Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The coffin is a grinning, gaping mouth, opening into the earth.

Jon has already pulled off the chains — they’re pooled on the ground next to the coffin’s pale wood. Inside is dark, a dark that seems to suck in the dim light of the Archives. Jon can only see a few steps down. And it’s cold. He always feels cold these days, but the draft of air from the coffin is like ice, smelling of damp and rot and mud. He shivers, chest aching, skin still crawling from Jared’s intrusion, and his missing ribs feel like a raw wound, Beholding making him all too aware of the exact path the bone took when it was ripped from his body.

Beholding also tells him the Archives are empty. Everyone else went home hours ago — even Melanie, who walked him back from Helen’s corridors, gripping his still-bloody rib in one hand, didn’t seem inclined to stick around to see what he needed it for.

Jon should be grateful about that, he supposes.

The rib is in his desk drawer. He left a recording, in case any of the others found it, warning them not to move it. Telling them where he’d gone. And if he doesn’t come back…well. Honestly, they’d only be relieved.

For all that he thinks the rib will work, he Knows — Beholding for once being helpful, only because the information makes him more afraid — that it may not be enough.

But he doesn’t care about the danger. Because Daisy is there, somewhere, in that gaping mouth, and he has to get her out. It doesn’t matter that he hurts. It doesn’t matter that he’s hungry — the statement he’d recently read in preparation already fading into little more than scraps — and it doesn’t matter that, if it were him stuck in that coffin, Daisy would just snarl and say, Good, another monster in the ground.

The scar on his neck has long since healed, but it itches with phantom pain at the memory of her knife at his throat, his own grave beneath his feet and Daisy’s hot breath against his ear.

Jon swallows and forces himself to take a step.

No one deserves to be stuck in there. Not forever. Not even her.

Gripping the rim of the coffin, he swings his leg onto the first step leading down down down into the earth. The air below seems to pull at him and he swears he can hear a sound, soft and crooning, coming from below — not screams, like the statements he’s read, but just as haunting.

“I know.” Jon’s voice is a whisper. “I’m willing,” he says, despite the fear that clutches at his throat. He already feels like he can’t breathe. Though breathing is little more than habit these days, a comfortable lie to let him ignore the truth of what he is. He sucks in a breath anyway, and steps down.

Another step, and his chin is even with the edge of the coffin.

Jon pauses. Looks around the empty document storage, at its bare walls and worm-stained floor and overflowing shelves, unable to shake the feeling that he will never get the chance to organize the statements stacked in haphazard piles from his research on the coffin, or clean up that forgotten half-drunk cup of tea on the floor in the corner. Unable to even care, one way or another.

He’d thought about bringing a tape recorder with him, but had felt so tired, all of the sudden. Tired of giving every scrap of himself to the Eye, to the Archives, to Elias, watching and listening, smug in his cell. Whatever happens to him, down below in the Too Close I Cannot Breath, it will be his choice. For once.

“This is my choice,” Jon says to the empty room, to the Eye, listening and watching, unfeeling in his mind, eyes prickling heavy on the back of his neck.

There is no response. Of course there isn’t. Huffing at his foolishness, Jon finally looks down, grips the torch in his hand, checks the extra batteries in his pocket, and steps down.

The light from the surface disappears immediately, and, though his torch still works, it’s dim and flickering and he can already tell that bringing it was futile. But he clings to its comfort as he walks deeper, no longer down stairs but following a jagged, winding path through the earth. It’s sloping down still, sharply, and narrowing with every step, until he’s crouching, head and shoulders brushing against rock on all sides.

And, though the rock is closing in and the air is growing thick and his light is dimming more and more, Jon feels relief amid the fear and crushing claustrophobia.

Because the weight of Beholding’s stare falls away with every step he takes.

The static in his mind fades, then dims, then falls blessedly silent, and he only now realizes how oppressive the Eye had grown since he’d woken as the Archivist, consuming his thoughts and pressing against the door in his mind until the absence of that weight is such a relief that he nearly gasps with it, despite the new weight of the stone above him and the distant, crooning whispers, growing louder with every inch, singing of crushing squeezing suffocating pressure too close too close stuck below the rock pressing down and mud sucking in drowning in stone cracking apart never escape never find up never —

Jon tries to tune it out, to ignore it, to find instead the distant pull that means Daisy, the scar on his neck itching then tingling then burning with remembered pain, leading him towards the one who’d carved it into his skin.

Jon doesn’t reach for his rib on the surface yet, doesn’t want to know if his anchor is just as blocked as the Eye by the Buried’s song. Doesn’t want to know if he has trapped himself forever below creation. Until he finds Daisy, it doesn’t matter. He ignores the Buried’s whispers and the sour taste of his fear — unsuccessfully, he is the Archivist, and cannot lie even to himself — and moves down.

The tunnel narrows further, until he’s nearly crawling — and then he is crawling, hands digging into the muddy dirt, small pebbles imbedded in the skin of his palms. Time is meaningless, without Beholding to feed him the seconds and the distance and the exact classification of the stones around him. He walks, and when he can’t walk, he crawls, and when he can’t crawl, he pulls himself along on his stomach, the weight of all of that earth bearing down on him from above, so tight and close he cannot breath, let alone move, and there are moments — far too many — when he gets stuck and thinks this is it, I can’t go farther, can’t escape, can’t get free and Choke croons crushing pushing deeper endless pressure and a part of him, a small part of him, feels relief at the thought that he is done, that he did everything he could and it isn’t his fault if he fails, if he lays down here beneath the earth and can’t move farther…but most of him keeps fighting, unwilling to give up on Daisy, and he pulls free, stones ripping into his clothes and skin and continues inching forward and forward until he can at last scramble to his hands and feet — never so much that he can stand upright, but at least he can breath again. And keep moving down. Always down.

Jon’s world narrows like the tunnel until all he knows is jagged edges and crushing weight, pushing down and up and in from every direction, surrounded by the smell of wet rock and the scrape scrape scrape of his fingers across the dirt and the darkness that seems heavier than the weight of the earth.

And heavier than that darkness, heavier than the stone, Choke’s attention is a pressure squeezing in from all directions. It is nothing like the Eye. Beholding was impersonal, eager for any scrap of fear or flash of guilt or stray thought he held, but holding itself apart from him, far distant. Uncaring. Unfeeling. Only watching and watching and watching as he starved on scraps and feeding on his pain and fear just as much as it fed on the statements he read.

In many ways, Choke is no different. Jon’s still enough the Archivist, even without his connection to the Eye, that he can See how it feeds on his fear. How it catches at his clothes and traps his limbs between rocks and in sucking sand and mud, giving him just enough air and movement to keep him going, to keep him scared of loosing that final bit of freedom. Choke is…suffocating. It will never let him go, never let him escape, never let him breathe —

But it will also never let anything else touch him, not death and not Elias and certainly not the Eye, holding him close and possessive and warm beneath the earth.

It’s this last thought — part his own, and part Choke whispering promises — that forces Jon to face the truth.

Jon planned to rescue Daisy — that was true. Is still true. He hates the thought of someone trapped here forever — because Choke won’t even let her die, won’t let the End take her away from this crushing, breathless existence, just as it will never let him go, if it has its way, but —

But.

He is tired of being a monster. Tired of starving. Tired of feeling guilty. Of fighting against the Eye for every scrap of humanity, and of doing it all alone, so crushingly alone, ever since he woke up to that empty hospital room and an Archives full of hateful glares and whispered accusations and assistants who blame him for everything. He remembered thinking — minutes or hours or days or weeks or years ago when he’d been free on the surface, letting Jared reach below his skin and rip out a rib, fingers still raw and bleeding from his first failed attempt at finding an anchor — that the coffin, no matter how bad, would at least be away. And if he got trapped here in the Buried, failed in his attempt to save Daisy, to do this one good thing and make his choice to become a monster worth it, then maybe that would be okay. Better even, for everyone he would be leaving behind.

And now that he is here…

Jon has stopped moving. He’s laying flat, stone at his back, pressing down from above. He can’t shift his arms, or lift his head more than a few inches. He just lays still, face pressed into the dirt, fingers sifting through the soft silt. He’s not giving up. He’ll keep fighting, keep pushing down, deeper and farther until he finds Daisy (and she is close because the scar across his neck burns, pain nearly as great as when it had been raw and open and smeared with grave dirt). But not yet. The mud below him is warm, forming around him and softening until he’s sinking deeper, cradled and held.

Jon knows what it wants.

“I am the Archivist,” he says, dirt on his tongue, between his teeth. “The Eye…”

Cannot hold you. Cannot take you from the earth. No. No. Mine mine mine. Hold close keep tight weight pressure crushing heavy endless —

“So if I stay?”

Mine.

“Why?”

Crushing guilt like crushing stone and endless pressure to do better hide incompetence pretend you know what you are doing when really you are drowning and no one can see must not let them see but still you shoulder more keep pretending or they will know and then it will all come falling down can’t sleep can’t eat starving for fear but can’t let sucking heavy hunger win must fight the crushing weight of the Archivist.

Jon takes a breath, feels dirt in his lungs. It’s no wonder Choke likes him. He has been drowning for months, for years, even, burying himself alive with every choice he’s made to dig himself deeper into the Institute and the statements and the Fears and the role of the Archivist. In a way, he’s surprised the Buried didn’t take him sooner.

Then the voice, the thought, the knowledge (not Knowledge, but close to it, only from something else) comes again.

Choose.

“This is my choice,” Jon had said, when he’d entered the coffin. A declaration to Beholding and Elias alike that the couldn’t control everything that happened to him. He hadn’t meant it like this, at the time.

The Buried. Choke. Too Close I Cannot Breath. Forever Deep Below Creation.

It is still a Fear. Still feeds on humanity, still preys on anyone unlucky enough to stray within its grasping roots — and if Jon accepts this, then he will feed his new god just as he’s had to feed his last. The countless statements he’s read flash across his mind — Joshua Gillespie, Enrique MacMillian, Karolina Górka, Vincet Yang — their pain visceral and real and all-too familiar after the uncountable however-long he’s been crawling through the earth. Crushing endless weighted pressure of the earth above and around and in him. Forever.

Is this really any better than the Eye?

Yes, he thinks to himself, even if he’s not yet ready to say it out loud. Yes, and he doesn’t care if it’s selfish. Because, for the first time since he’d become the Archivist — the first time since he’d opened that damned book, since he’d heard the knock knock knock and the Mr. Spider wants another guest for dinner and the screams of the boy who’d taken his place — Jon feels safe. The earth is crushing and suffocating and endless and inescapable. But it is, in spite of everything, safe. He is safe from the Eye, from Elias and whatever he’s planning (and Jon Knows he’s planning something, even if the Eye had never shown him what). Safe from the other Avatars and Fears and everything that has put its mark on his flesh. (The burn on his hand and the worm scars in his skin are all but invisible now, smeared with the dirt and coal of Choke’s grip). Here he is safe from Georgie’s disappointment, from Melanie’s sharp edges and promised violence, from Basira’s cold, calculating stare, weighing whether his usefulness is worth the price of his existence.

Safe from Martin’s indifference and the cold fog of his absence.

Martin.

Jon hadn’t let himself think about Martin, when he’d made his plan to enter the coffin. Melanie, Basira, even Georgie — he’d known they wouldn’t care. But Martin…

Is it awful of him, to hope that Martin will care, will mourn, at least a little, when he doesn’t come back?

At that thought, that admission that he won’t be going back, that he has made his choice and that choice is to stay, the scar on his throat twinges with new pain and he hears it: shifting sand and heavy, panicked breathing.

“Daisy,” he says, lifting his head from the dirt.

The sounds stop, freezing like a startled animal in its den. Then, “Jon?”

Jon pushes forward through the earth until he reaches a space large enough to kneel and suddenly she is there, in front of him gripping his hand tight in hers hard enough to bruise.

“Jon,” she sobs. “How…what…”

He can barely see her in the gloom. He lost his torch back…somewhere, and her face is little more than a shadow, covered in dirt and mud, just like his own.

“I came to get you,” Jon tells her.

Daisy shakes her head. “You came to…? Why would you?” Her eyes flick to his neck, though he knows the scar is covered by dirt.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, fighting the urge to lower his chin and back away. “What matters is getting you up.”

“How? There is no up. I…how can there be an up?”

Jon ignores the question and reaches for the rib in his mind, pushing past Choke’s endless crooning and his own doubts and straining to find that piece of himself on the surface.

He can’t find it. Can’t feel it. Can’t feel anything but the pressure around them.

Please, he thinks, and tries again.

Nothing.

Not even a glimmer of a direction and he nearly sobs, not for himself but for Daisy, for failing to do this one good thing for the people he’s leaving behind.

“Please,” he says again, and this time he speaks aloud, a plea to the god ever-listening and ever-crooning and ever-holding him tighter. “Show me up.”

I won’t leave, he thinks, unwilling to let Daisy hear this part. I won’t leave, but I need to get her out. Please.

Choke’s answer is an earthquake. And though Daisy whimpers in fear, Jon smiles as the tunnel around them shakes, dust and rocks falling from above, and a new opening appears to their right. An opening that leads up.

Thank you, Jon thinks, head bowed and dirt in his lungs.

“Come on,” he says, nudging Daisy shoulder. “Follow me. Up, Daisy, we have to go up.”

The word seems to reach past her fear, and Daisy begins to crawl after him into the new tunnel. They climb. It doesn’t take long for Daisy to push past him, up and up and up through the dirt as he falls behind, and Jon knows it’s because the earth doesn’t care about her any more, has wrung out enough fear and pain from her, and is instead clutching at his legs and hips and tattered clothes as he struggles after.

It seems like the next moment —surely they were deeper than this, surely they hadn’t climbed far enough yet — Daisy cries out and Jon looks up and sees light. The coffin, still open. A piece of the Archive’s ceiling. A face, peering over, calling out Daisy’s name.

It’s easy to let Daisy outpace him, to let her claw out of the dirt and up the stairs hewn into the cavern walls and out into the light. She doesn’t look back, and it’s easy again to let the stone’s clutching attempts to hold him grab him fast and not struggle to break free.

He could, he thinks, if he wanted to. This close to freedom, this close to the surface, to the Eye, and the power it grants him, power he can even now feel on the edges of his awareness, like the distant static of a tape beginning to play, Jon could fight Choke’s hold, renege on his choice and leave the Buried.

But he doesn’t.

Jon sinks into the earth and lets it take him.

No one calls out to him, though he can see Daisy is free — a last glimmer of the Eye’s power, letting him Know, for the final time, what is happening. Basira is hugging Daisy close and Melanie is watching the coffin with suspicion and fear, rather than any sort of hope, and Martin is high above in his office, lost in the fog and not sparing him a thought. Daisy is safe, is free, and none of them care that he is still trapped.

Jon knew they wouldn’t, and he isn’t surprised. The pain of it hardly cuts him here. If it does, the wound is quickly filled with dirt.

Soon enough, the earth shifts to blanket him, and all he knows is the all-consuming crushing endless pressure mine never leaving never letting go, and Jon finally, finally, lets himself rest.

Chapter Text

Jon doesn’t know how long he sleeps in the earth.

The minutes hours days weeks are a blur of dirt and sand and stone and mud and dripping water and pressure pressure pressure and always, always the constant crooning of Choke in his mind.

Maybe sleep isn’t the right word. Jon is aware throughout it all, distantly and constantly, of the weight bearing down and the dirt he breathes into his lungs (when he has the space to breath, that is), but it feels like sleeping — feels like the sleep he remembers from before the Archives, from when he was still, wholly and completely, human. It is nothing like his sleep as the Archivist—if he dreams, in this strange sleeping-waking-sinking-drifting in the earth, he doesn’t remember.

When Jon wakes, he’s curled in a tight ball, knees pulled up to his chest, in a tiny pocket of air. There’s nothing but earth surrounding him, and when he blinks his eyes open, sand falls from his lashes. The walls are damp, but warm, and there is no visible source of light, but he can still see shapes and shadows of the stone around him.

Jon doesn’t know how long it’s been or where he is, if he’s still in the coffin, or if he’s drifted to some distant continent far below the surface and sunlight and air of the world above, or if both are true at the same time. But he does know one thing. And this knowing is nothing like the Eye’s intrusive ocean, pressing against the door in his mind. Instead it is a quiet, settled, inescapably heavy feeling.

He is no longer the Archivist.

Nothing remains tying him to the Eye or the Archives or any of the Fears who have marked his skin. After all these — weeks? he thinks it’s been weeks, at least — he is of the Buried, and there is no taking back this choice, not after this long spent within Choke’s grasping roots and clutching soil and groundwater, washing away everything else.

“I’m not the Archivist,” Jon says aloud, just to taste the words, dirt-covered and absolute. His voice is rough, like he’s swallowed gravel, and as the sound of it fades, somehow echoing despite the small space, the earth below and around and above him shakes and contracts, pulling him closer and tighter until every inch of space is consumed by the crooning song of Choke.

Mine, it whispers. Mine.

Jon turns his face into the dirt and it is in his lungs and on his tongue and filling up all of the empty spaces inside of him and leaving no room for breath or doubts.

With the Archivist gone, Basira and Melanie and Martin would be free. The Archivist has always been the lynchpin of the Archives, and if killing him would have freed the assistants (something he’s glad he never managed to tell them, though a part of him had wondered if it would have been better, that way) then renouncing the Eye should have accomplished the same goal. He hopes they realized that, before Elias found someone else to become his puppet. Despite how they’d treated him, Jon never wanted them, never wanted anyone (he flinches from the memories of Tim and Sasha and everything they suffered), to get hurt.

And Martin…

Jon just hopes Martin is safe. He doesn’t know what Martin was working on, doesn’t know why the distance between them was so important, but if he was putting himself in danger for Jon’s sake, to protect him from Lucas or Elias or the various horrors lining up to carve their mark into the Archivist-that-was, then he doesn’t need to do that anymore.

Regardless, Martin is better off without him. And Jon is better off here, buried and Buried in the mud and stone. Safe.

The earth sings around him, and Jon forces himself to relax, leaning back against the curved stone at his back.

***

There are others, trapped in the earth with him.

Jon hears them sometimes, in between sinking and drifting and not-dreaming. Distant screams and groans of pain, scratches against the dirt and frantic fingernails digging at the stone, fighting for breath and space and freedom.

He forces himself to listen to them, to imagine the terror those people are feeling. The horror of their inescapable fate. The reality that this is forever and they will never get free.

Because he’s come to know something else, another feeling, dense in his mind.

“I will have to leave, soon.”

Like before, saying it out loud seems to relieve some of the pressure, and he can breathe again, for a moment.

Yes, Choke croons. Become root grow to surface to seek out screams and fear and terror and drag them below to feed and always remain tethered never escape for long always close and inescapable.

Jon swallows and nods. He is already starting to feel the hunger. It’s a different feeling than his hunger for statements, but he recognizes it all the same, gnawing and deep, like a pit hollowing out his center. A pit he needs to fill with fear, sharp as nutrient-rich soil and pungent as peat-moss.

Jon had starved the Eye. Restricting his statements and refusing to give in to the all-consuming, aching, static-filled emptiness that demanded he take and take and take, ripping stories from people’s mouths so he could Know, so he could drink in their fear and pain and suffering like a black hole, a spinning nebula of a thousand, hungry eyes. And when the eyes didn’t get their stories, they turned their unblinking gaze on him, boring beneath his skin and splitting open his memories, taking everything he had to give and more and always, always the hunger grew worse, grew deeper, until he couldn’t feel anything else. Until he was nothing else, just the hunger. Just the Eye.

Jon can’t go through that again. He won’t.

So he will feed people to his god. To the Buried. And his victims will suffer this fate, and none of them will regard it with the comfort he’s grown to feel at the endless pressure and choking air.

A part of him flinches away from the thought, instinctual and all-too human. The part of him that listened when Basira proposed they begin monitoring his statements, that bowed his head when they suggested locking him in the Archives at night, that bent his shoulders when Melanie raged at him for ruining her life, for being a monster, for Knowing too much and Asking too much and always, always doing the wrong thing.

Jon forces that part of him away, viciously. He refuses to regret this choice, refuses to regret deciding to live, to be selfish, to be safe. He will carry the guilt of everyone he hurts in the future, just like he carries the guilt of everyone he hurt as the Archivist, but he won’t feel guilty for living.

Not again.

And he won’t let the guilt crush him. He’s already carrying enough weight.

And Choke whispers, yes, and sings, pressure like mountain squeezing deeper more weight cannot escape past mistakes or choices brining only pain and more choices wrong choices always avalanche of guilt and never able to go back or escape what you have done.

Yes. Jon licks mud from cracked lips. But maybe he can find the space, amid the weight and guilt and drip drip drip of hunger hollowing him out, to be better. To be safe and to live, but also to live with himself, this time.

“Do I have to kill them?” Jon speaks into the dirt.

The ground rumbles, like it doesn’t understand.

“Do they have to be buried forever?” he asks instead.

No. Sweet grasping fear breathing hard giving up all hope only to find freedom but fear remains and always returns when faced with earth and rock and clutching pressure.

A pause, like the earth holding its breath. Then, the End brings an end to fear.

And Jon thinks of all the statements he’s read — not only of the Buried, but of all the Fears. Whether or not someone lived to make a statement seemed to do with chance. The Fear grew bored, grew full, found better prey somewhere else. Or it simply let them go to prolong the chase, make the final struggle more potent and ripe. (And he remembers a doorway, insidious and innocuous and yellow like a stain. He remembers Helen’s screams and Michael’s mocking laughter and the blood dripping from his arm).

But Jon will be the one controlling this chase. Which means he will choose how it ends. He will feed the Buried, trap someone below ground, induce a horrible and traumatizing experience that will leave them gasping and afraid of small spaces for the rest of their life…and then he will let them go. And at least he will not be left with the echo of their fear, constantly forcing them to relive their trauma, night after night. They will live and they will heal and Jon will satisfy the hunger opening a sinkhole in his center.

A bit hysterical, Jon thinks, there’ll soon be a great many statements about me, and almost wants to laugh at the irony, but can’t quite bring himself to manage it.

“It’ll be fine,” Jon says as Choke whispers, yes good fear hungry hollow need to fill and hunt trap below.

It’ll be fine.

***

In the end, it’s simple.

Eventually the hunger digs deep enough that he knows he can’t wait any longer.

Jon doesn’t have to say anything. Choke can feel it as well as him. The earth begins shifting around him, the space expanding bit by bit, until it’s large enough for him to stand upright. He pulls himself up, legs shaky and unsure, and a wave of dirt and sand and stones falls to the ground from his clothes. He keeps one hand buried in the mud of a wall for support and just stands there, for a moment. The pressure of the earth is all around him still, though it feels… lesser, like it has lifted its hold incrementally. But it’s still looming, hanging above and around him, ready to close in at any time.

Once he feels steady enough, Jon starts to walk. The earth in front of him opens up, creating a tunnel as he moves forward and closing in behind him as soon as he takes a step, so that the mud and stone surrounds him equally on all sides. He doesn’t know where he’s going, doesn’t even know where he is, but knows he’s walking in the right direction. The air is thick with dust and moisture, and the earth changes rapidly from sand to silt to stone to rock to clay to mud and back to sand again. He thinks he must be moving faster than it feels, covering a great span of distance with each step.

Then the earth disappears.

Jon is out. In the open. It’s too-bright and too-harsh and too-empty and for a moment he panics, breaths coming short and hands shaking before he finds the still-there sound of Choke in his head, grounding him.

It’s an underground station. That helps. He’s still below the surface. Jon can feel the foundations digging into the earth around him, and knows he’s back in London. The lights above are electric and dim, buzzing faintly, and even this vastness of manmade space, forcing it’s way into the earth, is too much to handle after the endless time Forever Deep Below Creation. (He can’t even fathom going above in the sunlight and the air with the sky a vast expanse above him and nothing to hold him down).

Jon brushes at his clothes, ineffectively, and walks into the station. The hunger claws at him, and he’s too impatient to be subtle. But it’s not busy, and no one notices the strange man covered in dirt appearing out of the tunnel walls. It must be late, or very early, but there are still a dozen or so people doing…human things. Jon has to watch them for a moment, unable to comprehend that there is still such normality in the world when he has been so irrevocably and completely changed.

Wait for a train, that’s what you’re supposed to do here. So Jon sits. And waits. Knee bouncing to the rhythm of Choke in his head.

It doesn’t take long for a mugger to target him. His wild hair and unfocused eyes, blinking in the too-harsh light, must make him seem drunk or high or both. And his clothes are dirty and tattered but high quality (leftover from when he cared about appearances and first impressions and professionalism) and the dark fabric hides the stains well enough. Whatever the reason, Jon sees the man watching him out of the corner of his eye — dark hoody, dark cap, face hidden in shadow — and it isn’t hard to guess his intentions. Jon doesn’t want to put himself on some moral high ground, feeding criminals to the Buried to lessen his own guilt (and it’s not like people in these positions are ever inherently evil, and no matter what harm they may cause, their actions aren’t enough to warrant being fed to a Fear god). But this once, this first time, he’ll take the easy target.

Jon stands up, brushes off his pants, and walks into a nearby service tunnel that wasn’t there a moment ago. The man follows him easily, so eager he doesn’t even question where Jon is going.

The tunnel narrows, subtle enough that Jon doubts the man notices, and the brick and stone walls turn to raw earth, jagged and bare, exposed roots crawling through the dirt.

It’s easy, Jon finds, to manipulate the earth around him. Choke listens when he asks, and stone and dirt and silt move and shift and dance at his fingertips.

The hunt is a blur of fear, sweet and sharp and satisfying.

It seems to take hours for the man to stop screaming, scrambling for air, digging ineffectively at the dirt walls, fingernails caked in mud, bleeding his pain into the earth. The screams turn to pleas. Then to whimpers. Then silence. But even in his silence the man is afraid, a fear more heavy and pressing and inescapable than words allow.

He starts to scream again, when Jon asks the earth to open, and the tunnel reappears, bringing with it the distant sounds of the station. Of humanity. The man keeps screaming as he runs towards freedom, towards the false safety of the open air and electric lights and man-made walls.

In his wake, the earth seems to suck up the sounds of the fading screams, and soon the tunnels are silent as the coffin.

Jon takes a breath, relieved and sick and satisfied and empty and aching and fiercely glad that he was strong enough for this. And now he gets to go home. Back to the Buried. To Choke and its crooning song, pressure mine holding close holding tight never letting go, and the pit in his center is once again full to bursting. Until the next time it grows hungry.

Jon turns away from the surface world and —

He nearly laughs.

The door in the center of the tunnel feels as inescapable as a landslide.

The yellow paint is as sharp as a grin in the gloom and dark of the earth, and when it opens, slowly and with a painfully sharp creak of wood, the grin grows teeth.

Helen — too tall and too sharp, coils of hair a halo of geometry and neon around her head — leans against the door frame. She cocks her head, neck bending impossibly far, and smiles, yellow like her door.

“Well, Archivist,” she says, and the title is a jab, meant to cut, meant to poke and prod and unearth everything kept hidden below the growing hollow of the shell he had worn. But he is not that, any longer — now the hollow has filled with dirt and loam and a crooning song — and the name cannot hurt him.

Jon shakes his head and his visions spins, her presence bending the tunnel around them, twisting it into a spiraling loop on and on and on and —

The earth shifts beneath him, pulling him under and sinking his feet into the foundation of stone. Solid ground to stand against the Spiral.

“I’m not the Archivist,” Jon says once the world makes sense again, and it feels just as freeing to say now as it did to whisper it to the earth alone.

Helen smiles like a headache, splitting her lips from ear to throat, and when she laughs, Jon feels the sound in his teeth like aluminum and lemons. “No,” she says, and he knows she notices his feet sunk into the earth, “I suppose you aren’t. How…delightful.”

She takes a step closer, and the movement seems to stretch the space between them even as it shrinks, both truth and lies in the same breath, and Jon remembers how the Distortion had felt as the Archivist, grating against his skin like a vibration gone wrong, a tape played backwards or grit in his eyes. Now the effect is dizzying, and more than a bit unsettling, but nothing worse, and a part of Jon wonders if the corridors behind her door would feel anything like the tunnels he walks below the earth.

Once he’s able to bring his vision into focus again, her face is inches from his own, skin dancing with impossible colors and swirls of light and he tries to blink, but the spirals are still behind his eyelids.

“I looked for you, but it seems you’ve been a bit out of reach, even of my doors. Taking a dirt nap, by the looks of it.” Helen laughs at her joke and Jon huffs, unwillingly amused as her fingers-like-knives pluck at his mud-covered shirt.

“And so well fed, too,” she purrs, lips coiling at the edges of her grin.

And Jon has to look away, remembering the sweet fear and the screams feeding the earth and the shame and joy and satisfaction rising equally in his mind —

Helen reaches out, using the tip of one pointed, too-long nail to raise his chin to meet her eyes.

“I am proud of you, Jon.”

Jon flushes. Her expression doesn’t change — split lips and radium eyes, sharp and psychedelic — but behind the madness, there is also something like…compassion.

And Jon sees in front of him, for a moment, the other Helen, shape untwisted and all-too human, giving him her statement, looking to him for answers and asking him to save her. He remembers this Helen, all sharp angles and grinning teeth, asking the same, coming to him, to the Archivist, and begging to understand what had happened and he —

He had turned her away.

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, voice thick, and her finger is still below his chin when he speaks, and he feels the edge cut, blood beading to the surface and knows she could cut deeper, so so easily, and Jon thinks he should be afraid (remembers vividly Michael’s fingers cutting into his shoulder, splitting skin and scraping bone and twisting deeper) but he isn’t. Maybe he would even deserve it, if it came from her.

Distantly, he’s surprised Choke hasn’t swallowed him, hasn’t bristled at the threat and risen to put an ocean of dirt between him and the blade at his throat. But maybe Choke — crooning in the back of his mind — knows she won’t hurt him.

And it’s right, because Helen just tilts her head, and he can tell she understands what he’s apologizing for, remembers as well as him. How he reacted with fear and horror when she came to him for help, unsure and grasping at the remains of her humanity after she lost herself to the Spiral, and he could imagine how it felt now, all too well. The choice between being consumed and protecting yourself the only way you could: by accepting the Fear. Jon, choosing to accept the Buried to escape his fate as the Archivist. Helen, choosing to accept the Distortion to survive Michael’s corridors. And he shamed her for it, shamed her for something so far outside of her control.

And now he has given up his freedom and his humanity to the Buried, more completely than he ever surrendered to the Eye, and she tells him she is proud.

Helen nods, like she can see his thoughts, and maybe she can, maybe the tangle of his emotions, spiraling and twisting in on itself, is the type of madness she understands all too well.

“We’re both monsters, Jon,” she says, and the word seems to twist into a spiral in his mind, a spiral like the curl of Helen’s hair, like the shape of the scar Michael left on his skin, long-covered by tracks of mud. Monster, he hears in Daisy’s growl and Melanie’s hate-filled snarl and Basira’s cold decision to lock him away. And he knows they would do worse if they could see him now, if they knew the choice he made, if they knew what he had just done to that man, and if they knew that he had liked it.

“It’s better, when you accept it, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jon says, and swallows. “You used to tell me that. I didn’t believe you.”

Helen nods, and there is something like sadness in the twist of her lips.

Jon remembers what else she told him. “You also said we should be friends.”

Now the grin is back to being a headache. “I did!” She laughs, a record in reverse on a bed of gravel. “That was truth, one of the few I offer. Do you believe me, now?”

Jon doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“Good.” Helen claps her hands, and Jon realizes her fingers are no longer at his throat, and the cut has already filled with dirt. “Then, as your friend, I feel obliged to tell you that I was worried about you, when I heard what happened to the Institute.”

Jon feels himself go stiff. “What?” he says, as a shudder runs through the ground beneath his feet.

Helen frowns, leaning forward at an angle no human could hold, tilting her head slowly to the side. “You didn’t know?”

Jon shakes his head.

Helen straightens. “It seems a sinkhole opened beneath the Institute. Swallowed nearly the whole building.” Her grin grows more teeth. “Wonder how that happened?”

Jon stares in shock as Choke’s crooning turns satisfied and smug.

“But…but the Eye. How could it attack the Eye’s place of power?”

“Tsk, tsk.” Helen shakes her head in mock disappointment. “But did it belong to the Eye, really? Beholding’s Heart was gone, sitting in prison as part of some grand plan. Its office overrun with fog and distance, clouding the Eye’s vision. And someone allowed a sliver of Choke to dig so deep into its foundations, unlocking that coffin all willy-nilly and then forgetting to chain it back up.” Her eyes seemed to glow, as vicious as Choke’s song in his mind. “And then its Archivist — oh it’s Archivist renounced the Eye like it was some two-bit human deity … and left.” She shrugged, the delicate motion grating against her inhuman shape. “Honestly, Jon, what did you expect to happen?”

“I — I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. I just…”

“You just wanted to get away.”

Jon swallows. “Yes.”

And he assumed the Institute would always be there, looming over London, and that Elias would find some other poor idiot to mold into the perfect Archivist. He didn’t think the Buried would…but of course it did. Jon knows how possessive it is. And he can’t ignore the sharp relief he feels, knowing the Archives and each and every statement he read, every recording he made, every tape carrying his voice, proof of the hold the Eye had on him, is gone. Buried forever.

Thank you, Jon thinks, and the Buried’s song turns soft and possessive again. Mine never letting go never never go back never return stay below clutching tight mine.

But though the relief is enough to choke him, the fear is nearly as strong.

Jon licks his lips. “What — what happened to them? The people in the Institute? Basira and Melanie? Daisy? Ma — Martin?” His voice is shaking by the end, and he doesn’t even have the ability to be glad his questions no longer buzz with compulsion or pull answers like an eye from a socket, because Helen is laughing again.

To her credit, she doesn’t tease him further. “Everyone got out. Seems Choke made quite a show of it, shaking and rumbling and scaring all those poor researchers half to death. As for your...former assistants, I wanted to find you, so I tracked them down when I heard what happened. Followed them for a bit, had some fun.” She leans forward, like she’s sharing a secret. “The angry one didn’t like me much. Neither did the cold detective. They didn’t seem too worried about where you were, either.”

Of course they weren’t. Jon knew that, already. But something in Helen’s eyes is very knowing, suddenly, and he has to look down.

“And…and Martin?” he asks.

Helen hums, like the scrape of nails on metal. “Martin was a little tricky to find, to be honest,” she says, and she laughs at the phrase, as if the Throat of Lies is ever honest in truth. “Like you, he’s been…hidden. Lost in a fog, I would say.”

If Jon still needed to breathe, he would be hyperventilating right now, he thinks. “Lucas?” he manages.

Helen shudders in disgust, shivers rippling through her entire shape, distorting the illusion of humanity. “Ugh. No. No, that one is long gone, back out to sea pretending to be a sailor. This fog came from a bit closer to home, I should think.”

Jon closes his eyes, like if he can’t see, then somehow he can block out the meaning behind Helen’s words.

Jon remembers what the Institute felt like after Lucas. Empty and aching and cold, and Jon still doesn’t know how much of the horror of the last few months was due to the Eye hollowing him out, or the Lonely preying on his mind and leaving him isolated and alone.

And now it has Martin.

Because Jon left him behind.

Suddenly the reasons he used to convince himself Martin is better off without him seem paper-thin and selfish, and guilt is a vice around his chest.

Around them, the walls contract and shudder, mirroring the sharp edge of his emotions, and Jon worries that Choke will react to his distress and pull him below, or worse, just collapse the tunnel, and he doesn’t think that would hurt Helen but he also doesn’t think she would appreciate it.

But he doesn’t really care, because Martin is in danger, and Jon has to do something.

Jon blinks, and suddenly Helen is leaning at the mouth of her door. She grins again and asks, “Would you like a ride, Jon?” as if she knows exactly where he’s going, and knows it isn’t back to sleep in the earth.

Jon takes a breath. He did wonder if her corridors would be as comforting as his tunnels, but he doesn’t think right now is the time to find out, with fear for Martin a rhythm beat in his veins.

He smiles back, a little dim, and says, “Not this time, but…thank you, Helen. I mean that.”

Helen blows him a kiss. “I’ll keep in touch, Jon.”

The door closes with another ominous creak (and this time Jon knows she’s doing it on purpose) and then it’s gone, and there isn’t even a mark in the dirt to show it had ever been there at all.

Jon stands in the now-empty tunnel and just breathes.

Then he calls out to his god, still listening and crooning in his mind, waiting patiently and unendingly to pull him below. Take me to Martin, he says, a plea and a prayer in one.

The earth reaches up to swallow him, and as before, Jon lets it.

Chapter Text

Jon climbs out of the Buried, this time. 

The ground opens above him like the mouth of an earthworm, and Jon crawls up its throat, using the jagged edges of dirt and stone to pull himself up.

Onto the surface.

He’s standing on concrete, cracked and shifted from the hole dug through it. The earth remains open behind him, and Jon can’t bring himself to step out of its reach. He can feel the warm air from below, Choke waiting patiently for him to return and reminding him he’s not alone. 

…pull below never release holding close pressing tight never escape mine…

Reassured, Jon looks around the room. 

It’s an empty apartment — the first building Jon has been in since he left the Archives. A basement, or at least ground floor, below street level, even though weak daylight shines through thin windows set high on the walls. (He’s still underground, still safe, and something in him relaxes at that, at least.) The room itself is small, bare, with sparse, well-used furniture. It’s also cold. And grey. 

“Why did you bring me…” 

Then Jon sees the sweater on the couch. Pink and green and the most awful pattern he’s ever seen. Except he has seen it before. Jon used to wear this sweater, when he was cold and alone in the Archives after he lost his flat and burying himself in the too-large knit monstrosity was the only comfort he had. 

“Oh. Oh no.” Jon takes a step back, nearly tripping over the cracked concrete. He spins to the face the earth. “I meant take me to Martin’s vicinity, so I could make sure he was okay, not drop me in the middle of his damn apartment!” he hisses, but Choke’s croons only soften, self-satisfied and smug. 

Jon shakes his head and takes a step towards the gaping earth, but with a crunch of stone, the hole disappears, cracked concrete melting together like it had never split. Jon resists the urge to shout childish names. “No. No. I’m not doing this. I can’t do it like this.” If he wasn’t so scared of the open sky, he would run out that door. “Take me away. Below. We have to —” 

The door opens.

For a moment, Jon’s vision goes blank and it feels like he’s trapped in the coffin again, feels like the earth is clutching him close, too close, too pressing, not enough air, can’t breathe, have to get away, have to escape — 

Then Martin steps into the apartment, and the world rushes back. Jon sucks in a breath. Martin is looking at his feet, shoulders hunched, drowning in a faded sweater. He closes the door behind him, hangs his keys on a hook on the wall, and looks up.

And sees Jon. 

Jon flinches, all-too familiar with how Martin has reacted to his presence in the past, and he doesn’t think he’ll survive if Martin looks through him, past him, like he’s worth less than the dirt on Martin’s shoe.

But this Martin gasps, eyes widening and Jon doesn’t know if the expression on his face is happy or angry or just shocked, but it is more emotion than he’s seen on Martin’s face since before the Unknowing, and even though there is a film of distance to that expression, like a fog between him and the world, the shell he’d worn before is cracked, at least a bit, and it makes Jon feel seen, seen in a way he didn’t know how to handle anymore, and he’s very aware of how he must look, covered in dirt and ragged clothes like he’s just crawled out of a grave, standing awkwardly in the middle of the Martin’s apartment. 

Where I very much was not invited, he hisses silently, praying the ground will reach up and swallow him. 

For once, his god ignores his pleas.

So Jon takes a shaky breath and forces himself to raise his hand (which he only now realizes he’s been holding clutched around himself like a shield) and waves, feeling foolish.

“Uh…hello, Martin.” 

“Jon.” Martin’s voice trembles. “You’re….you’re…you got out. The…the coffin. You got out. You’re okay,” he says, and Jon nods. 

“I’m okay.” Jon tries to give a reassuring smile, but it feels more like a grimace.

Martin steps further into the room, and Jon spares a moment to be grateful that at least he doesn’t have to explain a giant, abyssal hole in the middle of Martin’s flat.

Though Martin might not have noticed. He hasn’t stopped staring at Jon. “How?” he says. “Daisy said…she said she lost you. She said there was no way out. How did you escape?” 

Jon winces, both at the question itself and because Choke’s whispers have turned sharp and indignant at the mention of Jon escaping. But Martin can’t hear the song, and doesn’t know why Jon isn’t answering and Jon has to answer, but he hasn’t even considered how to explain…anything. 

“I — I…I mean it…well, you see, the thing is…what happened was…” 

“Jon!” Martin’s voice is high and reedy and Jon forces himself to take a breath against the pressure squeezing his throat shut. 

He closes his eyes, trying to pretend he is safe, held below ground where nothing can hurt him and he doesn’t have to see Martin’s face when he says, “I didn’t.” 

His voice doesn’t echo, though for some reason he thinks it should, but the silence is just as deafening. The beginning, he thinks. He should start at the beginning. 

“The coffin,” he says. “I went into the coffin to get Daisy. Had to get Daisy out. Aaaand I was going to come back! I had my rib, to lead me back —” 

“Hold on,” Martin says. “You had what?” 

Jon shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter.” He hasn’t even thought about the empty spaces in his chest since the earth claimed him. “What matters is, I had a plan. And it worked! I found Daisy, and I was able to lead her up.” He chooses not to mention the fact that the rib had been useless in the end. “And then…” 

Jon thinks about that moment in the coffin, seeing Daisy climb to freedom, seeing everyone turn their backs on him, and feeling the earth hold him close and tight and safe and warm. And he doesn’t regret it. Not even now. Not ever. 

“Jon?” 

No, Jon doesn’t regret it, but that doesn’t stop him from hunching his shoulders as he says, “Then I … chose to stay.” 

Martin just stares at him. Jon only knows this by the altogether too-familiar feeling of eyes against his skin, because he is very carefully staring at the empty expanse of concrete between them. 

“What do you mean?” 

And Martin’s voice is cold now, emotionless, and Jon has to hold back a shudder as the temperature drops and the room around them seems to stretch, growing larger and emptier and lonely. 

Jon’s breath hitches in fear, a fear that not even Choke’s whispers can soothe away. Because the Lonely is here, clinging to Martin like a shadow, just like Helen said, and Jon doesn’t know how to stop it from creeping between them and taking Martin out of his reach. He doesn’t even know if Martin wants him to stop it. 

Jon sets his jaw. “I chose to stay in the coffin,” he says again, unsure of what else there is. “I got Daisy out, but the coffin wanted me, so…I let it have me.” 

Martin’s laugh is sharp and mocking and nothing like Jon remembers. “You chose to stay. You chose to stay. It was bad enough when I heard what you did, playing the hero — again! Getting yourself trapped — again! By yet another Fear, and now you tell me that you didn’t even fight to come back? You left us in that place and chose to fuck off to the coffin without even telling us?” 

There’s a stone lodged in Jon’s throat. Somehow he still manages to speak. “What was I supposed to do, Martin?”

“You should have talked to me!” 

And Jon is surprised to find that he’s angry, as well. “Would it have mattered if I had?” he asks, and now his voice is cold and etched in stone. “You wouldn’t talk to me! You hadn’t even looked at me in months! What would you have done, if I came to you for help?” 

Martin doesn’t say anything, lips pressed into a thin line, and Jon nods, once.

“I know you had your whole,” Jon waves his hand, “thing going on with Lucas, and I know I had no right to wake up from that coma and expect you to be there waiting for me. You didn’t owe me anything, just because I realized how I felt about you, far, far too late to matter, but I needed help, Martin! I needed help, and Lord knows none of the others would give it, so I did what I had to do to protect myself, for once!” Jon’s voice cracks. He swallows and says, “I’m sorry if that was selfish.”  

“You know what? Yeah. Yeah, it was selfish, Jon! You don’t think I wanted to help? I was trying to help you! Trying to protect you from Lucas and the Flesh and a whole string of Avatars lining up to attack the Institute…and you were asleep! You wouldn’t wake up and I had to protect them. Alone! I waited for you to wake up, for months. And you couldn’t even do the same for me? You left me behind!”

Jon opens his mouth, then closes it again. Because he did leave Martin behind, and he knows it. And he knew it in the coffin. Knew what it would mean, and he made the choice anyway. 

Martin turns his back, breathing carefully through his nose, and Jon has to stop himself from reaching for him. Martin hadn’t liked touch, after the hospital. He probably wouldn’t appreciate it now.

After a moment, Martin’s shoulders straighten. Then the room begins to stretch again, fog forming at the corners of Jon’s vision. The fog clings to Martin. It’s coming from Martin, and when Martin turns to face him, Jon nearly breaks at the sight of his carefully blank face. He stares past Jon, at a point behind his shoulder, as if Jon is only an obstacle Martin must move past to continue with his day, and it’s even worse than after the coma, because Martin had just been looking at him, and now he isn’t, and it feels like a fissure opening up in his chest. 

And Jon doesn’t know how to fight this, doesn’t know how to stop it, or what he can say to bring Martin back to him, to make this right and Choke isn’t helping, song growing louder and more insistent — trying to calm me, Jon thinks near-hysterically — but it’s just making everything in his head more chaotic. 

Then he realizes it isn’t only in his head. The ground is shaking. 

The concrete cracks along a fault line wherever the fog touches, rising up to break through the wisps, filling the empty space with dirt and stone, growing like a mountain. Martin gasps, life coming back to his eyes, and Jon steps closer, not by choice but because the ground beneath his feet is rolling and he has no option but to move towards Martin. 

Then the walls crumple in. Like in the tunnels with Helen, but this time the walls close like a fist, and Jon doesn’t know how to stop it, doesn’t know if this is his fault or if the Buried is reacting to protect him, and Martin is saying something sharp and loud and Jon knows he’s scaring him, and that’s something he never wanted to do.

Please, please, he says silently. Please, stop. Calm down. I’m fine, we’re fine, please don’t hurt him, please. But Choke doesn’t listen, or doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care, unwilling to recede and risk letting the fog creep back into the edges of the room. And the fog can’t creep if there aren’t any edges to the room, if there is no empty space to fill with the aching feeling of Lonely, if everything is earth and stone and pressure. 

When Jon finally becomes aware of more than pressure can’t take what’s mine go away keep close and safe and never let go, he’s pressed against Martin. 

The earth surrounds them on every side. The air is thick with dust and the smell of wet soil and growing things and it’s warm and Jon just closes his eyes and breathes, face against Martin’s sweater, listening to Choke crooning, satisfied in his mind. 

“J — Jon?” And the Lonely is gone from Martin’s voice and it is no longer cold or emotionless, but it is scared, and Jon can feel his panicked heartbeat against his ear. 

Jon opens his eyes. They are in a space big enough to stand, if only barely. Jon has a few inches between him and the wall of earth, but Martin is hunching his shoulders, half-crouched over Jon. His eyes are wide, staring at the dirt, looming around them and pulsing like a breathing thing. 

“What — what is this?” 

“I’m sorry, Martin. I’m so, so sorry. You’re safe, I promise. I won’t hurt you. It won’t hurt you. It’s just…possessive.” 

“Possessive,” Martin says weakly.

Jon winces. “Yes. It…doesn’t like the Lonely getting close.”

Martin stiffens and Jon realizes he’s practically wrapped up in Martin’s arms, and steps back to put at least some distance between them, but the wall shrinks behind him until Jon has no choice but to press closer.

“You already have us, at least give us enough room,” Jon grits out, resisting the urge to kick the dirt like a child. Martin still needs to breathe, you know, he says silently, not wanting to scare Martin more. 

Hold close tight mine below ground safe hold mine pressure chase away fog no room to grow or escape. 

Jon slumps, knowing it’s useless to argue. And they can breathe well enough. It’s tight, but Choke isn’t pressing down on them like the weight of a mountain, so that’s something. 

“I’m sorry, Martin,” he says again. 

Martin’s eyes are closed and he takes a few deep breathes through his nose. “It’s…it’s fine, Jon. I — it’s fine. It’s just a lot.” He opens his eyes, and looks at the earth again, calmer this time. “So this is…?” 

“The Buried.”

“It’s what was in the coffin.” 

Jon nods slowly, tense and uncertain. He doesn’t want to start arguing again, doesn’t know how Choke would react to a fight between them.  

Martin is silent for a long moment. Then he rests a hand on Jon’s arm. “I’m sorry,” he says. “For how I reacted when you tried to explain. The Lonely it…makes things hard. Emotions are sharper, when I feel them at all, at least.” Martin looks embarrassed and earnest and, for a moment, Jon sees the Martin from years ago, twisting his hands together and stammering about a dog loose in the Archives. 

Jon shakes his head. “I understand, Martin. Completely. It’s not your fault. The Fears do that to you. Change you. Make you into something you don’t want to be.”  

Martin nods, looking down. Silence falls between them for a moment, and the only sound is Martin’s heartbeat and the earth’s crooning song. 

“Why did you stay in the coffin, Jon?”

Jon can’t bring himself to meet Martin’s eyes, staring instead at the pattern on his sweater. “It was the only way out,” he says. “I was too far gone to escape the Fears entirely. I made a choice in that hospital. I could have died then, but I…I didn’t want to.” Jon huffs. Everything would have been simpler if he just let the End take him when he had the chance, but, “I wanted to come back,” he admits. “To you. And then after, with the statements and the hunger and the Eye…I knew I made the wrong choice. But it was too late to take it back.” Jon takes a breath, feeling the earth at his back press a little closer. “Until I went into the coffin, and realized I could make a new choice. One I could live with. I chose the Buried.”

“You escaped the Eye.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why we could quit, even before the Institute was…buried. Right — that was you, wasn’t it?”

Jon snorts. “Unintended side-effect.” 

“I suppose that must have felt good.”

“I was asleep at the time, but yes. Hearing about it felt very good.” 

“Yeah…yeah. Good.”

Martin won’t look at him, and he’s blinking like there’s dirt in his eyes. Jon swallows, remembering what Martin shouted before the Lonely drowned him in fog.

“I’m sorry,” Jon manages to say, voice cracking. “I’m sorry I left you behind, but I had to get away. The Eye it was —” he shudders, and can’t say anything more but Martin nods, hand still on his arm. “And the others…they didn’t understand, or didn’t care. I couldn’t go to them for help. And you weren’t there.”

Jon grabs Martin’s free hand, and grips his fingers tight and nearly weeps in relief when Martin doesn’t pull away. “And I know I wasn’t being fair, before when…when I got mad. I shouldn’t have gotten mad. I said I’d trust you. I chose to trust you, and I meant it. I know you were working with Lucas for a reason. Of course you were, and I know you needed me to wait…and I tried. For months. But it was…” Jon laughs, and it is hollow and aching. “It was so hard, Martin, to feel anything other than the hunger and the Eye. Static in my mind. Sometimes…sometimes it felt like I was just the corpse of Jonathan Sims, and everyone was right to be scared of what I might turn into.” 

Martin’s grip tightens on his arm, on his fingers, holding Jon steady, and the earth presses in around them, and Jon leans into the pressure, letting it chase away the memories of before. 

“I’m glad you got out,” Martin says, looking at their hands, still clasped together. “I’m glad you’re…you’re safe.”

It’s not exactly a question, but Jon nods anyway. “I am. Choke won’t let anything hurt me.”

“Good. You deserve to be safe, Jon.” And Martin sounds fierce, as fierce as he did when he stormed into Jon’s office and dropped a can of worms on his desk, determined to be taken seriously by his ass of a boss. But there is something else there too. Jon waits, still holding Martin’s hand as tight as he can. 

“It’s just…Jon, I thought you were dead. Worse than dead. I didn’t even know you hadn’t come back for days.” Martin lets out a breath like a sob. “I knew you’d gone into the coffin — of all the stupid, self-sacrificing, reckless things you could’ve done, of course you went into the coffin — and I watched for you. I had a plan to use the tapes if you didn’t come out soon. But then Daisy got out, and I thought…I thought you’d be right behind her, right? So I left before you could catch me there waiting for you. God forbid I let you know I still cared! No one told me you were still missing, and I can’t…can’t really blame them, can I?” 

Jon opens his mouth, but Martin doesn’t seem to notice, eyes staring blankly at the dirt. 

“So I went back to Peter and his stupid fog and my stupid plan and it turns out that none of it even mattered! Nothing I did mattered. I only managed to make things worse. And now you’re here! You’re here and you’re safe and you didn’t even need me at all. And I’m so…so relieved Jon, but I — I’m still stuck. The Lonely won’t ever let me go. I can’t get away, and everyone is gone and I’m on my own, I’m all on my own and —” 

Jon realizes he’s crying. Martin is crying and now Jon is crying and there isn’t anything to do except pull Martin into his arms. “Not anymore, Martin,” he says, voice thick. “You’re not alone. I won’t let it take you. I won’t let it.”

He buries his face in Martin’s shoulder, and Martin’s arms wrap around him, clutching him close and Jon can feel his hitching breaths. Jon tightens his grip, fingers buried in his sweater, as if pressure itself can fight off feelings of loneliness. Because if Choke had showed him anything, it was how to hold tight and never let go. Choke presses closer too, around and below and beside them, and feels like a mountain of stone heavy on his back. Jon tries to put that strength into his hug, chasing away the Lonely and the pain and the guilt and the distance between them. 

Out loud, Jon says, past the lump in his throat, “I won’t leave you alone again, Martin. I won’t.” 

Martin shudders in his arms and squeezes back and makes a noise like he wants to reply but can’t manage to speak. Jon just holds him, hand rubbing firmly down his back. After a moment, he starts to hum, mimicking Choke’s crooning song always in the back of his mind — hold tight never let go mine mine mine — and hopes that even if Martin can’t hear the words he understands.  

He doesn’t know how much time passes before Martin sniffs and pulls away, just enough to meet Jon’s eyes. “Do you meant that?”

Jon blinks. “Which part?” 

Martin looks down. “That you won’t leave me alone again.” 

“Yes,” Jon says immediately. “I mean it. If —” Jon clears his throat. “That is, if you want me around.” 

“I do!” Martin says, and now he meets Jon’s gaze, and Jon sees a painfully fragile hope shining in his eyes — grey like a fog but no longer empty. “I just…why? Why did you come back for me?” 

Jon briefly considers stammering out some half-truth. But Martin deserves this, no matter how awkward Jon feels about saying it out loud. 

“Because I love you.” 

And Jon worries he’s made a mistake when Martin makes a strangled noise in his throat and raises a hand to cover his face. But he doesn’t step away from Jon’s embrace, so Jon forces down his nerves and waits. 

After a moment, Martin takes a shaky breath. “God we’re both such idiots aren’t we?” he says, muffled by his palm and Jon huffs a surprised laugh. 

“I’m afraid we are.” 

Finally Martin lowers his hand, and his face is bright red, even in the gloom of the Buried, but he meets Jon’s eyes despite his obvious embarrassment and says, “I love you, too.” 

Jon tries to say something, but it just comes out as a squeak. Then Martin is hugging him again, and somehow they end up in a pile of limbs on the ground, tangled together until he can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Jon is sitting in Martin’s lap, with Martin curled in a ball around him and his face is buried in Jon’s shoulder, breaths warm on his skin. Then Jon blinks, and the earth has shrunk around them, consuming the empty space and molding to hold them close, but Martin doesn’t seem to notice, or care. Jon presses against Martin, and the earth curls around his back, singing of hold close mine never let go never belong here where dirt and stone keep safe and warm and mine. 

And Jon closes his eyes and smiles into Martin’s sweater, because the earth will never let him go, and Jon will never stop holding onto Martin, and neither of them will ever be alone again. 

Chapter Text

“So…uh, Jon?”

“Hmm?”

“…How do we get out?”

Jon laughs — a real laugh for the first time in he doesn’t know how long. Because Choke is crooning around him and he’s still in Martin’s arms and Martin isn’t scared of him or disappointed in him, and Jon knows there’s so much more for them to figure out but for now he can just laugh.

Martin pokes him in the ribs, and Jon focuses. “Right. Yeah, let me just…”

We need to go up, Jon says. You can take me back later, but Martin can’t stay here as long as I can.

The pressure lessens and Choke’s song softens and Jon feels the earth recede around them, bleeding back and releasing its hold (for the moment) until they’re once again standing in Martin’s flat, still holding each other tight.

Martin takes a deep breath, as if shocked that he can. They step away from each other, though Jon keeps one hand on Martin’s arm, aware of how disorientating it is to leave the Buried, to suddenly have space and air and freedom and stand unsupported again. Eventually Martin stops swaying and manages to blink open his eyes in the harsh light.

Jon looks down and grimaces. “Sorry for the mess.”

Martin snorts. Dirt is streaked across the floor, and their clothes are covered in it, falling off in waves with every movement.

“I suppose I should get used to it,” he says with a grin.

Jon laughs. “I suppose you should.”

“Right.” Martin says as he brushes dirt off his clothes. Jon doesn’t even bother with his (he’s accepted that he’ll always look like he belongs in a grave). “Would you … like some tea?”

Jon smiles, feeling terribly fond. “That’d be lovely, Martin.”

“Right, okay.” Martin turns to the kitchen, then stops. “And then — well, I just was wondering if you were going to stay the night? You can sleep on the couch, or the…the bed with me.” Martin’s eyes widen, as if just realizing what he said. “Just for sleeping! I — I know you don’t…”

“Like sex?” Jon says wryly.

Martin actually blushes. “Yes.”

Good Lord, Jon loves this man so much it hurts. And because of that, he decides to take pity on him. “I don’t like sex, and yes, I do like cuddling, but Martin —” Jon hesitates, then decides just say it, because Martin is starting to look sad and Jon doesn’t want that. “When I sleep, it — the Buried tends to…well, bury me, and I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“Oh,” Martin says, looking at the ground in surprise. “So…like what it just did, with us?”

“Pretty much.”

“And would it hurt me, if I was sleeping next to you?”

“No! No,” Jon says hurriedly. “It just might be…uncomfortable. Claustrophobic. Waking up to that, unexpectedly.” He remembers Martin’s fear when Choke first grabbed them. Remembers Daisy in the coffin. The feeling of being buried alive. He doesn’t want Martin to have to face fear like that just for him.

Martin shrugs. “It wasn’t so bad, once I got used to it. As long as you’re there.”

Jon takes Martin’s hands in his. “I will be,” he says deliberately.

Martin smiles, and Jon sees the relief in his eyes. He squeezes Jon’s fingers. “Well then, it’ll be fine. I’d rather spend every night underground with you than one night alone.”

And Jon pulls Martin into another hug, holding him close and fierce until the lump fades from his throat and he can force himself to step away.

Then they make tea, and Martin finds some old clothes for Jon to wear — they’re far too large and Jon suspects they look more than a bit ridiculous on him, based on the way Martin’s eyes crinkle when he sees them, but he doesn’t care, because they’re warm and they smell like Martin.

And then Martin pushes his twin bed into the corner, snug against one wall (and Jon might have started crying at that if he had any room left for emotions today). They lay down together, Jon flush against the wall and Martin curled around him like a blanket. Martin falls asleep immediately, and Jon huffs in amusement when he starts to snore quietly, burying his face in the crook of his neck.

Choke wraps around both of them again as Jon closes his eyes, and he falls asleep to the sound of the earth’s song and Martin’s heartbeat in his ears.