something else about it was very comforting. 

With excessive caution Martin teased open the top left desk drawer. Inside were...more statements. Alright. Underneath that he found...staplers, extra pens, a great deal of hair ties, an afro pick, cellotape, and some brochures. Martin was left imagining the monster sitting in the chair next to him picking his hair, typing it back with his smooth and deft hands, always losing his pens and having to dig through his desk for more. 

The door rattled, and Martin fought a squeak of guilt. “Martin, what did I just say?”

Martin, very quietly, opened up the bottom drawer. It was filled, from bottom to brim, with tape recorders. They were all empty. Martin closed the drawer. What was with this thing and tape recorders? 

“I gave explicit instructions to stay out of this room, Martin. Cease this nonsense and leave it at once.”

“I can’t hear you,” Martin called back, “there’s a - er - door in the way!”

Muffled cursing from the other side of the door. Martin quickly looked through the three drawers on the other side of the desk. More statements, more tape recorders, but there was a small, glossy piece of paper lying on top of a glasses case, which Martin quickly snatched up and scanned. 

It was of the Archivist. He looked a little like he did in his dreams, with clear skin and premature crow’s feet, but his eyes were a brilliant and stunning green. He looked unhappy, slightly out of focus, standing next to the sign in front of London Aquarium. He was wearing a jumper that had a large picture of an octopus on it, with text that read out ‘AQUARIUM EAST LONDON - HAVE YOU SEEN IT?’. He was scowling. 

There was someone behind that camera. Someone who badgered him into buying a silly jumper, who made him pose like a tourist in front of a sign and take a photograph of him, to preserve precious memories. Someone who gave him that polaroid to keep and treasure and remember, that he kept secret inside his desk. 

The door clicked. The door pushed roughly against the chair, sending it screeching against the hardwood. 

The forehead eye hadn’t stopped watching Martin. It watched him now, unblinking and without any spirit or emotion. Martin thought about grafts, about grafting a branch of a tree onto another tree. Martin thought about parasites. Martin thought about jumpers and whoever stood behind a polaroid camera. 

Before he could even think better of it, Martin abruptly grabbed the arm of the Archivist’s chair. The Archivist didn't react, but the forehead eye went so far as to blink in what Martin imagined might have been surprise. 

“Listen,” Martin whispered harshly. “You want my help. I swear, I swear I’ll help you. But you need to help me, because otherwise I won’t live long enough to do anything for you.”

The Archivist didn’t react. Damn it, damn it! What could Martin say that would get it reacting again? What could Martin say to wake up the human inside?

“Do you want to see the person behind the camera again?” Martin whispered desperately. “If you keep us safe, I’ll make sure that you two are reunited. Don’t you want that?”

The forehead eye widened. The tape recorder buzzed and buzzed. The door to the office was shoved open, with a very unamused Elias kicking aside the chair. 

“Mr. Blackwood. I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re -” He stopped shortly, staring at the Archivist. Martin had shoved the polaroid in his pocket frantically, probably creasing it irreparably, but Elias didn’t even seem to be looking at him. He was looking at the Archivist, eyes wide and somewhat unfocused. 

Something hurt Martin’s brain, like nails on a chalkboard. It hurt Elias far worse - he hissed, pressing a hand to his temple, and Martin fought the urge to hide behind the still unmoving Archivist. 

“You’re signing his death warrant,” Elias spat, face twisted in something far uglier than Martin had ever seen. The Archivist didn’t respond - or maybe it did. “Fine. Have it your way. On your head be it. But that will be nothing new.”

The Archivist didn’t react - maybe. The buzzing and static in Martin’s mind began to grow louder, almost frantic, and it didn’t recede until Elias turned sharply on his heel and...walked out the door. It clicked shut behind him. 

It was only when Martin exhaled that he realized he was holding his breath at all. 

It wasn’t an answer. It wasn’t a promise. But it might as well have been, and Martin wondered with a sinking feeling what exactly he had gotten himself into. How could the Archivist help him? It couldn’t even help itself. 

But...even Martin could tell that it was powerful. Everybody knew that Elias had some weird demigod powers. The Archivist seemed even more powerful than him. Maybe if Martin was just able to...wake it up, then it could break the curse. It seemed to want to break the curse.

The thought was cheering, even if Martin was only fractionally further along in his quest than he had been five minutes ago. But he had a goal, and maybe even an ally. 

If he could trust the physical embodiment of an eldritch fear entity on earth. Which...he probably couldn’t. But…

“Thanks,” Martin whispered. “You really helped me out.”

It didn’t say anything. Just stared, absently and without any real focus, into the distance. 

“Can you talk? Non-psychically.”

It didn’t say anything. Possibly in response. 

“Okay. Well, uh, thank you anyway. Is there anything you, uh, need? A - a pillow?”

It didn’t say anything. Possibly sarcastically. 

“I’ll bring some tea next time,” Martin said firmly. Tea made everything better, he firmly believed. Or, at least if it couldn’t actually fix anything, it could make you feel better. “If you drink...tea...I don’t know if you only eat like, the souls of the damned. I don’t think I can bring you those. I can try!”

The tape recorder clicked off, and Martin understood that somehow as a dismissal. He set his chin firmly, and nodded at the Archivist. “Right. Thank you. I’ll be back. I promise.”

It didn’t say anything. But Martin was okay with that. 

Tim and Sasha were much more successful than he was, which was to be expected. They had uni degrees, while Martin had very accomplished lying skills. However, they didn’t have psychic connections to a monster straight from a Gothic novel, so who was winning now?

They were in the library again, which was quickly becoming the meeting spot for these plans. They sat around a wood table, slouching in the uncomfortable seats. Sasha was talking about stealing a maybe only slightly haunted couch from Artifact Storage, and Tim was talking about bringing in some blankets for the draft. Maybe it was true what they said - that you could get used to anything. 

“I’ve been looking up everything related to the Eye I could,” Tim reported, as Sasha made notes on her laptop. Martin was playing with his fingers, thinking about the polaroid in his pocket. He wanted to take it out and look at it, but he was scared. “Mostly bullshit propaganda, a lot of half-truths, some history. Nothing too good. But speaking of Martin’s mystery man, the Archivist is alluded to quite a bit. Apparently it’s a personification of the Eye’s power on Earth. How it uses its power on us, you know. Jonah Magnus talks the most about it. I got the feeling that the Magnus Institute was made to...hold it?” Tim made a vague ball with his hands. “As a way to lock it up? I couldn’t tell.”

“The financial records back that up,” Sasha agreed. “Way more money is funneled to the Archivist than any other department. It doesn’t seem like it, but the Archives really is the heart of the Institute. Gertrude Robinson milked Elias for thousands. It’s fucking awesome.”

“You hacked into Elias’ bank records?” Martin squeaked. 

“What, like it’s hard?”

“I don’t think we have to worry about Elias right now,” Martin said, wincing. “I mean, we definitely still should, but I think he’s going to...leave us alone?”

Both his coworkers stared at him, looking slightly intimidated. 

“How - how did you get him to do that?” Tim asked, looking strongly as if he didn’t want to know the answer.

“I sicc’d the Archivist on him?”

“I was really afraid you’d say that.”

Martin explained what happened shortly, drawing out the polaroid and passing it between his coworkers. They both spent a long time staring at it, especially Tim, whose expression seemed distant and far away. As if he was remembering something he’d rather not remember. 

“So it used to be human,” Sasha said finally. “It’s pretty weird, right? Like, you look at it now, and you get a strong sense of wrongness and non sentience from it. It just feels wrong.”

“The hundred eyes might have something to do with that,” Tim said dully.

“Yeah, but it’s beyond the eyes,” Sasha insisted. “It’s just not right. It’s not meant to exist. But when I look at this picture, I see a person. They’re not the same, but they aren’t as different as all that, right? It’s bizarre.” She frowned at the picture, lightly lifting it back from Tim. “So who was this guy, anyway? If we get his name I’m sure we can find out. Maybe if we see what happened to him, we can stop it from happening to us.”

But nobody knew his name. They looked at each other, slightly lost, because nobody knew, and it seemed a little rude to Martin that the Archivist had gotten their boss to back off from their secret criminal activities and they didn’t even know its name. Or the name it used to have. An unmarked grave, sitting in a wooden chair, a single eye out of dozens tracing Martin’s footsteps…

“The Archivist and the Director aren’t always on the same side,” Martin said slowly. “Elias can’t control it. The Archivist protected us from it -”

“It protected you,” Tim pointed out. “You’re its bestest buddy now. Keep mind walking with it or whatever, Martin. It’s our best bet right now to make sure that Elias doesn’t suddenly think our skulls need a good lead piping.”

The words made Martin flush, although he wasn’t quite sure why. “I don’t even know if it likes me or not…”

“Only you would be worried if an Eldritch abomination likes you or not, Martin,” Tim said flatly. He nicked the polaroid back from Sasha, squinting at it. “Who are you, Joe Spooky?”

Wouldn’t Martin like to know. 

The next dream was different. 

Martin was beginning to wonder if this was going to be an every night event. Not that he necessarily minded, of course, it was just that usually roughly 70% of Martin’s dreams were of the wet variety and he quite appreciated the stress relief. But maybe this was more important. 

He was in the Institute library. It was the largest room in the Institute, and fairly grandiose, with large arching ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows that let soft London light stream in. The bookshelves were old and carved, and held promises of fantastic tomes and hidden secrets. Martin had always adored it, had adored the scant tables full of tired grad students and the click of the librarian’s heels as they strode down the aisles searching for books. It had always felt so official and professional and academic, exactly what Martin had always dreamed of being. The library felt like an aspiration for the kind of person Martin wanted to be. The kind of person he’d probably never get to be. 

Now, in the dream, he was standing in the middle of a cramped aisle, surrounded by bookshelves. Judging from scanning the titles, he was in the middle of the Beholding section, under the ‘S’s. There was a man just ahead of him, angled so Martin couldn’t see his face. But his profile was familiar: tall, lanky, skinny, with uncontrolled hair. 

He was holding a book open in his hands, thick and bound with leather, but as Martin drew closer he saw that there was no writing in it. Every page, weathered and old, was completely blank. 

Which made sense, because when the Archivist turned around Martin saw that it had not magically grown any eyes. But it seemed more present than usual - it almost seemed happy to see Martin. It snapped the book shut, the ghost of a pleased expression on its face. 

“Right on time. You’re predictable, Martin.”

“I’ve been told that,” Martin said, shocked still. “Sorry - you can talk? And say things?”

“A steam locomotive is a type of railway locomotive that produces its pulling power through a steam engine,” the Archivist informed him, somewhat nonsensically.  “These locomotives are fueled by burning combustible material – usually coal, wood, or oil – to produce steam in a boiler. The steam moves reciprocating pistons which are mechanically connected to the locomotive's main wheels. Both fuel and water supplies are carried with the locomotive, either on the locomotive itself or in wagons pulled behind.”

“Uh. Right. Listen, Mr. Archivist -”

“The monarch butterfly or simply monarch (Danaus plexippus) is a milkweed butterfly (subfamily Danainae) in the family Nymphalidae,” the Archivist continued.  “Other common names depending on region include milkweed, common tiger, wanderer, and black veined brown. It may be the most familiar North American butterfly, and is considered an iconic pollinator species.”

“Okay. Right.” Martin stepped forward and, with daring that surprised himself, grabbed the Archivist’s arm. “I need you to focus. I know you used to be human. I know that you were alive, once. I guess that person could be dead, but - but I don’t feel like he is. What’s your name, Archivist? Your real name?”

The Archivist stopped short, expression puzzled. It tilted its head, creasing its eye sockets. “File corrupted. This information cannot be accessed.”

“What about where you were born? Your mother’s name, your father’s?”

“File corrupted,” the Archivist informed him severely. It didn’t move from his grip, pliant and supple. “Information cannot be accessed.”

“Okay. Great. So - so you don’t remember.” Too late, Martin realized that he was still holding its arm, and that it was sending Danaus plexippus fluttering through his stomach, and he quickly released it. “And you can’t hold a conversation. That’s fine. What do we need to do, Archivist? What can I do to help you?”

It was silent for a long moment, and Martin almost wished for the eyes back - even if they were wrong and inhuman, at least the forehead one seemed to have some semblance of attention. “No information found. The Archivist cannot be helped.”

“Then why do you keep asking me?!”

“Don’t you ever need what you can’t have?” the Archivist asked, and Martin stopped short. “Pity me, Martin. I walk endless dreams and you were the only one to ever want to help me. You were the only one who ever cared. There are people in London who will help you, Martin. Find Gerard Keay. I can help him help you. But I can’t help myself.” The Archivist dropped the book, and it shattered on the floor like it was made of ceramic. It hunched in on itself, curling up, hugging itself. “I did this to myself. Help me, Martin. Help me. Help me -”

Finally. Finally, something useful! “I said I will, didn’t I?” Martin said, as soothingly as he could, but even he could only do so much. “Come on, chin up. I’ll help. Don’t worry. No, please don’t cry -”

But the Archivist was crying, and then he was screaming, and Martin was tossed out of the dream by the scruff of his neck like a drunk at the bar. 

There was no Gerard Keay in the phonebook. 

There was no Gerard Keay in the internet. When Sasha looked it up, there was no Gerard Keay registered to vote. When Tim swindled his way into the city records, they couldn’t find evidence of one living in London. There was one that had, famously, murdered his mother and was sent to prison over it, but everyone doubted it was the same guy, seeing as he was dead and all.

Tim and Sasha proclaimed it a dead end, but seeing as it was literally their only lead they kept at it.  There was nothing in the employee records, less than legally obtained - and, for that matter, no employee records of their mysterious and ruggedly handsome Archivist Joe Spooky, as Tim had begun calling him - and not so much as a credit card bill. Gerard Keay, whoever he was, was a ghost. 

After a fruitless day of searching, they began to get more creative. Sasha disappeared into Artifact Storage to milk her contacts there,  Tim hit up his old buddies in research, and Martin baked a batch of biscuits and made his rounds among the secretaries and receptionists.

“What, Gerard Keay?” Diane asked, nibbling her choco chip biscuit. “He should be sleeping in the stacks right now. Lazy bugger.”

A stunning and unprecedented double victory for Martin. 

He texted Sasha and Tim the news, and they came running down to the library. Sasha kicked the door down in her high heels, and Tim was panting and out of breath when they practically crashed into the reception desk. Diane looked unamused as she delicately nibbled on her biscuit. Martin didn’t even have time to glow with quiet happiness that he had his coworker’s numbers. Nobody ever gave him their numbers!

“Where in the stacks, Diane?” Tim panted, fists clenching so hard on the counter that his knuckles turned white. “Where is he?”

“What are the chances?” Sasha whispered to herself. “Is this the work of fate? An uncaring god?”

“I’m not his mother,” Diane said crossly. “Thank goodness.”

“I know where he is,” Martin said, startling everyone. 

And he did. He was right where Martin thought he might be - in the section on the history of the Beholding, under the ‘S’s. Exactly where Joe Spooky - damn it, now even Martin was calling the Archivist by the dumb nickname - was last night. But he wasn’t bent over books or rattling his chains. In fact, he appeared to be asleep. 

Gerard Keay lay in the middle of the aisle, exactly where the Archivist had been last night, head pillowed on a particularly thick encyclopedia. He was snoring loudly and obnoxiously. The first thing Martin noticed about him was the frankly improbable size of his gauges. The second thing he noticed was the eyeliner, My Chemical Romance shirt, vans, and baggy jeans with wallet chains. He looked like he had walked straight out of a 2008 Hot Topic. He was a young man, much younger than Martin, and his placid sleeping face betrayed a youth that seemed at odds with the improbable number of scars littering his body. Most notably, his shirt was hiked down a little, revealing a large eye tattoo covering his clavicle. His hands had tattoos of eyes on each knuckle. The effect reminded Martin uncomfortably of Joe Spooky. The Archivist. They were not going with Joe Spooky. 

“Is that him?” Sasha whispered. “He looks like an undergrad.”

“How is this kid going to help us?” Tim whispered skeptically back. “He looks like his bedtime is midnight and his Mum just, like, doesn’t understand.”

“Joe Spooky - I mean, the Archivist said that he was our only hope,” Martin whispered furiously back. 

“Hah! You’ve submitted to calling it Joe Spooky!”

“It’s so rude!”

“It’s so rude how it keeps staring with its billion creepy little eyes -”

“Why are you talking so loudly in a library,” Gerard Keay said, very loudly, in a library. 

All three assistants froze guiltily. 

“I told everyone else,” Gerard said, still without opening his eyes, “I don’t do exorcisms, seances, summonings, tarot readings, investigations, pentagrams, scrying, ritual incantations, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, amoebic sacrifice, spells, magick, magic without the k, magik without the c, or wicca. I’m a monster hunter. All I do is hunt monsters. And books.”

The assistants traded glances. 

“We’re the archival assistants,” Sasha said finally, stepping forward. “We don’t need you to do any of those things. We just need information.”

Gerard Keay opened his eyes. They were a watery blue, but scanned the small team with a critical eye. “The archival assistants.”

“That’s us,” Tim confirmed. “Sorry, how old are you?”

“Thirty three,” the obviously nineteen year old said. He closed his eyes again. “Sorry, can’t help you. I’m taking a nap.”

“You don’t even know what it is we want,” Tim snapped. 

“You’re fully aware of the curse placed on the position and you’re invested in not dying, so you want me to break the curse for you?” Gerard asked, without opening his eyes. “Been there. Done that. I’m the best demon slash book hunter in Great Britain. Never lost a demon. Never failed to find a book. But there is one case that I will always regret. It was a cloudy day. December 23rd, 2015. Almost Christmas. When the broad walked in, I knew she would be trouble -”

“Is he going to tell us his life story?” Sasha whispered to Martin. 

“ - it was my greatest failure. I can’t help you. Nobody can help you. Write out your will while you still have the chance. If you have any valuable books...you know where I am.”

Martin had not wasted almost an entire day of his very limited time tracking down their only lead to be turned away by an art major. He walked forward, crossing his arms and looking down at the kid. The kid didn’t bother opening his eyes, as unimpressed by him as ever. 

Well, fine. So what if Martin wasn’t impressive. Or a demon hunter. So what if he only had three months to live. He wasn’t going to spend that time giving up. And he wasn’t going to be intimidated by a film noir wannabe. 

“The Archivist asked us specifically to find you,” Martin stressed. He rapidly called upon his most useful, and indeed only, skill: rampant lying. “It said that you were the best demon hunter in the whole world. That you were the only one who could uncover the truth.”

Gerard cracked open an eye. “It said that? It talked to you?”

“Sure did,” Tim jumped in, walking over and flashing his most signature winning smile. Gerard blushed a bit. “Go find legendary demon hunter Gerard Keay, Joe - The Archivist said. He’s always a good help to desperate folks. Because that’s what we are. Desperate.”

Just to cover all their bases, Sasha batted her eyelashes too. “We’re just so desperate.”

Bingo. Gerard flushed deeper, but after gesturing for them to step back he rolled to his feet in one smooth motion. It was only then that Martin noticed that he was wearing a black leather trenchcoat, which had apparently been repurposed as a pillow and now resettled into a creased and somewhat crumpled overcoat. He surveyed the three of them with a critical and cutting teenage eye. The most cutting eye of all. 

“You three are going to be trouble,” he proclaimed finally, like he was nailing his 95 theses to the church doors. “I can smell it on you. However, I will help you. Why? The Archivist appears in everyone’s dreams. Everyone who’s connected to the veil. But it never speaks to us. Why? Nobody knows. But it spoke to you.” Gerard sized Martin up, gaze lingering on his roundness and his friendly shape. “Why you, of all people?”

 Martin didn’t know. He shrugged helplessly. He didn’t really know anything that was going on in his life anymore. Nothing made sense, and adult life was distressingly confusing. 

“Quick question, Gerard,” Sasha said, half-raising her hand. “Why were you sleeping in the stacks? Are you a student?”

“My education was in the school of hard knocks,” Gerard said severely, effectively conveying that he had never stepped inside the school system in his life. “I just sneak in here to use the showers and get some reading done sometimes. It’s not a crime.”

The assistants stared at him blankly. Finally, Tim said cautiously, “Are you homeless ?”

“My home is the open road.”

So that was how Martin, Sasha, and Tim recruited a homeless teenager into their fight against death, fate, and god. It didn’t seem like he would help very much. But surely, Martin reasoned, a homeless teenager who sleeps in a library must know an awful lot about most things. Homeless people really seemed to have life figured out, to Martin. 

Besides, there was one thing that Gerard - “Call me Gerry, if we’ll be working together” - had neglected to mention, and one thing that Martin’s coworkers hadn’t picked up on. The Institute had a security guard on staff. His name was Chris and he was partial to jammy dodgers, although he was trying to watch his cholesterol. Chris wasn’t overly attentive to his job, but he was a fair hand at making sure vagrants didn’t spend all day sleeping in the stacks for weeks at a time. 

Which meant that Gerry had a connection to the Institute that he hadn’t divulged. That Elias, maybe even the Archivist, wanted him there. 

Being a detective hurt Martin’s brain. He hoped this was over soon.

It was lunch time, the employees milling about aimlessly as they packed up their lunches and went to the cafeteria in silent celebration of their ordinary lives, but today Martin and the others spent it cooped up in the Archives. They had meant to interrogate their newest lackadaisical ally, but he had ended up interrogating them instead. 

Also, Martin ‘accidentally’ let it slip about the cot he had found in a small room off the library, and had ‘accidentally’ slipped Gerry a key, which made him a lot more co-operative. He pretended not to notice Sasha and Tim’s alarmed looks. He wasn’t going to let a young guy sleep in the stacks for whoever knows how long. It was cruel. The Institute had a shower in Artifact Storage too. It turns out that you really could live here, if you had to. 

They weren’t completely sure if they had the authority to do all of this. But the Archivist had gotten Elias to give them space, which probably meant that nobody was going to stop them, so...why not?

“My life is disintegrating,” Tim said, dead eyed, as Gerry ruthlessly skittered his chalk over their carefully laid plans and monologued about how they were all bad. “This isn’t how I wanted to go out.”

Martin frowned as Sasha patted him sympathetically on the arm, taking notes on what Gerry was saying with her other hand. “How did you want to go out?”

“Big revenge plot against the Stranger,” Tim said glumly. “I was imagining explosives and a crowbar and everything. But everybody knows that archival assistants die mysteriously, covered up by the police.”

Some part of Martin, of course, agreed - that it was a terrible thing, to die unknown. But a larger part of him thought that it wasn’t so bad. He had lived unknown. And people always wanted to go out as they had lived, right?

Of course, this train of thought led him to the Archivist. Martin perked up immediately, raising his hand and stopping short Gerry’s extended lecture about the nature of reality to a fascinated Sasha and a bored Tim. “Gerry, would you like to meet the Archivist?”

Gerry scowled. “No.”

That stopped Martin short. “Are you sure? You might be able to like...get a read from him or something?”

“I’ve had quite enough interaction with archivists, thanks,” Gerry said coldly, and turned back to his chalkboard. “Now, we all know that the Magnus Institute is a hotbed for supernatural activity, and that it is one of the premier centers of worship and sacrifice in the world. Although the general public remains ignorant of the fear entities that control our lives, one may argue that humanity has subconsciously understood their existence for quite some time. For example. Lovecraft was said to have a special connection with quite a few of them…”

“Did you know Gertrude?” Martin asked. 

“I thought I did,” Gerry said shortly. “Anyway, how does the Magnus Institute worship the Eye? Why do its employees have no fear of death or paganism? The answer lies within the Statements. The Magnus Institute is one of the first temples of worship of the Entities in the United Kingdom, and as such it’s an unprecedented bank of knowledge.” He turned to the assistants, who were all looking politely attentive. “I trust you’ve already combed through all of the available statements on the Beholding and any information on Rituals publically available. Of course, I’m the world expert on rituals, but it doesn’t hurt.”

Everybody stared at him blankly. 

“Like,” Tim said finally, “the shite that Londoners come in with about the one time a giant spider ate their cat?”

“That is why the Institute technically exists,” Sasha pointed out. “I always thought we just took them so the acquisitions department of Artifact Storage can steal the cool shit people find in the charity shops.”

“We haven’t looked through any of them,” Martin said apologetically to Gerry, who looked horrified. “I was mostly just in research, which doesn’t really interact with them...do you think they’re important?”

“Holy shit, you’re all doomed,” Gerry said. 

Chapter Text

It wasn’t that Martin wanted to die. But more than that, he just didn’t want to die alone. 

He was a romantic. He couldn’t help it. Martin really did believe, with one hundred percent of his soul, that everybody had a special someone out there for them. Even if his parent’s relationship hadn’t worked out, well, then maybe they just weren’t that special someone. That probably meant that his mother’s soulmate was out there, soulmate-less and alone, thinking that true love didn’t exist...maybe that meant that Martin’s soulmate was out there, thinking that true love didn’t exist. 

Well, Martin would prove him wrong! Martin would find him, and maybe they would accidentally trip into each other and spill all their groceries and the guy would see Martin’s pride pin, and he would be like, oh you’re gay so am I that’s funny, I love your choice in onions, and Martin would say something very smooth like I love your choice in onions, and the guy would go oh haha I love your sense in humor let’s go get dinner, and they would both love knitting and camping and comic books and they would do all of these things together from now on, instead of apart. And they would adopt a german shepherd, because it was both of their favorite dogs. And the german shepherd's name would be Ace. After the Batman character. 

Not to brag or anything, but Martin was pretty famous on certain fanfiction websites for his soulmate AUs. He knew how to write them all: first words written on your arm, birthmark where they touch you for the first time, names inscribed across your heart. There was always a marker, some signal, a spotlight to magnify what you knew was there. The appeal was the surety, the knowledge that nobody was meant to be alone. That everybody could be loved. 

When Martin met the right person, he would think, as he put together a Spotify playlist with him and his hypothetical future boyfriend that would act as the soundtrack for their mountain cabin and their german shepherd, he would just know. It would be obvious. Like a spotlight, like divine intervention, like confidence and surety when Martin had always been so lacking in both those things. The happy ending would be foretold and guaranteed, and Martin wouldn’t be lonely anymore. 

It was for these reasons - the deep surety that soulmates were real and that all first meetings would be magical, his need to help people, and Martin’s blatant fondness for projection and ambiguity - that Martin became maybe, just a little bit, just a wee tad, obsessed with the Archivist. 

Not in a creepy way! Probably. Martin just thought about it. A lot. About the kind of person the Archivist used to be. Maybe he had been really nice. Maybe he had needed someone to help take care of him, and nobody ever had. Maybe he had liked teas and cakes and ices, and just like Martin, had never had the strength to force the moment to its crisis. 

He curled up on the couch, with a blanket spread over his legs and his journal in his hand, letting the telly drone on in the background about the Great Manchester Sinkhole. He was sketching out the story again, trying to get a good sense for it, still feeling kind of weird about how blatantly it was based on a real thing. Well, people wrote stories about their own lives or things that had happened to them all the time. It wasn’t as if he was writing them about a real person. Just a real...monstrous entity.

Maybe the story would be about a ghost, haunting an ancient Victorian home, and its deepening relationship with the newest tenant. It could take place in the English countryside, give it a pastoral feel. Toss in a few mystery elements, have the protagonist try to uncover the mystery of which of the innocent and happy English villagers commited such a grusome murder that a vengeful ghost was left behind. The ex-boyfriend of the vengeful ghost/love interest would be a red herring, but in reality it’s the vengeful ghost’s mother…

No, that was just too grim. He wanted a cheerful story. Vengeful ghost’s boss at the flower shop where he used to work was better. Stories deserved to be cheerful. Real life was so depressing already, who needed depressing fiction?

Martin looked at the telly, watching the ticker go by at the bottom of the talking head spouting nonsense with her posh accent. It seemed like the world was just getting worse and worse lately. Last month, the entire Amazon rainforest had burned down. A plague of locusts had consumed most of the crops in Sub-Saharan Africa. It wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary for the 21st century, but combined with the whole global warming thing, Martin felt as much confidence in the world’s lifespan as he did in his own. 

“Breaking news,” the talking head with perfectly coiffed blonde hair trilled. “Expert scientists from Oxford have reported that science has ‘stopped working’. Repeat, science as a whole, just no longer functions. We will now interview an economist to discuss what this means for the stock market. To you, Jim.” The scrolling text at the bottom of the screen solemnly reported that from now on, when you dropped something, there was a 1% probability that it wouldn’t fall. 

Well. That was weird. Didn’t affect Martin’s life much, though. He might donate to some relief efforts for...gravity. 

Martin texted his mother, asking her if she had heard about the gravity thing. She left him on read. He tried composing some poetry instead as he brushed his teeth, spitting into the sink and letting the toothpaste wash down the drain.

Your thousand eyes blink at me, but none of them see/Won’t anybody see me?

If you, the thousand eyed monster of my dreams, can’t see me, who can?

Martin snuggled under his covers, turning out the light and queuing up his sleeping playlist, which mostly just consisted of the most recent episodes of his favorite podcasts. On a whim, he added in a ghost hunting YouTube video to the top of the list that he’d been meaning to try out. Maybe it would give him good ideas for his story. It was all about research, after all. Despite everything, Martin was still a researcher. 

As Martin slowly drifted off to sleep, trying to wonder if he wanted to dream of the Archivist again, imagining the Archivist with its clothes off - it probably had a six pack - the YouTube video softly blared. Martin’s eyes were closed, but the hostess had a nice voice and spoke very authoritatively on very many topics. Martin wished he had more authority in his life that wasn’t scary short gay men who couldn’t be trusted around lead pipes or eldritch entities. 

“Remember to hit that subscribe button and ring that bell if you want to hear our newest updates. And we also have merch! It says GhostHunk UK in big letters, right at the front. Now, for our video today, we’re going to discuss the top 10 most unexplained hauntings. Not that any hauntings are explained, really, but it’s good to keep on track about these things.”

Martin drifted in, then drifted out. The soft muttering of the video permeated his dreams, or perhaps his waking thoughts, and the line between the world of sleep and the world of waking blurred until Martin could no longer differentiate. 

“I’ve been having these weird dreams lately,” the hostess said. “Actually, I’ve been having them for a while. I’m standing in front of this office, right? And I want to tell whoever’s inside about this ghost I saw. So I open the door. I step inside. And there’s this man there. He’s tall, and kind of good looking I guess. Not overly so. But he has no eyes. It’s like they were...scooped out of him with spoons. I hate something about him. He’s opening his mouth, but I know that whatever he says will kill me, so I clap my hands over my ears so I can’t hear what he’s saying. What’s he saying? What’s he saying that’s so important that he keeps coming back?”

Maybe it was a real part of a video. Maybe it was just a dream. Maybe it was both, or neither, or maybe Martin never had any chance at all, because everything faded into black soon enough and Martin was left holding a camera up to his eye, staring out through it at a scowling figure in an over-large jumper. 

“Come on,” Martin found himself saying, “smile for the camera, honey!”

“This is stupid,” the Archivist said. Martin couldn’t quite tell if he had eyes or not - they faded in and out, in and out. A memory superimposed over a reality. 

Tucked underneath Martin’s other arm was a cheap plushie of a killer whale. Its maw was gaped into a smile, with glass eyes unseeingly gazing into Martin’s armpit. 

“Darling, if you cannot give me one nice polaroid to remember this trip you’re walking home,” Martin said sweetly. “Get over yourself and give us a smile.”

“We don’t need a photograph to remember this trip,” the Archivist complained. “You remember it. I remember it. You just want something to frame for the flat.”

“What about when we’re ninety and senile and I need to remember the stupidest jumper I’ve ever seen you wear before you burned it two days later?” Martin asked, still smiling. Refracted, slightly out of sorts, he looked at the Archivist through the glass of the polaroid. “Now smile or you’re sleeping on the couch.”

He didn’t smile. He scowled. But Martin snapped the picture anyway, quietly happy. The camera whirred - it was this hipster thing, bought from Urban Outfitters and colored a pastel pink - and slowly spat out the picture. He took it in one hand and gave it a gentle shake as he lowered the camera from his eyes. 

The scene transformed. It was still the grassy entrance to the London Aquarium, but the blue skies were gone, replaced by a malevolent purple. The grass was dead and withered. It was painfully hot and strikingly cold, and a chilling gust of wind blew so hard it threatened to knock Martin off his feet. Instead of clouds there was a giant eye in the sky, its iris an unearthly green, the exact color and shape of the eye on the Archivist’s forehead, staring down at everybody and everything. Something roared in Martin’s ears, like the blood rushing through his eardrums so loudly it sounded like the call of the sea.

The Archivist still stood there. But now its eyes were scooped out, and the sockets were gushing blood. The blood poured down his cheeks, pooling in the collar of the jumper and dripping down from its hem. It made trails down his trousers, dripping into the hard cement, and forming a pool that spread slowly outwards like a murder scene. 

Martin screamed a name that he didn’t remember and couldn’t hear. The Archivist said nothing. It just stared at him, still scowling, still posing. 

Finally, it spoke. “Are we done yet?” it asked, as if Martin was still taking the polaroid. “Are you happy?”

 Then Martin felt something wet brush up against his foot, and he looked down to see that the tide of blood was slowly eating up his shoes, until it rose onto his ankles, and it overtook his chest, and Martin screamed in a panic, and it rose higher and higher until the tide enveloped Martin, rushing into his mouth and choking him with the coppery tang of blood, and he drowned. 

“Are you alright, mate?”

“I didn’t sleep too well,” Martin said briskly, frantically googling at his laptop. They were locked up in the Archives library again, and at this point Martin was beginning to think that he’d die here. Or, even worse, spend the last three months of his life here. 

But Tim and Sasha had dragged in that old, slightly haunted couch from Artifact Storage, and now Sasha and Gerry were both sitting on each end as they bent over Sasha’s laptop whispering about something that Martin sincerely did not want to know about. Tim was sitting across from Martin, shuffling through giant stacks of Statements that all seemed impressively useless. Martin said he would help with this job, but instead he found himself frantically googling, as if a few search results and a Twitter would make everything go away. 

Tim craned his head, sneaking a glance at Martin’s screen. He whistled. “Ooh, Martin’s found a girl? You in lo-ove?”

“You have to admit that there being no missing person cases correlated with any of the statement givers who died after giving their statements is fishy,” Sasha was arguing to a contemplative Gerry. “I think there’s a cover-up within the police. I’ve seen records scrubbed of any supernatural activity while I’m looking at them. It’s no coincidence.”

“I’m still gay, Tim,” Martin said flatly. He pulled his laptop closer to himself protectively. “I’m just doing some research.”

“Into…” Tim, extremely annoyingly, craned his head over the top of the laptop again. “Melanie King? The YouTuber?”

“Lives here in London,” Martin said. He leaned back in his chair, pursing his lips. “Has been running her show for three years. Queer and proud of it. Very active on Twitter.” The small icon with the grinning girl with tangled curly red hair laughed up at him. It was incongruous of the sheer amount of online fights she got into, but Martin could tell that she wasn’t an unintelligent or unkind person. Still, she didn’t seem anything other than normal. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but -”

“Oh, Melanie King?” Sasha broke in, both her and Gerry looking up from her laptop. “Did we find something in her statement?”

Both Martin and Tim stared at her blankly. “I’m sorry,” Martin said, “her what?”

“Did you find her statement?” Sasha asked patiently. “I pulled the short straw and interviewed her about six months ago, when she came in to talk about her ghost story. It stood out to me, it seemed pretty authentic. I’d say the Stranger, or maybe the Flesh. Did something there give us a clue?”

Okay, that was beyond coincidence. Martin had never felt so fucking validated in his life . “She leave her contact information?”

“I’m sure it’s in our database?”

That was how, as Sasha and Tim got into an argument about which of the cops they both knew on the force were in on Elias’ take, Martin stepped into the recording room and shut the door behind him. It was a simple and grungy room, just a desk and some recording equipment, as well as some of the omnipresent tape decks. But it should be relatively soundproof, which was the important thing. 

He looked at the number that Sasha wrote out for him, and took a deep breath. He exhaled. What was he doing? It had been a dream, nothing more. He barely even remembered her words. But it couldn’t just be a coincidence - in stories, these things were never coincidences - could he afford to miss out on a lead?

The mobile rang, and rang, and rang, until it was picked up, and then Martin remembered that he had social anxiety. 

“Hello, this is Melanie King speaking.”

She had such a grown-up way of answering the phone! Martin fought the urge to squeak. “Hello! Hello, this is - this is Martin Blackwood?”

“...okay?”

Shit. Shit! “From the Magnus Institute,” Martin followed up quickly. “I’m calling regarding your statement -”

“Really? About fucking time,” Melanie said, clearly aggravated. Her voice sounded just a bit different than it did on her channel, and there was a faint interference on the other end. “You said you’d get back to me and you never did. It’s been, like, six months. Have you found proof about Sarah Baldwin yet? I told you she wasn’t fucking real!”

Uh. Martin had no idea who Sarah Baldwin was. Maybe he should have found her statement before he called her...but there was no organization to those things. They had tried, and so far as they could tell there was no organization system, no digitization, no filing, nothing. Of course the Archivist didn’t really seem to be in much of a state to organize any of it, but surely one of the archival assistants over the years with nothing to do would have taken a crack at it?

Honestly, Tim had whined enough about the statements being useless wastes of time that Martin almost agreed with him. They were all nonsense, and there was a lot of them, and they couldn’t possibly be that important. It would take a year to even read all of them, much less test for veracity and follow-up. They didn’t have that kind of time.

But Gerry kept on insisting they were important, and Gerry did seem to know more about flaying someone alive than any human ever should, so...

Too late, Martin had realized that he had been quiet for far too long. “This isn’t about that,” he said hurriedly. “Or - it mostly isn’t. I wanted to ask - this is a very routine question, we ask it to everyone, really - if you’ve been having? Dreams?”

Judgemental silence over the line. “Dreams,” Melanie said flatly. 

“Yeah.” Martin wished he wasn’t so fucking awkward. “Dreams of...a tall man, with brown skin and scars. Kind of a poky face? Elbows everywhere? Either he has a lot of eyes or no eyes? Super creepy? Dreams of that guy?”

Silence stretched over the line. 

“I’ve never told anyone about that,” Melanie said flatly. 

Martin laughed self-consciously. “We at the Magnus Institute specialize in the impossible! I was wondering if you had anything, uh, more to tell about it. Whatever you remember. It may be...scientifically important.”

More silence. Martin couldn't’ tell if she was incredulous or in disbelief. Finally, she said “I’ll be in tomorrow. We can talk more then.”

“Or we can just -”

“Sorry, got video editing to do now. We’ll talk more later.” Melanie took the phone away from her mouth, muttering quietly to herself. “Martin Blackwood...what’s so familiar about that name?” 

Then she hung up, and Martin was left blinking at the ‘Call Ended’ notification on his mobile. Well. That...went. 

He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and exited the recording room to walk back into the main office space, only to have a gun pointed at him. 

“And remember don’t point at anything you don’t want to destroy,” Gerry was lecturing Sasha, who looked like Yule had come early. He flipped the gun over - a pistol, Martin noted faintly - and handed it to Sasha, who held it like it was her own child. “I’m giving you that because I trust you.”

“Why don’t I get a gun?” Tim complained. 

“What is going on,” Martin said flatly. 

“I feel like you’re more of an ax kind of guy,” Gerry said thoughtfully. He apparently noticed Martin for the first time. “Oh, I’m teaching Sasha how to defend herself. For when we run into trouble with the fuzz.”

“You’re teaching Sasha how to get into a shootout with the police,” Martin said flatly. 

“Don’t be such a spoilsport, Martin,” Sasha said, delightedly caressing her new gun. “The cops could be evil. You don’t know that.”

“All cops are evil,” Tim said, despite fucking half of them. “Why don’t I get a weapon?”

“Ugh, fine,” Gerry said, reaching underneath the sofa and drawing out a fire ax the length of Martin’s arm. “Here. Don’t go too wild.”

Tim accepted it happily, giving it a few experimental swings. “Fuck yeah!”

“Gerard,” Martin said, voice strained, “ why are you anticipating problems with the cops.”

“I mean, besides the obvious?” What was fucking obvious?! Gerry blinked at him. “We need to go bust up an underground fight club, and it’s best to be packing when you show up at one of those things. They’re illegal, you know.”

“Hmm,” Martin said, hating this.

Three hours later, Martin stood in front of a vending machine. He could buy a Honey Bun. He could buy a Mars Bar. He could buy healthy peanut butter crackers. He really did need to lose weight…

As Martin punched in the code for both a Honey Bun and a Mars Bar he felt the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. He looked up, feeling weirdly watched. Ugh. Martin scowled. Besides the death curse, Elias’ weird demigod omniscence powers were the worst part about working here. 

As the snacks shook out of their curlicues, Martin thought about the Archivist again. He hadn’t gone into his office yet today. Maybe he should. Did the Archivist get lonely? Did it get sad or bored? Somehow Martin doubted it. Did it like Mars Bars? It probably didn’t eat human food...maybe Martin could get it some nice crickets. He didn’t know where to find any souls of the damned, but it couldn’t be that hard. 

Was it aware of what was going on? Sometimes Martin wished he wasn’t aware of what was going on. Maybe it was like locked-in syndrome, where you could hear and think and understand, but not express any of it. That sounded terrible. What if it could hear Tim always teasing Martin? It wouldn’t think Martin was cool at all.

Martin’s fingers were hovering over the button that would dispense sweet, sweet crisps to him, when his sixth sense started wailing and a dulcet voice interrupted his reverie. 

“Hello, Martin.”

Martin jumped up a foot in the air, squeaking. He whipped around, only to find Elias. Despite them standing in front of the cafeteria, he didn’t look like he was about to go to lunch. He was wearing (grey) gloves, and had a (black, thankfully) umbrella tucked into the crook of his hand. He looked like he was heading to a drug deal.

“Mr. Bouchard,” Martin squeaked. “Hello! What’s...up?”

“Unfortunately, quite a bit,” Elias said. If Martin looked closer, which he had no desire to, he could tell that Elias looked a bit...not frazzled, but one of his eyes did seem to be twitching. “I traced your call logs and saw that you made a call to one Melanie King today.”

Martin stepped backwards, until he hit his back on the vending machine. Never before had Martin ever so deeply wished to crawl inside a vending machine, even when he was a teenager. “That’s invasive.”

“Is it? I have a hard time telling these days,” Elias said distantly. He stepped back, gesturing a little with his umbrella. “Take a walk with me, Martin.”

“Rather stay right here, thanks,” Martin said, forcing his voice into evenness. 

Elias’ eyebrow twitched. Martin set his jaw. They stared at each other, neither of which were backing down, one of which was objectively an extremely scary conduit of eldritch power and also made five times as much as the other did, while the other was Martin. Hm. 

What could he do? Fire him? Kill him, ahead of schedule? Come on. What was scary about a five foot four middle aged man rumored to be five times divorced, when real life was so much scarier? Besides the fact that everybody knew he had beat Leitner to death with a lead pipe, which was just a public service, and him murdering Gertrude Robinson, and who knew how many archive assistants he had bumped off -

“Goodness, you’re paranoid. I’m not going to eat you.” Elias cocked an eyebrow, which made Martin feel like a particularly interesting worm. “Believe it or not, Martin, I am capable of making your life a living hell without murdering you.”

“Er.”

“But I did make a promise,” Elias sighed. “And I’m afraid that I can’t quite go against the Archivist’s wishes just yet. It is...quite a fair bit more powerful than I am, at current. No matter how deeply I wish to slaughter all three of you, I can’t quite interfere just yet.”

“S - slaughter?”

“I really just wanted to express that I wish you dead for bringing Melanie King into my house,” Elias said earnestly, his slate grey eyes boring into Martin’s. “But we do what we must in dark times, I suppose. Do try to keep your little compatriots out of the upcoming circumstances, Martin.”

“I - okay?” Something occurred to Martin. “Does this mean that we aren’t getting our Yule bonuses?”

Elias looked at him pityingly. “If you survive until Yule, you can have your Yule bonus.” It was March, he pointedly didn’t say. “I hope you realize how much trouble the other Avatars have been giving me over this. You’re causing quite a bit of unrest for me, Martin Li Blackwood. I hope you realize what a disturbance chaotic elements create. I think society should be ordered. People should know their place. The lower class with the lower class, the high class with the high class. Chaos is ultimately the destruction of society. This is why facism is naturally the superior -”

That’s about when Martin started tuning Elias out, nodding along and agreeing when there was a natural lull. He went back to the vending machine, and carefully selected an extra Mars Bar. Along with a crisp packet, for Tim. The goodies plonked to the bottom of the machine as Elias droned on about how giving money to the poor was communism.  Martin gathered the snacks into his arms and turned around, making no secret of the fact that he hadn’t been listening. 

“Were you and the Archivist friends?” Martin asked, almost absently. 

That stopped Elias short. He didn’t blink - actually, he almost never blinked - but he tilted his head just a fraction. “The Archivist didn’t have friends,” Elias said scornfully. But his expression went far away for a second, as if he was remembering things. “But I was...he was special.”

So, yes. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me -”

“I’m not helping you.”

“You couldn’t, even if you wanted to, huh?” Martin said thoughtfully. Elias twitched. “I think, if you really wanted us out of the way so bad and not bothering you, you would have let us disappear into research or artifact storage. And you wouldn’t be here bothering me right now. I mean, there’s no way you didn’t know that we wouldn’t stir up some trouble if we were transferred to the Archives. So we were transferred for a reason. Either it was a direct decision from the Eye...in which case I don’t know why you would try to keep us away from the Archivist, if it was its decision...or it was yours. Why would you try to guide us towards a problem, then try to keep us from solving it? What’s the point?”

Elias’ lips thinned, and Martin couldn’t fight a triumphant smile. Not bad for the guy with no A levels, huh? But all the older man said was, “He wasn’t partial to sweets. Good day, Martin.” 

Then he turned sharply on his heel and strode away down the hall. Martin watched him go, thinking hard, trying to accept how little he knew as he slowly bought some peanut butter crackers. 

When he got back to the Archives to find everyone in frantic discussion he spread out the food, giving the Mars Bar to a thankful Gerry and the crisps to Tim. To Sasha he handed a pack of gum he had stored away, and he slowly tucked the peanut butter crackers in his pocket before knocking on the door of the Head Archivist’s office. To be polite. Nobody answered, obviously, so he went inside anyway.

That little altercation had made a lot of no sense. Some vague threats, some vague promises. Only two things about it really stood out to Martin: that Elias knew Melanie King personally, and that Martin had compatriots. Martin didn’t have friends .

Were there other people who were involved in this? Did Martin have to - what, find them? Who held the clues to the Archivist’s past?

The office was dark, as usual. Martin found himself wondering if the Archivist liked it that way, or if it would like a little bit of sunlight once in a while. Maybe Tim was right - should they take it for walks? It couldn’t be healthy to be cooped up all the time...but it couldn’t be healthy to have that many eyes, either. Did he need eye drops? Martin would pick some up at the apothecary later. 

“Hullo,” Martin said, feeling a little as if he was speaking to his potted plants at home. Which he did all the time - he was very proud of his little indoor garden - but it was somehow stranger. His plants didn’t blink at him. “How are you doing? Bored in there?”

The Archivist just gazed absently and unfocused at the door, mouth slightly slack. Lights on - literally, some of the eyes glowed - but nobody was home. But when Martin looked down at his desk, at the tape recorder that had just clicked itself on and the spread of papers in front of it, he saw that the spread of papers was just a little bit different. 

Martin had never seen it move. Yesterday Tim, like an asshole, had tried shoving it and moving it around a little to see if it was rigid, but it would just flop bonelessly. Who was moving the papers? 

It had been the one to unlock the door...was it just pretending? Or was it psychic? Why didn’t anything that was going on just make sense ? 

Time to investigate. Martin walked forward until he was standing in front of the desk, spinning the papers around so he could get a better look at them. Statements. Gerry had been right. They were important - or, at least, important to the Archivist. 

“What are you doing with these…” Martin muttered. “All of Tim’s research said that the Archivist is omniscient. Why do you need to be reading?”

The Archivist didn’t answer, but Martin didn’t have very high hopes for that. He sat down in the chair on the other side of the desk, which Martin was rapidly starting to think of as ‘his’ chair. He took the crackers out of his pocket and put it on the desk next to the tape recorder. “Got something for you. Elias says hi, by the way. Were you two friends?”

Silence. Obviously.

“It’s nice to have friends,” Martin said inanely. “I don’t really have any. I mean, there’s lots of people I’m friendly with, but nobody who I’m really, like, best mates with. No Ron Weasley to my Harry Potter, I guess. Or maybe I would be the Ron Weasley in the situation. Have you ever read those books? I mean, I’m sure you know of them. Knowing everything and all.”

Silence. Yeah, duh.

“I dreamt of you last night again,” Martin said, what he really wanted to say. “It was horrible. No offense! But it was just...really disturbing. I woke up at four am and couldn’t sleep a wink after that. I’m keeping a journal of all the dreams. I think it’s really you. Not just my imagination. I think you’re walking through more dreams than just mine. I’m just the only one who listened, I guess. I’m still listening, Mr. Archivist. I’m still here. I won’t leave. I mean, until I die, which is going to be soon.”

But what Martin really wanted to ask he didn’t say, because it was the stupidest thing in the world to ask an eldritch monster if they had a partner, and like, are you and the partner still together, or…?

Why had the worst part of that nightmare been the fact that the Archivist had a partner? There had been rivers of blood. 

“Sorry. I guess I’ll head out. Feel free to eat the crackers when I’m not looking, I guess.” Martin stood up, playing with his fingers, feeling awkward. “You’re a good listener.”

But Martin had the sense the Archivist heard that a lot. He quietly took the polaroid out of his pocket, carefully uncreased, and placed it right in front of the Archivist. The forehead eye tracked his movement, but when he put down the polaroid every single eye on its body focused sharply on the picture. Martin took a step back, frightened. Had the Archivist...missed it? Had he even known it was gone?

“Sorry,” Martin whispered, walking backwards and silently opening the door out of the office. “I shouldn’t have taken it. It’s yours.”

The last thing Martin saw as he closed the door behind him was every eye on the Archivist staring, and staring, and staring, at a little photograph, and the man frowning inside it.

Back in the office space, a breakthrough had been reached. Which...they desperately needed one, so Martin could be cheerful about it. Until he heard what it was. 

“Got it!” Sasha yelled triumphantly, punching the air. “I have found the single most corrupt cop in London!”

“Is that...good?” Martin asked, unwilling to know the answer. 

“It means,” Gerry said slowly, a shark-like grin stretching over his face. “That I think it’s time to pay a...Detective Alice Tonner a little visit.”

Martin really, really didn’t like the sound of that. 

The sequence of events that lead Martin towards secretly infiltrating an underground London fight club were this:

First, drop out of school to support your sick Mum. Second, regret the decision. Third, falsify your CV to throw it at the first place you see. Fourth, get hired and find out that the place is a cult and that you’re not allowed to quit. Fifth, get transferred to the basement, where it is assumed you will die within three months. Sixth, recruit your coworkers, your scary boss with too many eyes, and the local homeless teenager to try to postpone your inevitable death. Seventh, get a crush on your boss with too many eyes despite the fact that relentlessly inflicting you with horrible nightmares shouldn’t be interpreted as flirting. Eighth, decide that the nineteen year old homeschooled child knew what he was doing, and that you should totally follow him into sketchy clubs. 

Really, it was more of a dive bar. Its peeling sign proclaimed its name as Dr. Jekyll’s Hyde-away , which may have been clever if you were a sixteen year old with dreams of being an English major. Gerry had eagerly led Martin there after work, buttoning up his trenchcoat against the March chill as Martin huddled in his jumper and tried not to walk too closely to the greasy boy in a trenchcoat. He slipped in after Gerry, wrinkling his nose as the smell of beer and sawdust hit him, and followed Gerry to the bar. 

It was already dark out, having stayed at work long past when Martin normally left, and the moonlight and street lights shone in through the grimy window. The dive bar was small, with wooden booths hugging the walls and pockmarked wood tables in the center. A few people lingered at the tables, smelling of sea salt or frowning with deep creases in their faces, and Martin abruptly felt much too fluffy and cute for all of this. 

The most notable thing about the bar was the small stage on one wall. Barely big enough for the drummer, bassist, and guitarist, Martin could see a small band conduct a light sound check. The lead guitarist and vocalist, a small and emancipated older man with gaunt cheekbones and sunken eyes that reminded Martin of the Archivist, strummed his guitar and hummed a note into the microphone. It made Martin’s ears hurt. Not a very good band. Nobody else in the bar seemed to notice, or care. 

“Hello,” Gerry said, hopping onto a barstool. Martin hoped he had an ID. “I’ve heard a rumor of a particular - feature of your establishment?”

The bartender, who looked like he picked his teeth with femurs, eyed the brightly grinning pasty white emo teen, and the innocuously fluffy and subtly yet obviously gay thirty year old Chinese man. Gerard shot Martin a look that clearly read ‘you’re making me look uncool’. Martin had never felt so uncool in his life. 

“I’m going to,” Martin said slowly, “go over there.”

He went. Over there. 

Very obviously, at the bar, Gerry flashed a large stack of bills at the bartender, and from now on Martin was going to ask no more questions. 

Instead he sat at a table next to the stage, anxiously playing with his phone and trying not to look like he was there for a drug deal. He scrolled aimlessly through the news sites, and was surprised to see a breaking report that 90% of Antarctica's ice had melted. That was bad. Actually, that was super bad. But Martin had other things on his mind, so he scrolled past it.  

Why had Gerry made him go along? Why couldn’t Martin have stayed at home for this one? He didn’t want to be in charge of making friends with the corrupt cop. Martin was a big believer in ACAB. Despite his unassuming appearances, and his general desire for everyone to just get along, his politics were very progressive.

The bassist on stage, who looked a little like a normal man stretched out very tall and unnaturally thin in a toffee puller, smirked down at Martin. Martin very fervently hoped that he was just smirking in his general direction. “Hey, you. Fat guy.”

“Don’t be rude,” Martin lectured instinctively. Then he remembered to feel fear. “I mean - me?”

“Yeah, you!” The bassist cackled. “You here for the show, kid?”

Oh, god. Unprompted, unrehearsed social interaction. One of Martin’s many weaknesses. He shot a glance at Gerry, who was deep in negotiation with the bartender. “I - no, not really? No offence! I’m sure you’re great!” Martin laughed awkwardly. Kill him. “I just - don’t listen to music.”

The drummer, a short Asian woman with her hair tied into a ponytail at the top of her head, raised an eyebrow at him. Now all three members of the band were staring at him. Martin hated everything about this. “No music? At all?”

“None!”

“Philistine.” She went back to her kit, testing the cymbals. “One, two. One, two.”

“That means you’ve never heard of Grifter’s Bone,” the lead vocalist said, grinning at Martin. His teeth were yellow and rotting, and his eyetooth had a clean hole through it, as if someone had taken a hole punch to it. “Make sure you stay for the encore, kid. We’ll bring the house down.”

Not if your music is anything like what I’ve heard so far, Martin thought. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s great!” Martin said.

Grifter’s Bone - okay, so it was a cool band name, so what - went back to setting up, and Martin almost cried with relief when Gerry jogged towards Martin. He was grinning widely, which was never an encouraging thing. 

“We’re in. Come on, Martin, they’re about to start!”

“But I was going to listen to the band,” Martin said weakly, as Gerry grabbed his hand and tugged him up. Martin followed him, somewhat unwillingly, as the bartender unlocked the half-door behind the bar and let them through with a nod, opening the door to the back. 

The back, instead of an evil dungeon, was a storeroom. Filled with industrial sized plastic jugs of syrups and alcohol, Martin recognized it intimately from his time as a bartender (ages 18-20), restaurant dishwasher (17-19), and waiter (20-24). Gerry gawked a little, hand almost vibrating with tension from where it was still squeezing Martin’s, and Martin supportively squeezed it a little. The minute he did Gerry ripped his hand away, flushing and sticking it in his pocket. Problems with affection. Martin tucked that away. 

“So,” Martin said, almost afraid to ask, “why are we in a storeroom?”

“It’s what’s underneath the storeroom,” Gerry said excitedly. “I really had to dig deep in my Leitners for this one -”

“Sorry, your what ?”

“Oh, I own the greatest collection of Leitners in Europe now that my Mum’s bit it,” Gerry said, waving a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, I keep them in the tunnels underneath the institute. They’re mostly harmless, so long as you don’t wake them up. Family Business.”

“That’s so much to unpack.”

“My Mum was really into thrifting.” Gerry shrugged. “You pick some stuff up.”

“Like cursed books?” Even Martin had heard of Leitners! Artifact Storage had a closed Facebook Group of their favorite ones! Sasha’s personal top, which she told everybody at length, was the bone pooping one. “Gerry, look, you seem nice, but what’s your...deal?”

“Is this really the time?” Gerry asked, as if he hadn’t casually dropped that his mother trained him to collect evil literature. And not even the A level kind. He crouched down to the floor, running a hand over the stone tile. “Hanson said that it should be around the whiskey...help me look, will you?”

“Don’t you have, like, a uni you should be attending?” Martin asked, somewhat hypocritically. “Or a real job…?”

“Demon hunting’s a real job. It pays great.” Gerry knocked on the tile, pursing his lips, before moving onto the next one. “I wouldn’t know what to do in a uni. I moved around too much as a kid to really get a feel for that kind of thing. I think I’m legally dead, anyway.”

“Is that why you’re homeless?” Martin asked. Something else hit him over the head, much like a brick. “Are you the Gerard Keay?”

“How many do you know?” 

“The one who killed his Mum?!” Martin yelled, perhaps far too loudly. 

But Gerry didn’t pay any attention to that. He focused instead on moving aside a small fridge, tracing his hand over dust and dirt, until his fingers found a latch. He crowed in triumph, digging his fingers in deeper, and finally lifted up part of the floor with surprising ease. 

It was a trapdoor, and when Gerry pulled it all the way back it revealed a narrow staircase. Martin abruptly felt as if someone had promised him some wine in their cellar. His life was such a horror movie. 

“Ladies first,” Gerry said cheerfully, despite Martin’s accusation of matricide. Martin gave him a wary look, which he just shrugged at. “Fine, then I’ll go first. Stay close, though.”

As Gerry climbed down the stairs, the top of his head disappearing into the gloom, Martin tried to take his phone out of his pocket again to text Sasha where they were, in case they never came back. But he fumbled it, his fingers clammy and sweaty, and the phone slipped through his hands and went crashing to the ground. 

It didn’t hit the ground. It fell, but halfway through its descent it began to slow, until it stopped in midair. It hung suspended in midair for one second, then two, before slowly floating back up. Martin caught it, blinking in surprise at the event. He suddenly remembered the background news report that gravity had stopped working. 

“One in hundred chance…” Martin whispered to himself. Was this...supposed to happen? Was any of this, was any of what was going on, supposed to happen? 

He followed Gerry into the dark. Gravity, Antarctica, and the world beginning to lose sense was none of his business. Martin didn’t care about the entire world, just himself. Eye on the prize, here. 

As Martin descended the steps hidden in the back of the dive bar, walking for what felt like an unusually long time, he thought about all the times in his life when he felt wrong or strange. Just out of place, or just out of time. Martin had always felt like his life had to be more than what it was. A high school dropout, bouncing from dead end job to dead end job, never settling down happily...surely his life had to have more than that in it, right? But, as it turns out, it wouldn’t. It never would. 

There had to be a reason why we were ourselves, Martin had always reasoned. We were the protagonists of our own lives. We could have been anyone in the world - a housewife in Japan, a construction worker in Brazil, a psychologist in America - but we were ourselves. There had to be a reason why, right? Martin wasn’t religious, but he did believe in some basic plan. A fate or a destiny. 

But Martin was, more than likely, going to die in three months. Having accomplished nothing, doomed to end as some sacrifice for an elder god. That didn’t say very much about Martin’s character at all. Dying didn’t erase the purpose of living, but it quite effectively eliminated the purpose for every step of your life after that. No goal. No plan. No purpose. 

The sad thing was that for the first time Martin did feel somewhat as if he had a purpose. This last week was the most driven he’d felt in a long time. It was the first time he felt as if he was working towards something in years. Why was a time limit the only thing that had ever pushed Martin to actually live? It wasn’t fair. He should have gotten another fifty years with not a lot of living inside, instead of three months with a whole bunch of living. 

I’m going to kiss the Archivist before I die, Martin swore to himself, just as he walked through the door at the bottom of the stairs. No excuses! Martin was going to tell the boy he liked how he felt! And if the boy was an eldritch being incapable of returning affection, and was quite possibly destined to consume Martin’s soul, well, it wasn’t obliged to reciprocate! 

  That extremely inane thought was the last thought Martin had before his brain became overwhelmed with a simple observation: that he was in a large basement, with its only piece of ‘furniture’ a circle of barbed wire marking out an arena, with a crowd of people shouting and yelling at two fingers inside, and that the two figures were punching each other. 

It was at that moment that Martin realized Gerry had led him into an elaborate underground fight club. 

“This is so cool,” Gerry whispered, bouncing on his toes.

“Aaaa,” Martin whispered. 

“You sound like a teakettle. Come on, let’s find who we’re looking for.”

“What would a cop be doing here?” Martin whispered, quickly following in Gerry’s footsteps as something awful occurred to him. “Is the cop lady going to bust it up? Are we going to get arrested? I don’t want to die in jail, Gerry!”

“Don’t be such a square. Just let me do the talking, okay?”

“Gladly.”

The people were all...rough looking types. Martin didn’t want to stereotype, but in his fluffy jumper and his corduroy slacks he didn’t really fit in. He wanted to hang out at the back and hope that this mysteriously corrupt cop who hangs around underground fight clubs noticed them that way. But Gerry was pushing his way to the front, and Martin would have felt like a terrible Responsible Adult if he let the teenager get stabbed to death on their first field trip, so he cautiously swam after him into the crowd. 

The room was dimly lit, but Martin could still see the swell of speakers in each corner. Money changed hands as fast as lightning, shouts and jeers echoed throughout the room, and Gerry pushed past the entire crowd so fast they were practically pressed against the barbed wire barrier around the fight arena before Martin could blink. They landed next to a woman, one of the few women that Martin could see in the room. She was counting a large stack of bills, lips pursed. Tall, willowy thin, with darker skin and a hijab tightly wrapped around her head, she was wearing a leather jacket and thick jeans. She didn’t notice or pay any attention to Martin and Gerry, her attention split between the money and the two figures in the arena. 

One of the figures was a tall, burly man, with muscles as big as Martin’s head. The other was a short white woman, likely as short as Martin, with blonde hair cut to her chin like she had chopped it all off with a knife. She had no chance, and Martin winced as a thick boot caught her right in the gut and made her spit blood. But there was a feral grin on her face, as if she didn’t even know she was losing. 

“Bingo,” Gerry whispered, and Martin’s stomach sank. 

The teenager politely wandered close to the official looking tall woman, hooking his fingers on the barbed wire fence and slouching slightly. He grinned fiercely at the woman, who eyed him out of the corner of her eyes like he was a dead fish who was rotting up the place. 

“Basira Hussain?”

“That’s me,” Basira said uninterestedly. “Wanna place a bet?”

Bookie, then. Martin felt ridiculous even thinking the word. But Gerry just grinned wider. “Good to meet you, Miss Hussain. I’m Gerry, and the bloke in the jumper is my associate Martin.” He dug around in his pocket, withdrawing the same thick stack of bills that he had flashed to the bartender. Basira’s eyes widened a fraction. “Sure, I’ll place a bet. The stack on the lady, okay?”

“The odds are ten to one,” Basira said cautiously, without reaching out to take the money. “Are you sure you don’t want to put it on Jameson?”

“Tell you what,” Gerry said easily. “I’ll place it on the lady, but if I win I’ll just get it back. Plus maybe one conversation with the both of you?”

“If you lose you’ll lose the whole stack,” Basira said slowly, as if Gerry was a moron. Her gaze flickered to Martin - a silent inquiry if Martin was responsible for him. Martin, who often wondered the same, shrugged helplessly. “Alright. Your...whatever.”

She took the money, made a note in her small leather bound book that made Gerry twitch, and gave him a receipt. 

“Don’t tell me,” Martin whispered, as the woman in the ring got punched solidly in the face. Martin winced, covering his eyes. “You know what? Do tell me. Just tell me when it’s over.”

“Just wait,” Gerry said, clapping Martin on the shoulder. “And listen.”

They did wait. Martin kept his eyes closed, hearing nothing but the meaty thwacks of fist hitting flesh and the jeers of the crowd. Gerry kept up a light conversation with Basira, who clearly just wanted him to go away. 

“What brings you to a place like this, Miss Hussain?”

“Money.”

“That’s cool. Do you like Panic! At the Disco?”

“No.”

“You should try them out! But just their earlier stuff. Their later stuff isn’t so good.” The sound of a head hitting the pavement resounded in the room, and the crowd broke into cheers. “Do you work with Miss Tonner?”

“None of your business.”

“She’s pretty incredible, isn’t she? How she always gets back up.”

For the first time, Basira’s voice softened. “Yeah. She is.” Another cheer ran through the crowd. Martin kept his eyes very closed. “It’s about to start. Watch closely, kid. But don’t listen.”

Then it did start: the speakers crackled to life. A thin, reedy guitar line echoed throughout the room. Martin recognized the terrible music - it could only have been that terrible band upstairs. It got louder and louder, the song slowly kicking into full gear. What was the name? Grifter’s Bone or something? 

What was that song? What was so hypnotizing about it? Martin opened his eyes, just as the crowd began to burst into a frenzy. Flesh and bodies pressed up against him, but he could barely tell. The muscular man in the ring was screaming, spittle flying. Violence hummed in the air like a song. Blood rushed through Martin’s ears, beating in time with the rise of the song into a slow caterwaul. It was awful. It was fantastic. It was everything that ever was and that had ever been. It was the battle hymn of the trees, it was the call of rage of the Norse, it was the capture of England. It defined history, and Martin was nothing without it. 

Two hands clasped him around the ears, and something soft was inserted inside them. Martin turned his head to see Gerry, who had ear plugs of his own inside his ears, give him two big thumbs up. Basira didn’t seem affected either, but Martin noticed for the first time that her hijab was pulled tightly over her ears. There was a small bulge there, and he realized that she was wearing ear plugs too. 

In the ring, Alice Tonner screamed .

Her eyes turned blood red. Her teeth elongated into points, and her fingernails lengthened into razor sharp claws. She leapt, farther than a human should have been able to, with a guttural roar that Martin couldn’t hear but that shook his sternum, and she leapt onto the back of her opponent. She lifted her hand, claws glistening in the dim sickly yellow light, and dug them right into the other man’s eyes. 

That was when Martin closed his eyes. He really didn’t want to see what happened after that. 

After what felt like an eternity, or maybe just the length of a song, Martin felt somebody tugging at his elbow. It was Gerry, who had his earplugs in his hands, and was motioning for Martin to take his own off. He did so, feeling slightly dizzy, and feeling mostly out of place. 

“Wasn’t that dope?” Gerry asked cheerfully. “You don’t get entertainment like that above ground.”

Martin took a deep, shaky breath in, then exhaled slowly. “What,” Martin said slowly, “the fuck was that.”

“The Slaughter! Come on, I got us that conversation with Tonner and Hussain. Did you know I was the only one who bet on her? Wicked, right?”

“Yeah,” Martin said faintly, “wicked.”

They found Alice Tonner and Basira Hussain in a back room of the basement. Gerry lead them in completely courageously, and as Martin looked around he saw that it was some kind of locker room. First aid kits, paperwork, and lockers holding workout gear and presumably belongings. There was a bench in the center, which Alice Tonner and Basira Hussain sat on. There was a stack of money between them, and they were presumably counting it out and dividing it. 

Alice Tonner didn’t look so good. She had a thick wrap of bandages around her midsection, leaving only a sliver of flesh between the bandages and her sports bra, and there was something foreign and crimson in her eyes. She didn’t look up when Martin and Gerry entered, but Basira did. She still looked unimpressed by them, but - well, if Martin was her, he wouldn’t either. 

“You have five minutes,” Basira said flatly. 

“Aren’t you a cop ?” Martin burst out, flabbergasted. “Why are you doing this?”

Tonner - because he couldn’t think of her as Alice - fixed him with a stare, her eyes empty and ringed by thick bags. They reminded him of the Archivists' eyes, just a little. Present, but so empty and haunted. “Ex-cop. And none of your fucking buisness.”

“Daisy,” Basira said, with a tired expression. Daisy?

“I was fired. She quit.” She gestured to the stack of bills. “We need money. Is that all you wanted to ask?”

“It wasn’t even close,” Gerry said, still maniacally cheerful. “We’re from the Magnus Institute.” Both women abruptly looked five times as suspicious of them as they did ten seconds ago, which was fair. “We’re looking for a missing person. He would have been related to a supernatural case, which means that we couldn’t find anything about him in the police database.”

“Why is this our problem?” Basira asked flatly. 

“You were the two most...off the books, let’s say, cops on the force,” Gerry said. “If all that’s left of the supernatural cases are human memory, then you’re the best people to ask. Do you know anything about an employee of the Magnus Institute who went missing, about...three years ago? Male, thirties, black, likely would have worked as an archival assistant?”

Both women glanced at each other, holding a silent conversation. 

Slowly, Basira said, “Every archival assistant goes missing and is presumed dead. Every single one. We all knew it. After a while, we just stopped investigating. Nobody could ever find anything.”

“Incompetent, piece of shit force,” Tonner groused. She fixed Martin with a beady stare. “Assistants were picked because nobody gives a shit about them. What do you care?”

“I’m an assistant too,” Martin said, surprising himself. “And I think whoever that person used to be, he’s my boss now. He’s the Head Archivist. And...it’s not fair, you know? To die without anybody ever knowing what happened to you. There has to be someone out there who misses him.  They deserve to know what happened to him. It’s just not fair.”

The women glanced at each other again, a silent conversation. But this time, Basira was shaking her head, while Tonner just looked grim and resolute. 

“No,” Basira said out loud. “It’s none of our business.”

“We’ll be by tomorrow,” Tonner said, making Martin choke on his spit.

“Daisy, our dreams are -”

“Dreams?” Martin burst in, excited. “Have you been dreaming of him?”

“None of your fucking business,” Tonner said, which might as well have been a yes. “We’ll be by tomorrow. Now get the fuck out.”

“Great doing business with you two,” Gerry said, grabbing Martin’s arm. “We’re such huge fans -”

“Get the fuck out!”

They got the fuck out. 

But, as they rode the tube home like somehow normal people, neither of them could resist their excitement. Gerry was eagerly enthusing about Grifter’s Bone, which was apparently ‘super indie’ and ‘part of the Slaughter, oh did I forget to tell you about that?’. Martin was just happy that they were actually getting somewhere, actually doing something that felt just a little heroic. For the first time, Martin felt as if he was taking charge of something. 

Dreams. Melanie, Tonner, Basira, and Martin. What was the connection? What was the common thread between all of them? They were all unrelated to each other, just barely brushing up against each other’s lives. What was the similarity? 

“That’s my stop,” Gerry said, as the sweet automated voice echoed over the tube. He stood up, adjusting his trenchcoat. It was the stop for the Institute, and Martin was reminded that Gerry was currently sleeping in the basement. “Thanks for the field trip, Blackwood. I have a lot of reading to do before we move on.”

On a stupid whim, Martin burst out, “Are you really okay sleeping in the Institute? Don’t you have any…” He faltered, cutting the word ‘parents’ off short, when he remembered that Gerry was apparently somewhat matricidal. He really should ask more about that, but...he really didn’t want to. “Anywhere else to go?”

“Are you kidding?” Gerry puffed out his chest. “I love the freedom of a vagrant’s life. I spent my entire childhood under a warden’s thumb. Not any more.” He deflated a little bit, scuffing his toe on the floor. “Besides, it’s not really safe to stay put. We live in a dangerous world, Martin. You of all people know that. The best you can do is just learn how to protect yourself. Nobody else is gonna do it for you.”

“Everybody needs somebody, Gerry.”

“Not me.” The tube ground to a stop, and Gerry nodded at him. “Did you hear about the polar ice caps? They’re all melting. Does it ever feel to you, Martin, that the world is so much more fragile than we like to think of it? That it’ll just take one stiff breeze to knock it over?”

“No?”

“Maybe it should,” Gerry said mysteriously, before the tube doors slid open and Gerry was whisked away by the crush of the crowds, melting into London.

 Martin thought about his parting words for the next three stops, about if Gerry knew that he was lying to himself. Maybe sometimes you had no other choice. It seemed like sometimes you needed to lie to yourself just to survive. 

On a hunch, Martin texted Sasha a question, and got his answer back two hours later as he was brushing his teeth before bed. Alice Tonner and Basira Hussain were both in the Institute database, which meant they had both given statements. The employee who was down as having taken both their statements was blank. 

Another text buzzed his phone, from his cat supplier. Martin smiled, always happy to hear from her. She sent a picture of the kitten - whose name was Gumball, and was quite cute - and wanted to know when he wanted to pick up the cat next week. In the picture, Gumball - a small black and brown kitten - was gnawing on a feather toy on top of a bed, filled with stuffed animals. One of the stuffed animals was familiar - a toy killer whale, gaping maw resembling a smile. It looked a little old, and a little threadbare. 

Can’t wait to see him, Martin texted back. Maybe next Sunday? Also, where did you get that orca toy?

Next Sunday works! And the orca is from the London Aquarium. I got him years ago with my boyfriend. His name is Grouchy : )

Huh. Must be a popular date spot. Martin shrugged, turning the phone off and snuggling deep into bed. Maybe...when Martin had a boyfriend, he could take the boyfriend there. And the boyfriend could go - oh, Martin, you know the best date spots. And Martin would go haha, yeah, I totally do, why don’t you use your connection with the mystical evil god I saved you from to tell me about fish? And Martin’s boyfriend would go oh yes, I know all about fish. 

Martin drifted asleep, imagining barracuda circling tighter and tighter, thinking of lips drifting closer to his…

“Do you ever think about death?”

“Lately? Yes.” The question surprised Martin. It was almost left of a normal thing to say. “Normally...no, not very much.”

He and the Archivist were sitting on the tube. It was empty save for them, trapped in a small metal tuna can hurtled along incomprehensibly from destination to destination. The carriage rattled, the advertisements were nothing but jumbles of letters and numbers, and occasionally the cheery robotic voice would crackle on to scream in an agonizingly human manner. 

The Archivist was dressed like any other businessman, if faintly history professor-ish in a very sexy way. In a tweed jacket, tight turtleneck, and professional slacks, it could have been hurtling along to his job teaching history at Oxford. It was sitting across from Martin, staring fixedly at him, despite its lack of eyes. 

“Death. Death is the cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism.  Phenomena which commonly bring about death include aging, predation, malnutrition, disease, suicide, homicide, starvation, dehydration, and accidents or major trauma resulting in fatal injury. The remains of a living organism begin to decompose shortly after death.” The Archivist parroted, before cocking its head at Martin. “What are you most afraid of, Martin Li Blackwood? Suicide? Homicide? Starvation, dehydration, major trauma?”

“Being forgotten,” Martin said. 

The Archivist stared at him with its empty pits for eyes. “Everyone’s forgotten.”

“You were,” Martin agreed. “But if I were to die, people would remember me. Maybe nobody would care , but people knew who I was. I helped people.”

“Would any of them show up to your funeral?”

Martin stayed silent. 

“Thought so,” the Archivist said, its voice tinged with triumph. “Everyone dies alone, Martin. Everyone dies forgotten. Who will remember the way you picked your hair? The scared thoughts you have before dawn? The pet names you called your cat? Is remembering the way you brought them tea really remembering you?”

“If it’s all the same,” Martin said calmly, “then why did it hurt you so much to die forgotten?”

The Archivist didn’t have anything to say to that. It just stared, and Martin set his jaw and stared back at it. The subway kept throttling forward. 

“Don’t try to pretend the life we live doesn’t matter,” Martin said. “It does matter. The songs we sang, how we lived, if we tried to be good or if we didn’t care that we were bad - it mattered. If we were kind, if we made a day better, if we helped others up when they fell - how can you say that it’s insignificant? It’s the only thing there is.”

“What about power?” the Archivist asked. 

“What about it?” Martin asked, exasperated. “God, you sound like a Disney villain. Go live in real life. Get off Wikipedia and go outside. Jesus. I went into a fight club today for you. Where’s my thanks? You’re just haranguing me. Can’t you give me any hints or clues about your identity or something?”

“I kind of literally can’t go outside,” the Archivist pointed out. 

“Then perish, I guess,” Martin said, moving so far beyond exasperated he was verging into spiritually exhausted. “I’ll - I’ll think of something. I’ll do something. I just need something from you too. I can’t be alone in this. I - I wasn’t meant to be alone, I don’t think.”

“The moment you die will feel just like this one,” the Archivist said.

“God, that’s so creepy!” Martin threw up his hands. “Isn’t there anything helpful you can tell me?”

“Hold your breath,” the Archivist said, a second before the subway doors opened and released a wave of water.

Water flooded the small carriage, barrelling into Martin with a physical force, and he was swept off his chair. Lifted alight, swept away, Martin gagged as water flooded through his nostrils and crowded into his mouth, crawling inside him and bursting him open, as the subway flooded with water until it was completely submerged. The Archivist didn’t react, even as water flooded into its empty eye sockets, and it drowned. 

Chapter Text

The radio droned on about the mysterious disappearance of Australia as Martin directed Tim on how to move the Archivist into the office. 

“Rather funny, isn’t it?” Sasha mused, as she sat on her office chair and eyed Tim with interest. “Australia just disappearing like that? What, did it sink into the ocean?”

“Weirder things have happened,” Gerry said solemnly, sitting on Martin’s desk and eating pistachios. Martin was glad that Gerry had money for food, even if he was still mildly concerned about where he got the money. “I saw a four dollar bill in Tesco’s once.”

“What? Just like, on the ground?”

“Yeah. Weirdest shit ever.”

“Aren’t you a demon hunter?” Tim grunted. He was carrying the Archivist piggyback from his office into the office space, clearly extremely uncomfortable. The Archivist slipped a bit and Tim shuddered. “Ugh, I just felt one of its eyes on my arm. Martin, why are we doing this.”

“It needs to go outside more,” Martin said severely. “Just put it down on the sofa.”

“I’m a rare book collector,” Gerry offered. “ And demon hunter. But the demons are more metaphorical. God isn’t real.”

“Rude,” Sasha said. “I’m Catholic.”

“Really?”

“Everyone in Artifact Storage is. There was this one crucifix - never mind. Tim, don’t just dump him!” Sure enough, Tim had just dumped the Archivist on the sofa. It flopped over, boneless, arm twisted at a weird angle that looked profoundly uncomfortable.”Sit him up. Like in Weekend at Bernie’s.”

“I hate this so much,” Tim groused, but he obligingly aligned the Archivist so it was in at least a semi-natural pose. He leaned it against the far arm of the couch, extending an arm so it rested on the arm of the couch as he leaned the head back. It could have been taking a nice nap, except for all the eyes eagerly watching Tim and probably wondering what the fuck they all were doing. “Do you think we should get a bunch of little sunglasses? So we don’t have to look at this shit all day?”

Martin trailed after Tim, but when he almost tripped on the floor he looked down. A tape recorder, maybe fallen out of the Archivist’s pocket. It was...running. Again. Still. Martin cautiously placed it on his desk, ignoring Gerry’s curious look. “I would say it’s more like they’re looking at us. But if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think they...see like we do?”

“What makes you say that?” Sasha asked interestedly. 

“The Archivist’s omniscient, I think. They’re probably Seeing things that aren’t here. That are very far away, maybe. I don’t know.” Martin crossed his arms uncomfortably. “But I think it’s lonely and I’m getting sick of all the nightmares, so this is where we’re at right now.”

“You’re the boss,” Tim said, informing Martin of something he didn’t know. He still scowled at the display, which in fairness looked just like a very creepy mannequin display at a mall. “Still hate how this thing is stealing part of the office couch. Now I have to sit on, like, the opposite end of it.”

“We could put it in a chair in the corner?” Gerry volunteered.

“That’s creepier.”

The radio cheerily informed them on the probability of World War Three - a record breaking thirty three percent probability. It didn’t feel like anything to be concerned about, although it was technically quite concerning. Only 33% - that was a significant chance of it not happening. Sasha and Gerry began chatting about whether or not it would be a good idea to book any flights about now as Tim retreated to his desk, scowling at the Archivist. So far as Martin could tell, Tim resented the situation and thought that the Archivist was creepy - which wasn’t a good combination. Martin resented the situation but thought the Archivist was cool, Sasha also thought the Archivist was creepy but didn’t resent the situation, and Gerry seemed to think the Archivist was both cool and that the situation was fun. Well, bully for him. He wasn’t the one under a death curse.

Martin, in an act of bravery, sat down on the couch next to the Archivist. It didn’t seem to appreciate the move any. It still wasn’t anymore aware than it had been yesterday. But, just a little bit, its face was angled towards the light, like some kind of demented houseplant, and that was enough. They sat in silence for a second, listening to Sasha and Gerry good naturedly bicker, hearing Tim eventually jump in with a forced smile to brag about his island vacations. 

“This is important,” Martin whispered to it, so the others couldn’t hear. The forehead eye swiveled towards Martin, almost curiously. “Even if we’re going to die tomorrow, that doesn’t mean today doesn’t matter. Do you see what I mean? The ending doesn’t outweigh all the rest. If what you said is right...that the moment we die will feel just like this one...then that makes every moment equally important. Right?”

The Archivist didn’t say anything, but Martin wasn’t expecting it to. They sat in companionable silence, the forehead eye staring dolefully at Martin, and listened to the others bicker. It was a strange, out of place sense of peace, but it was peace all the same. 

Happiness in adversity. Peace in the storm. Was that even possible? What did it mean, that even a man destined to die could be happy? That a species that spent most of its short existence in anger, fear, hatred, and pain could laugh?

These were very philosophical thoughts for Martin, but despite everything he had always secretly thought of himself as a somewhat philosophical person. But not a pretentious one. A practical one. Martin wasn’t very smart, and he didn’t know a lot about most things, but what he knew he was certain he understood. And Martin understood love. 

Would his life have been different, if he had finished high school? Maybe he could be a professor, or a scientist. An anthropologist or a sociologist or even a therapist, studying humanity and history. 

The daydream was appealing, if ludicrously unrealistic. Oh, he could be a rural GP like in those telly programmes. Helping cure the cold in the Scottish moors, petting the cows every day on the way to work. His husband, an intelligent and refined author slash history professor. Martin would wake up early in the morning, do yoga, and brew tea for his lovely husband. He would wake up his husband in the morning with a cup of Irish Breakfast, and he would go, ‘Oh Martin I love you so much I’m so sorry about drowning you in your dreams all those times’, and Martin would go ‘haha that’s alright, drink your tea love’, and his husband would pick his hair with one hand as he made breakfast with the other, and they would talk about social issues like politics, racism, and homophobia over the kitchen table just like smart people did. Then Martin would bike to work in his small clinic, stopping to pet the cows along the way, as his husband wrote his bestselling novel in his study, and their german shepherd would -

“Hullo?” the door opened, and a red headed woman with a mane of curly red hair poked her head in. “Is this the Archives?”

Everybody froze - Sasha and Gerry from where they were fighting over a Leitner, Tim with his axe hoisted over his head as he was about to chop through an old broken chair he found, and Martin from where he was sitting next to an eldritch human monster hybrid daydreaming about their cottage in Scotland.

“Right,” Melanie King said. “Er. I’ll come back later.”

“No, wait!” Martin squeaked, standing up, but he stood up too quickly and accidentally tripped over a suspiciously loose floorboard. He lost his balance, tumbling backwards, and took a very ignoble pratfall onto the Archivist’s lap. He felt his elbow jab an eye. Or five. 

Unfortunately, Martin’s weight made the Archivist slide off the couch, collapsing on the floor. Martin squeaked, dragged along for the ride, and found himself abruptly buried under six feet of lanky, multi-eyed horror monster. The room was dead silent for a second, Martin wheezing under the weight of one monster and a hundred creepy eyes, and also finding himself oddly kind of into it? But also repressing that very quickly. 

The silence was broken by Gerry’s barked laugh, teetering into a whisky cackle, and by Melanie King’s shout. “Hey, that’s the dream monster!”

“It’s our boss,” Sasha said apologetically. “It’s good to see you again, Melanie. Thanks for agreeing to come talk to us. Just take a seat anywhere? We aren’t normally this much of a mess.”

“Mmph,” Martin said.

“Save it for the third date, Martin,” Tim said,  walking over to squat next to Martin’s plight and not help him at all. He proudly gestured at the Archivist, whose eyes were still spinning a bit. “Congratulations, you’ve met our office mascot. More interesting to watch than a fish! Less upkeep than a hamster! Put it in a little ball and watch it roll around! Gawk at the way your coworker develops a crush on it! The hot new pet of the new millennium.”

“I had a robot dog as a kid,” Sasha volunteered.

“Please help,” Martin wheezed. 

“Ah, what the fuck,” Melanie said.

Of course, that was when two new figures poked their heads in through the open doorway, and Alice Tonner and Basira’s eyes both widened when they saw yet another strange tableau. Specifically, when they saw Martin slowly being crushed to death.

“Shit, it’s the eye monster,” Basira said.

“This is stupid,” Tonner said, and Martin was inclined to agree with her.

Twenty minutes later, after Martin had been rescued, the visitors and coworkers and Gerry had been sat in chairs arranged roughly in a circle like some kind of demented self-help group, and both tea and short explanations had been given, they were roughtly on the same page. Roughly. Martin still didn’t know how to address this whole thing.

Tim Stoker, the cheery but ill tempered ex-publisher with a secretive past. Sasha James, the maniacal yet whip-smart survivor of Artifact Storage who didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. Gerry Keay, the matricidal demon hunting teen with a childhood shrouded in mystery. Martin Blackwood, normal bloke whose past would technically be secretive if it wasn’t just pathetic. Introducing: Melanie King, YouTuber with a temper who’d been trying to stab to death the apparition in her dreams for the past two months. Basira Hussain, the loyal ex-cop who seems haunted by her past. Alice “Daisy” Tonner, the most crooked cop on the force who was no longer entirely human. 

A strange cast of characters. Yet, there was something strangely right about their arrangement. It felt normal, if the word could ever be applied to the situation. Something about seeing Melanie, Basira, and Daisy (really, she wanted them to call her that) again...it felt like coming home. In a weird way. They were just missing one person. 

Martin explained the situation as he knew it to the three women - including Martin’s dream of Melanie, his dreams of the Archivist, and the death curse which was very well established within his cult and the police force but that shocked Melanie. 

“This place did seem totally weird,” she said seriously, chewing a lock of hair. “When I was walking over here today I almost ran into this short old guy? And he like, looked at me like I had just ripped apart his dog with my bare hands? It was weird as fuck. The minute he saw me, he just turned around and ran the other way down the hallway. Weird greyscale motherfucker.”

“And you’ve never seen this guy before.”

Melanie shook her head. “Nope. Would have remembered someone that evil looking. But there was something familiar about him…”

She trailed off into quiet, looking concerned. Basira was scribbling something down in a notebook, as if she was investigating a police case. She nodded firmly. “That matches up with mine and Daisy’s experiences. I started having dreams of the Archivist after I interviewed the Director about the latest death of an archival assistant. This must have been...six months ago? The Director was not happy to talk to me.” She shook her head. “Sketchy, I knew it. Afterwards, I kept on having weird dreams of this figure. Tall black guy, just covered in eyes. He kept on opening his mouth, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. He stood far away from me as I...ate raw and bloody meat. I’m a vegetarian.” She wrinkled her nose, clearly disgusted. “Always nightmares. Every time.” She glanced at her...friend (?), who had gotten up from her chair and had moved to squat in front of the Archivist. “What do you think?”

Daisy (was Martin really supposed to call her that? It seemed like an elaborate prank) was just staring at the Archivist. Unlike almost everybody else who had ever seen it, she was making direct eye contact with the eyes. She seemed to be engaged in a...staring contest with the forehead eye. It blinked first.

“Is she single,” Sasha whispered to Tim, much louder than she likely intended.

“Buzz off,” Basira said, oddly aggressively.

Daisy reached out a finger and poked the Archivist in the cheek, carefully avoiding any of the eyes. It didn’t react, obviously, but she seemed satisfied.

“You’re really gotten yourself in it this time, haven’t you.”

The Archivist didn’t respond - but the surprising part had been that Daisy had said anything to it at all. 

She rose from her crouch, crossing her arms. Daisy looked the entire assembly over carefully, hre eyes lingering on a suddenly anxious Martin. “This is the guy I’ve been dreaming of. He stinks of evil.  Also like he doesn’t bathe enough.”

The pronoun didn’t escape Martin, but he kept his mouth shut on it. Instead, he asked, “What does he do in the dreams?”

Daisy shrugged. “We play fetch?”

Everyone stared at her except Basira, who was rubbing her forehead. 

 Melanie raised her hand, almost politely. “Okay, so...if what Blackwood says is right...maybe if we, like, put the Archivist’s soul to rest it’ll stop haunting us. It can rest in peace or whatever.” She abruptly looked a little defensive, crossing her arms. “That’s how it works with all the ghosts I track down.”

“It’s a good idea,” Sasha said supportively, and Melanie flashed her a smile. “The Archivist is so powerful, it should be able to save me, Tim, and Martin from our untimely deaths. I guess it’s just a matter of...waking it up?” She deflated a little. “Although I have no idea how to do that.”

“Maybe its name is the key,” Tim suggested. He looked seriously at the Archivist. “Joe Spooky, free yourself from your chains!” No reaction. “Uh, John Smith, release yourself!” The Archivist definitely twitched at that one, but maybe Martin was the only one who saw it. “Okay, that’s not going to work. Any other ideas? Uh...blackmailing Elias?”

“Do you have any dirt on him?” Basira asked sharply. “Fucker’s creepy as hell.”

The archival assistants looked at each other. Did they have any dirt on him? Was it possible to get him to cooperate? 

“He’s definitely hiding stuff,” Martin said slowly, “but I think he is cooperating. In...his own way. Is there anything you learned about the Institute from your time on the force, Basira?”

Basira huffed, slouching in her seat. “Plenty. Weird cult - yeah, whatever, we get enough of those. Controls several members of the House of Parliament, or maybe they control it. Sure, why not. Mysterious deaths every two months, usually but not always archival assistants. Yes, Officer, I haven’t seen a thing. Didn’t even know the assistant. Don’t even remember their name. That’s all I can tell you. And I get a door slammed in my life. By the next day, the poor soul doesn’t exist anymore in the databases. And we all move on. I won’t lie, it got to me.” She sighed slowly. “Thirties, black, looking like...that,” she waved a hand at the Archivist. “Sure, I might remember it. I think there was an investigation into a research assistant who dropped off the face of the earth many years ago. Can’t recall his name or anything helpful, though.”

“Which is weird,” Daisy said, as if she’d said it many times before. She was staring at the Archivist again, icy blue eyes penetrating through its body into whatever soul it had left. “Considering how you never forget their names.”

“None of our coworkers remember either,” Sasha said slowly, glancing at Tim. “Everyone just says ‘The Archivist is the Archivist’. Whenever we try showing a picture of him to someone, there’s no recognition. I don’t know if they’re lying to protect their own arses, but…”

“Maybe we can get the actual police on it,” Tim said hopefully. “If we make enough of a stink, then they have to help -”

“They can’t help,” Daisy said shortly, cutting all conversation short. She nodded at the Archivist, as if she had come to some sort of decision. “Only I can. Do you want to know the last place the Archivist went before he lost his soul?”

Everyone glanced at each other.

“How would -” Sasha began, just before Daisy turned into a wolf.

It was quick, easy, and supple. She bent over, quickly peeling off her clothes in a way that made everybody in the room save Basira cover their eyes, and began glowing with a soft light. Muscles bunched and shifted under her skin, fur sprouted in tough grey bristles, and her head elongated to a muzzle’s point. It was horrifying, for two or three seconds, and then it was over. A grey wolf stood in the office, about as tall as Martin’s chest, her eyes the same ice blue as Daisy’s. 

“Not this again,” Basira said. 

“ What the fuck ,” Melanie screamed. 

“Oh, cool ,” Gerry said, face splitting into a bright grin. “She’s the Hunt!”

“ That’s reassuring!” Tim yelled. He stood up from his chair, as scared as Martin had ever seen him. He was pale, looking directly at the wolf standing there with its tail swinging. “So what, Daisy’s a monster too? Isn’t there anybody I know who’s fucking normal around here?”

“I’m pretty normal,” Martin said, offended.

“Your taste in men is far from normal,” Tim shot back, and Sasha clapped him on the shoulder. 

“Ease up, Stoker. Werewolf Lady looks like she wants to help us. That makes her okay in my book.”

“I don’t mess around with monsters,” Tim muttered, but he sat back down in his seat and shut up, which was the most anybody could ask from him. 

Daisy growled, and sniffed the Archivist very thoroughly. The Eyes didn’t seem to know what was going on, but they were very intrigued by the proceedings. She sniffed him thoroughly, nosing along his limbs, and barked when she seemed to be satisfied. She paced the room, nose close to the floor, trying to suss out a trail. Melanie squeaked when Daisy came closer, drawing her legs close to her chest, and Tim bristled, but Sasha enthusiastically gave her a couple good pats and Basira just looked tired. Martin, for his part, stayed very still when Daisy gave him a good extra-long sniff. 

Then she turned around and bounded off into the hallway, scratching at the door to the library. Everyone looked at Martin, for some reason, so he got up and opened the door for her. She bounded in, tail wagging, and Martin peeked his head into the library. He had almost never gone in - he was a little frightened of it, actually. But it was nothing special - just a lot of bookshelves with a lot of books that looked like they would kill you if you opened them, and a truly stunning quantity of cardboard boxes. Out of curiosity, as Daisy sniffed around the room, Martin opened up one of the boxes. 

Inside were cassettes. Martin grabbed one, flipping on the light and squinting at the label as the others filed in quickly. The label read simply ‘Case 0051701’. That was unhelpful. He grabbed one of the omnipresent tape recorders that always seemed to be around, pressed pause from where it was recording and popped the cassette out, and put the new cassette in and pressed play. Daisy was scratching a section of the floor, whining softly.

Whirring, and echoes. Finally, a familiar voice crackled from the speakers. “Statement of Leanne Denikin, regarding an antique calliope organ she possessed briefly in August 2004.

Original statement given January 17th 2005. Audio recording by -”

Then the cassette exploded into a blast of static, and Martin winced. It felt as if forks were being dug into his eardrums and swirled around. He quickly pressed stop, ejecting the cassette. It was smoking a little. 

“Gertrude’s old statements don’t do that,” Gerry said, making Martin scream again. He hadn’t even noticed him walk up. Gerry was rubbing his chin, looking thoughtful. “Which Archivist was that?”

“It was him,” Martin said numbly, as Basira crouched down next to Daisy and started working her fingers in under the loose floorboards. “It was our Archivist. I’d recognize that voice anywhere. Do you think the whole cassette is corrupted?”

“I mean, probably -”

But Martin was already replacing the cassette, fast forwarding through the part where he was guessing the Archivist gave his name. Come on, come on -

“When I had first remembered about the loft, I'd been annoyed. I thought there'd be so much more stuff up there, days more sorting to go through. But when I turned on the light, I saw that it was almost completely empty.”

The Archivist’s voice was smooth and silky, like honey, but also with an oaken and comforting flavor to it. Martin sighed dreamily, and Tim mimed gagging behind him as he helped Basira pull up the floor. They were probably doing something important, but it didn’t seem very important now. Could Martin go through all of these tapes? They had to have some kind of clue, right?

Martin fast forwarded a bit more. This was just a Statement, yeah, clowns, definitely the Stranger, who cares -

“I thought it was pronounced “Ka-lee-o-pee?”

Martin and Gerry froze. As one, they slowly glanced at Sasha, who was lingering by the door and frowning at her laptop. 

“Is that -” Gerry said. 

“Yeah,” Martin said.

On tape, the Archivist sounded a little flustered. “Sasha? You're... back early – I thought you were trying to get hold of those police reports for the Harold Silvana case?”

“Tried and succeeded. They were actually quite helpful.”

“I see you,” Martin whispered, for reasons he didn’t understand.

“Sasha, you’re not going to believe this!”

As Tim and Basira excitedly revealed a trapdoor to secret tunnels underneath the Institute, Sasha patiently stood by as Martin played the incriminating section of the cassette for her. She did a double take when her voice appeared, but otherwise didn’t flinch. They let the whole conversation play out - it was quite banal - before Martin reluctantly pressed stop on the recorder again. He wanted to listen to the whole thing. Just for the Archivist’s voice.

“Well,” Sasha said finally, “needless to say, that was not me.”

“Stranger?” Gerry guessed. “Or the Spiral?”

“I know what the Stranger sounds like when she’s imitating me,” Sasha said flatly, shuddering with the memory of an awkward breakup. “No, that’s me. I mean, it’s not me, but it is me. It’s definitely something I would say. Amnesia?”

“Amnesia sounds likely,” Gerry said, the first time Martin had ever heard that sentence. “So what, you worked with the Archivist while it was still human, and when it went all spooky your memory was wiped of its human self too?”

“It’s what seems to have happened to everyone,” Sasha said, frowning. “Best put it back for now. We can go through all of the tapes later.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Martin said quietly, but everybody was already moving forward to climb into the mysterious trap door where, according to Tim’s excited shouts, “you guys, there’s whole-ass tunnels down here, what the fuck!”. Martin severely did not want to go into the tunnels. He severely wanted to sit here and comb through every tape they had, in case his voice showed up on one of them. 

Just one more. Just one more, and then they could go through all the rest later. He quickly grabbed a random one, sparing a single glance at the label - #8370108, and if he remembered Gertrude’s byzantine organizational system correctly then that meant that this was recorded several years later - before pushing it in. 

“Statement of Hezekiah Wakely, regarding his career as a gravedigger. Compiled from a series of letters to Nathaniel Beale between 1837 and 1839. Audio recording by -”

Static. Martin ground his teeth and dropped the recorder. Pointless. They would get more time for all of this later. When they emerged from the - Martin took a glance backwards - creepy tunnels. Right. 

Daisy was still standing at the mouth, waiting for him. She was truly a gigantic wolf, but somehow much friendlier looking than in human form. Martin sighed, wondering why werewolves didn’t bother him anymore. Between that nutcase Trevor Herbert, ex-cop crazy werewolves, and Martin’s own personal damsel in distress, his life was beginning to look a lot like Twilight. This was nothing like all his self insert Twilight fanfictions said it would be. 

“Do we really have to?” he asked the wolf. Daisy just barked. “Right. Hey, can I ask, uh - how did you get fired from being the most supernatural cop into the city and get turned into a werewolf and end up in underground fight club rings?” Daisy barked again, more reproachfully. “Right. None of my business. Sorry I asked.”

He slowly descended the stairs, letting Daisy walk alongside him and pretending that it didn’t make him feel much safer, as something bothered him. How did the organization system of the statements work, again? He was an archival assistant, he should know this...if he was interpreting that last cassette right, then it would have been recorded in 2018.

Which was...two years from now. 

Martin slipped on a wet step, almost losing his balance, and Daisy barked attentively. Right, right. Come to think of it, the statement with Sasha in it was recorded in 2016, which was obviously this year and supposedly the Archivist lost its soul years ago -

Hm. Martin wasn’t that great at math, but something wasn’t adding up here.

“I hate this,” Tim muttered from where he was walking in front of him, sticking his hands in his pockets. Martin didn’t blame him - the tunnels were small, cramped, wet, musty, and extremely dark. They didn’t have torches beyond the torchlight of their mobiles, which everybody had out, and in general it wasn’t a great idea to go underground unless you had an exit plan. “Let’s just walk out of this and come back with decent supplies.”

“Aw, are you scared?” Sasha mocked. “Grow a pair, you baby. Daisy, lead on!”

“You are not suggesting we -”

“Do you want to solve this mystery and save our lives or do you want to die mysteriously because you were too chicken to walk into some mysteriously dangerous tunnels?” Sasha said sweetly, and Tim shut up. “Right. Melanie, Basira, you don’t have to come with us. But this is definitely something I’m doing. I mean - did anybody know there were tunnels under the institute? This is wild as shit!”

“Oh, I’m coming,” Melanie said, and Martin saw that she was holding her phone horizontally. “I’m also recording every fuckin second of this. This is going to boost my channel into the big leagues.”

“I’m not ditching Daisy down here,” Basira said flatly. She glared at the wolf, who wagged her tail. “You’re going to get me killed one day, Daise.” Daisy barked cheerfully. “Right. Well, she’s guiding us, so lead on. I guess. I hate this too.”

“All of this for some guy we don’t even know,” Tim muttered, but Martin pretended not to hear him. If he was going to bring his bad attitude to work today, then he could just leave it in the coat rack of repression. 

The tunnels smelled like must and damp, and Martin could practically feel the dust tickle his throat and aggravate his allergies. The corridors were tight and crowded, forcing them to walk single file and occasionally giving Tim and Martin difficulty squeezing through. They could hear faint sounds, just barely on the threshold of awareness. A little like water dripping, or like stone groaning, but there was something oddly human about the sounds too. They mostly walked in quiet, with Daisy at the head and Tim bringing up the rear tightly gripping his axe. Sometimes Sasha made a bad joke to ease the tension - “Anybody remember that Long John’s Cave statement?” - or Melanie would whisper descriptions of the situations to her Youtube subscribers, but for the most part they all silently agreed to let the atmosphere percolate.

The walls weren’t always the same - sometimes brick, sometimes panelled in wood, sometimes dirt, sometimes stone. The floor changed too - from hard rock to loosely packed sand. There was the unmistakable touch of humanity about it, a long forgotten relic from society, but the tunnels were impossible to date just by eye. Martin wondered if they were old coal mining tunnels from the 1800s, or maybe even older - they could go all the way back to the medieval period! Only one thing was for certain - nobody had been here in a very long time. 

“Is that a crisp bag?” Sasha asked, prodding a small aluminum packet with a sneaker. “Weird.”

Gerry’s expression darkened. “Let’s just not worry about that.”

Well. That complicated things. Martin tried not to think about it too hard.

The only other thing about these tunnels that made him feel strange took a long time to realize. Time had lost all meaning, their clocks were running backwards, and Melanie’s phone wasn’t running out of battery. But it wasn’t until they were deep within a stone corridor that Martin had realized what had been bothering him - rather, what hadn’t been bothering him. 

“I don’t feel watched,” Martin whispered. “I don’t feel a...prickling on the back of my neck.”

“That’s normal,” Basira said flatly. 

But Tim stopped in his tracks, squinting at some etchings on the stone. “Martin’s right,” he said distractedly. “In the Archives you always feel...watched. It drives you fucking insane. It’s like water torture. Never having a second of privacy. Like…” He ran a finger over the stone, eyes narrowed and thinking hard. “Like a panopticon.”

“Like what now?” Martin asked.

“Oh, yeah, the philosophical thought experiment of the prison where every prisoner is always watched,” Basira said, nodding, making Martin feel very dumb. 

“Smirke again?” Sasha asked, making Martin feel even dumber. “You and your 19th century architecture, I swear.”

“I’ve been here before,” Gerry said quietly. “Oh a hunt. But I never got this far…”

“I recognize this work,” Tim muttered. “But it can’t be...we’ve been going in spirals…but that’s impossible…” Daisy barked, and Tim shook himself. “Right. Let’s keep going. I hope I’m not right…”

But he was.

They reached the center eventually, after what felt like weeks or hours. Martin’s feet hurt, but that was all he knew. Melanie’s phone was at 130% battery, and nobody could work up the energy to be freaked out by it. The architecture had transformed into what was undoubtedly an underground structure, with walls and flooring, in a spiraling shape. If it wasn’t for Daisy and her nose, Martin knew that they would have been trapped down here for weeks, or months, or forever. They would have never escaped. Turning into a werewolf sounded useful.

Eventually, they came to a halt in front of a door that was larger than the others, and seemed to lead to a round center. Daisy halted and, in a grotesque mash of limbs and fur, stood up and transformed back to a very naked woman. Everybody averted their eyes again, and Basira sighed and took off the outer layer of her hijab and shucked her jacket to give to Daisy, along with a few safety pins. In a few seconds Daisy grunted and they turned back around again she was wearing a makeshift shirt and a motorcycle jacket, looking very proud of herself. 

“I told him I’d do it,” she said hoarsely. “Tell that motherfucker I don’t go back on a promise.”

“Why did you promise?” Martin asked. “Nobody’s ever been able to hear him except for me.”

She shot him a bizarre look, just before pushing the door open. “We’re friends. Keep up, Blackwood.”

Okay. So he wasn’t getting an explanation. That was hardly the biggest problem they had right now. Martin filed in after her into the central room. It was dark, lit only by the light of their mobile’s torches, with high vaulted ceilings and arches. It was almost Gothic, their footsteps clacking on the stone floor, and save for the decorations on the walls and column work it was completely unfurnished save for what looked like a tomb in the center.

“This is the panopticon,” Tim muttered, increasingly frantic. His eyes were bloodshot and twitching. “What’s Smirke’s panopticon doing underneath the Institute? What are we doing in it? Is this some kind of temple to the Eye? Why is this place the key to it? Why did I take this dumb job -”

“Call dibs on grave robbing!” Sasha yelled.

“No way,” Melanie said, “I want to do it!”

“It’s not grave robbing if nobody catches us,” Gerry insisted. “This is more like tomb raiding. Like the video game!”

“You’re all nuts,” Basira said weakly. “This is a crime. Let’s turn around.”

“Like fuck we’re turning around now,” Daisy said. 

But Martin didn’t have anything to say, because he was already walking to the tomb. There was a single plaque on it, unrusted and clean. 

JONAH MAGNUS, the plaque read. 1800 - . THE LIGHT OF THE BODY IS THE EYE: IF THEREFORE THINE EYE BE SINGLE, THY WHOLE BODY SHALL BE FULL OF LIGHT. 

“Huh,” Martin whispered. “Matthew 6:22. That makes sense. But there’s no death date.”

“What do you mean?” Basira asked, moving to stand next to him. “Oh. Yeah. Most tombs have the dates that the person died. What’s that, the Bible or something?”

“Sermon on the mount,” Martin said, distracted. His mother was…quite religious. “If I remember correctly, the eye’s a metaphor for the conscience of the person, their spiritual guiding light, so to speak. You see, uh, the eye’s only supposed to be focused on God. So you can say that Jesus is telling his followers not to deviate from their focus on God by getting wrapped up with worldly things.”

Basira was silent for a second, before shivering. “And indeed, those who disbelieve would almost make you slip with their eyes when they hear the message, and they say, "Indeed, he is mad. But it is not except a reminder to the worlds.”

“Is that the Qur’an?”

“Protection against the evil eye,” she said flatly, and Martin nodded. 

They both stared at the tomb in silence as Melanie, Tim, and Sasha bickered behind them. Daisy was staring at the ceiling, lost somewhere inside herself.

“...say it again for me?” Martin whispered. 

Basira muttered the verse in Arabic, and it really did make Martin feel braver, make him feel safer. He took a deep breath, wrapped his love and his fortitude and his determination around him, and reached out to grab the edge of the tomb. Basira took the edge too, and together they pushed the heavy stone lid off the tomb. 

“Hey, guys,” Melanie said, but nobody really paid any attention. “I just got an alert - I dunno how I’m getting the internet down here - that North Korea just shot all of its nukes at Britain? Guys?”

The stone groaned, and everyone else rushed over to get a good look at the concrete and stone screamed, and with an awful thunk and crash the lid slid fully off and revealed the inside contents of the tomb. 

The Archivist was inside. 

It was lying next to the body of Jonah Magnus, but it was very much alive - or as alive as the Archivist had ever been. It opened its eyes when the tomb was opened, and it sat upright under its own power. Martin opened his mouth to scream, but when the Archivist opened its mouth and began speaking all other sounds were drowned out. 

“Bring all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and leads and dies!” The Archivist said, monotone yet rising in speed and tone and pitch and frenzy. Its hair whipped around its face although there was no wind, and every eye on its body was glowing. “Come to us!”

Something awful happened to the world. Martin felt it in his soul. Something grabbed and twisted and ripped the world apart, scattering it into fragments. 

“I open -

The panopticon disintegrated. The body of Jonah Magnus turned into Elias Bouchard, then turned into Jonah Magnus again, but it had no eyes, it had never had eyes, it had never seen, it was always seeing - 

Basira was holding Martin’s hand, and Daisy was holding his other, and Sasha was clutching onto Basira and Tim was clutching onto Sasha and Melanie was gripping Tim tight and Tim had grabbed Gerry’s arm and pressed him tight against his side so he wouldn’t be swept away. They were all screaming, but they had no mouths to scream with. 

“ - the door!”

And everything was nothing, and nothing was anything any more. 

Martin dreamed that night of opening the door to the Archives and walking down slimy cement steps, stopping in front of a wood oak door. The door had a plaque in front of it, reading in embossed letters ‘THE ARCHIVIST’. He looked down at his hands, only to find himself holding a mug of steaming tea. The mug had a kitten on it, with the word ‘CAT-FINATED’ underneath. It was quite cute. 

He reached out with his left hand and twisted the brass knob, gently pushing the door open. The room inside was dark and dim, lined with shelves crowded with filing boxes, endless stacks and stacks of paper. It loomed above Martin’s head, shadows nipping at his heels, and in the center of the room was an imposing oak door with a tall, slight, unspeakably handsome man sitting behind it. 

Martin stepped closer, and the man looked at him with every one of its endless eyes. 

“Martin Li Blackwood,” the Archivist said. “You were too late. The world ended anyway.”

“What?” Martin said, confused. He had just meant to bring his boss some tea. 

“You didn’t even notice,” the Archivist whispered. “The Extinction comes for us all, Martin. It is the one fear the whole world knows. But they should know me. I am the greatest fear in their hearts. I am the corruption, I am the darkness, I am the facism. I am the deaths of their souls and minds. I dug out my own soul and ate of it, and it was bitter.”

“What the fuck?”

“He who ends his own life ends an entire world,” the Archivist said, “and I did both. I never needed your help, Martin. I just wanted to drag you down with me.”

Then the Archist was in front of him, standing toe to toe, and Martin squeaked. It reached out with two gnarled hands, and Martin thought for a second it was going to grasp his cheeks and kiss him, and it lowered its mouth to Martin’s neck, hot breath blowing against Martin’s neck, and his lips made contact with Martin’s skin, and then his teeth did, and then the Archivist was ripping out Martin’s throat with his teeth and Martin was gushing out and screaming and crying and dying and everything became so small -

Martin’s alarm went off.

He opened his eyes. 

He stared at the ceiling. 

He waited for his heart rate to go down.

“Hm,” Martin said. 

Martin got dressed, brushed his teeth, went to the bathroom, made and ate breakfast. It was strange - he had just bought cereal yesterday, but now he was out again. He had toast instead. He wasn’t really that hungry, anyway.

As he sat at the breakfast table eating toast and drinking orange juice, he attempted to call Sasha on his mobile. But her number wasn’t in his phone. Neither was Tim’s. Weird. Not the weirdest thing to happen in the past week - that would have been the world exploding - but definitely a bit strange. 

He checked the news. Nuclear war may be imminent. Experts were saying a 10% probability. Down from 33% yesterday, which was good. 

For the first time, Martin checked the date.

It was a week ago. March 7th, not March 12th.

Hm. 

Martin slipped on his socks, tied on his shoes, and went to work. He couldn’t really think of anything else productive to do.

“Transferring?”

Martin stopped short in front of his old desk - or, rather, his usual desk - or, rather, his newly old desk. He gaped at Tim, who looked a little as if he was on a coke bender. His eyes were red rimmed, his hair was sticking up at all ends, and he looked more than a little maniacal. 

“Yep! Starting right now, we are the newest archival assistants.” Tim was sweeping all of his desk things into a cardboard box, heedless of delicate electronics or stress balls. “Got the call from Rosie this morning. You, me, Sasha James.” He grinned broadly at Martin, like a shark. “I hope your will’s written out.”

“Huh,” Martin said, staring aimlessly into the distance. “I need to talk to Elias.”

Tim froze. 

“Nothing about your Mum?” he asked, almost frantically. 

“What? I mean, next time the world ends she’ll be as dead as the rest of us,” Martin said, distracted. “Or not dead. Right. I’m going to go speak with Elias. You should probably touch base with Sasha and Gerry.”

“You remember ?”

“I’m afraid I blacked out after the Archivist killed us all,” Martin said apologetically as Tim sputtered. He dumped his briefcase on his old chair, nodding at the other coworkers steadfastly ignoring all of them. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back. I’ll meet you and the others in the Archives after I’m done.”

The only thing running through Martin’s mind as he climbed the stairs to the third floor, walking through winding administrative hallways, is: this is my fault.

He was the one who got everyone involved with the Archivist. He was the one who insisted on exploring and finding and chasing, always. If it wasn’t for him, maybe they would have had those extra three months. 

Why did the Archivist kill all of them? Well, it didn’t seem to have a choice. That didn’t mean Martin wasn’t mad at it. He was pretty stinking mad. It’s not nice to go full vampire on people in their dreams. 

Maybe nuclear warfare wasn’t the Archivist’s fault. But, considering how its spiritual role seemed to be causing the apocalypse, Martin doubted that just a tad. If he thought about it, really thought about it, he realized that society had been heading in that direction for quite a while. It seemed almost...inevitable. 

They said that frogs didn’t jump out of a boiling pot, so long as you turned the heat up slowly. 

Finally he got to the reception area in front of Elias’ office. Rosie was there, as if she wouldn’t be turned into a melting skeleton less than a week from now, happily typing away. 

“Hello, Rosie,” Martin said politely. “I was wondering if I could see Mr. Bouchard? I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment.”

“Oh, he’s quite busy right now,” Rosie said cheerfully. “Meetings all day, you know. Can you make an appointment? His next availability is next month.”

“Thanks, I’ll come back later,” Martin said, as he walked past Rosie and down the hallway, ignoring her yells, passing underneath giant painting after giant painting of serious eyed dour old men with something about them unsettlingly identical to Elias, until he came to Elias’ oak office door. 

He knocked. 

“I’m busy!” a voice echoed from inside. 

Martin walked inside.

Elias looked terrible. Not quite as bad as Tim, but undoubtedly as if he hadn’t really been sleeping. There were puffy bags under his eyes, and his tie was askew. He didn’t look happy to see Martin, but he didn’t look surprised either. That was alright. Martin hadn’t really been intending to surprise him.

“Mr. Blackwood,” Elias said smoothly, “if you have any concerns about our transfer, you can register them with HR -”

“What happened in the panopticon?” Martin interrupted. 

“I’m very busy,” Elias said tetchily. 

“Why do you have the ugly corpse of Jonah Magnus under your institute?”

“I’d hardly call it ugly,” Elias said, offended. 

“What was the Archivist doing there? Why did it say that stuff? Why did the bombs hit just as the Archivist destroyed us? Why is it a week ago?” Martin’s voice wasn’t rising, wasn’t panicking or yelling. He felt very calm. But he also wanted to throttle Elias, just a little bit. “What is going on?”

“If you don’t leave,” Elias said, eye twitching, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to call security.”

“Why would I be afraid of security?” Martin said. “I’m not even afraid of you .”

“Martin, god fucking -” Elias threw his pen on his desk, startling Martin. “I will tell you everything , alright? Martin fucking Blackwood is the last hope for civilization and, more importantly, my plans. I will tell you whatever you want . I just need two fucking seconds to get over the fact that my flesh was just - god fucking damnit, Tim!”

Elias jumped up, and wasted in no time in running for the door, throwing it open and booking it down the hall. Martin didn’t waste any time either, chasing after him, and he was only distantly aware of how stupid the two of them might have looked as they practically leapt down three flights of stairs, running past a fleet of confused employees, and burst into the Archives.

The first thing they heard was shouting. Tim’s shouting. Sasha was yelling too, almost pleading, and Gerry’s thin and reedy voice was clear. It was coming from the Head Archivist’s office, but Elias was already running towards it, throwing the door open. 

“Mr. Stoker!”

“ Fuck you, you creepy old -

Martin huffed and panted, skidding in right after Elias, just in time to see Tim standing over the Archivist with an axe raised above his head, clearly just about to swing. 

“Put the axe down,” Sasha was pleading, “we can fix this without killing someone.”

“That’s not going to help anything,” Gerry was shouting. “That’s just going to make this so much freaking worse -”

“Mr. Stoker, I will get you blown up again, so help me -”

“No,” Martin whispered, but it was too late, because Tim was swinging the axe down, and in one clean stroke he had loped the Archivist’s head straight off its neck. 

There was no blood. It was very clean. The head rolled on the floor, like some awful misshapen football. Tim stood over the corpse, panting, grinning in triumph. Sasha was screaming. Martin didn’t know what he was doing. 

“There,” Tim said, wild eyed and proud. “There! Problem solved! No more apocalypse. No more nuclear war, no more creepy Eyes. The apocalypse is cancelled, and I have cancelled it. Now we can get back to our -”

But that was the moment that a very powerful shockwave blew them all off their feet, and the world exploded in a flash of light and heat and flames again, and Martin knew no more. 

Martin sat next to the Archivist in silence. They were in a desert crouched on shifting sands, the burning sun beating down on them. Martin thought about Basira’s prayer - protect us from evil eyes. 

The Archivist was on its hands and knees, sobbing. The horrible part was that every eye was crying, water soaking through its clothes, dripping water. It was a hoarse, awful, desperate crying. Martin had tried to get its attention, but it didn’t seem to notice him, so he was stuck just sitting next to it listening to it cry. 

“I gave you everything you wanted,” the Archivist cried. “I gave you me, I gave you my soul, I gave you my body. Please, I gave up everything just to keep them safe. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. Please. Please give me back. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.”

“That might have been the axe Tim put through your neck,” Martin said flatly.

“Elias said that it was my choice,” the Archivist cried, perking Martin’s attention. “That it’s all my fault. It is my fault. I’m such a loser. I don’t deserve Martin, or Daisy, or anybody good. God, Martin. I ruined his life . Now I’ve become his murderer.”

“Did we used to know each other?” Martin asked urgently. “Like you and Sasha knew each other?”

“Sasha’s gone,” the Archivist moaned, clenching his fists into hot sand. “Eaten, gone, forever. Tim’s gone, blown up, forever. Melanie’s blinded. Martin’s lost to loneliness. All that’s left is me. I’ve ruined it all. I’ve sold the world. For what?”

“I wish I knew,” Martin said, staring out at the dunes. They were beautiful, in their own way. “Sometimes it feels like the world’s not even worth it. Everybody knows it’s going to end some day. Why not today, right?” Martin sighed, running his fingers in a faint pattern through the sand. “I don’t really like my life. But living isn’t so bad. I don’t want to stop doing it. I don’t think you did either.” Martin glanced at the sobbing Archivist from the corner of his eye. “I’m starting to get a picture of the situation. You sold your soul for power. The Eye used you to destroy the world. Now whenever the world’s destroyed, it resets. Through time and space. We used to know each other, I think. Me, Sasha, Tim, Gerry, Daisy, Melanie, Basira...we all used to know each other. Is that right?” The Archivist’s tears sizzled on the hot sand. “Archivist. How often have we done this?”

How many times have you destroyed the world?

The wind picked up, and in a rush and crush of grinding rock a sandstorm washed over them, filling Martin’s mouth and nose and eyes and ears, and they drowned to death together under a whirlpool of sand. 

Chapter Text

Martin woke up, gargled a glass of water and spat it out into his bathroom sink to get the taste of dirt out of his mouth, and went to work early.

It was March 7th, five am. 

By eight am, he was sitting in Elias’ office, watching Gerry go through all of Elias’ desk drawers as he sat in his very comfortable office chair. Unfortunately, for the leader of an apocalypse cult, Elias’ desk wasn’t very interesting. A lot of files, none of which were very interesting to Martin or Gerry. A surprising amount of weed and paraphernalia, which Gerry quietly scooped into his pockets. There was also a wicked sharp silver letter opener, which Martin slid into his pockets. 

Gerry had a Leitner tucked under his arm, which he insisted was tamed. It was some kind of...haunted phone book, with numbers that could reach both the living and the dead. They used it to call the rest of the Gang and quickly brief them on what was going on, as best as they understood it, and they had all arranged to meet in Elias’ office as soon as possible. They should be arriving soon. The only person he hadn’t called was Tim - Sasha had promised to go to his apartment and check on him and make sure that he behaved. And wasn’t, you know, decapitating more people. 

The anger bubbled up in Martin, but he ruthlessly and efficiently shoved it down. Of all the reckless, stupid shit. What a fucking idiot. He couldn’t blame him, really - he was scared and lashing out, and it wasn’t as if Martin hadn’t made mistakes - but how violent and cruel. He could have killed someone. He did kill someone. It was just luck that it couldn’t die. 

At eight fifteen, the door finally swung open. As expected, it was Elias. He didn’t seem surprised to see Martin sitting in his seat, Gerry perched on his desk with his legs swinging, but he didn’t seem very happy about it. 

“Now,” Martin said lightly, “where were we?”

Elias sighed, gesturing with his umbrella. “Out of my seat.”

“Gertrude would be so disappointed in you,” Gerry said disapprovingly. 

But Martin got up and moved to the guest seat anyway, because he really did feel awkward sitting in another guy’s seat, even if Gerry didn’t move. Elias casually shoved him off with his umbrella instead, refusing to touch him, and settled into his office seat instead. He sighed, seeming to sag, and propped his elbow on the desk. With his other hand, he pulled out one of the tape recorders in his desk - he had an entire drawer just of tape recorders, weird as fuck - and pressed record on it, placing it in the middle of the desk. 

“March seventh, eight fifteen am,”  Elias sighed. “Attempt number...is this fifty fourth or fifty fifth?”

Martin sucked in a breath. Gerry just nodded grimly. 

“Martin Blackwood and Gerard Keay are in my office,” he said. “I’ve been recruiting their help in the last ten or so loops, but this is the first time they’ve arrived with their memories intact. Gerard began coming back to life on the...fourth loop, I believe, for reasons unknown to myself. I noticed on the third loop the Archivist had been reading quite a bit on his life, so I suppose...imagination had a role to play.” Elias rubbed his forehead. “On the tenth loop, employees began beginning the loops with knowledge of the true purpose of this institute. That was when things began breaking down, I believe.” He eyed Martin and Gerry, who were both pale. “But I believe a full explanation should wait until your friends get here.”

It didn’t take long. Daisy burst through the door barely ten minutes later, Basira hot on her heels, and Martin didn’t miss the way Elias carefully leaned away from her. Daisy didn’t look happy, having been updated on the situation by Gerry, and Basira fetched more chairs as Melanie, Sasha, and Tim came in. Tim was last, looking haunted, and he flinched when Martin glared at him. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, looking sick. “I just...got so mad…”

“Just sit down,” Sasha said to him gently, squeezing his hand. Martin hadn’t known - hm. Gerry looked speculative too. 

“Now that we’re all here,” Elias said, desperately trying to look in charge of the situation, “I want to thank you all for coming. I know we’re in a difficult situation right now, but I appreciate your patience and -”

“What the fuck is going on,” Daisy barked. Figuratively. She was human, for now. For a given value of human. 

“Time loop,” Gerry said cheerfully. “But you’ve probably already guessed that.”

“Jesus Christ,” Melanie muttered, looking sick.

“Indeed,” Elias said. “But I’m afraid the situation is far less stable than that. The world is distingriating further with each loop. They’re lasting shorter and shorter periods of time. The loop that you all remember being from was the longest we’ve had in a while, three years. I’m afraid that if the situation continues on as it is, by the time we get to loop seventy or eighty they’ll barely begin before they’re destroyed.”

“The timeline always resets to after you kill Gertrude, right?” Gerry asked. 

“Yes. The Archivist’s soul is always gone by the time I get here,” Elias said. “Trust me, if she was around to fix this, it would have been fixed by now.”

“She was always like that, wasn’t she,” Gerry said nostalgically.

“Quite. That being said, this is the first time the rest of you have been involved. Normally Martin, Sasha, and Tim die in a very boring manner and the universe decomposes sooner or later.” Elias sighed again. “This wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to rule over a fear dimension. Act as pope in a cathedral worshiping terror. Reimagine the world to create a perfect maelstrom of horror and fright. All of the other Avatars always bitch at me about this. ‘Why do you keep trying to destroy daytime telly, Elias?’. ‘I like my big ships, Elias’. Idiots.” 

“Do you need a moment?” Basira asked, arching an eyebrow. 

“It’s just decomposing. It’s pointless. And I’m stuck in this stupid loop. For decades.” Elias grit his teeth. “I am going more insane than I already was. I am quite thoroughly tired of this.”

“I don’t give a fucking shit!” Tim screamed, and only Daisy and Sasha leaping forward to grab his jacket stopped him from lunging forward to probably strangle Elias or something. “The world is dying and you’re saying this is your fault? I should try killing you instead, you egotistical -”

“That won’t help,” Elias said quickly. 

“It’ll make me fucking feel better!”

“Enough,” Daisy said roughly. “Things are different now. We’re on the case. The world won’t end again.” Tim exhaled, forcibly reigning himself in, and Daisy carefully let go of him. She turned back to Elias, raising an eyebrow to meet Elias’ eyes. “How do we get the Archivist to stop murdering the world?”

“Get it to stop being the Archivist,” Elias said. “But that’s rather like asking the sun to stop being the sun. Or asking Martin to stop pining.”

“Hey!”

“Would reminding him of his identity help?” Daisy asked urgently. 

“Certainly.” Elias reclined in his chair, folding his hands on his lap. 

Everybody stared at him. 

“Well?” Basira asked finally. “What is it?”

“I haven’t the faintest clue.”

Everyone groaned. 

“The Archivist doesn’t know,” Elias reminded them. “It forgot the minute it sold its soul. That was the price. The Archivist is the one recreating the world, for some godforsaken reason. How can it include what it never knew? The information’s been wiped from my own memory. The Eye certainly knows, but it wouldn’t divulge.”

“Somebody has to know,” Daisy said. 

Elias shrugged. “Maybe somebody who loved him, before he was an it. Somebody who the Archivist would recreate with this love as an essential part of themselves. But there’s nobody like that. Nobody ever cared about him, you see.”

Everybody stood in heavy silence, feeling the impossibility of their task ahead of them. Martin’s head was spinning. This was so much more than he had thought. If he, and this random gang of overly violent and crazy people, didn’t fix this, then reality as they knew it was going to disintegrate. Martin had faked his credentials for his job requirements, and this was not in his job requirements!

“Then we better get looking,” Daisy said, mouth set in a firm line. She nodded at Basira, who gently grabbed her hand and nodded back. “Right. We can do this. We have to.”

“I’ll help too,” Melanie said heatedly. “I’m good at research. We can look through the statements, track down the Archivist’s history, and beat this stupid eye god.”

“The goal isn’t to beat ,” Elias said delicately.

“Fuck off, it so is.” Sasha crossed her arms. “Why were you trying to keep us away from talking to it, if we’re your last hope?”

Elias looked away, mouth thinning. “When you interact with the Archivist, the loops tend to end shortly afterwards.”

Nobody knew what to say to that, considering how right it was. 

Martin had more questions - about the panopticon, about the body, about why they all remembered now - but Tim looked like he was going to vibrate out of his skin with rage and the tape recorder had clicked off. It was time to go. They didn’t have any more time to waste. 

“We’ll do it,” Martin said, turning away from Elias to look at everyone behind him. “We’ll get it done. We just have to help the Archivist, so it can help us. I promise I’m getting all of you out of this. The entire world out of this. We better start cracking.”

And that was it. Everyone looked a little bit more cheerful, even if a speculative glint entered Elias’ eye, and they finally broke up the meeting. Only Martin stayed, exhaustedly slumping in Elias’ guest chair, as everyone else filed out. Elias was typing something very empathetically into his phone, though who he could possibly be talking to Martin didn’t want to know. 

Finally, he asked, “Was I always in love with him?”

“There is no version of Martin Blackwood that does not love the Archivist of the Magnus Institute,” Elias said slowly, as if the words held incredible weight. As if anything Martin could do or be could ever mean anything. “Even when the sun grows cold and the stars grow old, that will always be true. Close the door on your way out, if you please.”

There was nothing else to say to that. Martin left, closing the door behind him, and hoped it wouldn’t be the last time. 

Martin had always preferred fantasy to reality.

In his opinion, it was perfectly natural. So long as you kept yourself wrapped up very tight inside, stomped down on everything you felt and were so that you were the only one who ever knew, you could never be disappointed. Endless teenage days dreaming about the relationship he would have with his crush du jour meant that Martin was never forced to confront the ugly reality of a relationship. In real life, people disappointed you. Nobody was perfect. What if your Prince Charming was just another frog? It was far better to just dream, and leave it as a wish your heart makes, instead of a messy reality. 

Martin had always been honest with himself, even if he was a liar to everyone else. He knew that he lingered in fantasy so he wouldn’t have to deal with reality. And he knew that he tended to idealize. But, honestly, could you blame him? Real life was so boring and mundane. Who couldn’t use a nice pint of ice cream and some escapism at the end of a hard day. It was what made people human. 

So Martin read romance books, and he dreamed of the guy that would sweep him off his feet, and he wrote a thousand relationships he would never have. But it was just good practice for when he really fell in love. When Martin really fell in love, for real and for good, he would know. It would be like a lightbulb going off, a spotlight moment. 

Martin walked back to the Archives in a daze, Elias’ words echoing through his head. Not the part about the time loops or the apocalypse or how Martin and his gang of feral homosexuals were the only ones who could save the world. No, Martin was thinking about star crossed lovers. About Martins who always fell in love with Archivists. 

It was something Martin had always known about himself: that he would do anything for true love. Martin was now discovering a new thing about himself: that he would burn down the world for true love. 

What did Martin know about the Archivist? He knew that it was in great pain. That it needed help. That it was a little grouchy and enjoyed telling people facts and that it had destroyed the world over fifty times. That was a start. After all, nobody was perfect. People became perfect when you accepted them for who they were.

Who did Martin have in his corner? Sasha, who was pretty insane on the outside, and Tim, who was quite insane on the inside. Gerry, who was apparently ex-dead, though apparently most people were in that state, and who had known Gertrude in some way or another. Basira and Daisy, ex cops hiding dirty secrets and surprising loyalty to the monster they barely knew. Melane...Martin didn’t know what was up with Melanie. Maybe even Elias Bouchard, who had something to do with Jonah Magnus, even if Martin didn’t know quite what.

And the Archivist. Martin had to believe that. 

Martin had promised to help them. They were depending on him. He stopped in front of the door to the Archives, listening for the frantic arguments going on inside. He took a deep breath. Nobody had ever depended on him before. 

Martin opened the door to the Archives, and everyone stopped talking and fighting when he walked in. He forced a big grin, crossing his arms. 

“So,” Martin said, “let’s make a plan. Who’s in?”

Everybody looked around at each other. Sasha whispered something in Tim’s ear, who scowled. 

“I’m in,” Melanie said immediately. “I’m not missing out on this story of a lifetime.”

“I’m helping save the world,” Gerry said stubbornly. “That’s what Gertrude would want.”

“I made a promise,” Daisy said, glancing at Basira, who nodded. “We both did.”

“I kind of have no choice!” Sasha laughed, propping her hands on her hips. “But yeah! I got nothing better to do for the next few months.”

Tim, who was leaning against a desk, crossing his arms and looked away, scowling. But he glanced back at Martin anyway. “It’s not like I have a choice.”

“Good enough,” Martin said firmly. He closed the door behind him. “Let’s get down to it.”

The first to it, as it turned out, was research.

Statements, specifically. What was the apocalypse? What was that weird shit the Archivist had been sprouting? Were time loops, like, a thing that happened to people? It was worth it to find out. 

Their first few days at the Archives, Martin had half-heartedly tried to go through the Statements, but the organizational system was so fucking nonsensical he gave up within two seconds. Luckily, Gerry was now here, and for some reason he had the entire thing downright memorized, and he was able to explain it to everyone else. Basira and Melanie were excellent at researching apocalyptic rituals, Sasha and Tim excelled at the practical side of trying to track down the Archivist’s identity, and Daisy occasionally disappeared for three days with Gerry and came back dripping blood clutching a cassette between her teeth. 

Martin was good at...well, none of it. But he was beginning to learn that he was actually quite good at organizing people, and making sure things ran alright, and coordinating efforts and consolidating information, and in general managing people. He had never been in a managerial position in his life. He had no idea. It was oddly exciting. Mostly confusing, but a little bit exciting too. Martin hadn’t known that he had been good at things. 

They didn’t talk to the Archivist anymore, and kept its office door firmly shut. Instead they spent their time running through the tapes that seemed to start in 2016 and extend all the way through 2018, odd records of the future. Glimpses into a life never lead. Melanie mostly took charge of listening to those, but Martin helped out as much as he could, quietly obsessed with the little glimpses of the Archivist’s personality. 

He had been gruff. Mean and caustic and taunting. But there was a wry intelligence, a dry humor, and a genuine care and dedication. It was endearing. Melanie had thought him a ponce - had thought him an asshole, when she ran into the Statement that she, in this life, had given to Sasha - but Martin hadn’t really expected her to understand, anyway. 

His name had been mentioned frequently, from the earliest tape on the Anglerfish they could find. Apparently he had been/was/will be a...very shite archival assistant. Well. Fair enough. 

When Martin had begun showing up in the tapes himself he had screamed. Did his voice really sound like that? Was that what he was like? He was a little...pathetic? Worms ? 

Jane Prentiss was still alive, according to Sasha’s research. Working in a Wicca shop. She and Tim had gone to check her out themselves, pretending to be a couple searching for a wedding tarot deck because they got overly inventive with their cover stories, and according to them she was a perfectly normal person. Whatever differences there were between universes, what other...acts of imagination the Archivist had created, none of them knew.

Daisy, who had cheated and skipped ahead to the ending, was extremely smug. “Told you we were friends,” she told them during their daily task force meeting. “I was great. Martin, you sucked in 2018. Depressed motherfucker.”

“Okay, rude, call me out in front of my coworkers.”

“Mood,” Tim said, sneaking a sip of whiskey before Sasha stole it and, in an act of supportiveness, downed all of it herself. Martin, very quietly, shipped it. MLM/WLW solidarity. 

“So you’d say that he was closest with Martin and you?” Basira asked, pen flying over her legal pad. “Have you tried talking with it?”

“I haven’t dreamed about it in weeks,” Daisy said flatly, yawning. “I tried to go in to talk to it a few times but it didn’t respond. I think the Archivist likes my wolf form, though.”

“Great work,” Martin said firmly. “By the way, you guys, I’ve managed to convince Elias to add Basira, Daisy, Gerry, and Melanie to payroll. It’s strictly under the table because we don’t want to trap you in his web of lies, but our budget is huge and I can sneak in an actual paycheque under our ridiculous travel budget.”

Everyone cheered. 

When they broke up the meeting Martin sighed and begun the five times a day search for the tape recorder. Today it was underneath Tim’s desk. He sighed, tugged it out, and flipped it off while ejecting the cassette. He took his usual pen from his pocket and marked the label - “APRIL 3RD 2016, TEAM MEETING, UNOFFICIAL” - before marking it in the spreadsheet and filing it in the cardboard box. 

A month. A month of research, of dreams every night, of occasional hijinks and much more frequent danger, and they had come so far while barely getting any closer. 

He paused, and checked a different spreadsheet. The Jane Prentiss thing should be happening...in two days, actually. Should he be worried about that? She did seem to just be a Wicca, but you never knew…

Listening to too many Statements a day wiped Melanie and Basira out, so they were making slow progress. The Archivist had been quite thoroughly erased from history. Elias was maddeningly unhelpful on what to do next, and they were all forbidden from venturing back into the tunnels. The Archivist wasn’t talking. Every day just felt like banging his head against a brick wall. 

He glanced at the door to the Head Archivist’s office, letting the sound of Tim and Sasha’s easy bickering wash over him. Maybe he should...no. Elias had been quite clear when he said that Martin didn’t tend to live very long if he interacted with it too long in flesh space. 

Even if he wanted to. 

How aware was it? How much was it cognizant of what was going on? Martin knew that it was. It always seemed to know the situation in his dreams. He had seen a documentary on locked in syndrome once...locked in syndrome for three years, even more...it seemed like hell. It was obviously hell, what with the way it seemed to be constantly mentally screaming in pain and anguish. 

Did it deserve it? Tim thought so. He could tell that Melanie and Basira secretly thought so too. Martin didn’t know. 

But life wasn’t all work, even if Martin frequently caught himself staying at the Institute until eight pm rewinding and replaying the same tapes over and over again, lost in the silky voice. 

“Do you think it’s possible to fall in love with someone you don’t know?” Martin asked. With a great deal of practice, he had finally learned how to exert some control over the dreams, and now they were in a cheery Scottish meadow, leaning against a fence and watching the Highland cows graze. Martin was sitting on the fence, as the Archivist leaned against it. “Like, their voice, or their story? But if you’ve never met.”

“Love isn’t real,” the Archivist said flatly. Its sightless eyes - and Martin had discovered after a great deal of trial and error that it truly was blind in the dreams, even if its understanding of the environment never wavered - aimed towards the softly blowing breeze. “It’s a collusion of our chemicals meant to trick us into reproducing and continuing the species.”

“I don’t think my brain’s interested in me reproducing,” Martin pointed out. 

“The Gay Uncle Hypothesis posits that people themselves who do not -”

“Okay, Mr. Wikipedia,” Martin said, laughing. “I get it. But surely you’ve fallen in love, right? I know you had a girlfriend or something. Even somebody like you wants to be intimate with another person, or loved by someone.”

“I am the boundless power of an eldritch fear entity stuffed inside a mortal shell, and my voice is the last remnant of his humanity crying out to you,” the Archivist said sourly. “And even in my past life, I held no particular drive for intimacy.” Its expression twisted into something bitter. “Sex is what makes us human, after all.”

“I don’t believe that,” Martin said, surprising himself with his vehemence. “Dinosaurs can have sex. It’s about the - the love, the closeness. And even if you didn’t want either of those things, you’d still be human. You being an eldritch fear monster has nothing to do with your romantic or sexual orientation.”

“You’re lying to yourself,” the Archivist said flatly. “You are falling in love with a fiction. With a projection, an escapist fantasy, a caricature. With a dead man. It’s a false, hollow love.”

Martin exhaled, kicking his heels against the weathered wood. “Maybe. I mean - I’m not stupid. I know it’s all very - fantastical. But you don’t think that it’s possible? To fall in love even when it’s not rational, or reasonable?”

“No. I know it is not possible.”

“Then maybe you don’t know a lot about love,” Martin teased. 

The Archivist stiffened self-importantly. “I am omniscient. I know everything about everything, I know the nature of the turn of the universe, I have seen the patterns of every dimension -”

“Read more Danielle Steel, that’s your real education,” Martin said, laughing, and the Archivist huffed again. It was...fun teasing it. Rare moments like this, when it wasn’t crying out in pain or lashing out, were nice. “Even if I don’t know anything about him...even if the person I’m so fascinated with is just a voice on a tape...I don’t have to, you know? Love isn’t about, like, always understanding everything or having it dissected. It’s not a science. It just is.”

“It’s not rational,” the Archivist complaimed. “People change day to day, and between the years they are entirely separate people. Look at marriage! Twenty year olds say that they want to spend every day in retirement together when they are eighty years old. It’s not logical. Your husband at eighty is far from the person he was at twenty. He’s not the person you fell in love with. Why make that commitment, when that house is built on sand?”

“Marriage isn’t saying that you’ll stay the same forever. It’s saying that you want to grow together.” Martin smiled at the Archivist, at its pointed face and its hollow eyes and its pock-marked scars that shift and turn and disappear. “I guess it’s about faith. When something can’t be proven, you need faith to believe it. Some things are beyond rational understanding. You just have faith that you and your partner will want to live life together, forever. That your love can withstand anything. That’s it.”

The Archivist was silent for a long moment. In the distance, the cow moo’d. Finally, it frustratedly said, “I’m omniscient. How do you know something I don’t?”

“It’s because you don’t get out very much.”

More silence. Longer. Martin waited. When the Archivist finally spoke, it was quiet, almost ashamed. It was an emotion the Archivist had never expressed before. “I miss the way you used to bring me tea.”

“I’ll bring you tea for the rest of our lives,” Martin blurted, cheeks burning red. “I promise. If - if you promise to drink it.”

The Archivist turned its head, and stared at Martin for the first time, its gaping eye sockets raw and empty. “The Beholding, the Archivist, or the human?”

“I - you?” Martin faltered. “I thought you were - the human? Right?”

“You should adopt that kitten,” the Archivist said, its empty sockets spinning. “If you can even tell them apart.”

A cow moo’d, a harsh beeping blare, but it was just his alarm, and Martin was forced to wake up yet again. 

Ugh! Martin groaned, gripping his hair by the roots. Never in his life had he had so many dreams about someone that were all dry ! His life was so hard!

Speaking of hard, Martin took care of all of that, and resigned himself to another day. Maybe he would bring the Archivist tea today. Maybe. 

Was the person in his dreams the human or the Archivist? Was he falling in love with the voice over the cassette tape, or with the desperate figure in his dreams? Was there a difference, beyond the harsh workings of time and destiny?  Martin didn’t want to fall in love with Cthulhu. Was this a love square with two people, like in Miraculous Ladybug?!

My life is just like a Hallmark movie, Martin thought morosely, finding a normal looking worm outside as he walked to work/prison and thoroughly stomping it to death just in case it was a witch avatar of a fear god themed after the worm plague stalking him and trying to eat him to stop him from saving the world.

Wait. Martin had never seen a Hallmark movie starring a gay Chinese guy. And he’d seen a lot of Hallmark movies. Maybe if he asked the Archivist politely, it would make gay asian love stories the hot new thing in the new universe once it deleted this one. 

It was a thought. 

Once he did get to work, once he divvied up tasks for the the day and began the ritual of hiding Tim’s whiskey, he found himself staring at the door to the Archivist’s office more than usual. Had he been avoiding it because it was safer? Or because he was a little mad at it? 

He checked the news, grimacing when he saw the headline. Most of Southeast Asia had fallen to the monsoons. He was pretty sure Britain was the only island left. Aw, tigers were extinct? That sucked. They needed to work faster, and finally make progress. Martin hated living in a world where all the pandas had died a month ago. 

The first person to come in after Martin was Daisy, surprisingly enough. Normally she only rolled in a little before noon. She was yawning, mouth opening wide to reveal canines an inch long, and they exchanged a few banal greetings before Martin settled back into work and she settled back into playing on her phone. When the others showed up, usually starting almost an hour from now, the office would become loud and boisterous again, but for the moment it was quiet. 

After Martin found himself glancing at the door to the Head Archivist’s office for the thirtieth time in a minute, he sighed. “Daisy? Can I ask you a personal question?”

“No,” Daisy said, swiping on her phone as she sat at the guest chair next to Basira’s desk. Martin suspected she was playing Candy Crush, but it was impossible to confirm. 

“Am I in love with the Archivist or with the human inside it?” Martin sighed. “Is there even a meaningful difference? Can the two be separated?”

“Oh my god, I don’t care.”

“Do you think if I true love’s kiss it, that’ll bring its memory back?

“Sure, why not,” Daisy said sarcastically. 

Martin looked up from his paper, looking at her. “Really? Do you think so?”

“Definitely go give it a shot,” Daisy said, without looking up from her phone. 

Martin nodded furiously, standing up from his desk and clenching his fist heroically. “I’ll do it! I’ll tell him how I feel, and maybe that’ll be the key!”

True love - why hadn’t he thought of it before! 

“Wait, are you actually going to -”

But Martin was already pouring still-hot water from the kettle into a mug that he liked to imagine was the Archivist’s favorite - it had been the only mug in the kitchen when Martin started working in the Archives, and it had ‘WHAT THE GHOST’ printed in big letters on the side with a cute little cartoon ghost - and dunking a packet of PG Tips inside. He carefully added sugar and milk, and ignored Daisy’s mingled confused and horrified look as he bravely walked into the lion’s den. 

“I’m not watching you do it!” Daisy called, as he knocked on the Archivist’s door and entered. “I’m pretending this isn’t happening!”

The room was dark, as usual, and the Archivist’s eyes seemed to glow green in the gloom. He put the cup down in front of the Archivist, taking a second to glance at the papers. The desk was...messier, then he remembered. There were more statements, scattered around. Some of them were even balled up or crumpled, as if the Archivist had destroyed them in frustration. 

“Good morning,” Martin said cheerfully. “Got your tea. How are you doing?”

Silence. Obviously. Martin didn’t sit down, anxiously playing with his fingers while keeping a smile on his face. 

“Right. You remember our conversation we just had? Of course you do, you remember everything, ha ha.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he scanned the statements. One of them seemed to be about an Archivist, trapped underground, leaving nothing but a desperate skeleton behind...another seemed to be from Jonah Magnus. What was it reading? Why did it never tell him? 

Martin quietly opened the desk drawer, pulling out the photograph easily. It was just the same as he remembered it, from the other reality. He found himself clenching it, creasing the edges. The forehead eye blinked curiously. 

Why had that person gotten to be with him, and Martin didn’t? Why did that person get a grouch who posed for a polaroid, while all Martin got was this? It wasn’t fair. The Archivist had said that love wasn’t real, but it used to have this. Martin didn’t even get this. 

This was supposed to be his soulmate. His star crossed romance. Why was he spending all of it locked in a desperate fight for his life, alone and unsupported by his true love? Mario wasn’t supposed to resent Princess Peach. 

Was he in love with the Archivist, or with whoever the human used to be? Was what he was feeling even really love at all? Did the Archivist care about him back -?

No, of course it did. It asked for him , for his help specifically . The Archivist and Martin had been in love, in that dead world, even Elias said so. This was supposed to happen. 

Then why did it feel like something so wrong?

But they had tried everything but this, and Martin desperately needed just something to go right, anything, and if it worked then it would be worth it. Right?

“I’m going to try something,” Martin said, throat abruptly dry. His palms were sweaty, and he wiped them on his khakis. “Just - hold still, okay?”

Ugh, the logistics of this. His cheeks were covered in small eyes. So was the forehead, with the large eye that was still curiously watching him. The only part of it that wasn’t covered in eyes was its lips, so maybe - yeah. Yeah, that’ll work. Martin’s heart thumped in his chest, triple time. This could work. This would work. 

Okay. He could do this. And the Archivist would say - thank you for saving me, Martin. Someone, finally, would thank him. Something would be okay.

Martin screwed his eyes shut and leaned in, and clenching all of the courage he could scavenge in his fist he brushed his lips to the Archivist’s. 

They were cold and limp like a corpse’s. But something bloomed in Martin all the same, a beautiful feeling of security and rightness, and in the span of a second it was like the sun had come out from behind the clouds -

HE IS SO FRUSTRATING WHY DOESN’T HE UNDERSTAND THAT I HAVE TO STAY AWAY I KNOW THIS HURTS I DON’T LIKE BEING LONELY BUT WE HAVE NO CHOICE WHY DOES HE ONLY CARE NOW THAT I CAN’T CARE ABOUT HIM BACK - 

A rush of heat. A shockwave. An explosion. 

And, once again, Martin was thrown backwards, his head hitting something hard with a horrible crack, and he knew nothing else. 

Martin came into awareness in his bed. 

He wasn’t awake. That was abundantly clear, when he realized that he was lying on top of his old Power Rangers comforter. When he opened his eyes and sat up, looking around, he saw that he was in his childhood bedroom. Every little detail was there: the shelves on the wall holding comic book figurines, the bookshelves holding adventure novels and game guides. A tube telly crackled on a peeling stand, with an SNES roughly jammed in underneath. Loosely decorated with Jesus memorabilia and arts and crafts from Sunday school, the homey atmosphere was undercut by the large, ugly bolts of the lock Mum had put on the door to keep it locked from the outside. 

Martin sighed. At least this wasn’t his bedroom as a teenager. She had taken the door off for - months, was it? After she found those magazines? Christ. 

“Why did you do that?”

The Archivist sat at the foot of Martin’s bed, staring intently at him. It...so much as it ever had facial expressions, which it wasn’t very large on, it seemed angry. 

“Sorry,” Martin said, cringing. “I thought it would help. I guess it didn’t.” He perked up. “Unless the world exploded in a good way -”

“I don’t like kissing,” the Archivist said severely. “I wouldn’t have said yes .”

Oh. Martin sat in silence, burning up in guilt and shame. 

“If you only care about some pathetic dead Joe Spooky, then you shouldn’t bother with me. Any human in me is buried deep, endlessly screaming to be free of its prison. I am the jailor and the prisoner. The man you idealize is dead, and his corpse has corrupted into a monster who sees your greatest sins.” The Archivist stretched its eye sockets wider, and something grim and softly green shone from within them. “I know everything about you. Every shameful desire, every secret wish. I know why your father left you. I know why your mother never loved you. I have swam in the depths of your loneliness. I have tangled myself in your web. I have been dissected under your eyes. But you, Martin Li Blackwood, know nothing about me.” 

Martin’s throat was dry, and his heart was seized with an odd sort of horror. Why? Was it being in his childhood bedroom that made him afraid, more scared than he had ever been in the Institute?  Or was it the way the Archivist picked him apart sightlessly? 

“The fantasies of man destroy the world, time and again. The fiction I told myself - that my sacrifice would be worth it, that power was necessary to survive - destroyed it the first time. The fantasy that you tell yourself, your Sleeping Beauty happily ever after, destroyed it again. Do you want to know what is inside that shell that you stare at so longingly? Do you know the composition of this figment, this chimera in front of you? I am a machine, an automaton. Do you know what I am made out of?” The Archivist leaned in closer, and Martin saw that it did not breathe. “I am made of hate and loneliness. I am perversion and ruthlessness. I am everything bad and cruel in humanity. I am the vessel for the Entities of Fear. I am the corpse of a dead man.”

“There is still some human in you,” Martin whispered furiously. “I know it. I know there’s goodness and humanity in you, Archivist. Stop trying to push me away.”

“If you call my name three times, I will wake,” the Archivist said, sitting on Martin’s power rangers bedspread. “But you do not know if the human I was will make the same decision, all over again.”

“I won’t let him!”

“You let him last time,” the Archivist said. “Take a deep breath.”

Fuck this! Fuck it! As the door slammed open and water began rushing into the room, chasing itself upwards so it could choke Martin out once again and kill him, he grabbed onto the Archivist’s arm. It reeled back, shocked, and Martin wanted to let go but he also wanted to hold on forever. 

“I don’t only care about you because of the human I think you could be,” Martin said furiously, even as water dampened the edges of his bedspread. The Archivist stared at him, mouth slightly open in surprise. “I care about you for you ! I wasn’t bringing tea all those times to the human ! Not only humans are capable of good! I think you can be good too, Archivist, even if you are evil! Because - because I feel so evil, and wrong, and - and bad, my Mum always said so - and if even I can be good, you can too! Even people with evil in them like you and me can be good! I can’t believe that I can be good unless I can believe that anyone can be good, don’t you get that? You aren’t pushing me away! I’m going to save all of you! And you’re going to save all of me! That’s what you do when you -”

But he couldn’t speak any longer, because the water was crowded into his mouth, and he was swept away into the current. Martin drowned, again and again and again, and it no longer even felt like drowning, but like filling up with something that was dangerous and cruel and uncontrollable, but that he needed if he ever wanted to survive. 

Martin lay awake in bed long after his alarm went off. 

He had messed up. What a fucking idiot. Of course fucking - fucking kiss someone who was basically in a walking coma wouldn’t work. How gross. And immoral! Don’t forget about immoral. If he was the Archivist, he’d never want to talk to Martin again. 

A little, nasty voice in his head whispered that the Archivist had done way worse, what with killing everybody fifty times over and all. Martin beat the voice down with a stick. Sure, the Archivist wasn’t perfect - in fact, sometimes Martin worried that it kind of wanted to dream-murder him and eat his flesh - but none of the apocalypses were its fault. Martin sometimes felt as if it apocalypse’d by...breathing. An involuntary reaction. Who could help that?

Martin thought of Joe Spooky, bent over endless tape recorders late into the night, eyes rimmed by bags, slowly losing all faith in everyone around him. He thought of the Archivist, sitting alone in an empty office, calling for a Martin half-understood. Was there a meaningful difference? 1 cup human + 1 cup monster = Archivist? Did the human grow into the Archivist when planted in loamy soil? Did the human form a chrysalis around itself and turn into an Archivist? How does a man become a monster? Whose fault was it?

The story had to be long and complicated. Martin didn’t pretend to know it. Maybe he shouldn’t even pretend that it was comprehensible. He didn’t want to start wondering at what point were people fully responsible for their actions, because then that got into the old ‘Heaven and Hell’ mental argument. 

He called in sick to work, ignoring the pissy texts from the rest of his coworkers and friends, and watched a lot of telly. He read some old favorite books - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein - and leafed through his old collection of Hulk comics. 

Is he man? The cover of the first issue of the Hulk interrogated. Or is he monster? Is he both? Martin wondered how to define monster. Was it someone who did bad things? Or just felt no remorse over them? Was it Bruce Banner’s fault he was the Hulk? One could argue yes - he was the one who had been obsessed with gamma radiation, he was the one who ran into the testing site to save Rick Jones, and he was the one with anger issues so bad that he turned into a rage monster. Especially if you viewed the Hulk, like some did, as a metaphor for a nuclear bomb, then Bruce Banner definitely carried the guilt of that immoral science.

But there was something so lonely about the Hulk. He just wanted a friend, someone to make him feel better, someone who he couldn’t hurt. When Betty or Rick Jones hugged him, he always went back to normal. Who was the monster - the man who had a destructive temper and created bombs, or the simple beast who just wanted to be left alone? 

Martin had thought that hugging the Hulk would turn him back into Bruce Banner. But instead the monster had rejected the love, insisting it wasn’t worthy of respect. That was a very human thing. And Joe Spooky was the one who had sold his soul for power and bartered away the humanity he had left. Were the lines between man and monster so simple? 

A wound that can’t heal - that was how Martin always thought of the Archivist. Eyes always oozing blood, always crying in pain. Stuck in endless limbo, always in the moment of the injury but never progressing towards the healing. A ghost haunting old corridors. But maybe the metaphor was more psychological than that. Maybe what was repressed could never be healed. And so long at the Archivist could never accept or remember its humanity, it could never stop feeling that pain. 

Time loops. An Archivist who could never heal and move on from the pain. A Director who was locked in the same behavior over and over. Martin, who indulged in love over and over again with no intention of ever following through, and never receiving love back as a result. What was the connection?

Kitty of the day! She’s been meowing up a storm. 

His phone buzzed with a text from his cat supplier, and Martin was able to spare a rare, genuine smile for the image of the woman holding a little kitten to her cheek. She had another one in her other hand, Martin’s kitten’s brother. They were identical in every way. With a rush, Martin remembered the Archivist’s words from a reality ago. 

Martin checked the time and date. March 7th. 3:30 pm - wow, where had the day gone. On impulse, and because he was so out of ideas it wasn’t even funny, he texted back, If you’re free at home right now, would it be alright if I visited Gumball? I could really use a kitten pick me up :(

The answer came back immediately. Sure! Come over anytime this afternoon. You still have my address? 

Yep! May I bring a friend? I can vouch for them. 

No problem. See you soon. ;)

Martin made a call, received a grudging yes, and began pulling on trousers. Everybody needed a break sometimes, right?

Especially him, probably. Sometimes he wished - but that was a waste of time. It was a time for action. 

Call his name. Wake him up. And, when the world wasn’t ending...well, then Martin and Joe Spooky/the Archivist/the Beholding could work out their differences. 

But it was almost impossible. His name was erased from history. From the universe, actually. Elias said the only way was to find someone who had loved him, but if there was one thing Martin could tell just from looking at the Archivist it was that he was alone. Maybe that was what drew them together. Martin was lonely too. 

Maybe they could be lonely together. One day.

Tim was standing in front of the flat complex, arms crossed and scowling. Somewhere over the last month/three universes his dress code had changed, from Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts to leather jackets, flannel, and jeans. It was super sexy but Martin refused to admit that. Far more surprisingly, Melanie was standing next to him, looking as cheery as he had ever seen her. 

“This is hilarious,” she said as Martin walked up. “Like, honestly, what are the chances? London is not  a small city.”

“We get it, you have a girlfriend and I don’t, shut up, “ Tim groaned. “If you’ll just stop being so smug -”

“You not having a girlfriend is your own fault,” Melanie argued. She came to his shoulder, but she possessed a ferociousness that made Tim lean back. “She’s not going to sit around forever, you know!”

Tim looked away uncomfortably as Martin tried to pretend he wasn’t there. He had always been good at that. “Is the apocalypse really the time?”

“What other time do we have?”

“You sound like Martin.”

“Maybe our fearless leader is right about some things,” Melanie said, as if he was not literally right there, before fishing in her pocket and pulling out a key. She raised an eyebrow at the both of them. “Now, are we going to go in or not?”

Martin didn’t want to know, but she told them anyway. 

The flat complex was nice, but not very fancy. Martin had been there before to pick out Gumball, although it felt weird to have been in someone’s home and still not know their name since you forgot to save it into your phone and you’re shit with names. But, apparently, once Melanie saw the pictures Martin sent to the group chat, she had gotten very excited over the woman in them. So excited that she had her own key to the flat. When she saw Martin invite Tim out, she had invited herself along.

Which was fine. Even if Martin had, kinda, maybe, wanted to talk to Tim in private. They could do that later. 

They walked up three flights of stairs, rang the doorbell, and Martin frantically tried to remember his cat dealer’s name so he wouldn’t accidentally call her cat dealer in public. He knew it was kinda strange. Like, Robert? Or something? Regina? Shit. 

The door swung open, and a short woman stood at the entrance, holding a kitten in the crook of an elbow. She smiled pleasantly at Martin, gave Tim a polite look, and then her face broke out into a wide grin when she saw Melanie. 

“No shit!” his cat dealer cried. “You two know each other!”

“Georgie, you absolute darling, you’re selling Gumball to my coworker! Let me in, I’m going to kill you for not mentioning this.” Melanie stepped forward and exchanged an affectionate and casual kiss with Georgie - right, that was her name! - before stepping inside the flat, throwing her shoes off and collapsing on the couch as if she lived there. 

Georgie Barker was a short woman, even shorter than Melanie, with dark skin and an undercut with three piercings in each ear. She was dressed rather butch, with enough flannel and combat boots to rival Tim, but Martin had first met her when she was dressed prettily in a sundress too. She talked fast, laughed loud, and had a certain assertive aggressiveness to her that made her somewhat intimidating if you didn’t know her very well, which Martin didn’t. She wasn’t in the business of selling cats - her cat The Admiral had been very naughty, and she had put the kittens up for a very cheap sale on their local Facebook page. That was how they meant. Pure coincidence. 

Also, she was the host of What the Ghost, which was how she and Melanie met, which made Martin say something very dumb. “Like in the cup!”

They were sitting on the ground, Martin trailing a toy along the floor so Gumball could pounce on it. He was an adorable tortoiseshell, with big black eyes that reminded Martin a little of the Archivist. God, he had it bad. Georgie was sitting across from him, and Melanie was sprawled on the couch as Tim manspread next to her. He looked vaguely uncomfortable, and also slightly thoughtful. 

“Cup?” Georgie asked, petting Gumball’s brother Rock Candy.

Martin nodded eagerly. “When we first moved into our new office, there was this old cup in the cabinet. I’ve heard of What the Ghost, but I never listened. It was really vintage looking too, it didn’t have your usual logo.”

Georgie was quiet, expression oddly serious. She reached over to the coffee table, grabbing her laptop, and pressed a few keys before swinging the screen around. “Did the logo look like this?”

“Exactly like it.”

“That’s weird.” Georgie bit her lip, slowly closing the laptop. Tim stood up and started pacing the edges of the room, stopping to peer into picture frames with a single minded focus. “That was like, first wave of merch. Not a lot of people have those…”

“Maybe an old assistant was a fan?” Melanie suggested, not nearly as invested in the conversation as Martin and Georgie seemed to be. The Admiral, the daddy of the kittens, was purring in her lap as she scratched behind his ears. 

Martin raised an eyebrow at Melanie, effectively communicating - the old assistants who no longer technically exist on this earth, nor have they ever existed? Melanie shrugged. 

Tim quietly disappeared into Georgie’s bedroom. Georgie didn’t notice, shuttering away her troubled expression to smile brightly between Melanie and Martin. “I never knew Martin was your coworker, Mels! Do you do podcasting too, Martin?”

“I kind of have a new side gig,” Melanie said, wrapping a finger around a red curl self-consciously. “It doesn’t pay great, but I think it’s really going to be the story of a lifetime. If I can ever keep my stupid recordings.”

“Ooh, fancy investigative reporter,” Georgie teased. “Where is this new job?”

“The Magnus Institute,” Martin said glumly. 

“What, the cult?”

“Investigative journalism,” Melanie said gleefully. 

“Whoah, can I interview you too?” Georgie opened her laptop again, carefully keeping it out of reach of an excited kitten. “I heard that place has all the best ghost stories.” She paused a second, eyes narrowing, before turning to Melanie. “Wait, does this have anything to do with your dreams?”

“The knife ones? Yeah.”

“Huh.” Georgie chewed her lip. “Spooky.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Martin said, wriggling the cat toy so Gumball would jump around. He was so cute. Martin would just like him to get old enough so he could take her home. But he kept on getting reset, always moved back to childhood. Last time he had seen an image of him, he was a month and a half old. Now, he was only a few weeks old. Was anything fair? Martin wanted to get older. 

They made small talk after that, Martin quickly lying and saying that Tim was in the bathroom when Georgie asked, Georgie asking Martin about his pet owning history and Martin asking Georgie about what it was like to run a podcast. It was a fun life, apparently, if a bit lonely occasionally. She had a group of weirdo friends, but nothing too permanent. Yeah, she played roller derby too. And rugby. And basketball. What about you? Oh, writing’s so much fun. Yeah, I went to Oxford, what about you? Oh. That’s fine, I grew up like that too. I once knew someone else who -

Tim banged open the door of Georgie’s bedroom, startling everyone. He strode forward, face a blank mask, and dropped three photographs between Martin and Georgie. They fluttered to the ground, sliding onto the carpet, and the kittens tried to pounce on them. 

“Whoah, what the fuck were you doing in my room?” Georgie asked.

“Tim? The fuck is wrong with you?” Melanie cried.

Martin just took a look at the photographs. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat.

It was a group picture, five young adults sitting on a couch. Georgie was one of them, holding hands and sitting next to a figure so familiar it was painful. As always, he wasn’t smiling. Martin picked it up, hand shaking, and got a bare glimpse of the figure’s Oxford t-shirt before it was snatched away.

“That’s private!” Georgie cried. “What is wrong with you people?”

“We’ve been looking for that man for months,” Tim said, voice as taut as a piano wire. “And you had a picture of him in your bedroom . Who is he?”

“How is that any of your business?” But Georgie was clutching the photograph tightly to her chest, and Martin saw that it was valuable. Maybe even sacred. “This is private, shove off.”

There was probably a good way to explain it. There was probably a gentle way to ease her into it, this short woman who had unexpectedly become the most important person on Earth. 

But they didn’t have that kind of time, and Martin didn’t have that kind of energy. 

“He’s the Antichrist, and he destroyed the world,” Martin said, exhausted. “And I know I’m technically a cultist but you should still believe me.”

Georgie stared at him. 

“We work for an Eldritch fear god,” Tim said curtly, standing with his arms folded. “If you don’t help us, we’re all going to die tragically and prematurely.”

“I’m just here for cool reporting,” Melanie volunteered. “But I think that’s the guy who’s been appearing in my dreams. Georgie, if you know anything, you have to tell us.”

Georgie stared at all of them, eyes wide, face pale. Her hand was shaking.

Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “Where is he buried.”

Martin and Tim exchanged glances. Awkward. “He’s only a little dead,” Martin said delicately, since Tim was incapable of it. “He’s - it’s - actually uh, sitting in its office. At my workplace. But we really need you to tell us his -”

“I’ll get my coat,” Georgie said, standing up and delicately putting the kittens back in their pen. “And I’ll give my statement. We’re going now .”

So this was the woman behind the camera: kind, happy, and gracious. Scratch her surface, and you’ll find a woman so unmistakably ferocious that you wanted to keep your distance. Intense, driven, and overcome by a terrible anger in brief lightning hot flashes, she seemed like the kind of person who would have been close to Joe Spooky. Maybe it took a certain kind. Martin wasn’t that kind, but diversity was the spice of life. 

The thing was that people left traces. That even the dead left footsteps. Photographs, text logs, Tumblr messages, letters, objects, memories. Happier times, when they were still in your life, or at least when you took them for granted. There were a thousand ways to die, and it could be slow or all at once, and it had nothing to do with the beat of your heart. 

The thing was that Martin could tell the kittens apart. They were brothers, but Gumball was much more playful and happy while Rock Candy was more shy. Even if they were almost identical, and even if they came from the same place, they turned out so differently that Martin could have never mistaken them. 

On the train over Georgie explained the situation in taut, short sentences. 

“He’s my ex. I figured that we weren’t that big of a deal. I barely - I barely even remember his name. Or what he was like. I don’t have any text messages with him or anything, and I could never find him on Facebook after we broke up. But I like, still miss him? If that makes sense. One night I got - wow, I got super drunk, and I spent hours searching for him on the internet. But there was nothing. It’s like he never even existed. If it wasn’t for the developed pictures I have of him, and those Christmases we spent together that we filmed, it would have been like he never existed.”

“What’s his name?” Martin asked urgently.

But Georgie just shrugged, miserable. “That’s what gets to me. I know that I loved him. That we had something really good, even if I think it ended kind of badly. But I just can’t remember his name for the life of me. How much could you have loved a guy, if you don’t even remember his name?” She laughed, a little wetly. “Never mind. I’m not making sense.”

“You’re making perfect sense,” Martin said quietly, and they didn’t say anything more. 

Of course, it was March 7th, so when Martin, Tim, and Melanie finally entered the Archives it was old and dusty and every desk was bare. Of course, they were in a time loop, so Basira, Sasha, Gerry, and Daisy were still sitting around half-heartedly thinking up plans. They all stopped talking when Georgie walked in, hugging her coat tight around herself. 

“Statement giver,” Martin said, as if that explained anything. “She has some information on - uh, Joe Spooky.”

Everybody’s eyes widened at once, within seconds a tape recorder and notepad was procured. They argued about where to take the statement - Melanie thought it should be in the office room, Basira thought that the recording room was more professional - but after their argument went on for too long Georgie started ignoring them, looking at Martin.

“Where’s - uh, Joe Spooky?”

Martin nodded at the Head Archivist’s office, door firmly shut as usual. “I don’t think - wait, Georgie, don’t!”

But she was already walking that way, and before Martin could catch up after her, she had opened the door and slid inside with a calm confidence that Martin could never have. Everybody else noticed too, and filed in quickly after her, but Martin frantically shushed them as they saw Georgie standing in front of the Archivist’s desk, silently staring at it.

If Martin was expecting something different – the Archivist coming to alertness, it calling Georgie’s name, it enveloping her in a passionate kiss – he didn’t get it. It was the same as always: sitting there, limp yet taut, hundreds of eyes spinning everywhere. Maybe the only difference was that now, for one of the scant handful of times that Martin could remember, every eye was fixated on Georgie. 

She stood in front of it, looking a little stunned. But she didn’t look afraid. Most people would be, when seeing a creature with a hundred eyes. That was the thing about the Archivist – it looked human, except for the scopophilia bits, but nothing about it could ever be mistaken for human, or for a ‘he’, or for something sentient and aware. If the eyes hadn’t been there, Martin would have figured it for a particularly well-arranged pile of meat. A waxwork, an automaton. It was as if it was purposefully made to be upsetting and disturbing. Nothing that could ever be real, ever be human. Except for the fact that it had been, and Georgie had known it. In a way that Martin never had. 

“Honey?” Georgie whispered, and Martin’s heart broke in more than one way. “Is that you?”

For a moment, for the first time, Martin thought that the Archivist might respond. He was lingering in the doorway, everybody craning their heads behind him, Gerry practically crawling under his arm to get a sight of the soap opera, but Martin pushed him back. Some things should be private. Or at least given the illusion of privacy. 

Georgie stepped closer, holding out a hand. Martin couldn’t tell if she was crying, but her voice held a slight hitch. “Is that you? What happened? I thought you had died. What are you doing here?”

No response. She stepped closer, until she was standing against the desk. Without showing a trace of fear, she reached across and cupped the Archivist’s cheek. She stared into his eyes for a long time, saying nothing, quietly watching the forehead eye blink curiously at her. 

They really should give them some privacy. Martin stepped back, ready to close the door and shoo everyone away, but then Georgie looked back at them. With a bright, fake grin stapled into place, eyes creased to complete the illusion, she snapped her fingers at them. 

“Well? Don’t you all take statements? Get me a mic, I have a show to do.”

Bravery. Martin hadn’t known it could look like that. 

Gerry darted off and returned in seconds with one of the omnipresent tape recorders, as Daisy walked in and talked quietly with Georgie. Basira walked in with a form, which she put in front of Georgie and let her fill out, and they quietly interrogated her. Martin wasn’t an ex-cop, thank god, so he left them to it, and stepped back to confer with a furiously whispering Tim and Sasha. She seemed mad at him, and Tim was stewing in a chair.

“ – I told you.”

“Okay, so I’m wrong once in a while, whatever,” Tim snapped. He scowled, looking away. “I could still be right.”

“Come off it. She loves him. You can’t fake that.”

“What’s up?” Martin asked, almost afraid of the answer. Sasha turned to look at him, pushing her thick mane of curls away from her face. She didn’t look very happy either. 

“Timothy Benjamin Stoker here’s been saying that she has to be some sort of plant.”

“There’s something not right about her,” Tim whispered furiously, risking a glance at the shut door to the Archivist’s office. “Look, I was getting weird vibes from her, so I checked out her room. Those weren’t the only photographs I found.”

“Maybe she’s a True Crime fanatic,” Sasha said, but her protests were slightly weaker. A cold feeling began to drip down Martin’s spine. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Five corkboards. They took up an entire wall. Covered, absolutely papered, in photographs. A lot of them were of just regular people, so I figured she might have a photography hobby. What the fuck ever. But the other half…” Tim pulled a disgusted face. “They were all of corpses.”

Martin stared at Tim silently. 

“It’s weird,” Sasha admitted, “but, like, come on. True Crime podcasts are a whole big thing. And even if she is a weirdo –“

“ – or a serial killer!”

“Then she still might know who the Archivist is! And that’s more important than her personal hobbies, right?”

“Sure,” Tim said sarcastically, “let the possible serial killer in a room, alone, with our only lead to humanity. Oh, but don’t worry! Maybe the teenager can fight her off. Or our werewolf.”

“Are you seriously saying Daisy couldn’t take her?”

Tim set his jaw stubbornly. “Not if she wasn’t human. And I don’t part time as an endangered animal, but I can smell freak well enough.”

This is stupid, Martin decided abruptly. Just stupid. He turned on his heel and walked across the room, to where Melanie and Gerry were quietly talking in the corner. They both stopped when he walked up. They both looked pretty excited. Martin didn’t blame them – this was the biggest development they had since they met Daisy and Basira. 

“What are the chances that our lead’s my girlfriend!” Melanie whispered excitedly. “The narrative is just too good! And she mentioned her ex-boyfriend all the time, but I never imagined that it was Joe Spooky!”

“Do you think this is it?” Gerry asked, eyes alight. “She’ll know his name, and then – pow! World saved?”

“Melanie.” Martin swallowed, unsure of how to broach this. He could ask Tim – nope, bad idea. “Did Georgie have any weird hobbies?”

But Melanie just looked confused. “Nothing out of the ordinary, no. Unless you count podcasting. She skydives, does extreme sports. She’s a real thrillseeker. It’s how we met, actually, I was filming –“

“What about photography?”

“Yeah, she’s real good,” Melanie said promptly. “Why?”

“Have you been inside her bedroom?”

“Uh, rude?” Melanie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we’re dating, I’ve been in her bedroom. Normal bedroom. Unless you want to know what we get up to in it –“

“Never mind,” Martin said quickly. He still didn’t understand how lesbians had sex and he thought it was none of his business, quite frankly. “I’ll just go help her give the statement.”

“Sure, whatever,” Melanie said, already brushing him off. She turned back to Gerry. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when this is all over?”

“Oh, man, maybe lease a real flat?”

“Hey, if you need some extra help, you can always crash at my place. My pay’s gone up recently, so I may be getting a new one.”

Okay. Either Georgie wasn’t a serial killer/Nighstalker/true crime fanatic and Tim was hallucinating, or she was and Melanie found nothing weird about this. Martin…really didn’t know which one he preferred. He couldn’t afford to have Tim going crazy on them. Any crazier than he already was. Sometimes Martin had the sense that Tim was hanging by a thread, and that it was bound to snap any day now. 

Elias would know. But that would involve bringing Elias into this. So that was right out. Only one thing to do, probably. Martin sighed, boiled some water, and ten minutes later he knocked on the door to the Head Archivist office again. Daisy shouted for him to come in, and Martin walked inside holding a tray and five steaming mugs. 

Tea made everything better, or at least less bad. Plus it reminded people that Martin still existed – which, granted, had been less of a problem recently, but old habits died hard. Georgie was sitting in Martin’s chair, which was both uncomfortably metaphoric and just uncomfortable period, as Daisy and Basira stood next to her, talking quietly. A tape recorder sat between them. The Archivist was…not doing much, as usual. 

“ - consent forms. Great. Thanks.” Basira waited patiently as Georgie scribbled at the disturbingly thick stack of paperwork (‘If our archivist starts haunting your dreams you agree not to sue”). “Alright. You mind having us in the room? You can give it just to it if you want.”

“You’re fine,” Georgie said firmly. Her gaze flickered to Martin, and for the first time Martin noticed something oddly...dead in her eyes. But in a flash it was gone, and her bright grin was back. “Might be good to get it off my chest, yeah?”

“I’ve heard that before,” Basira said neutrally. She nodded at Daisy, and reached over to swap out the omnipresent tape recorder and press play. As usual when recording a statement - they did occasionally get people in wanting to give them, and it usually fell to Martin, Tim, or Sasha to take the statements on account of them actually working there - a particular tension carried itself across the room. Like lightning, about to strike. “Statement of Georgina Barker, regarding her memories of the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Statement taken direct from subject, March 7th, 2016. Audio recording by Archival assistants of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.”

She stood back, nodding at Daisy, and they both perched on a folding table in the corner. Martin stayed where he was, leaning against the far wall. Georgie didn’t look at them, her eyes fixed solely on the Archivist’s many, as the usual odd spell that seemed to settle over statement givers overtook her. 

Georgina Barker spoke, and the Statement begun. 

I’ve never been a normal girl. I was always just a bit - well, weird. Not bad weird. I was pretty popular, had my friends, and I was smart too. It always helped to be smart. Made it really easy to get people to do what you want. And the other kids were never quite as smart as me, so it always worked out alright. I kept my head down, the teachers adored me, Mama was glad I never gave her any trouble. Pretty happy childhood, honestly. 

Except the other kids kept talking about something weird. Like during storms, when lightning would flash and crackle, and some of the other girls would scream, but never me. Or one time when I was exploring in the streams with Ricky, and we saw this huge tarantula. He nearly peed his pants. I didn’t really get why. Scary movies, scary video games, the one time I almost got hit by a car - I never seemed to react the way everybody else did. Eventually I learned to pretend, but by then the damage was done. Everybody already knew me as Georgie Barker, the girl without fear.

It’s a miracle I didn’t end up with the Web, honestly. I was already halfway there. See, when you have no fear, your sense of empathy is sometimes a little dead. You tend to get a bit more...objective. Not more logical or anything like that. I’m not Spock. I just tend to see the bright clear line from A to B a bit clearer than other people. That’s all. And maybe it is no surprise that I didn’t end up with the Web. I always had a destiny. 

I was smart, but poor. It was hard to get into Oxford. But I did it. It was even harder to find a way to pay for it - but, well, when you’re young and cute, men and their money are soon parted. I even got a full scholarship and everything. I wanted to be a reporter, someone who’s sent into war zones in Africa. Everyone would kind of laugh. Isn’t that scary? Oh, yes, I would say, but I don’t get scared easily. Wouldn’t you see an awful lot of dead things? Well, yes, but see - I had always liked dead things. The same way I like kittens. I like dead things. 

Something happened my freshman year of Oxford. That’s not the point now. To make a long story short, a girl I had a crush on died, I had a conversation with a few corpses, and something changed in me. I became aware of the way the universe worked, the cogs in its machine. I did some research, went to some places I really shouldn’t have, did a lot of drugs that probably weren’t a good idea, and I saw it. I saw them. The fourteen fears of man and beast. My eyes were opened. 

I was far from the only one. You know as well as I do that there’s an underbelly of London, aware of its secrets, screaming with silent voices. But I was one of the blessed few. I was one of the few that had been marked by them. I realized it, when I realized that I could look at an animal and see when it would die. It would be like - this sickness, following them around. Tendrils. Tentacles, almost? It’s hard to explain when none of you have the senses to see them. Yeah. It was hard to focus on my classes that semester. I was discovering so much about myself, and the world, and - well, there was my boyfriend.

I met him - oh, I don’t remember now. Some class or some party. It’s so fuzzy. But I remember what made him stand out. Honestly, there were barely a handful of black kids in that school. It was as simple as that. But that’s not why I went over to talk to him. See, I could see the time and date of death for everyone in that room. Everyone but him. It was like he couldn’t die. Or like he was already dead. It was fascinating. 

So we talked. We talked all night. He was as smart as I was, with a wicked sense of humor. I remember he liked making fun of people, and was a bit pretentious, but he had this well of kindness in him that I envied. He was oblivious to everything. Least cunning man I’ve ever met. Like a battering ram of a person, honestly. He was far from simple and easy, but I just loved how straightforward he was when I was so far from it. 

My boyfriend had his own problems. His mental illnesses were barely being managed. He had a real chip on his shoulder - which I did too, but his was worse than mine. I think he felt like he was always drowning. Maybe like he was always treading water, kicking his feet, exerting one hundred percent of his energy just to keep treading water. That was how he put it to me, when things got bad. Like he was drowning. 

But we were good together. Everything I was, he wasn’t, and vice versa. But everything that was important to us - our interest in the supernatural, our ideals, our values - were the same. The sex was nonexistent, but I didn’t even care. I’d never met anybody who understood me before, who made me feel seen. Who knew that I was a horrible husk of a human being and didn’t even care. 

For a while. Eventually things just became too much. The things that were endearing and fun about him just became annoying. I remember, I remember it so well. We were lying in bed, and he turned over, just staring at me with sleepy eyes. They were brown. And he asked me if I loved him. I told him I did. 

Then he said, “Liar.”

How did he know? Nobody ever knew I lied to them, not even him. I was terrified. I wanted to be honest with him, I wanted him to know me - but only what I let him know. He started knowing too much. He started knowing what I did to kids when I was a kid, the depths of my cruelty. Things I never wanted him to know. I threw him out. There were a lot of the reasons, but that was the tipping point, I think. It just didn’t work. Maybe the problem was me.

After that, a lot of stuff happened. Not super important right now. A satellite hit me. I think I died and came back to life? I stopped eating - food. I started eating other things. I met some people, who explained a lot to me. You know how it is. You fall in with a bad crowd, and suddenly you’re doing things you would normally never do...except I would, I think. A girl’s got to eat, right? Even if what I eat isn’t really ethical or moral...well, tons of people are bad people. I’m okay with being one of them. Even if I’m not sure I’m a person.

The End. That’s what it’s called. Death. The Cessation. The Finale of All Things. I just know it as myself. I think it’s always been me. And I think I’ve always been it. Jude always refers to the Desolation as her god, Jane always refers to the Corruption as her children, but I view no difference between me and it. We’re all it. It’s all of us. The period at the end of our sentence. The shadow nipping at our heels. The secret face of woman. I’m not human. But it is. Maybe it’s the only human thing there is. 

But I still think about him. Even if I moved on, if I have a great girlfriend now who loves death as much as I do in her own way, I still think about him. I hate that loose end. I hate how I never found out why he had no death date. And more than anything else, he had been good. Maybe the only good person I had ever known, so filled with goodness that it vaporized me like the sunlight dissolving ice. He did a good job of hiding it, and he was messy and mean and pretentious and bitter, but he was just so, so human. The most human man I had ever known. And even today, I wonder what Jonathan Sims would think of me and the person I’ve become without him. 

The spell ruptured violently. 

The Archivist seized, limbs jerking, disrupting everybody from their trance. Georgie - who was a fucking Avatar of the End who he was buying kittens from - jumped up from her chair, shouting his name, real tears streaming down his face. When Martin looked at Daisy he saw that she was crying too, mouthing his name over and over again, while Basira was leaping into action. She ripped off a bit of her scarf, running forward and stuffing it in the Archivist’s mouth as it  seized. She picked him up and put it on the floor, keeping it away from furniture that it could bang its limbs against. 

“Jonathan,” Basira was saying urgently. The Archivist’s hundred eyes were rolling, some of them watering, crying blood. Its main two eyes were closed as it jerked. “Jonathan, you’re alright. It’s over now. Come on, you’re safe.”

“Someone call 999,” Martin cried, like a fucking idiot.  He moved forward too, but Daisy grabbed his sleeve at the last minute. When he looked back her expression was taut, her whole body tense and poised to spring. “He’s going to die!”

“He won’t die,” Georgie said, irrationally calmly. She crouched by him, holding his hand and helping Basira try to keep him still. “Please, Jon, it’s me, I remember now - Jon, it’s Georgie, please wake up -”

Then it - he? - stopped moving. All his eyes closed. Not disappeared, just closed. His main eyes glowed once, sharply, a great burst of green, and then faded into a warm brown before they fluttered closed. Martin surged forward, wanting selfishly to be the first person who Jonathan Sims saw, but Daisy tightened her grip on his arm until it was a vice. 

Then Jonathan Sims opened his two main eyes. For the first time, there was an alertness in them, an understanding. He looked around the room, taking it in. His gaze lingered on Georgie, who was smiling through her tears, and on Basira, who stared intently at him. 

He cleared his throat, rasping a cough, and roughly spoke. “How -?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Basira said crisply, withdrawing a small torch from her pocket. She shined it in his two main eyes, making him hiss. “Do you know your name?”

“Jonathan Andrew Sims,” Jon rasped. “Where am I?” An eye on his arm fluttered open, then closed. “Oh. Magnus Institute. Of course.”

“You’ve been here for the past three years,” Basira said gently. “But you’re safe now. Everything’s alright now, Jonathan.”

“Right,” Jonathan said, before he surged up and tackled her. 

Basira was strong and muscular, not as powerful as Daisy but close. But Jon was much bigger, and had utterly surprised her. He knocked her onto her back, large hands clasping around her throat, and Daisy lunged . 

Upon retrospect, she had seen it before any of them did. She knocked Jon off her, crashing him to the floor, and Jon screamed like a wild animal. Or maybe he was a wild animal, an insane thing, because he was fighting Daisy with everything he had, eyes wild, face twisted and contorted into hate. 

“Stay down , Jon,” Daisy grunted, executing a couple complicated looking pins to keep him in place. Basira was already back up, scrambling for the back of the room for her bag and pulling Georgie away from the fracas. Which Martin knew for a fact contained a taser. No, no, this was all wrong, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. “You don’t want to do this!”

“I don’t want anything,” Jon snarled. “I am beyond want! I am beyond humanity! I am higher than the greatest of you! I am no human! You ruined everything, you idiot humans -”

“Shut up !” Daisy screamed, socking him across the jaw.

But he wouldn’t. “You can’t stop me,” Jon panted, and every eye on his body was opening, and his brown eyes were glowing a bright green again. “I’ll keep killing you. I’ll keep killing everybody. I’ll murder the world until it’s perfect. Jonathan Sims is a monster, and nobody can control me again!”

No! No, this wasn’t the man from Martin’s dreams! Martins ran forward, heedless of the flying limbs, almost unaware of the way a green light began to fill the room. A familiar shaking rattled his bones, and the signs of the world destroying should never be familiar. 

“None of you will remember next time,” the Archivist panted, “none of you will know -”

Martin grabbed the Archivist’s arm the second the world exploded, and in the end maybe that was what saved him. 

Or maybe not. He would never know. 

“So you know the truth.”

Martin sat in the hard plastic chair, staring through the thick glass window at the tired man on the other side. They were speaking into phones - no, they were speaking into tape recorders, one on each side. The man’s voice crackled through the tape deck in front of Martin, and vice versa. He was wearing a prison jumpsuit. There were no guards, but it didn’t seem like that kind of prison. 

“I don’t understand,” Martin said helplessly into the tape deck. “I thought you wanted your identity back. You’ve been super clear on that!”

But the man - Jon? Or the Archivist? - just shook his head. “I said that it hurt. And it did hurt. Having a soul hurt. It’s the greatest pain there is, Martin. But don’t blame yourself. You did exactly what I wanted you to do.” The man looked to the side, lost in his own memories. Martin noticed for the first time that he had eyes, rich brown ones that Martin could swim in, only two. “Elias had fucked me over. It was always his goal for the Archivist to become a vessel for the Entities and end the world. I ended up doing it, in the end. I was - tricked, encouraged, cajoled, pushed. I guess it was mostly my fault. But I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for him, that’s for sure. Or maybe I would have. It feels like fate, most of the time.”

“The Archivist and Elias weren’t on the same page,” Martin said slowly, desperately trying to pierce together what was going on. 

“My...vision wasn’t the same as his.” The man quirked a half-smile at the joke. “I wanted a world where we were all happy. You and I, together. Sasha and Tim, alive. I kept on trying to make it. But it kept decomposing. I just couldn’t get it right. I tried again and again, but something kept on holding me back. I thought it might be my humanity. So I...got rid of it.” The man’s eyes grew distant and far away. “I didn’t lose it all the first time. I wasn’t a whole monster. But every time I kept on doing it wrong, and it kept on hurting, and nobody recognized me. So I just chopped it all off. Bit by bit. By the...tenth? Eleventh? Time, there was nothing left. I just hadn’t expected it to hurt so bad.” The man’s face settled into an odd sort of peace. “By the fifteenth run through, I had cut off even my own name. My own memories. And since I was the one remaking the world...nobody else remembered me either.”

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts...save me, save me…

“Wait,” Martin said, realization slowly dawning. “Is that why you kept on trying to have me get your name back?”

The man nodded. “I had lost all identity. All intentions. You can’t make a perfect world like that. I needed my identity back. And I wasn’t lying. The pain really was excruciating. Having a soul when you’re a monster burns.”

Then the man smiled. It wasn’t a very nice smile. 

“Now I can make it better again. A better apocalypse. I have my intelligence back, and my body. I’m thinking...March 7th again? It’ll be better this time. You’ll see. A brand new world. It’ll be ours, Martin. You won’t remember, of course, but you don’t need to.”

“Jo - Arch - you, look, that doesn’t make any sense,” Martin said urgently. “Why can’t you just put the world back to the way it was before it blew up? You can make yourself human again. If you bring us back to the original timeline -” And how stupid had Martin’s life gotten that he was saying the word timeline with a straight face? “ - then things can be normal again. We can have our memories back -”

“That’s not important,” the man said dismissively. “Besides, you can’t regain humanity after you’ve lost it. A chemical reaction cannot be undone. The old world was broken and crooked, Martin. I’m making it better. If I have to destroy everything to do it, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Martin’s mouth was dry. He had, as he did sometimes, the encroaching sensation that he had fucked up terribly somewhere along the line. “Who am I talking to?” 

The man leaned into the glass, warm brown eyes sparking. He breathed on the glass, fogging it up, obscuring his face. He drew one stick figure, childish and sloppy, with many little circles drawn on his limbs. Then he drew another stick figure, with X’s for eyes. 

Then he drew a line connecting the two, tracing it over several times. The man tapped it with satisfaction. “In the grey space. In the No Man’s Land between human and monster. Maybe ego would be a good word, balancing the superego and id. I am the part that suffers from their decisions. You think of Bruce Banner and Hulk, Martin? I am the amorphous, twisted, awful thing, caught between two realities, never happy, never sane. I am the corner of the soul in perpetual pain. I am the brain that is always drowning. I exist in you. I exist in everyone. But I am so, so real in him.”

“Why...is it painful?”

“It hurts, being human.” The man’s eyes glittered a soft emerald green, hidden in the dirt. “It hurts, being a monster. But at least when you’re a monster you can do something about it. You can hurt others back. It’s preferable.”

That was when something important slotted into place for Martin, something indefinable, and Martin finally understood what he needed to do. He had no idea how he was going to do it, but at least he understood now. 

Martin stood up, pressing pause on the tape recorder. “Thanks,” he said, “I understand the situation now.” The man tilted his head in a silent question. Martin set his jaw firmly. “You’re a coward. You’re too scared to fix your mistakes, so you restart the game, over and over, until you get it right. You destroy billions of lives with a thought, so you can have your happily ever after. Maybe we are made for each other, Jon. We’re both self-sacrificing idiots who would rather dwell in fantasy than take responsibility for reality.”

The man’s face darkened, and Martin heard the faint, rushing roar of water. 

No. Not this time. Martin held up a hand, fingers poised to snap. “I’m stopping you. One way or another, I’m making it so that you can’t hurt anyone anymore. Not even yourself.”

Then Martin snapped his fingers, and woke himself up. 

Chapter Text

The alarm hadn’t gone off yet.

Martin stared at his alarm clock, softly blinking 5:32 AM. He felt a crushing sense of hopelessness and isolation, of fear and failure. 

He really thought he had done it. He had thought that he had finally gotten through to the Archivist - to Jon. He would get his memories back, and then Jon would give everybody else their memories back, and the world would stop blowing up. It wasn’t like the Archivist kept on murdering them all on purpose. 

Except that it did. Except that it knew exactly what it was doing. It was running the slot machine over and over again, searching for the perfect solution. Martin thought of the picture that Georgie painted, of a bitter and frustrated man who contained a well of deep kindness. The root of that Jon Sims had taken seed and flowered into the Archivist, a creature so evil and self-centered that it would remake reality for its own happiness. 

It would have been almost fascinating, if it wasn’t Martin’s life - how kindness could be warped. How the best in someone could become bad. Maybe he had just gotten addicted to the power, to the knowledge. 

Didn’t it care? Didn’t it know that Martin cared about it? Did that mean nothing? 

Some hopeful, idealistic part of Martin wanted to think that the Archivist and Jon were doing it for him. That it loved him as much as he loved it, and that it just wanted to create a good life for them. Better than they had been living so far. 

How many archival assistants had died? Did Jon care about none of them? Or was that a manipulation too, meant to spur Martin into action?

Who knows. This amount of introspection wouldn’t help anything. Introspection actually very rarely helped anything, unless it was well structured and problem solving oriented. Martin wasn’t really normally in the business of solving his problems. 

Guess he would have to start. 

Step 1: Call his friends, update them on the situation.

He memorized their phone numbers weeks ago, for this situation. He called Sasha first, because she tended to wake up the earliest - or, probably, just not go to sleep, she pulled all nighters at least twice a week.

“Hullo?” Sasha picked up, yawning. “Whozzis?”

“It’s Martin,” Martin said. “Listen, the Archivist’s name is Jon - I know it’s really boring - and he destroyed the world again.”

Silence over the line. 

“How did you get my number?” Sasha asked. “I don’t remember giving it to you, Martin.”

Shit. Shit. “Never mind,” Martin said quickly, “I’m - uh, wrong number. I’m gay. Bye!”

Fuck. That ended well.

The call to Tim went similarly. So did the call to Basira. He couldn’t get ahold of Daisy at all. He was in the middle of punching in Melanie’s number - although nowadays he found Melanie just as sketchy as Georgie - when his mobile lit up with a call. 

It was Georgie. Martin hesitantly answered it. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Georgie burst out. “My calendar says it’s March 7th. March 7th was yesterday. Also, did Jon kill us?”

“I don’t know what happened,” Martin said dully. “Look, I have to go to work. Can’t you - hit up your Avatar buddies or something about this? I’m going to try to talk to Elias and get this sorted out.”

“Sure, good idea.” Georgie paused, exhaling softly. “That wasn’t - whoever that was, it wasn’t Jon.”

“It was,” Martin said, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep. “It was just something else too. I’ll call you later, Georgie. I have to take care of things at work and deal with getting transferred again.”

“Got it. I’m sure Michael has to know what’s going on…”

If anybody would, it was a Spiral Avatar. Martin really, very severely did not want to get mixed up in Avatar business, since dealing with two Beholding Avatars without toddler leashes was more than enough for him, so he left Georgie too it. He also resisted asking her the time and date of his death, which was surprisingly hard. 

He hung up on her, then got dressed and went to work. What else could he do?

Maybe Elias would give him a raise after all this. That would be nice. 

Martin did not get his raise.

In fact, he did not get transferred at all.

He walked to his old desk, checked his email, only to find absolutely nothing besides spam. He looked over at Tim, who was doing his work and chatting with Henri like every other morning. He had hinted to Tim that, maybe, there was something they ought to do...but Tim just gave him a confused look and asked him about the call that morning. 

“What, are you getting a crush on me, Blackwood?” Tim laughed, winking. “I’m afraid I simply can’t be tied down at this moment in time.”

When Martin rapidly made up an excuse to go to the bathroom, he asked at the Artifact Storage reception desk for Sasha, and got a very confused Sasha. 

This wasn’t good. Martin couldn’t do things alone. He just wasn’t made for it. He wasn’t competent, or smart, or cunning. He was just Martin. It had always been other people who knew how to do things - fight, think, research, plan. All Martin knew how to do was...make tea. And making tea wasn’t going to stop the apocalypse, or the man causing it. 

Gerry wasn’t in the library. But he was probably fine. Definitely fine. Yep. 

The last person Martin tried was Elias. As usual, he walked straight past Rosie, opening the door to his office and stepping inside. It was almost relieving, the clear recognition that flitted against Elias’ face when he looked up from his paperwork. The curl of his lip, the sneer, the look of exasperation, were also all intensely familiar. 

“Mr. Blackwood,” Elias said smoothly, “I do require an appointment.”

“We have the Archivist’s name,” Martin said flatly, forcing as much steel into his voice as he could. “But it backfired. He went insane, shouting about -”

“Mr. Sims?” Elias said, and he might as well have punched Martin in the face. “Don’t be silly. Everyone is aware of the identity of the Head Archivist.” Elias’ eyes flickered to the desktop calendar. “He has made a...request that I not speak with you.”

“You’re joking,” Martin said. “You must be - Jon’s telling you what to do?”

Elias twitched. “The Head Archivist is a very powerful position. Please close the door on your way out, and make an appointment, please.”

“Elias -”

“ Please .”

Martin left, silently fuming. Power plays. Anyone who could fight against Jon was being neutralized, one by one, either via memory or via exertion of control. Maybe the Avatar’s memories couldn’t be erased - which raised several questions about Daisy, whose status Martin had never been sure about and that she had never explained. He tried to make an appointment with Rosie but, whoops, Elias was next free in May. 

“We’ll all be dead by then!” Martin screamed, far too loudly, and stomped down to the basement. 

It wasn’t dusty. It was actually pretty well maintained. People walked down the halls, clutching folders or strutting in sensible high heels, and the lightbulbs actually seemed to be working. When Martin walked down the hall - Artifact Storage on one side, Archives on the other, both kept very far away from each other as if proximity could cause an explosion - and opened the door to the Archives, it glided open with barely a squeak. 

It was the Archives. It always was. But it was well lit, not dusty and musty like it always was March 7th. It looked well organized and neat, with statements and tape recorders carefully put away. But there was something empty about it - empty from the lack of penguins holding pride flags, from the lack of a sagging and droopy couch, from the lack of Tim and Sasha and Melanie and Daisy and Basira and Gerry - 

“Hullo,” Gerry said, looking up from where he was typing at a laptop on what was normally Basira’s desk. “Can I help you?”

It was really just Gerry. But there was something cleaner and sanitized about him too, just like the Archives. He had lost the leather duster, swapped it for a blazer, and was wearing ordinary slacks and a button-up instead of ripped jeans and band t-shirts. His hair was brown. The eye tattoos were still there, and if Martin tilted his head they seemed to blink, but his eyes were just as wide and guileless as ever. 

Martin opened his mouth, then closed it. Gerry was wearing...dress code. It was inhumane and unnatural. “I wanted to see the Archivist,” Martin said faintly. He stepped inside and closed the door solidly behind him. 

“Oh, you’re here for a Statement?” Gerry pronounced it oddly, as if it was capitalized. He got up from his chair and walked over to a filing cabinet, easily withdrawing a pen and the usual stack of consent forms. “I can take it. But normally you’d do that at the front -”

“No, it has to be to the Head Archivist,” Martin said firmly. 

Gerry frowned at him. God, he was so young. This wasn’t fair. “Mr. Sims is a really busy man -”

“Gerry,” Martin said firmly, and Gerry’s eyes widened. “I don’t know why you work here, or what’s going on. But this is a matter of literal life and death. And if you don’t let me in to see your cunt of a boss, the next time he makes a guest appearance in my dreams I’m going to punch him into my next door neighbor’s nightmares.”

“God, there’s nothing I can say to that, but you’re really cool,” Gerry said. He looked at the consent forms, then just shrugged. “I’ll grab him.” 

But the door in the hallway was already opening, and an excruciatingly familiar face poked out. It was the Archivist, sporting a spiffy new haircut and actually looking like it had taken a shower. As odd as it was to see it moving around - and Martin really had to figure out pronouns, he wasn’t going to be rude - it was odder to see it in fresh clothing, with alert bright green eyes and hair cropped close to its scalp and tapered in a fade. It dressed like a sexy English professor, the effect only slightly ruined by the blinking eyes peeking out from under its collar and cuffs. 

It - he? - seemed surprised to see Martin. That, in and of itself, was a surprise - wasn’t he omniscient? Why would he be surprised? 

The expression of surprise was wiped away quickly, and the Archivist easily gestured Martin in. When he opened his mouth and spoke, his voice wasn’t hoarse, but gentle and well used with a posh accent. “I’ll show Mr. Blackwood into my office. Thank you, Gerard.”

“Uh. Okay, Mr. Sims.” Gerry glanced nervously between the two men, but he sat back down and returned to work anyway. Or, at least, made a show of it. Martin knew Gerry fairly well by now. “You can go ahead and go in, then,” Gerry said to Martin. “ ‘S weird, though. He normally doesn’t take statements from employees...says it’s bad for business.”

“How so?”

Gerry shrugged uncomfortably. “Expensive to keep hiring people.”

Ah. That answered a lot of questions that Martin hadn’t wanted to know the answer to. 

The Archivist’s - Jon’s - office was clean and well lit. The desk was bare, save for a single tape recorder, and a single piece of paper in the center. With a laptop to the side, and a pair of headphones, it almost looked like a well organized desk. Jon had already sat back down, typing into his laptop, his forehead eye blinking open and shut sleepily. 

“Have you already filled out the consent forms?” Jon asked, not looking at Martin as he sat down. “I’m a fairly busy being, so if at all possible, Gerard can take your Statement -”

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Martin said pleasantly. 

Jon froze, fingers hovering over the keyboard. “Ah. You remember.”

“Of course I fucking remember!” Martin yelled, and Jon leaned back in his chair. “Idiot! What is Gerry doing as an assistant? You’re going to get him killed!”

“Likely, yes,” Jon said, expression blank. “That’s why I didn’t hire you or Tim or Sasha this time. But I still need an assistant, Martin. This is still a real office.”

Martin opened and closed his mouth, shocked. That was it. He just didn’t care. Gerry was going to die from the curse, and he just didn’t care. 

“How long have you been in this timeline?” Martin asked quietly. 

But Jon just shrugged. “A month or so. There was a readjustment period towards having my memories again. I assure you, Gerry is grateful for the employment.” He folded his hands primly on the desk. “This timeline’s been going well so far. Everyone’s memories are wiped - save yours, apparently, as of today. By keeping interaction with the rest of you down, and by using expendables as assistants, I should be able to prevent the rituals -”

“What the fuck is wrong with you!”

“Please stop cursing, it’s quite unbecoming -”

“I will not!” Martin yelled, even louder, and Jon winced. “People aren’t expendable, Archivist! I didn’t help you get your memories back so you could keep killing people and blowing us up! ”

“I have no choice,” Jon said sharply. “I can’t fully eradicate the other Entities and their Avatars. I have to shut down their operations. I’ve already made good headway with the Stranger.” A dark smirk crossed his face. “That Humpty Dumpty is never putting herself together again. Next up is the Dark. I can think of an excellent location in the sun for Maxwell Raynor. After that’s the Desolation, and I can begin to install my plans for Jude Perry. After I eliminate the rest of the Avatars, I can finally get rid of that nuisance Jonah. It’s all going according to plan, Martin. Trust me.”

Shockingly enough, Martin didn’t. “And if you fail?”

Jon shrugged. “Then I restart. All I lose is time. And I have roughly...infinity of that.” He nodded in a way that was likely intended to be reassuring at Martin. “Don’t fret. None of this is your business anymore. It’s really best that you stay out of all of this.”

Maybe it was in that second. Maybe it was then, that Martin realized that Jon Sims was so far from human it was almost laughable. Because if there was anything sane or human in that mind, it would have known that there was no universe or timeline where Martin would have just given up and minded his own business. 

This was his business. This was Martin’s fault . And he was going to fix it, one way or another. 

“Transfer me,” Martin said immediately. 

“No,” Jon said, equally quickly. 

“Do it.”

“I won’t. You wouldn’t survive the month.”

“I’m not going to survive the month anyway. Don’t you get that, Jon?” Martin said, frustrated. “None of your perfect little worlds last. Nothing ever works out. There’s always going to be something that destroys this. More than fifty times, you’ve tried, and more than fifty times you’ve failed miserably. Isn’t it time to try something else? A different approach?”

Jon stared at him blankly, the forehead eye open wide, in a classic ‘does not compute’ expression. “I just have to keep trying. It’ll work eventually.”

“You’re stuck . Literally and  - and figuratively. You’re stuck in this self-perpetuating loop where you make the same mistakes, do the same things, and fuck up your life in the same way, over and over again. And you refuse to see it.” Martin stood up, slamming his fist on the table, and Jon’s eyes widened. All of them. “You’re weak and cowardly. You ask for my help, because you’re lonely and in pain, but then you reject it, because you’re afraid of anything else. You bitch and moan about how terrible your life is, but you refuse to do anything real to fix it. You push away all of your friends, everybody who wants to help you, and then complain about how nobody cares. I’m sick of it. You’re - you’re just like me. You’re fucking just like me.” A sob bubbled in Martin’s chest, and he tried desperately to push it down. “I guess we were made for each other after all. We’re both terrible people in the exact same way.”

Jon opened his mouth, then closed it, flabbergasted. “Martin…”

“Forget this.” Martin turned away and stalked to the door, throwing it open. “Have fun with your hamster wheel. I’m going to actually do something.”

Of course, Gerry was crouched right next to the door, listening in, because he was Gerry no matter the universe. Martin quickly dodged him, stalking out of the room, barely hearing the way Gerry was frantically asking Jon if he was going to die and throwing open the first door he saw, running through it. He had to get out of here. Then he could get some distance, do some deep breathing, maybe some crying, and think of yet another useless plan that would just make things worse. 

Except he didn’t get out of there at all. He didn’t step into the basement hallway. He didn’t see the cement floors and dimly lit ceiling. All he found instead was a winding corridor with ugly carpet and candelabras every few feet, and standing in the middle was a man with very peculiar proportions next to an apologetic Georgie. 

“Great,” Martin said. “I was worried that things might be incapable of getting worse. So glad I was wrong.” 

“I brought a friend?” Georgie volunteered, as if that improved the situation. 

When Martin glanced backwards, only to find the door he walked through completely vanished, he realized that it really, really didn’t. 

Michael “The Distortion” Michael looked pretty much just as Martin had pictured it from listening to the tapes.

With a feral, too-big grin, too-big hands, and too-big height, it reminded Martin of every unsettlingly large man he had met in his life. Its curly blonde hair cascaded down to its shoulders, and it was very similar to the Archivist in one important way: you could never mistake it for a person.

         Also knife hands. Which – ew! The eyes were way sexier.

         Most importantly, the last Martin had understood it was still very much not on the side of humans. Which made Martin’s sudden appearance in winding hallways that seemed unsettlingly familiar from that woman’s testimony even more worrying.

         What had ever happened to her? He hadn’t gotten far enough to know. He hoped that she was okay, and that nothing bad had ever happened to her. That seemed fair.

         “Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Assistant,” Michael said cheerfully, idly slicing its fingers through the wallpaper and digging them into the plaster. Sometimes the wallpaper shifted and morphed, as if there was a woman screaming behind it. Georgie, from where she was walking alongside them, seemed approving. “I wouldn’t hurt you. You know what they say: the enemy of my enemy is a worthless, squirming human sack of flesh destined for decomposition in polluted dirt.”

         “He means that he hates the Archivist,” Georgie interpreted easily. “Michael, darling, the Archivist seemed quite incensed when Martin walked off. Do you think there’s any chance he’ll be followed?”

         “How do you define definitely?” Michael chirped, literally. The hallways ground and twisted, as if some almighty gears in the walls were being squeezed together.

         Martin did not want to be walking down the hallway, did not want to be getting even further lost in these tacky corridors where the floorboards sighed when he stepped on them. But something, some powerful force, pressed in on them, and Martin found it hard to fight down the rush of fear bubbling in his chest.

         “Is Jon, like, mad? At me?” Martin asked, fighting hard to keep his voice even. It shouldn’t have mattered if Jon was mad at him, because he was thoroughly and completely mad at Jon, but the rejection still hurt.

         He must not have been very successful, because Georgie shot him a sympathetic look. Her outfit had shifted radically from the way he had last seen her, and she was now elaborately dressed up in an ornate Victorian blood red gown, complete with a small ruffled cap. Really going in hard on that ‘Grim Reaperess’ aesthetic. “I don’t think so. But he definitely wants to tear Michael into floorboards, just on principle. Jude filled me in on what’s going on in this universe. Apparently the Beholding’s been on a real tear against everyone. He’s ruining decades worth of pacts and noninterference policies. He’s just trying to…stamp everyone out. Like a great big old boot.” Her jaw tensed, and she looked back towards the front. “He wouldn’t touch me. The End doesn’t even do that whole ritual thing. Too gauche. Why bother, right? I don’t need to put in special effort to make sure people die. They’re quite competent at that already.”

         “The Spiral is not overly invested in maintaining Michael’s cohesive form, as it were,” Michael informed them easily, as if it wasn’t talking about its own death, as the hallways shifted and rattled as if struck by a concussive blow. It set Martin’s teeth on edge, making them vibrate uncomfortably. “But it would be, in general, inconvenient. We were wondering if you…quite possibly knew of some way to handicap the Archivist?”

         Oh, god. Martin paled. This was a fight. This was a fight, and Martin had taken sides. Had he? He was still bound to the Beholding, as much as anyone could be. And Jon…Jon didn’t want him dead. Jon, actually, quite severely did not want him dead, to a worrying degree.

         It should have felt nice, to be cared about. But instead Martin just felt cold. He didn’t know if what the Archivist defined as love could come even close to reality. Jon wasn’t taking what he wanted into account at all, arrogantly asserting that he knew best. It was oddly objectifying.

It was oddly…exactly what Martin had been doing to him, for months. Martin groaned, feeling the fires of hatred and righteous indignation simmer lower in his chest. He couldn’t help but remember his idealistic obsession with soulmates, his romantic fantasies that seemed so stupid now. Maybe they really were still soulmates, in the most ridiculous possible way – two men of completely different backgrounds and levels of sanity, but strangely identical in their toxicity. They were made for each other – but maybe just made to ruin each other’s lives.

         “So how are you planning on killing The Archivist?” Michael said pleasantly, as plaster rained from the ceiling. Michael scowled, twitched a finger, and screwed shut the hallway that they had just walked down. Part of Martin wanted to run for his life, but the rest of him knew that it would be pointless. “The Spiral has at least the square root of i of ideas.”

“We aren’t killing him,” Martin said firmly, cutting off Georgie. “We’re just going to fix this. Somehow.”

“I’m not certain it’s possible to kill him…” Georgie mused, wincing as a glass window over a brick wall cracked. “But we should be able to destroy the seat of his power.” She looked at Martin, mouth set in a firm line. “You know the Archives better than anyone save its Avatars. Does it have a weak point? Anything vulnerable inside?”

Martin opened his mouth to protest, to assert that he was an idiot and didn’t know anything, but stopped short when he remembered a stone prison far underneath the earth. A prison that was so important that Jon showed up there himself to stop them from investigating any further. He blew up the world to stop them from getting any further. 

“I have one idea,” Martin said hesitantly, “but we need Daisy.”

“Say no more,” Michael trilled. It stopped walking, turning to face the wall, and used its knife fingers to carve three long, screeching lines in the wall. The wood bubbled and warped, bending in as a doorknob knew from the gnarled wood, and a door popped into existence. It stepped back, bowing elegantly. “Ladies first.”

Georgie opened the door and swanned inside, skirts rustling, completely fearless. But that was only to be expected. Martin wasn’t so lucky. He stood in front of the door instead, peering into the black swirling emptiness, watching Michael out of the corner of his eye. It was vapidly grinning, but Michael thought that he saw a swirl of anxiety in its rainbow eyes. 

“Why does the Spiral hate the Archivist?” Martin asked, instead of walking through. Somehow this felt more important.  

Michael blinked. Vertically. “The Spiral does not,” it said. “Michael does.”

“Aren’t they the same thing?”

“Are the Archivist and Jonathan Sims and the Beholding the same thing?” Michael trilled another laugh, but it sounded far faker this time. “Even animals hold grudges. Even fractals spin endlessly. Sometimes you just want to...hm. Stop.”

“They’re a combination of each other,” Martin said, having thought about the matter very hard himself. “I mean, nobody exists in a vacuum. We’re all affected by our experiences. That’s like asking if I’m my mother. I would never be the person I am now without her, because I’m genetically half her and because of the way she brought me up...for better or for worse...but I’m not her . Jonathan Sim’s life has been affected by the Beholding, and the Archivist has been affected by Jonathan Sims and the Beholding, and Jonathan Sims has been affected by the Archivist. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a, a pure and immutable self. I think we’re just all...a combination of a lot of things, that changes every day. Does that make sense?”

Michael stared at him for a long, awkward moment.

Finally, it said, “I was the first archival assistant who Gertrude killed. Or transformed. I was far from the last.” Its gaze pierced Martin, but at the same time it didn’t quite seem to be looking at him at all. “Michael Shelley was expendable. All humans are, to people like that. Humans who think themselves gods. Gods who think themselves human. Dangerous all the same.” Its skin sparked and twitched, distorted in the infinite hallways. “It makes me angry. So, so angry, Martin Blackwood. That someone with a life and a future was reduced and squashed into nothing at all, just a footnote in someone else’s story. But now Michael Shelley is so much more. Now Michael Shelley is everything...but still nothing at all. That’s what Gertrude did to me.” Its eyes span as it stared Martin down, enrapturing, revulsing. “And that’s what I’m going to do to the Archivist. I’m going to make it nothing. Just like Michael Shelley.”

Martin swallowed. “Every assistant ended up like that?”

“Yes.” Michael laughed, like fingernails in a cheese grater. “Every assistant until you. Sasha James, consumed by the Thing Which Is Not What It Is. Timothy Stoker, blown up into little pieces in his revenge. You’re the only one left. It must have seemed to Jonathan Sims as if there was...perhaps a curse. That thing’s imagination is quite powerful.”

A curse on the position? Or a curse on him?

Then the door opened again, and Georgie stepped back through. She was much more windswept and ruffled, and a little dazed. “Guys? Daisy’s way ahead of us.” 

A second figure stepped through, and Martin felt a wave of relief sweep over him. It was Daisy, wearing a tank top and cargo pants, chewing on a toothpick. She had two large packages tucked underneath each arm, and looked absolutely not surprised at all to duck into the crawlspace between reality. 

“Open a door to the panopticon,” Daisy panned. Her canines flashed a sickly yellow in the dim lighting, growing longer and longer with a sickening crunch. “Now.”

“Er.” Michael actually seemed alarmed, its first emotion that was not placid happiness. “The Spiral does not technically have the power -”

Daisy growled.

“Right. Well, let’s have fun!” Michael laughed again, even as the hallway shook, knife teeth glinting. “Let’s play a game, Archivist.”

Martin didn’t really understand what happened after that. 

It felt like a war, or at least a struggle. The hallways crumpled in, then ballooned out, doors opened and closed in the blink of an eye. Daisy growled, wolf and human and wolf again, and Georgie’s face shone in the bone white of a skull for seconds before flashing back to her normal face. Martin felt very stretched out, like he had stepped into a funhouse mirror, before snapping back to regular life. He heard distant voices - Jon, and even Gerry - but he could not be sure if they were reality or dreams. If reality meant anything. If it ever had.

On the wall, paintings showed Martin’s fourth grade classroom, the face of his aunt, the shape of his liver as it writhed in his body. Daisy howled, the reverb echoing through his sternum. Plaster rained down from the ceiling, and Michael was whistling in a way that sounded almost painful. 

Then a hole opened - not a door, just a gash in time. Michael’s whistle raised in pitch until it was almost painful. 

“Go!”

Georgie moved first, picking up her skirts and hurtling herself through the hole. Daisy was close on her heels, but she looked behind her, and saw Martin standing frozen. She huffed angrily, shifted the packages under her arms so she could grab Martin by the arm, and tugged him through the hole. 

It was like stepping off the end of the world. Martin fell, the air robbed from his lungs, unaware if he was screaming or not. Wind stung his eyes, and he felt awful and stretched and empty. For an awful few seconds, hours, days, he felt as if he would be falling forever. 

Then his cheek smashed against something hard and cold. Martin wheezed, coughing, and the world tilted back into shape. 

Then he realized that he was lying on stone, and that they were back in the panopticon.

Everyone coughed and sputtered, but the two women got up much quicker than he did. Daisy wasted no time, walking towards the center of the circular room that was completely unchanged from the last time they had been there. It was big, vaulted and empty, and made Martin want to sneeze. She shook her package onto the floor, right up against Jonah Magnus’ tomb, and began fiddling with what looked like wires. 

“Michael can’t hold them off for long,” Georgie coughed, walking over to help Martin up. “But we won’t need long. Right, Daisy?”

“Shut up, I’m focusing.” Daisy was crouched over the packages, fiddling with wires and what looked like a lighter. And - and maybe a detonator? What?

“Are those explosives?” Martin squeaked, regretting his life and how short it was. “Daisy, this is an enclosed space. We’ll die!”

“I’ll be fine,” Georgie chirped. 

“Well, good for you!” Martin threw his hands up. “What about me?”

“You’ll have time to run,” Daisy bit out. She stood up, brushing her hands on her pants. “Right. That time to run is now, by the way.”

Holy fucking shit. Martin felt faint. He had so many questions - how had Daisy kept her memories, was she an Avatar, where the fuck had she gotten the explosives from - but there was no time. He turned around, adrenaline coursing through every vein of his body and thumping in his ears, but before he could run he found that it was already too late. 

An elaborate archway was open in the stone wall. Jon stood in the middle, arms crossed, scowling heavily. Behind him, far more surprisingly, was Gerry, who looked like he didn’t have any idea what was going on and was completely terrified. 

“I wasn’t done with you,” Jon snarled, which could mean - which could mean so many terrifying things that Martin didn’t even want to think about it.

“We’ll talk later,” Martin squeaked. “Bye!”

He tried to run, Georgie and Daisy already beating feet, but Jon was too fast. He reached out a hand and Martin found himself incapable of moving, feet frozen to the floor, like a rabbit so scared that it paralyzed itself. 

“We’ll talk now ,” Jon said lowly, dangerously. 

Daisy growled, a deep and terrifying sound, and leaped at him with a giant silver knife in her hand. 

“Oh no you don’t,” Jon said, twisting his hand, and Daisy was forced into her wolf form. She fell to the ground, howling in pain. “You aren’t shutting me up again. I get to talk now. And I have so much to say.”

“Uh, boss?” Gerry said, pointing at the ticking package near Magnus’ tomb. He looked terrified, like he didn’t know what was going on, and Martin could vividly imagine it: Jon running after Martin, Gerry frantically running after Jon, trying to make sense of what was happening, incapable. They needed to get him out of here, before it blew. They needed to get everyone out of there, because Martin didn’t want to know how much this explosion would destroy. “I think those are explosives.”

Jon stopped, every eye widening. “Oh, son of a -”

A lot happened at once. 

Georgie, who Martin hadn’t even noticed, appeared in front of Jon. For a second Martin thought that she was going to - to push him away, saving Martin and Daisy, or close the doorway somehow, but instead what she did was grab Gerry’s arm and pull him behind her as she disappeared into the archway. It closed up behind her, leaving Jon, Daisy, and Martin alone in the panopticon. 

Less than a second later, Martin felt the most familiar sensation. Light, then a concussive force shattering every bone in his body, then an explosion. He screamed, the sound tearing itself out of his body, and he heard his screams echoed by Jon and Daisy. 

He felt something grab him - grab his soul . It was painful, like knives stabbing every vulnerable and soft part of himself, and he screamed as he was dragged somewhere. Somewhere closer to light and heat, like a bonfire, as if something was shielding him from the explosion with its body, except its body was the explosion and light and fire. 

And then Martin didn’t know very much at all. 

He didn’t dream. 

Martin woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling.

For a second, he felt oddly out of place and confused. This wasn’t his bed - it was far too hard and narrow. The thin and scratchy blanket wasn’t his either. The ceiling was stone and cement, not popcorn plaster. Whose flat had he crashed at? Martin didn’t have friends. 

But he did. Sasha and Tim, Basira and Daisy, Gerry and Melanie. But he had never been to any of their flats. They weren’t those kinds of friends. You know, friends who hung out outside of work. Then who -

Then reality crashed over him, suffocating and drowning, and Martin bolted upright. 

“Oh,” Basira said, “you’re awake.”

They were in the climate controlled room off the library, which Martin didn’t go inside very often. It was practically Gerry’s bedroom, with its attached shower and small cot and cardboard boxes filled with his clothing. But he was lying on Gerry’s cot, and Basira was sitting at the small desk on the far wall reading a fiction book with her chin propped on her fist. She seemed bored, but the thick bags under her eyes belied how tired she was. 

Martin also had no recollection of how he got there, or anything after the panopticon exploded. Although this technically made sense - he should technically have far more brain damage than he did - it did not bode well. 

“What’s goin’ on?” Martin asked muzzily. He yawned widely. Maybe the entire day had just been a bad dream, and it was April again. That would be nice. Maybe his life was a bad dream, and they were back in the original doomed timeline, and Martin had just been catching a quick nap. That would be even nicer. It would, of course, be best never to step foot inside the Archives again, but you couldn’t have everything. “Where is everyone?”

“Sasha and Melanie are in Artifact Storage, looking for something that might help us. Tim’s drinking himself into a stupor. I am here making sure that you aren’t dead.”

“Where’s Daisy?”

Basira’s lips thinned. Martin couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t answered his first question. “She’s with the Head Archivist.”

The blatant omission of his name was noted, but Martin couldn’t care. He stood up, staggering a little when a dizzy spell hit him, but he quickly grabbed his carefully folded jacket off from the foot of the bed and pulled it on. He set his mouth in a firm line, forcing his legs to stay steady instead of like jelly. For the first time, he actually felt like he had survived a concussive explosion. 

“I have to go talk to him. He’s just - he’s being ridiculous. He’ll listen to me.” 

It was optimistic, but Martin traded in optimism. 

Basira just turned the page of her book, seemingly bored. “I’d check outside first.”

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged, exhaustion weighing down her body. “Just look.”

A sense of impending doom began to creep over Martin. 

The Archives were empty. Basira hadn’t been lying - nobody was inside, left empty and abandoned. Something about them was oppressive and scary, like a nightmare, instead of reality. When he left the Archives and climbed up the stairs to the first floor, he found the entire building abandoned. The lobby, the hallways, the main library - all standing empty, wind whistling through. The receptionists weren’t at their desks, and no heeled feet walked its halls. 

Well, Martin thought, it must be late. Nobody was ever in the building after seven, save Martin himself and Gerry. But when he looked at the clock on the wall across from Sabrina’s desk, he saw that it was eleven am. 

Maybe it was a Saturday, Martin thought ridiculously. Not a lot of people came in on Saturdays, right? Right? 

Maybe it was a holiday. He didn’t really know when Easter was this year. Or - or maybe Jon had closed down the entire building! That made the most sense. Things were normal! Everything was fine!

Martin speed walked through the lobby, sweaty palm clasping around the doorknob, and swung the door open into an empty world. 

Not literally. The ground was still there, parched and cracked. Dead. No weeds, no trees. The sky was a violent, angry purple, like a bruise. There were no clouds. Only a single eye, staring, blinking, its iris shining bright green. 

There were no buildings. No Chelsea, no London. No people. No anything. It was a dead world, and only the Magnus Institute remained. 

Martin slowly stepped back inside. He closed the door. He silently grabbed a chair in the lobby and pressed it up underneath the doorknob. He wished he had a key, so he could lock it. 

They were trapped. And Jon had trapped them. 

“Pretty bad, huh?” 

Martin whipped around, heart jumping into his throat, but it was just Tim. He was leaning against Sabrina’s desk, a half-empty bottle of Jack in his hand, grinning lazily at Martin. There was no happiness in the smile, no joy. Just barely repressed desperation. 

“No more Starbucks,” Tim said casually, taking a swig from his bottle. “No more movies. No more sports. Sports are done! We’re done with sports!” Tim laughed, long and hard, but it didn’t sound very amused. “No more kayaking, or urban exploration. Just this.” His lip curled. “It said it’ll keep us safe .”

“What did Jon do,” Martin whispered. 

“Your pet monster trapped us. Or it saved us. I don’t think anybody knows.” Tim shrugged. “I was chugging away at work when we blew up. Nuclear holocaust, the usual. We all woke up in the Director’s office. But, oh boy, is there a new sheriff in town.” Tim laughed again, taking another desperate swig. “Elias is done. Don’t know what happened to him. My memories are back, though. I remember what you remember. Not the first fifty timelines, but everything afterwards.” He lifted the bottle in a grotesque parody of a toast. “But I found this bottle of Jack 

under Henri’s desk, so cheers!”

“No,” Martin whispered, shaking his head, backing up until his shins hit the chair that stood between him and the dead world. “No, this can’t be it.”

“It is! Welcome to the end of the world!” Tim cackled, and it was like he couldn’t stop. “You missed your last stop!”

Martin ran.

He ran up the stairs, all the way to the third floor. The elevator didn’t work. Rosie’s desk was abandoned, the pictures of her grandchildren smiling vacantly at an empty chair, a half-full cup of coffee gone cold. Martin ran down the hallway, underneath the looming eyes of Directors past, and his heart thumped a persistent rhythm in his chest. 

Jonah Magnus. The Panopticon. Elias Bouchard. Jonathan Sims. The Archivist. The Beholding. Martin Blackwood. How did they connect? How did these things intertwine? Martin didn’t understand anything . Nothing made sense, nothing was easy or fixable. The world had been deteriorating for a long time, and Martin had never noticed, and now he was faced with it.

Had Jon done this? Or was it something that not even Jon could fix?

The oak doors of the director’s office finally came up in front of Martin, and he skidded to a stop. He heard a faint voice inside, talking to itself. 

“ - look, it’s not perfect, but it’s all we have.” Jon groaned, as if he was frustrated. “Either I end it or it decomposes. If I just get it right , if I just get it perfect, then it won’t decompose at all. Don’t give me that look. I’m doing my best here.”

A small bark. Martin’s heart jumped in his throat, and he pushed his way inside the office. 

It was just as Elias had left it, in every detail. In every detail save for two: the large dog, or small wolf, sitting by the desk, tail lashing slowly and staring up at the figure behind the desk, and the tall form of Jonathan Sims sitting in Elias’ plush leather chair. A single tape recorder sat in the center of the desk, running in perpetuity. 

“Stop criticizing me,” Jon said firmly, and the wolf growled before lying back down, resting its chin on its paws. “Good girl.” He looked over at Martin, as if he was surprised to see him. Liar. “Martin. You’ve awakened. Now are you feeling?”

“What did you do?” Martin asked, mouth dry. 

Jon narrowed his main two eyes. Every eye on his body was green and glowing faintly. “ How are you feeling ?”

Without him, on its own accord, Martin's mouth opened and he vomited words. “I feel like shit, I’m headachy and tired, and I’ve never been more scared in my life.” Martin shuddered as the spell snapped. “What did you just do?!”

“One of my more minor powers,” Jon said dismissively, leaning back in his chair. With one hand he scratched the wolf on the head, eliciting a soft rumble of satisfaction. “To answer your own question, I didn’t do anything besides save your life yet again. That was all this one.” He glared down at the wolf, who just wuffed. “You’re a very bad girl, blowing up the Heart of the Institute like that.”

Martin’s blood froze. “What did you do to Daisy?” 

“Helped her,” Jon said immediately. “You aren’t understanding, Martin. The other Avatars are gone -” he glanced down at Daisy, who sleepily blinked. “ - or neutralized. We’re finally free from the spectre of the apocalypse.”

“Georgie and Michael -”

Jon waved a hand dismissively, forehead eye blinking. “I’ll track them down soon enough. They aren’t important, anyway. The Spiral and the End have no rituals. The world is finally safe. I finally fixed everything.” He grinned, throwing his hands out in a tah-dah motion. “I saved the world!”

Martin stared at him blankly, almost unable to process how stupid that sentence was. He looked pointedly out the window, at the dead world. “Everyone is dead.”

“Everyone except the six of you,” Jon corrected, “so everybody I care about is alive, which is almost as good as everyone being alive. It’s about expectation management, Martin. When you lower the bar a little, your goals are more achievable.” He beamed at Martin. “Nothing can hurt you, if you stay here. No Loneliness, no Vast. No Buried getting at Daisy. She’s not going to hurt herself again.” Daisy blinked sleepily. “No Stranger eating Sasha. Tim can’t blow himself up even if he tried! No ghosts around to shoot Melanie, and no sharp implements to blind herself with! Even Basira’s fine. I finally won! After hundreds of tries , I finally won!”

Martin stared at him. 

“So,” Martin said, excessively slowly, “your idea of winning is trapping us in the Institute. Forever.” 

“I’ve been trapped in it for years,” Jon said, faint annoyance crossing his glowing features. “It’s not that bad. It’s rather calming, actually. You’ll get used to it.”

“Jon, please put the world back.”

“Don’t feel like it.”

“Jon.”

“I won’t.”

“Jon!” Martin screamed, scraping his already hoarse throat. Daisy startled, scrabbling backwards. Was she even in there? Was she even sentient? When had things gotten so bad ? “Are you a monster or just an idiot? You cannot put your friends in a toy chest ! We are human beings, even if you aren’t, and we cannot live here ! What’ll we eat?!”

“Statements,” Jon said blankly. 

“ We can’t eat statements!”

“Fine!” Jon snapped his fingers angrily, and an apple popped into existence on his desk. It was ruby red and shiny, and Daisy started salivating, but in only a second it popped open to reveal straight lines of brightly grinning teeth inside. “There. Food! I did it!”

“That’s not food!”

“Don’t be picky.” Jon scowled, and Martin was almost lightheaded with how ridiculous the situation was. “I’ll take care of you. Of all of you. Look, even Daisy’s happier this way. No, don’t eat the teeth, you’ll choke.” Jon carefully pushed the teeth apple away from the wolf, who was trying to gobble it up. “Bad girl. Anyway, I am fully aware the situation isn’t - it’s not perfect. But it’s the best one we have. You will simply have to - to deal.” Jon swallowed, and for a brief second Martin caught a flash of how scared he was. When he desperately tried shrugging on the haughty, villainous air, it just didn’t fit right. “When Daisy blew up the - when the panopticon blew up, my powers became - unstable. I am afraid that if I try to reset the world again, it may not - come back together, as it were. This is my last chance. So I won’t waste it.” He set his jaw stubbornly. “We can be happy here. You said so, Martin. We can get through anything, so long as we’re together.”

But they weren’t together. They’ve never been farther apart. Martin stood in awe, disbelieving that everything could have gotten so bad in such a short period of time, unaware even of how to fix it. If what Jon said was true, then it wasn’t as if even Jon could do anything. The almighty Archivist, God on Earth, down to his last shot. 

If Jon reset the world again, he didn’t know what would happen. To an omniscient god, nothing was scarier. Nothing Martin could say or do could fix that. He couldn’t pep talk a deranged god back into sanity. If there was a good solution, they would have found it by now. 

Was the apocalypse always so inevitable? If none of this had ever happened, if the world had spun on happily free of Avatars and Archivists, would the apocalypse have happened anyway? Martin didn’t know. He didn’t live in that world. This one was all he had. 

“You ought to leave,” Jon said, as kindly as a monster like him was capable of. “I’ll call for you if I wish to speak to you. Maybe some - some space, to grow accustomed, would be best. Don’t worry about me. My best friend is here.” Jon looked down at Daisy, whose tail lashed through the air. “I was finally able to give her what she always wanted.” He looked back at Martin, who was frozen to the spot. “What is your heart’s desire, Martin? I’ll give it to you, if I can. So long as it doesn’t involve anything that no longer exists, I can try.”

His heart’s desire?

“I have to go,” Martin whispered, and to his eternal shame he stumbled out of the room. He heard the soft click of it locking behind him, a small barrier so insurmountable, and after that everything was a bit of a blur. 

But maybe that was for the best. It wasn’t as if Martin’s desires had ever been good for anything anyway. 

Time lost meaning. 

Martin slept quite a bit. He read when he wasn’t sleeping. He didn’t talk very much. The others talked between themselves, constantly conferring or trying to cheer each other up, but Martin didn’t really see the point. Maybe he was like Tim that way - Tim, who had barricaded himself in the library and refused to come out. 

Nothing really held much of a point anyway. Sometimes Daisy trotted down to visit, let Basira pet her or played fetch with Melanie, but so far as they could tell there was almost no human intelligence there. Sasha tried to cheer Martin up, get him moving again, but he held no desire. There was a small, poky television in the second floor break room, playing reruns of Friends, and oftentimes Melanie could be found there, just sitting and watching TV. 

The books in the Archival library...existed. Nothing was overly fascinating. They had enough books, enough television, that the boredom didn’t crush them. It just bore down, like a heavy weight, stones on their back suffocating them. 

Martin couldn’t breathe. Martin was drowning. 

Eventually, he started listening to the statements again. All of the ones recorded by the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, Jonathan Sims. He made it through to where Jon caused the apocalypse the first time, barely invested. It was like a work of fiction, so disconnected from Martin’s life. 

If Jon had really survived all of that, had really seen all of those things only to smash it with a hammer, no wonder he was crazy.

Martin tried hard not to think about Jon. But he listened to the statements anyway, because he couldn’t not think about him. 

At some point, and Martin had no idea when that point was, Martin became aware that someone was standing in front of him. He was sitting in the library, in the dark, listening to the endless tapes. He had moved onto Gertrude now, listening to her horrible tale. Michael Shelley’s voice emerged occasionally, like bubbles rising to the top of a cauldron, and it overcame Michael with grief. 

Then a hand reached out and ripped the headphones off his head. Martin jumped a foot in the air, choking down on a scream, and it was like he landed solidly back in reality. He realized for the first time that it was Sasha standing in front of him, and behind her a wrung-out looking Tim. He even looked sober. He must have drunk all the alcohol ages ago. 

“Martin,” Sasha said. “Can you hear me now?”

Martin shook his head dizzily. “Yeah.” His eyes were spotting. Had someone turned on the light? He pinched the bridge of his nose hard, willing the spots to go away. “What’s up?”

“You’ve been in here for a week,” Sasha said gently. Her round, sweet face was framed by her curls, and Martin was struck by grief. In the tapes she was dead, but in reality she was in front of him. “Why don’t you come out? Melanie’s set up a darts tournament.”

“I’m fine,” Martin said, distracted. He picked up his headphones again. “I’m doing research. I’ll join you later.”

Tim snorted. “Told you, Sash. Martin’s caught up in his fantasy land, as usual.”

“We don’t need that,” Sasha said sharply. She smiled at Martin again, but there was an edge of pain behind it. “You’re working harder, not smarter. Take a break, talk with us, get your head on straight. It’s not like we don’t have time.”

“Or maybe we can just live here forever,” Tim said. “Even if all the food has teeth. And I’m bored .”

“You guys don’t get it.” Martin exhaled slowly, pressing the heel of his hands into his eyes. With a scrape of the chair across from him, Sasha slowly sat down, and to his surprise Tim sat down next to her too. They were looking at him, expressions troubled, and Martin’s heart hurt. Had they been worried about him? “This is all my fault. I - I have to be the one who fixes this. If I can just think of the right thing to say, then Jon’ll finally listen.”

“It’s not,” Sasha said bluntly. “The situation isn’t any one person’s fault. You were doing what you thought was right. You wouldn’t be Martin if you didn’t. Even if it had...unintended consequences, nobody blames you.”

“I bet Tim does,” Martin said bitterly. 

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Tim said easily, leaning back in his chair and balancing on two legs. “At least you tried. You’re a constant of the universe, Martin. The sun shines, the universe ends, and Martin Blackwood will always try to help everybody. I’d rather have all of this than lose that about you.” Tim smiled, small and weak, but real. “You were manipulated. Just like the Archivist was manipulated. Just like all of us were manipulated. Hell, I blew up the universe myself a time or two. The only thing whose fault this is the Beholding. I’m saving all my hate for that bastard. And maybe a nice bit for the Archivist.”

Sasha reached out and took Martin’s hand, squeezing it tightly. Her hand was cool and soft. “We’ll get through this. And we’ll get through it together. Isn’t that what you always told us? You were the one who always motivated us to try to save ourselves, and to refuse to accept fate. We need our fearless leader back, Martin. We need the guy who wouldn’t accept destiny. We can get along without you, but we’d like you there.”

“Tim,” Martin said, and to his horror he found himself choked up. “Sasha. I - I understand him. I do. He lost both of you, and he couldn’t bear it. It was just us left, me and him. If I had the power he did, if I could save both of you from dying horribly, I would have done it too, no matter the consequences. I want to hate him but I can’t.”

Both Tim and Sasha glanced at each other, holding a silent conversation with their eyebrows, and Martin wondered abruptly - at what point did that happen? It did happen, clear as day. He was happy for them. Something could grow in here. Something could live. 

“You always see the best in people,” Sasha said. “You have a big heart, Martin. You saw the best in the Archivist. And I think he loves you back. Even if he shows it in the worst possible way.”

“It’s obvious that you define yourself by what you can do for other people,” Tim pointed out, as if Tim was in the habit of psychoanalyzing Martin. “Maybe the Archivist does that too. I don’t fucking know the guy. But Martin - you didn’t need to save anybody to be worth anything. And maybe the Archivist defining himself by his ability to save people, instead of save himself, is what got us into this mess.”

“I don’t want to die, Martin,” Sasha said quietly. “But you have to promise me. If I do - you’ll be happy without me, right? You’ll move on?”

“I wouldn’t,” Tim said, with false flippancy, and Sasha lightly punched him on the arm. “I wouldn’t! I never moved on after Danny. I think, if it was the other way around - now that  is the other way around - I would just want him to live his life. Not spend the rest of his life trying to make up for the mistake of something that wasn’t even his fault. And Martin, I wouldn’t want you to do that either. Okay? Oh, don’t cry!”

But Martin was crying, and he couldn’t stop, because nobody had ever given him permission to only worry about himself. He hadn’t known that he even needed it. How pathetic was that? That Martin didn’t feel like a real person unless he was trying to help someone else? 

If Martin’s hypothesis was right, and he and the Archivist really were fucked up in the same way - how desperate must the Archivist have been, to have at least one person left over at the end of the day to tell him good job, who would love him? No wonder he sought Martin out, constantly calling for help. Everybody needed somebody. Nobody could be lonely for so long, for the rest of their lives. At what point would you do anything to just not be lonely anymore? 

But maybe this wasn’t about the Archivist, or Jonathan Sims. Maybe it was just about Martin. Martin’s friends were worried about him. They wanted him to be happy. How had Martin lived so long and never gotten that, from anyone? 

It wasn’t time to die. It wasn’t time to give up. Martin had fifty more years of his friends caring about him. He had a wedding to be best man for, both for Tim and Sasha’s and Daisy and Basira’s. He still had to adopt that kitten. He had never seen Gerry pull himself out of homelessness, had never seen Melanie hold hands with her girlfriend. Everybody deserved better than this half-life, trapped and stifled. Even if life ended, that ending gave it meaning.

Martin was going to save Jonathan Sims, his friends, and the world. But maybe most importantly he was going to save himself. Fantasy was good, and fun, and gave you hope to live another day - but Martin was kind of invested in seeing how he could write the story of his own life. It had always been the one book he had never felt like reading. 

“Oh my god, we broke him,” Tim was saying, as Sasha frantically patted Martin on the back. “I just can’t win. I’m never trying to be nice again.”

Martin sniffled, and heroically stood up. He put his hands on his hips, pulling up every loose scrap of courage he had. “I’m going to save Jonathan Sims.”

“Not this again -” Tim groaned. 

“I’m going to save him because everybody deserves a helping hand,” Martin said, speaking over Tim. “No matter how much they suck. And if I can forgive Jon for ending the world because he’s lonely and sad, I can forgive myself for never getting my A levels because I was lonely and sad. Yeah! I’m going to do it!”

“Congrats!” Sasha yelled, punching the air. “Team OG Archival Assistant, go!”

“We’re not a team,” Tim groaned, but he looped his arm around Sasha’s and smiled at her anyway. “What do you say? Starts with us, ends with us?”

“It was always us,” Martin said firmly, nodding at a beaming Sasha and a grim Tim. “All of us. And Jon. It was us at the beginning, and I think it’ll be us at the end. It’s our problem. Let’s fix it.”

“I’ll get my cricket bat!” Sasha called. “Let’s go, team!”

She waved at Martin, kissed Tim on the cheek, and ran off, presumably to get her haunted cricket bat from Artifact Storage. Tim was left glancing nervously at Martin, who forced a reassuring smile at him. 

“So, like, what’s the plan, boss? I assume you have one.”

“I was thinking,” Martin said, with a slow relish, “of making some tea.”

The plan was easy to explain to Melanie and Basira. Martin believed that the best plans were simple and non-convoluted. Less steps that could possibly go wrong in a simple plan. 

“That’s boring,” Melanie said, crossing her arms. “Why don’t you just set the Archives on fire again?”

“That’s an idea,” Tim said excitedly. 

“If we burn down the building, and we lose, then we’re really sunk,” Basira said dryly. She nodded at Martin, the fluorescent lights highlighting the bags under her eyes and her mouth a grim slash. “Melanie and I will take care of it. Just...be careful. He’s dangerous.”

She knew better than anybody. But so did Martin, and he just flashed a wan smile. “He won’t hurt me. He cares about me too much, I think. But thank you. I’ll be careful.”

“He cared about Daisy too,” Basira said, and there was nothing to say to that. “Good luck.”

“Kill him for me!” Melanie cheered. 

“No murder is involved!”

“A little would be fine,” Basira said seriously. 

As Martin walked with Sasha and Tim up the creeping steps, so intimately familiar, carefully clutching a steaming mug of tea, he thought about the rest of his life, and of the rest of his story.

On some level, he had always been afraid to live. Afraid to fail, which really was the same thing. Martin had always just drifted, content to survive, subsisting on books or television. He had worked two or three jobs the majority of his life, and his mind was bent around that. Martin often felt uncomfortable with free time. With not having a purpose. 

The unfortunate thing about real life, Martin was beginning to find, was that it held no purpose. Bad things happened without rhyme or narrative reason, random acts of cruelty. Sometimes people died and it wasn’t even ironic or karmic, or satisfying culminations of their character arcs. People just...died. Shit happens, to the world and to our own lives. And the only meaning in it is how we respond, and what meaning we give it. Nothing is inherent - not meaning, not worth, and not the future. 

The power to choose your own future...Martin kind of wanted a garden. A pet tarantula and cat. A nice flat. To live in a beautiful small town. To write his novel. To get his A levels and degree. It was almost a surprise. Near the end of it, Martin had really been under the impression that he hadn’t wanted much of anything. He hadn’t been living for much at all. 

Tim was the same, revenge a poor food to subsist on, devoid of nutrients. It left you always eating, always raging, but always hungry and unsatiated. If Tim got out of this - would he find something else too? Or would he fall back into old patterns? Didn’t they deserve the opportunity to find out?

What gardens would Jonathan Sims tend? What pets would he adopt? What life would he choose for himself? Would Martin be in it? Could he?

To their surprise, they ran into the Archivist outside of his office. According to Sasha, who prowled the Institute for weak points far more frequently than Martin or Tim did, the Archivist rarely left his office. He tended to avoid the rest of them. As Sasha put it wryly, he had some sense of shame. 

But he was standing at the end of the hallway in front of his office, holding a red baseball and tossing it to the far end so Daisy could chase after it. The giant portraits of directors past were all gone, leaving only faint imprints on the walls, and instead there was an unsettlingly giant tapestry spanning both walls. The tapestry was of a single, radioactive green eye, one on each wall. It was overwhelmingly claustrophobic, and made the hairs on the back of Martin’s neck stand up. 

The ball went sailing through the air, and Daisy almost collided with Sasha in her eagerness to catch it. Daisy plucked it out of the air with her jaws, barking around the ball when she saw Sasha, tail wagging, and Sasha laughed and rubbed her on the head. 

“Babysitting going well, Detective?”

Daisy’s tail wagged furiously as Jon jogged to their end of the hallway, panting slightly. “Give the ball, Daisy. Give.”

The wolf’s tail wagged harder, as she refused to drop the ball into Jon’s extended palm. He glared at her. “Daisy. I need the ball if you want me to throw it again.”

No take, Daisy’s happy pants said, only throw! Martin desperately hoped she wouldn’t remember this when she was turned back to normal. 

“Alright, have it your way.” Jon propped his hands on his hips, eyes skimming over Sasha, Tim, and Martin. They all forced bright, friendly smiles. “Sorry. She needs exercise. Can I help you three?”

“Peace offering?” Martin said, holding the mug of tea out. 

Jon stared at it, as if it would turn into spiders in half a second. The humans in the room held their breaths.

Then his expression softened, the forehead eye blinking lazily, and he accepted the mug. “Thank you, Martin. Always dependable. Come inside?”

Jon’s office looked...different. 

Frankly, it looked as if a tornado had ripped through it. A lot of the furniture was smashed, cracked in half, and a desk lamp lay shattered on the floor. A visitor’s chair was lying on the ground missing two legs, splinters scattered everywhere, so Martin was forced to sit as Tim and Sasha stood behind him. Jon relaxed into Elias’ office chair, which definitely had burns singed into the leather, smiling pleasantly at all of them as if it didn’t look like Daisy had been locked in here alone for months and left to go wild. 

As usual, a tape recorder sat in the center. Martin, just through sheer exposure to the tapes, understood that it was the Beholding’s way of listening in. But he had the feeling that it wouldn’t interfere with this. If it had any power here. If it was anything other than Jon, than the Archivist. 

“How are you...doing?” Martin asked awkwardly, hands fisted in his lap. Jon whistled at the doorway, watching Daisy trot into the open door and begin gnawing on a chair leg at Jon’s feet. He reached down and petted her absently. 

“Oh, fine, we’re both fine,” Jon said absently. “I think this timeline is going very well, don’t you?”

“We’re certainly not in any danger,” Sasha said, with a gentle smile. She was excellent at that. Jon smiled back, always happy to see her happy. “We really owe it all to you, Jon.”

“It’s nothing.” Jon fiddled happily with the hem of his blazer. “I mean, it’s the least I can do for all of you. After I got you two killed so many times, and everything with Martin - well. It’s the least I can do to make up for everything.”

“You’re completely right,” Tim said, who was struggling with the mandatory honesty thing.

The important thing about the plan was this: Jon held all the powers of the Archivist and of the Heart of the Institute. He was a mind reader, omniscient, and omnipotent. He could, quite literally, see everything that happened in this dead world at once. You absolutely couldn’t lie to him. So they didn’t. 

Jon sipped at his tea. He smiled gently at the mug, clear nostalgia written all over his features. 

“We were thinking,” Martin said slowly, carefully watching the shape and tilt of Jon’s expression. “And we made a decision. As a team! And since you’re also a part of our team, the original Archival team, we wanted your input. Don’t you think it’d be fun to see Georgie again?”

Jon blinked at them all over, putting the tea down. “Why? Is this world not good enough for you?”

“It has everything we need,” Tim said hurriedly. “But she’s important to you, right? It’s not like she’d be any danger to you here. You said it yourself, nobody can die. What can an Avatar of the End do?”

“And we all really want her here,” Sasha stressed. She squeezed Tim’s hand, shooting him a soppy look. “And, well, she’s really great at planning events…”

“What kind of events?” Jon asked blankly. 

Okay, maybe he wasn’t good at using the omniscience. “Oh, you know,” Sasha hinted. “Me and Tim have been talking…and we’re ready to make a really big step...”

“Step here? Outside?” 

“Georgie said she’s a really good wedding planner,” Martin hinted. 

“Oh. Oh!” Jon hurriedly stood up, face breaking into a genuine smile. “Oh! Oh my goodness, congratulations! Congrats to - to the both of you! Wow! I had no idea -”

“We were very private about it,” Tim interjected, slinging an arm around Sasha’s shoulders. “Really, an impulsive decision. But, you know, why not?”

“Yes!” Jon was grinning now, pure and uncomplicated happiness lighting up his face, and Martin’s heart ached. “Of course! We can definitely do something. You’re right, Georgie has to be here for this. I’ve missed her, anyway, she was my best friend for so long, it doesn’t seem right without her…” He set his face firmly, standing back from the desk. “Of course. Really, congratulations to you two. This is - this is fantastic. Really. Wow! Marriage!” Something vulnerable cracked along his expression, like an open wound. “See, I know I was doing the right thing. If you two were still dead, then we wouldn’t have this. I knew I was doing the right thing. I knew it. You can still be happy. A fairytale ending, for the both of you.”

“And we owe it all to you,” Tim said, with the full appearance of sincerity. “We’ll have to do a toast. To the first four, right?”

“Right. But after Georgie!” Jon turned to face the wall, face screwing up in concentration. Silently, as slowly and carefully as he could, Martin stood up from his chair and moved to stand behind Jon. Daisy lifted her head when he was forced to step over her, growling slightly, but when Martin pressed a finger to his lips she huffed and lay back down. 

Somewhere, in the basement, Melanie and Basira were carefully destroying every tape. Every Statement, every surreptitious record. Every record of the Eye’s insight possible. Without its history, without the foundation of the past of the alternate timelines, the structure of the Institute would be irreversibly weakend. Maybe even unsalvageable. 

Jon didn’t notice. He was building a door, forming a frame before forming the wood panelling and the doorknob. But it wasn’t wood panelling at all - it was flesh, it was eyes, thousands of eyes staring unblinkingly at Jon. 

“I’ve been letting her hide out. But it’s time she came out of hiding,” Jon muttered, focused intently on his task. The doorknob yawned, sharp teeth glinting in the fluorescent light. “She doesn’t understand. She can’t possibly understand death, she doesn’t feel fear. She doesn’t know the truth. If you could keep yourself in a happy moment forever...wouldn’t you? Just a little bit of more time with the people who you love, people who are gone now...isn’t that the closest thing you can get to heaven?”

The door swung open, inky blackness swirling behind it, and Jon stepped closer. He rolled up his sleeves, and carefully behind them Tim was picking up Daisy and moving to the back of the room. Sasha gave Martin a silent thumbs up, mouthing ‘good luck!’, and Martin smiled weakly back at her. 

“Let’s dig you out, little Avatar,” Jon muttered, sticking his hand into the thick, sludgy blackness. He swirled his hand around, searching and probing for something unfindable. “Oh, here she is. You can’t hide from me. Nobody can.”

“To be fair,” Martin said into Jon’s ear, “you never look .”

Then Martin pushed Jon into the door, driving him forward with every inch of momentum he could wring, and both Martin and Jon fell into the gaping maw between worlds. 

The door swung shut behind them, and The Archivist and his Assistant disappeared into the cracks between worlds.

....only to land in a tacky hallway. 

Matin moaned, feeling nauseous and a little like he had been stuck in a washing machine turned to the highest setting. Jon was next to him, still on the floor, hacking up a lung as his eyes frantically blinked. He eventually forced himself to his feet, snarling at Martin. 

“You did that on purpose .”

“No, I tripped,” Martin said sarcastically, shakily getting to his own feet. The hallway was the same, and as different, as ever - with burgundy carpet and seasick green walls, completed by tacky gothic candelabras and paintings of people trying to escape the painting, it was the Spiral. But where was Georgie and Michael? “Of course it was on purpose. And you fell for it. Literally.”

“Your temper tantrum does not amuse me,” Jon spat. He strode towards the wall, running a hand over it before easily rapping on it. “Open up and let me out of here.”

The wall didn’t transform. It stayed stubbornly still.

Jon knocked more insistently. “I’ll rip you molecule from molecule and consume you, Michael. Don’t test me.”

The wood bubbled and warped into a small mirror, reflecting Jon’s face back at him. Jon snarled, oddly enraged, and smashed the mirror with his elbow. The glass shattered with a crack, shards of glass falling to the floor and melting into silver. 

“A trick,” Jon muttered, whirling around to stare at Martin with a hundred eyes. “It’s all a trick. You tricked -”

“Yes, get over it. Turnabout’s fair play.” Martin coughed, spitting up something light blue and gelatinous. He had to stop jumping universes. “You’re quite easy to trick, Jon. You have this particular talent of only believing what you want to believe.”

“When we get back home I am locking you in a closet for a year,” Jon muttered. “See if you change your tune then.” 

“Oh, like you did to Daisy?” Martin snapped, frustration bubbling over. “Torture me like you’re torturing her?”

“Shut up.” Jon, without flinching, drove his hand into the wall. It melted through, as if the wall was water, and Jon pushed his hand down. But the wall stayed a wall, and when Jon withdrew his hand it was bubbling with angry red pus. He scowled, shaking his hand out and restoring it back to normal. “I had to do that. She wouldn’t stop trying to kill me. Besides, she’s my best friend. I wouldn’t hurt her. She’s happier this way.”

“So which is it? You had to do it, or you did it to help her?”

“Both can be true,” Jon snapped. He stared at the ceiling, raising his voice. “Michael! Come out here right so I can kill you! ”

“Michael isn’t available right now. Can I take a message?”

A small, slight figure stood at the end of the hallway, where it turned left into an unknown future. He was skinny and pale, still wearing a button-up and slacks, but he was now wearing a thick and heavy looking leather duster that scraped the ground. He was carrying an axe in one hand and a flashlight in another. He was grinning, wide and ferocious, and Martin’s heart leapt. 

“Who are you?” Jon asked, wrinkling his nose. One of his eyes flashed. “Oh, I know now. Gerard Keay. So this is where you ended up.”

“Gerry!” Martin called, and for the first time in what felt like years joy rose in his chest. “You’re alive!”

“Alive and kicking! With my memories back, too!” Gerry waved his axe in a wave to Martin. “I have a bit of a bone to pick with Archivists and the Beholding, so if you want me to let you out of here you’re going to have to catch me.”

“Gladly,” Jon said darkly, and set off running. Gerry disappeared around the corner, and Martin frantically followed him.

It felt like they ran for years, or for seconds. Time and space were not linear, A not always leading to B, with the shortest path not always a straight line. Sometimes life warped, reality twisted, and Gerry stood right in front of them before disappearing. But no matter how hard Jon ran, no matter how frantically he twisted the hallways back into rightness, Gerry always disappeared around the corner the second they grew close. Martin realized, perhaps quicker than Jon did, that they were being taunted, and lead somewhere. 

If Jon knew, he didn’t care. He kept chasing Gerry, kept running him down until eventually they came to a dead end. A hallway with no continuation, just a wall at the end with a single cheery yellow door at the end of it.

WIth no hesitation, Jon skidded to a stop in front of it and waved a hand. The door was thrust open. Jon stepped through, with Martin cautiously poking his head behind him.

It was a new world, or an old one. A very old one. It was like the world Martin had just come from. Nothing but sand and parched earth, the sky the color of a bruise with a giant eye lingering over them. Dead. 

“Great,” Jon said unhappily. “So this is what became of that first new timeline. Pointless.” Before Martin could begin to register that he had once lived in that , Jon shut the door. The door winked out of existence, like an eye closing, and a new one popped up, this time lime green. Jon flicked it open too. A similar world lay behind it, not exactly the same but similar enough: dead. The wind blew hot and scalding on Martin’s face, and he knew that it was too hot to live in. Jon closed the door again, scowling mightily. 

“What is that bastard playing at?” Jon muttered. “Showing me my mistakes like this. I get I’m incompetent, they don’t need to tell me.”

“Is that what you’re getting from this?” Martin asked hysterically, as the door spawned again and again and Jon opened it up again and again to the same sight. Some worlds were littered with baked skeletons. Far more were empty. All were dead, ruined and destroyed beyond repair by a god with too many neuroses to count. “You did all of this. You ground every universe into the dirt. This is what happens when you blow up the world, Jon. This is reality!”

“It’s a reality,” Jon corrected stuffily, as he stared out into barren wastes. “It’s not the most important one. They weren’t all my fault, anyway. Some of them just - decomposed. They couldn’t hold together.”

“Wow, I wonder why that is!” Martin yelled. “Is it because you were abusing your powers? Destroying everything you touched ?”

“Blame everything on me as usual,” Jon muttered. “Michael’s lying, anyway. It’s just showing me the bad endings. There’s a happy ending somewhere here. There’s a good universe here somewhere. I just have to find it and take us there.”

 He turned around, only to find where they had come from sealed up. They were, effectively, trapped in a box, with doors on every wall, and Jon screwed every eye he had shut before opening them widely. Dozens of doors popped up, of all different shapes and sizes, and Jon threw them all open. But it was the same story. Nothing in the universe held anything left, for anyone. 

“Don’t you get it?” Martin murmured, more to himself than to Jon. “They’re all gone. There’s nothing left.”

Jon looked around at the dozens of landscapes, jaw slackening slightly, and his legs gently folded underneath himself. He stared up at the landscapes, on his knees with his mouth slack, as if he was praying. More and more doors opened, showing the same thing, closing and reopening, closing and reopening, to the same thing. 

Martin gently crouched down next to him. He took his hand. He held it tightly, not knowing what to say, if there was anything he could say that could possibly help. You couldn’t pep talk a god out of his megalomania. But maybe you could show him his kingdom. 

“It’s pointless,” Jon whispered. Some of the eyes were crying but his main ones were dry, glowing sickly green. “No matter what I do, it’s the same result. There’s no future. There’s no world where humanity survives.”

“That’s not true,” Martin said quietly, rooting himself in the hopes it would ground Jon. He couldn’t afford indecisiveness now. “You keep getting the same result because you keep doing the same thing. You were just - caught in a loop. Throwing your head against the wall, again and again. But there’s another way.”

“What other way,” Jon whispered. “What could I possibly do?”

“You can let go.”

Jon bent over, folding in on himself, and Martin gripped his hand tighter. Every eye on his body was flickering colors, spinning or whirling and rolling frantically. “I can’t, they’re all dead -”

“We lost Tim and Sasha,” Martin said, choking up a little himself. “And it hurt. God, I know it hurt so much. I know you lost me too, in my own way. I know you lost yourself. But Jon...you survived, didn’t you? You got through it. You’re not as weak as you think you are. I think you’re really strong, actually.”

Jon was trembling, and the walls were warping and bubbling. The doors were closing and opening and disappearing and reappearing, so furiously that it almost drowned out Martin’s words. 

“I’m lonely too,” Martin said, struggling to make himself heard and understood. “I’ve always been lonely. And when I met you, you were someone who needed me, someone who I could save. And...I liked that. I liked being needed. But, Jon, you don’t need me. You don’t need me to be strong, just like I don’t need you to be strong. I know that, even if something happens to me, you’ll be okay. You’ll be okay, won’t you? Jon?”

All the doors closed. One opened. 

A little boy stood behind it, standing on a high stoop, desperately tugging at the shirt of an older boy. Nobody’s faces were visible. The older boy didn’t react, as if he was in a trance, walking slowly into the thick and putrid darkness. A single leg, hairy and black and jointed in two places, crept out of the darkness, drawing the boy closer. 

Martin realized, too late, that he was watching a boy get eaten alive, and so was Jon as a child. He swallowed, looking down at the crumpled figure on the floor in front of him. 

“This moment, that you relive over and over again, this moment where you couldn’t save someone.” Martin swallowed again. “You were a kid, Jon. You couldn’t do anything. You were powerless. It’s not your fault. And it’s not something you can go back and change, either.”

The door closed, and opened. Jon, sitting by himself, in class, at home, at the dinner table, lonely. Jon, passing through life, silent and unnoticed, as a ghost. Jon, locked forever in memories of a thousand mundane traumas, unrecognized and uncared about. Meanness began shining through, pretentiousness, callousness. He grew up into someone hardened, someone who struck first before he could be struck, and soon he had driven everyone away. 

Everyone but Martin. And then Martin too. 

“Jon,” Martin said. “It’s time to make a change.”

Jon raised his head, and his eyes were glowing so brightly that they were almost painful to look at. 

“Yes,” he said, with a voice that reverberated a thousand times, “I think so too.”

Every wall fell down.

Martin stood in an empty space, that was both space and not space, that was not a location but not not a location. It was featureless and undefined, and somehow stretched on in vastness and incredible claustrophobia.

 He was no longer alone with Jon.

Georgie stood in front of them, still in her Victorian Grim Reaper outfit, except now in black. She was holding a light parsol, twirling it idly. Gerry stood next to her, looking very proud of himself. Behind them was Michael, who seemed overly excited to see Jon in incredible psychological pain. 

Jon slowly stood up, eyes alight with an unholy green. He stared Georgie in the eyes, who just arched her eyebrow. 

“Done with your temper tantrum?” she asked. 

“Yes,” Jon echoed. He spoke with a thousand voices - a thousand timelines, a thousand Jons. “Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome.” Georgie glanced at Michael, who grinned down at her. “You’re satisfied too?”

“I am satisfied with my revenge,” Michael trilled. “Oh, what an eternity we’ve had.”

“I super don’t know what’s going on,” Gerry said cheerfully. “But I really like being an extra dimensional demon hunter.”

“Gerry’s my apprentice,” Georgie stage whispered to Martin, winking. “He’s coming along swimmingly. He’ll be collecting souls any millennia now.”

“Great. Fabulous,” Martin said, dizzy with the turn of events. “So, uh, what’s the plan? Are we going to fix…” he waved his hand, gesturing to the empty everything. “...this?” Something awful occurred to him. “Is this even something that can be fixed?”

“It can.” Jon slowly swiveled his head - or was he The Archivist now? - to slowly gaze at Georgie, then at Michael. “I will need the assistance of the End and the Spiral.”

“About time you asked,” Georgie said flippantly, twirling her parasol. “I think I can put all these worlds to rest. It’ll be quite a job, but it’s doable. Michael, then you’d be up?”

Michael trilled a laugh. “I think I can shift the realities back in place. Beholding?”

“I’ll put us in the right place.” Jon’s forehead eye stretched open wide, shining faintly. He turned his head to Martin. “No more shortcuts. No more perfection. Just what we had. It is all we have.” He hesitated, only slightly. “Sasha and Tim…”

“We’ve already said our goodbyes,” Martin said firmly. “They knew that this was their future. They’ve accepted it.”

“It’s a pity,” Jon said distantly. “I would have liked to see that wedding.”

“I’ll put it into my next story,” Martin teased lightly. “It’ll be a romance.”

Jon smiled faintly. “Will it have a happy ending?”

“I think I like bittersweet the best.”

“Me too.” 

On impulse, because some part of Martin had never stopped feeling that overwhelming love, he reached out and linked his hand with Jon’s. He squeezed it tightly, hoping that Jon understood in that gesture the complexity of his feelings. How much he loved him, but how much he wanted to get to know him first. The empathy, the pity, the self-love, the journey. How Martin wanted to get lunch with him, maybe some sunny day, when things were better. How, more than anything, he knew that Jon needed a friend, and how he would like to be that friend. 

“Goodbye,” Jon whispered. 

“Don’t say that,” Martin said. “We’ll see each other again. Say, ‘I’ll see you later’.”

Jon smiled gently, and he squeezed back. “See you later.”

“Okay, cool party!” Georgie clapped her hands, before holding one hand as if she was about to snap her fingers. “I’ll have to murder everyone here now. But I’ll bring you back! Hopefully. I’ve never done this before. Say hello to death, guys!”

But Martin already had, a long time ago, and when everything winked out for him he still felt the warm feeling of Jon’s hand in his, long after everything else faded. 

Martin dreamed. But what he dreamed wasn’t anybody’s business. 

Martin was reading a romance novel when Jon woke up.

He had been expecting it for a while. Jon had been waking up off and on for days since he read the statement that ended everything, always horrified and scared, and Martin had eventually given up and just parked himself on a chair in the cabin bedroom. It’s not like there was much to do outside, anyway. It was all...very demonic.

Martin sighed. He still had to get in contact with the other Avatars, develop a plan to fix this and change the world back to normal, find the other members of the Institute, change Daisy back from being a werewolf...the to-do list went on. Nobody said reversing the apocalypse that your boyfriend (boyfriend!!!) started would be so much work. Hopefully once Jon woke up from his weird psychic coma he would be more helpful. 

He was just staring affectionately at his phone background - Gumball standing on the back of Jon’s head as he slept at his desk, Gumball’s little tail held high in the air - when Jon groaned. Martin stuffed his phone in his pocket, moving to sit at Jon’s bedside. He held Jon’s hand and squeezed it tightly, hoping it would be the first thing he felt when he woke up.

Jon’s eyes - his main two ones, but they were brown and that was always a relief - fluttered open. He opened and closed his mouth, swallowing, and Martin silently held a cup of water with a straw to his lips. He sat up a little and drank eagerly, and Martin eventually pulled it away. Jon coughed again, and when he spoke it was with a raspy voice. 

“Martin? Is that you?”

“In the Flesh,” Martin said cheerfully, and Jon cringed. “Sorry. Bad joke. Yes, it’s me. You’ve been asleep for days. You’re pretty lucky to be alive.”

Jon blinked blearily at him. “Did I...”

“Open the door? Yep..”

“Oh.” Jon stared down at his lap, clutching Martin’s hand tightly like a lifeline. “I had terrible dreams. I had a dream that I was - destroying and recreating everything, over and over. I was in such incredible pain…”

“Just a dream,” Martin said quickly. It wasn’t technically a lie. From a certain point of view. “You’re okay now. There’s a lot to take care of, but just - just rest now, okay? You can worry about it when you get better.” He smiled weakly at Jon. “I’ll be there to help. So will all of your friends, and everyone who cares about you. We’ll fix this together..”

“You know,” Jon said, giving Martin a small smile, “I believe you.”

A bittersweet ending. Seemed good enough to Martin. 

He sat there, holding Jon’s hand. He sat there until the demands and pressures of real life pulled them apart and Jon fell back asleep, secure in the knowledge that Martin would be there in the morning.

Jon slept, dreaming nothing, a faint smile on his face, and Martin stayed until he awoke.