Chapter Text
-11-
Aim for the future
“Ssssoooo…” Tim started with no rhyme nor reason, breaking the tense silence. “Had a good night?”
Martin shot him a look. Not that he was wholly against breaking the silence, per se, it was just… There was something distinctly unholy in that single, drawn out word, and the following question.
They were currently sitting in Georgie’s utilitarian car. A bit of a tight squeeze, but they needed to be on stand-by and ready to go, so they’d have to deal with it.
Jon and Melanie had left before the sun even rose, to go wherever they finally settled on as a safe location for the counter-ritual. They’d all agreed to being kept in the dark about said location, just in case Magnus’ might try to extract information out of them— There was nothing he could take if they didn’t know in the first place, after all.
They’d seen the both of them off, had a little laugh breaking the vague tenseness when Melanie made a show of explaining to Jon what a car is, gaining back a blatantly exaggerated, unimpressed irritation, followed by a protest about ‘being fully aware of what a motorized vehicle is, thank you very much, I was not born in the middle ages’. And then they were off in Melanie’s just as utilitarian little car, Jon’s expression furrowed in focus as he started listening to the impressive number of Statement audio recordings that had come in from Georgie and Melanie’s fanbase; they’d quickly tested the earlier ones before calling it a night, the previous evening, and thankfully it seemed that Jon could pretty much immediately tell genuine ones from the inevitable not-so-genuine recordings that were sent over, so that was one less issue to think about.
(Martin also got a long hug, before Jon climbed in the passenger seat and got a laptop and wireless headphones plopped on him; hug that took all of Martin’s effort to break off in order to actually let Jon go where he needed to go. He knew Jon had promised he’d be fine, but… Well. They were still separating in order to go on a dangerous mission. Martin felt like some heartache was warranted.)
It would take Jon and Melanie a while to reach their location, so the rest of them had to wait for Melanie to message them and confirm it was showtime. Georgie had spent about an hour rigging out a livestream set-up that would allow her to throw out her bait to Magnus while driving, so she wouldn’t be a sitting duck; they then proceeded to go pick some heavy duty torches, before finding a spot fairly close to the institute— And once that was done they had nothing left to do but sit in the car and wait.
“So?” Tim insisted, when nobody replied. Or, more likely, when Martin did not reply; Tim’s gaze was very pointedly fixed on him.
“...What?” Martin asked back, confused.
“Don’t play coy, now,” Tim pressed on, turning in the cramped car as much as he could. They were both too tall to really do much of that, though. “You emerged from that hotel room looking fresh as a daisy, this morning. I would have been ready to bet you’d look like a zombie.”
“W… Why would I?”
“Oh, come on, we are all on edge,” Tim huffed. “Impromptu saving the world mission? Some nerves are definitely warranted, I don’t even know how long it took me to fall asleep.”
Martin’s frown was deepening in sincere confusion. “What are you getting at?”
“You and Jon definitely had… Some fun times once in the privacy of your room, huh?”
Martin gaped like a landed fish, violently blushing up to the root of his hair. “That’s not— So inappropriat— TIM!”
“We are all adults, no need to be such a prude,” Tim insisted, grinning, and Martin was abruptly reminded of the fact that Tim never had any particular issue talking about his conquests, in the past. “I’ve never seen a man more clearly waking up from a fantastically restful sleep than you, buddy, and we all know what the best way to sleep so soundly is.”
“That is really none of your business!” Martin snapped back, high-pitched, resisting the impulse to hide his burning face in his arms. “Why are you even bringing this up?! Surely there are other topics to discuss, especially in the presence of—” Martin trailed off, significantly glancing at the two front seats.
Sasha tilted an eyebrow at him through the rearview mirror. “What, can’t talk about such uncouth topics with the ladies present? Sheesh, Martin, way to make somebody think you are the one emerging in the modern world from the forties, instead of Jon.”
“That’s not…! Oh, for f*ck’s sake,” Martin muttered, making Georgie snicker. “I have no interest in discussing this specific topic with anybody but my partners, thanks.”
“So you and Jon did have s—”
“Tim.”
“Booh, you’re such a party pooper.”
“I prefer to keep my parties private. I don’t even know what possessed you to ask—”
“Well, one does get a bit curious about the… Huh… Preferences of somebody who grew up in that era,” Georgie interjected, amused. “Besides, Tim does have a point— Not to put you on the spot more than you already are, but you do have the blatant beginnings of a solid beard burn on your face and neck.”
Martin finally gave in to the impulse of hiding his face in his arms. He wasn’t blind, of course he noticed, when looking into the mirror as he washed up in the morning, the vaguely reddened patches of skin where Jon’s beard consistently rubbed against in his quest to—
Ok. No. Nope. Not the time to think about that. Wildly inappropriate.
“I can suggest you some products you both can use to prevent actual rashes,” Tim interjected again, and even though Martin wasn’t looking at him, for obvious reasons, he still could hear the sh*t-eating grin in his voice. “Trust me, they are going to be a lifesaver.”
“Thanks,” Martin spit out, muffled, gaining three sets of chortles. “Now can we please talk about something else.”
“I don’t know, I could definitely tell that Jon’s mind went in some places, during our shared dream,” Georgie pressed on, and oh, god— She sounded just as unholy as Tim did. What did Martin do to deserve this? “We played that game he spoke about— The story writing one? I hadn’t expected him to have such a dirty sense of humor with how prim and proper he seems to be, but oh boy, that man can be crass if he puts his mind to it.”
Martin let out an inarticulate noise, forcefully pulling the hood of his jumper over his head and pulling at the strings until he was plunged in darkness.
“Well, he was a soldier, I suppose some gallows humor is to be expected,” Sasha tacked-on cheerfully. “Do you remember the stories you wrote? I’d love to hear them.”
“As if I could forget them!” Georgie replied, clearly settling down to start sharing, and Martin promptly wished he could just fling himself into the sun.
(Five minutes later, as he laughed to the point of tears along with the rest of the car’s occupants, he was thankful that flinging oneself into the sun wasn’t easily achievable, after all.)
**
“Thank you for the donation, SwigglyPiggly!” Georgie’s voice echoed cheerily from Tim’s phone. “But, really, you all might want to hold off a bit, get yours in when the real fun starts—”
It felt a little weird, standing in a darkened alley just a turn away from the institute, the three of them huddling around the small screen showing Georgie’s face. She’d positioned the camera as to look at her from an upper point of view, purposefully cutting out of the shot any of the car windows; the only way one could tell she was, in fact, driving as the livestream went on, was the faint hum of the engine in the background, and the occasional bump making the camera shake.
She’d only barely started the stream a few minutes prior, right after they’d climbed off the car upon receiving a message from Melanie simply saying ‘Showtime’.
“Yes, the title of the stream is not deceiving you,” Georgie continued, likely in response to some chatters. “I promise we’ll get to that real soon, just waiting a few extra minutes to allow people to tune in… Trust me, this is a livestream that will make you tell your grandchildren I was there when it happened! So, help spread the voice! The more the merrier!”
It did not surprise Martin in the slightest, the way the number of people tuning in was steadily climbing. Her and Melanie were already quite popular, but she was really working the audience— No doubt as a way to ensure rumors of what was happening would reach Magnus’ ears as quickly as possible.
“No, guys, don’t worry, Mel is fine. She’s got a bit of a side project she’s taking care of, right now— You’ll see very soon! It’ll be worth the wait, promise. In the meantime it’ll be just me keeping you company, today!”
Martin resisted the compulsion to take a quick peek over the alley, just to better see the entrance of the institute. It was still way too early.
“—Alright, alright, I know you guys are impatient, so… How about I give you a little appetizer? Let’s start with this. I’m sure most of you are already familiar with the Magnus Institute; for those of you who aren’t, the institute’s mission is to research and catalogue encounters and experiences caused by entities working for Patrons— And it is also a temple to one of said Patrons, the Beholding, which is something that has been well documented and out in the open since the forties—”
The wait was unnerving, and doubts were starting to assault Martin’s mind. What if they couldn’t get in? What if Magnus did not take the bait? What if the counter-ritual went wrong once more…?
Sasha’s hand took his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. When Martin startled a little, turning to her, she was smiling faintly.
“It’s going to be ok,” she whispered, low voiced but determined.
“And if something goes wrong, we have that gun,” Tim added in much the same tone. “And your guns, if you catch my drift.”
Martin couldn’t help the little amused snort escaping him, trying to somewhat relax his shoulders.
“—Jonah Magnus’ being the one pulling the strings is pretty much a well-known fact, but what if I told you that there’s a whole lot more than you might imagine, hiding behind the institute? Or, really, perhaps I should say under the institute— In the basem*nt and, more specifically, in the archives. By the way, Jonah, if you are watching… Our common friend, Jon, says ‘hi’. And also ‘f*ck you’,” Georgie paused for a moment, a little grin on her face. The chat, visible on screen, was running a mile a minute. “Well, not in as many words, he is way too polite to say that, but the sentiment still stands. I’m on my way to meet up with him while having this lovely chat with everybody, maybe he’ll even jump on stream to directly share a bit more ‘behind the Magnus Institute scenes’, so to speak? I’m sure our viewers will be wildly interested in what he might have to say…”
“Ok, that’s smart,” Sasha commented, impressed. “But also a bit risky— God, I hope she knows what she’s doing.”
“Who’s Jon? What an excellent question, MrCo— Ok, I’m not reading that username out loud, buddy. But an excellent question nonetheless. We’ll get there reeeeeal soon, but for now how about we review our history lessons? I know, I know, but trust me, this is going to be fun— Mods, get ready to dispense channel points to our dutiful students!”
Voices rising in the distance made the three of them startle, and exchange a quick look before they carefully peeked out from behind their corner, to look at the entrance of the institute; Jonah Magnus, in his quote-unquote borrowed body, was barking furious orders at a small team of what Martin could have only described as a mix between bodyguards and mafia thugs.
Martin also noted, with a not inconsiderable amount of satisfaction, that he looked like he had a close encounter with a battering ram. Martin’s own hand was a little bruised, but it paled when compared to the rainbow of swelled contusions marking Magnus’ face.
They waited, watching him jump in a -pricey looking. Asshole.- car, the noise of tires skidding on the road angrily announcing his departure.
“Looks like our fish bit that hook, line and sinker,” Tim commented, a feral grin in his voice. “Time to move?”
Martin and Sasha simply nodded, determined.
**
Melanie drove, hands cold yet sticky.
The silent car ride was giving her ample time to just sort of ruminate about the recent happenings. It all felt so improbable and absurd, and yet all she needed to do was to briefly glance at the passenger side, where one Jonathan Sims was sitting, in the flesh, very real and… Very short, actually. One does tend to imagine legendary historical figures as larger than life in every sense of the world, but although Jon definitely seemed to carry a sort of oppressing presence with him, if a quiet and almost gentle one, he was very much not… Larger than life in the physical sense.
Seriously, the guy was shorter than her. It was a little funny.
But still, there he was. Still alive and kicking almost a solid century after he changed the world, determined to free them all for good, this time around.
It was making Melanie’s head spin. If he could truly do it… God, she didn’t even want to imagine it. It would be more than a dream coming true.
And if they really could achieve such a thing… God, she might also end up in history books, along with all the others. It was hard to imagine such a thing.
She was so nervous that it took all of her focus not to break Jon’s own. He was intently listening to all the Statements that her and Georgie’s fanbase had willingly given (and wasn’t that going to be a hoot, once they would be able to reveal the reason why they needed those in the first place. So many people that helped, albeit indirectly, in trying to save the world. They would all definitely get a shoutout for this, Melanie would make sure of it), and he looked increasingly invigorated by it.
By the time they arrived at their destination, the navigator cheerfully announcing as such, she truly felt like they were in the middle of nowhere, and Jon slowly took off the headphones once he noticed they’d stopped; when he turned to look at Melanie that gauntness to his face had disappeared. His features were still sharp, almost angular, but he didn’t look like a starved man anymore.
Also his eyes were an intense, unnatural green, almost emitting a glow of their own.
“...Ready?” was all she could manage to ask. His gaze felt like a physical force pressing her down against her seat, filling the air in the car with a faint, distant buzz.
He nodded stoically, but then closed the laptop with quiet, almost soft gestures, turning around to deposit it and the headphones on the backseats, before climbing off the car.
He peered with a focused gaze at the edges of the heavily wooded area they’d picked as their counter-ritual spot, maybe scouring the area, to Know where to go to ensure nobody would disturb them. Melanie noticed that his very military-adjacent attire also looked less like it hung from a scarecrow-thin body, and more like there was a far healthier man hiding under it.
He was still short, though.
“Alright,” Jon finally declared, stretching his neck. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this full in my entire life. I’d be almost tempted to lie down for a nap, hadn’t it been for the far more pressing matter at hand.”
“Definitely no napping on our save-the-world job,” Melanie concurred with a little grin. “So, how do you want to do this?”
“Perhaps you ought to accompany me in the woods,” he replied, turning around to pin her with that glowing green gaze that made her feel like a butterfly on a board. “Just to ensure you can memorize the path and retrieve me later, once all will be said and done.”
“Shouldn’t I stick around, just in case?”
“I’d rather you keep your distance, for your own safety—”
“And you expect you will need retrieving after?”
He hummed, eyes moving away. “I can only imagine I will be left quite weakened, after the counter-ritual is complete. I will likely need some assistance.”
Melanie squinted at him. “Define weakened.”
“Well,” he replied in a light tone. “I’ve existed as an Avatar longer than I haven’t, by this point. To be stripped away of such a status will, undoubtedly, have some repercussions on me.”
She stared at him for a long second, a frown settling deeply on her face.
“You made a promise,” she then said, slowly and carefully. A small smile pulled at his mouth.
“I have, and I intend to keep it,” he replied, shrugging faintly. “But I cannot predict exactly in which state I will be left, once all is said and done.”
“Jon…”
He glanced at her again, expression softening somewhat.
“I will be ok,” he said. “I’ll probably just be quite tired.”
Melanie peered at him a second longer, before sighing silently. “Fine. It’s not like we can do much about it, can we? Let’s go, then.”
**
Slipping in the archives turned out to be a lot easier than they expected, what with the fact the entirety of the institute workforce seemed glued to their computers and smartphones, no doubt the rumors of Georgie’s livestream having spread like wildfire.
Stepping back into the tiny office with his limp motivational poster and heavy iron door felt bizarre. Martin couldn’t help the wash of distant nostalgia pouring over him at the sight, almost as if he walked into his elementary school classroom after decades, and not in the office he’d only left just over a week prior.
Still, it was not time to stand there and reminisce, so he went straight for the number pad, punching in the code Jon had handily Known for them. The familiar hiss and click-clack-clack dutifully echoed in the silence, and Martin readily pushed the door open, descending the narrow staircase with Tim and Sasha on his heels.
“Woah,” Tim commented as they stepped into the first room. “This place looks eerie.”
Martin blinked. Right, the others had never been down in the archives, before.
It was also quite bizarre, to not immediately feel the weight of Jon surveying his meager territory with that Beholding gaze of his— Which was arguably a good thing. It also meant Magnus wasn’t keeping an eye out for the archives, either.
“Sheesh, it’s like walking in a giant freezer,” Sasha commented as they made their way through the endless shelves and the rolling haze. “Was this place always like this?”
“Oh, yes,” Martin replied. “Or, well, no. It was more like this,” he added, cheekily turning off his heavy duty torch, plunging them all into almost complete darkness. Sasha let out a little yelp of surprise.
“Wait, really?” Tim asked, flabbergasted. “This is how you used to go around grabbing files in this place?”
“Yep.”
“Dude.”
“I know. C’mon, I’ll regale you with lovely tales from the archives when we’ll have the time. We are on a mission, now.”
They fell back into silence, their steps echoing while they sneaked between shelves, up and down more staircases, from a room to the other— When they finally got into the right one Martin set onto searching this fable trapdoor, torch pointed at the floor, with the intent of a bloodhound.
Hadn’t he known there was supposed to be this hidden entrance to the tunnels he would have entirely missed it, even with the light offered by the torch. It was barely more than a slight indent on the flooring.
They pried it open with a bit of effort, and peered in. All they could see was a darkness much thicker than the one permeating the archives, almost feeling like a presence in its own right. But then Tim shined his own torch downward in it, revealing scuffed brick walls and concrete flooring.
“It still kind of boggles my mind, the fact we’ve been sitting on all this crap the whole time,” Sasha commented, whispering, for some reason.
Although Martin supposed he could understand. This sort of eeriness certainly seemed to inspire the need to keep one’s voice low.
“It still boggles my mind that we’ve been sitting on top of a living piece of history,” Tim added, shaking his head, almost flabbergasted. “And that we’ve all been terrified by him, nonetheless. This is so weird.”
“Sure is,” Martin agreed with a little sigh, starting to descend in the tunnel. The air immediately felt less frigid and a lot more musty, the moment he crossed over. Dust motes danced in the beam of light shined by his torch, suddenly disturbed after what was likely entire decades of dormancy.
The darkness inside still felt oppressingly thick. Tim and Sasha flanked his sides, Tim’s torch joining his, Sasha causing a rustle of paper as she undoubtedly made sure to still have the map drawn by Jon, just in case.
Not that Martin needed it. He’d gotten quite good at memorizing maps, it seemed.
“...Let’s go,” he said, frowning at the dark, determined.
This was the last stretch. Just a bit more, and then it’d all be finally over.
**
The curious thing was, Jon thought, that the second door really did not try to hide its nature.
It hadn’t been there, the first time he tried this. There had only been the one door, which he’d opened with ease, feeling the enraged, muted screams of all those things that hovered at the edge of their universe, angrily protesting their inevitable fate—
Then things went the way they did, and the door was slammed closed once more.
Now there was a second door. It was, blatantly, not a good door.
He still took the time to examine them both; test the handles, trace the patterns on them, ponder upon the feelings that ran up his arm as he did so, discerning their deeper nature. He needed to make sure he wasn’t being tricked. He needed to make sure to open the right one.
But, really, that second door was quite obvious. Jon recalled, with a fond prickle of grief in his heart, the scathing commentary upon the nature of the Fear entities that Gertrude was used to providing in spades.
A dullard, she’d used to call The Eye. Blinded by its own inability to comprehend. Always watching, but never understanding.
The only entity she really feared was The Web, and Jon knew why in ways that went beyond the scarring in his soul left behind by his own encounter with it at a young age. Agents of the Web were… Cunning, sharp, still human in all the ways that allowed them to see the big picture, rather than lose themselves in their banquets of fear.
But The Eye was not any of that. It witnessed, but there was not a single thought swimming behind that staring pupil.
Really, it was no wonder the second door looked the way it did. No subtlety whatsoever, that was The Ceaseless Watcher to a T.
So Jon gazed upon that eye, dispassionate, and the eye gazed back, unfeeling, unthinking, always watching, but never understanding.
Finally Jon stepped up to the door that had been there the first time, pulled on the handle, and opened it again.
**
Georgie nervously peered at her rearview mirror.
She’d started doing that not long after the stream began, stealing nervous glance even as she kept her mask of cheerfulness with practiced ease. Just to be sure, just in case…
It was hard not to feel paranoid. Was that red car following her, or was it just another red car? What about that taxi? She’d even tried to memorize some plates, just in case, but it was hard to do, with all the things she needed to keep an eye out for…
“—Of course,” she kept talking to her viewers, not dropping her apparent, almost airy attitude. “I understand it might be hard to believe me, for now, but trust me when I say you’ll have concrete proof soon enough.”
It was difficult, juggling the driving with reading the messages her mods highlighted to help her keep the chat engaged even through the barrage of comments. Numbers of viewers were definitely climbing up, making it rather hard to keep things contained, but she couldn’t exactly focus on that, now. Mods had to do it.
“Thanks for the donation, Momocelon, even if you sent it to call me a hack fraud,” Georgie grinned cheekily, eyes peering at the rearview mirror again. “I mean, I wouldn’t send money to somebody just to do that, but you do you—”
God, how long had it been since she started the stream? It felt like ages had passed. She took a tight turn at the first chance she got, hoping perhaps to shake off a totally suspicious black car from her trail.
“How long until I get there? Well, that depends,” she replied after quickly reading another highlighted message. “I am sort of waiting for a… Signal, if you will.”
And then, just as she said that, Georgie distinctly felt something go askew, as if the world had suddenly tilted a little bit to the left with no rhyme nor reason. The sky grew dark, like an instant and unannounced solar eclipse was taking place, and it took all of her willpower to continue driving even through the traffic that had screeched to a surprised halt; she carefully weaved through cars that stopped in the middle of the road, their drivers climbing off of them to look upward with jaws hanging slack in shock.
She wasn’t going to make the idiotic mistake of doing the same and expose herself to dangers. What she did, though, was to allow a feral grin to emerge on her face, glancing up to her camera.
“I don’t think I need to add much more, if not that some of you might want to look outside a window, if you aren’t already,” she said to a chat that was moving so fast it started to lag on screen. “Enjoy the show.”
**
Melanie gaped at the sky.
She’d left Jon in a small clearing deep in the woods, once he’d deemed the distance acceptable, walking herself back to the car with her hands wringing against her chest in nervousness, sending the others the message they’d agreed upon, and settled down to wait.
The last glance of Jon she’d grasped as the vegetation became too thick was of his back as he sat down, cross-legged, almost as if in meditation. She’d asked him how she was going to figure out when it’d be safe for her to come back to him, and he’d simply said “you’ll know.”
She pondered on that as she waited, nothing seemingly out of the ordinary— Watching the sky suddenly go dark made blatantly clear what he’d meant. She truly hoped this was a good sign— It felt like the entire planet had suddenly shifted and then stopped at a standstill, all noises growing muted and then disappearing.
She squinted at the heavy grayness of the firmament above. It was strange, but she could’ve sworn there was… Something, squirming up there.
A lot of somethings, actually.
It was impossible to make out any definite shape; if she opened her eyes wider, all she could see was just a gray, dark sky, but if she squinted just so, just barely enough to see, her gaze growing fuzzy in the effort of making out any detail, she could see… Things squirm and writhe, like ever-changing shapes, mutinous, formless worms trying to refuse some sort of pull.
Melanie had wondered, when listening to those tapes, what Gerard meant when he said he could see that the counter-ritual was working; perhaps this is what he saw. All of those weird shapes in the sky, trying to contort away from a force that yet was relentlessly pulling them, like water inexorably forced down a drain by the very nature of existence itself.
Perhaps this is what he’d seen, before things started to go wrong. But this time… This time they weren’t.
This time things would go as planned.
She smiled, leaning over the roof of her car, watching, witnessing the world being finally changed for good.
**
Even though they were deep, deep in the bowels of the earth and could not witness all that happened outside, they still distinctly felt it when the world was finally freed.
Jon had told them they would undoubtedly know when the counter-ritual was to reach its conclusion, and it’d be safe for them to do what was needed. None of them asked how, nor why.
They all felt that prickle traveling up their spine, the chain breaking, the lifting of that oppressive force that had made of them its servants, exchanging looks of shocked determination.
“...So, together,” Tim said, voice trembling slightly. “At the count of three.”
Sasha nodded, as Martin forced his heart trying to escape through his mouth right back down where it should be, letting out a weak, “right.”
“One…” Sasha said, voice thick.
“Two,” Tim added.
“Three,” Martin whispered, and scrunched his eyes close as they all applied the pressure with a sickening, wet crunch.
The knife sank deep in the chest of that body that lied in wait, like a king forgotten on his throne; for a moment they all waited for… Something. Anything. A scream of pain and rage, the phantasm of a powerful man that for decades thought himself invincible attempting one last time to cheat death—
But nothing happened. The body spasmed one, two, three times, and then went horribly still. Tim surreptitiously -and looking a little grossed out- went to check the body’s pulse, only silence weighing heavily on them for interminable seconds, until his retreating hand all but confirmed what they knew already.
Sasha sniffed. “Well. That was almost underwhelming.”
“Serves him right,” Tim commented, flicking his hand as one does when trying to chase away a displeasing sensation. “The bastard didn’t deserve some kind of epic death.”
Martin did not comment, resisting the temptation of yet again looking at the ancient remains of Jonah Magnus, now fully exorcised from this world, and instead going straight for those metallic steps climbing around the tower.
He just wanted to get out. He needed— He needed to make sure Jon was ok, that taking Magnus out did not hurt him—
Jon had made it clear this was something that needed to be done. Jonah is too dangerous, he’d said, I cannot exclude the possibility of him enacting some sort of plan to try and reverse the process even if the counter-ritual was completed as intended. He needs to be dealt with.
Jon had to be ok. He had to.
He distantly registered Sasha and Tim’s rushing to reach him. For a moment he feared they might— Ask something, or tell him to stop, or—
But they didn’t. They simply quietly followed Martin down at the base of that tower, back to the door that led into that large, dark room, once more plunging into the maze of tunnels with firm, quick steps, almost a jog as they retraced their way back to where they came from.
What suddenly made Martin momentarily forget that one determined objective that dulled any other thought was the act of turning a corner, and shining the torchlight upon the unmoving body of the man who’d once been Elias Bouchard.
“Oh,” Sasha exhaled, the three of them frozen on the spot by the sight. “So he did try to get to us, like Jon said.”
Martin was hit by a sudden, starkly clear realization that Elias had been… Somebody. He’d been somebody, once, just another person, like them, whose only crime was to become the unwitting latest link in a chain of duplicitous deception, by the hand of a man who refused to give up to the fate that awaited them all.
Martin moved almost mechanically, handing his torch over to Tim, who fumbled in surprise for a moment. He approached the body, still warm and pliable, kneeling to shift it over his shoulder, grunting a little under the weight of it as he rose back up on his feet.
“...What are you doing?” Tim asked, sounding indecisively perplexed.
“We ought to give him at least a dignified burial,” Martin replied, flat-toned.
There was a long moment of silence, before Tim spoke again, “do we?”
“He’s not… Jonah Magnus can finally rot away in that tower, for all I care,” Martin said, resuming his determined gait. “But Elias Bouchard— He should at least get a proper burial."
It was hard to explain much more than that, his own voice coming in somewhat distant to even himself. Another long moment of silence followed as Tim and Sasha also did.
“...Fair enough,” Sasha finally commented, quietly, and a little somber.
They added nothing else as they retraced their steps, hopeful to emerge in a new, different world.
**
He floated for a long, quiet moment, a sensation between lightness and emptiness in his ribcage, making him feel like an idle little balloon in the fist of a child.
The second door had crumbled into nothing, flecks being transported through the first one as if carried by a gentle breeze.
The world was quiet.
The world hadn’t been so quiet for Jon in… God. He couldn’t tell how long it’d been, he couldn’t even remember how it used to feel, existing with the only noise in his head being his own thoughts. Existing without that constant stream of information pressing on him, extraneous, useless, only serving to make him feel tense and on edge at all times— Barely able to get anything actually useful out of it, out of all that The Eye Beheld; no more than an antenna receiving signals and yet lacking the necessary ability to understand required to actually parse through it.
The world was so, so quiet, now. It was beautiful.
He felt so light. Almost drowsy. His eyes were heavy, and he knew if he closed them he’d fall into the sweetest, most gentle sleep of his entire life.
But he needed just a moment longer—
His hand was still on the handle. The door still ajar. A soft breeze caressed him, but it had long stopped carrying anything with it.
All that needed to leave finally left; he could feel it, way deep down, in his own restored humanity— They were gone.
They were gone.
Gertrude, Gerry… Everybody. It’s done. We’ve done it. We’ve finally done it.
He let out a long, tremulous sigh, and pushed the door closed with a gentle click. The ornate key under the handle sat, quiet and unassuming; Jon took it, and gave it a couple of decisive turns.
He finally closed his eyes as the first door also tenderly crumbled into soft, welcoming nothing, and drifted away in the quiet, quiet world.
