The sun is just beginning to set, filling the purple sky with blues and soft pinks, the first starts beginning to peek out of the clouds. The mid-sized two story home has the lights on inside, and is filled with the sounds of a light party happening with people talking and laughing. Outside, there are fairy lights strung along a short path in the backyard garden of blue and purple flowers to a small arch with a bench underneath. Jonah sits with Martin, dressed well but comfortably in sensible shirts and trousers. They've been talking.
"See, I have good ideas every now and again," Jon sounds all too proud. Martin smiles at him.
"I'll mark the date on my calendar and celebrate the anniversary."
"Oh? Am I going to have to sign divorce papers already?" Jonah means it completely in jest. But Martin's entire face goes scarlet at the words, looking up at the bower of flowers around them. It's a beautiful evening with the sun setting and the moons just starting to come out. The air is cool and moist from the morning rain.
"That - that requires us to get married first, yeah?"
Jonah looks momentarily confused. "I-it does. I thought that was the sort of joke, but maybe I didn't get it across right-"
Martin reaches for Jon's hand as the Archivist starts to mumble more to himself, squeezing it tightly. "D'you... Do you want to be married? Here? Tonight?"
Jonah feels his face going through a face journey, starting with that initial transition to joy, to confusion, finally to realization. "Tonight? Like - this party?"
"Not the party. That's- I want a private ceremony. Just us."
Jonah watches Martin's face. A bit of disbelief, but... Hope? "Of course. Just us. Then... Yes."
Martin looks back at the bustling party inside, all the visitors moving in and around and about. Then he looks back at Jon, in this quiet garden of theirs that they built, and smiles down at him. "Stay here. Just a moment. All right?"
Jonah nods and waits as Martin goes inside. He sits perfectly poised, waiting and taking in the surroundings so he will always remember the moment. Even when Martin returns with a small box in hand. "You- you've already gotten me mine, but." He looks down at it nervously before reaching for Jonah's hand. "Hold out your hand for me?"
And Jonah obliges, his burned left hand trembling in Martin's now as he slips the ring onto his finger, gold with a line of mother-of-pearl going through its center as a decoration.
"Do you like it?"
Jonah almost doesn't hear the words, not really. He stares at it, his hand still in Martin's, watching the way his more solid color swirls under his skin from the touch and the ring. "Yes."
"Good. I-i was worried."
"You shouldn't be. It's perfect," is what Jonah manages as he squeezes Martin's hand in turn.
"Oh, good. I mean, I hoped, I just - you know."
Jonah goes with Martin back toward the bower, his expression soft and open. How could he not be right now? "It's all right. It's exactly right."
"I'm so glad, Jon."
They stand there, together facing each other under the bower. Martin looks down at Jon, then at the sky, around the garden.
Jonah gives Martin's hand another squeeze. "We're together in all this. A-and if the others turn up, then. They're staying as well."
"Yes, agreed, Jon. This is our home now." Martin beams down at Jon.
"You're my home."
"You're my home now too. wherever we go, we go together."
"That's the plan, Martin." Jon leans up to kiss Martin, squeezing his hands.
After being kept in perpetual freefall for twenty minutes and unable to breathe, the real shock was the detective showing up and beating Michael Crew to unconsciousness after confirming the man was no longer human. Being shoved into her car with the man's body and driven to the middle of the woods.
Jon is shaking in his boots, so to speak. Being shoved out of the car in the wind.
"So... So what now? You kill us?"
Daisy's voice is firm and cold. "You think he's going to save you?"
"What? What, no-" Jon cries out as the gunshot fires and killing the other man who'd tormented him just hours before.
"Now." Daisy grabs for Jon's bag, "Let's see the bag." She unzips it, poking around. "One wallet, brown leather, no cash. One packet cigarettes, Silk Cut. One lighter, gold, spiderweb design. One pocketknife... blunt. Huh. One set of keys to the Magnus Institute. And one tape record-" Her voice suddenly becomes much clearer as she pulls the recorder out of the bag. "You sneaky little freak! You want to record this? Alright, I'd have to destroy it anyway."
Jon stares at the recorder having turned itself on at some point. "What, I? I didn't- P-please don't shoot me."
Daisy grabs Jon and slams him into the nearest tree. "Why are you doing this? Tell me!" The bit of static starts in his words, and Daisy grabs him by the throat. He can't move. He can't even think. She takes the blunt pocketknife and puts it against his neck.
"Stop. Asking. Questions. That's how you want it? Fine. You brought a knife. So we go through the voicebox."
This is it. This is how Jon will die, alone in the woods with a feral cop at his throat. No one will ever know what happened to him or where he was. Daisy's victims always simply disappear when she's finished.
The world around is varying shades of gray. The sky cloudy and overcast with a sharp, icy wind blowing. The waves crash into the shore to the left as Jon plods his way through the sand. There is a house just in reach that he runs to.
Once inside, the house creaks with shifting settlement and floorboards. But he sounds out of breath, not used to running. But he can see him.
"I know who I am," he mutters to himself. He can feel this house leeching at him, stealing his everything down to the color of his own skin. "I know. I'm Jonathan Sims. Th-the Archivist. This place will not take me again."
It almost happened, the first time he went looking for Martin. He won't let it happen again when Martin is so close. His skin is almost completely monochrome by the time he rounds the corner of a large sitting room with empty chairs... except for one.
A shadow of a shape sitting there, large and soft. Jon practically runs to the chair, trying to reach for the face of the man who may have once sat there.
"Martin. Martin, i-it's me. It's Jon, I found you."
The shade's dark shadowy eyes turn to look forward, as if it hears a distant word on the winds blowing through the rickety home. Jon's voice sounds more strained, panicked.
"I'm sorry it took me this long to find you. But- I-i'm here. Martin, please... Look at me." He's desperate. Every part of Jon is begging Martin to just look at him with those shadows that were once his beautiful blue eyes. A shift of sound, like a chill one feels on a cold night, brushes against his hands.
"Who?"
Jon stares dumbfounded at the shade. He has to get through. He has to, he can't fail on this, not now that he found him. "M-martin... Please..."
The faint whisper of a breath being inhaled is the loudest noise Jon's heard in years (or days? The apocalypse destroyed all sense of time, none of it works right anymore-) before the shade's voice whispers back to him. "Who is Martin? That sounds like a nice name."
Jon's voice cracks, his grasp on the nothing that is this shade of Martin is tight but holding emptiness. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Just... Just, please come with me. I can take you out of here."
The silence after such a broken request is overpowering. Martin never answers him; the shade doesn't understand what Jon is saying. After everything that's happened to him, he finally breaks. Not able to save the man he loves from this ending. He sobs bitterly, head on what would have been Martin's lap if he were physically present. It feels like hours. Maybe days. Before his voice finally begins to whisper. "Ceaseless Watcher... Please... See my own torment here. And turn your gaze upon this shade. Please... Grant him an exit. There is nothing left to See of him."
There's no response for a moment. But the shade stiffens, then seems to... blow away in the wind, leaving Jon leaning on an empty wooden chair.
A shorter, muscled eastern Asian woman with short cropped hair stares Jon down as they talk in the woods. Alone, no paths anywhere. "I guess Mike is normally short for Michael, yeah?"
"Corridors, weird limbs, laughs like a... headache?" Jon thinks to the various Michaels he's come into contact with. Jude looks at him confused.
"What? No. He's pale, got a big weird scar. Smells of, um..."
Jon thinks for a moment before it strikes a chord. "Oh, ozone!"
"Yeah, that's the one. Hangs around with the Fairchilds sometimes."
"Michael Crew," Jon almost sneers. Those of the Vast were hard to track down and didn't like being bothered.
"That's him. I know where you can find him."
"Where?"
Jude smiles. "Not for free."
Of course. It's never that simple. "Okay. What do you want?" The faster he can be on his way, the better. Jon is nervous the longer he's around Jude Perry.
"Oh, nothing much. Just shake my hand." Jude says it so casually. Simply.
"W-what?"
There has to be something else to this. But she has her hand out, waiting for Jon to take it. It'd be rude not to a second time. "You hurt my feelings earlier. I want you to shake my hand." She waits for him, then smiles so sweetly. "Come on. It won't hurt."
Fine. Fine, why not. Get thisover with. "Fine."
Jon takes her hand with his left firmly, ready to shake it. But there's the sound of meat sizzling, and a heat.
Jude's smile widens, her voice sneering at him. "I lied."
The heat intensifies, his hand covered in flames. Jon screams, an indescribable agony taking his entire hand.
The calliope music is haunting and melodic in a way that makes one want to tear your ears off. Where does he begin, where does everyone else end? The liens are being blurred in a mass of color and motion. The choir of victims without skin sing a chorus Jon can't understand the words to because there aren't words anymore. There isn't anything concrete anymore, not without his eye helping him, but there's only so much the Beholder can do. The Stranger is antithetical to the Eye, and the Unknowing is just that: how to no longer know anything.
Jon doesn't know where Tim or Basira or Daisy went. He can hear them, he thinks, but he can't see them, not really.
"It isn't - it isn't real."
Nikola, the Russian clown marionette thing dances around him in a painting where the oils were smeared to give an illusion of motion around him. "What isn't real, Jon?"
"I-i-i don't know. None of this is real."
"But it is! Just because you don't understand doesn't mean it's a lie." They sound so perfectly amenable.
"Who are you?"
The clown's form shifts just slightly just a hint of something different. "Why, I'm... I'm Tim, of course! Who else would I be?"
Jon squint, trying to make sense of it. "You're not. You're not Tim."
"Oooh, you caught me! I'm Sasha!"
His blood boils, a nerve clearly hit. "Shut up!"
Nikola giggles, dancing around him in a stop motion animatronic way of moving, nothing quite human but not still either. "Really, it's me! Sasha... whatever-her-name-was! Back from the dead, just like you wanted!"
"Get away from me or I swear, or I'll-"
"Or you'll what? Hit me? Go on then, try it - make a fist."
Jon stares ahead at the swirling mass of nothing end everything in front of him. He looks down and... are there hands? Are there anything for him to make into a... what was it? What word?
"I... I...." The words are getting more difficult. Not just to say but to even comprehend. Nikola giggles.
"Do you even know which of these hands is yours?"
"Stop... Stop, stand still."
Nikola leans in close, her plastic, fake mannequin face right next to Jon's. "Do you even know what a hand is?"
Does he? Does he know what ...that... word she said even is? The scene doesn't change or shift, but something about Nikola changes, a face he .... thinks he recognizes, if he squints hard enough to see through the tangled mess of unreality.
"Wait. Wait, I- I know you."
"I would hope you do."
"How are you here?" Jon stares at the vague shape of his predecessor's face glowering back at him through the nonsense.
"Don't be obtuse, Jon. I'm here because you failed."
"I-i tried. I tried, I almost-"
"You almost what? You almost didn't doom the world? No, you almost let reality be the plaything of a lazy, foolish liar."
Her words are striking up that age old hurt of being blamed. Everything, everything wrong is his fault. Always his fault somehow. "No, no - I would - I could have stopped them."
Nikola wearing Gertrude's face stares down at him harder as the music continues to swell and rise around them. Shouting and screaming is happening somewhere else, but Jon's focus is squarely right here.
"How? You didn't even know what it was. Do you know how many people I killed to keep the world in one piece? The sacrifices I made, and you didn't even know what you were fighting."
"N-no, I didn't-" She's right. He had no idea what they were fighting. He still doesn't. If the Unknowing continues, they might never know anything ever again.
"I suppose it's of no consequence now, it's far too late."
Jon stares at her desperately. "What can I do?"
Gertrude!Nikola's face widens into a dangerous grin. "You can scream, I suppose. Weep, maybe. Have you considered curling into a ball?"
"Why are you doing this?"
"I'm not. You know, it's probably for the best I'm dead. Can you imagine how I'd hate having to watch you fumble around as my replacement? I really cannot express how much of a disappointment you are."
The words strike hard, sharp in the center of his chest. His grandmother had died not that long ago, and then Gertrude's body bound not long after.
"I'm sorry, I didn't even-"
"I fought for years to stop the Stranger in its tracks, and you didn't even notice when they desecrated my corpse. And now look at me. You've made me part of their ritual. This is your fault."
The word are lead in his stomach. The unknowing swirls and distorts reality around him even further as he sinks deeper into knowing nothing anymore.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sidereal - wedding
Date: 2023-05-07 01:32 am (UTC)"See, I have good ideas every now and again," Jon sounds all too proud. Martin smiles at him.
"I'll mark the date on my calendar and celebrate the anniversary."
"Oh? Am I going to have to sign divorce papers already?" Jonah means it completely in jest. But Martin's entire face goes scarlet at the words, looking up at the bower of flowers around them. It's a beautiful evening with the sun setting and the moons just starting to come out. The air is cool and moist from the morning rain.
"That - that requires us to get married first, yeah?"
Jonah looks momentarily confused. "I-it does. I thought that was the sort of joke, but maybe I didn't get it across right-"
Martin reaches for Jon's hand as the Archivist starts to mumble more to himself, squeezing it tightly. "D'you... Do you want to be married? Here? Tonight?"
Jonah feels his face going through a face journey, starting with that initial transition to joy, to confusion, finally to realization. "Tonight? Like - this party?"
"Not the party. That's- I want a private ceremony. Just us."
Jonah watches Martin's face. A bit of disbelief, but... Hope? "Of course. Just us. Then... Yes."
Martin looks back at the bustling party inside, all the visitors moving in and around and about. Then he looks back at Jon, in this quiet garden of theirs that they built, and smiles down at him. "Stay here. Just a moment. All right?"
Jonah nods and waits as Martin goes inside. He sits perfectly poised, waiting and taking in the surroundings so he will always remember the moment. Even when Martin returns with a small box in hand. "You- you've already gotten me mine, but." He looks down at it nervously before reaching for Jonah's hand. "Hold out your hand for me?"
And Jonah obliges, his burned left hand trembling in Martin's now as he slips the ring onto his finger, gold with a line of mother-of-pearl going through its center as a decoration.
"Do you like it?"
Jonah almost doesn't hear the words, not really. He stares at it, his hand still in Martin's, watching the way his more solid color swirls under his skin from the touch and the ring. "Yes."
"Good. I-i was worried."
"You shouldn't be. It's perfect," is what Jonah manages as he squeezes Martin's hand in turn.
"Oh, good. I mean, I hoped, I just - you know."
Jonah goes with Martin back toward the bower, his expression soft and open. How could he not be right now? "It's all right. It's exactly right."
"I'm so glad, Jon."
They stand there, together facing each other under the bower. Martin looks down at Jon, then at the sky, around the garden.
Jonah gives Martin's hand another squeeze. "We're together in all this. A-and if the others turn up, then. They're staying as well."
"Yes, agreed, Jon. This is our home now." Martin beams down at Jon.
"You're my home."
"You're my home now too. wherever we go, we go together."
"That's the plan, Martin." Jon leans up to kiss Martin, squeezing his hands.
Season 3, Ep 91 - voicebox
Date: 2023-05-07 01:43 am (UTC)Jon is shaking in his boots, so to speak. Being shoved out of the car in the wind.
"So... So what now? You kill us?"
Daisy's voice is firm and cold. "You think he's going to save you?"
"What? What, no-" Jon cries out as the gunshot fires and killing the other man who'd tormented him just hours before.
"Now." Daisy grabs for Jon's bag, "Let's see the bag." She unzips it, poking around. "One wallet, brown leather, no cash. One packet cigarettes, Silk Cut. One lighter, gold, spiderweb design. One pocketknife... blunt. Huh. One set of keys to the Magnus Institute. And one tape record-" Her voice suddenly becomes much clearer as she pulls the recorder out of the bag. "You sneaky little freak! You want to record this? Alright, I'd have to destroy it anyway."
Jon stares at the recorder having turned itself on at some point. "What, I? I didn't- P-please don't shoot me."
Daisy grabs Jon and slams him into the nearest tree. "Why are you doing this? Tell me!" The bit of static starts in his words, and Daisy grabs him by the throat. He can't move. He can't even think. She takes the blunt pocketknife and puts it against his neck.
"Stop. Asking. Questions. That's how you want it? Fine. You brought a knife. So we go through the voicebox."
This is it. This is how Jon will die, alone in the woods with a feral cop at his throat. No one will ever know what happened to him or where he was. Daisy's victims always simply disappear when she's finished.
AU Season 5 - bye martin
Date: 2023-05-07 04:35 am (UTC)Once inside, the house creaks with shifting settlement and floorboards. But he sounds out of breath, not used to running. But he can see him.
"I know who I am," he mutters to himself. He can feel this house leeching at him, stealing his everything down to the color of his own skin. "I know. I'm Jonathan Sims. Th-the Archivist. This place will not take me again."
It almost happened, the first time he went looking for Martin. He won't let it happen again when Martin is so close. His skin is almost completely monochrome by the time he rounds the corner of a large sitting room with empty chairs... except for one.
A shadow of a shape sitting there, large and soft. Jon practically runs to the chair, trying to reach for the face of the man who may have once sat there.
"Martin. Martin, i-it's me. It's Jon, I found you."
The shade's dark shadowy eyes turn to look forward, as if it hears a distant word on the winds blowing through the rickety home. Jon's voice sounds more strained, panicked.
"I'm sorry it took me this long to find you. But- I-i'm here. Martin, please... Look at me." He's desperate. Every part of Jon is begging Martin to just look at him with those shadows that were once his beautiful blue eyes. A shift of sound, like a chill one feels on a cold night, brushes against his hands.
"Who?"
Jon stares dumbfounded at the shade. He has to get through. He has to, he can't fail on this, not now that he found him. "M-martin... Please..."
The faint whisper of a breath being inhaled is the loudest noise Jon's heard in years (or days? The apocalypse destroyed all sense of time, none of it works right anymore-) before the shade's voice whispers back to him. "Who is Martin? That sounds like a nice name."
Jon's voice cracks, his grasp on the nothing that is this shade of Martin is tight but holding emptiness. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Just... Just, please come with me. I can take you out of here."
The silence after such a broken request is overpowering. Martin never answers him; the shade doesn't understand what Jon is saying. After everything that's happened to him, he finally breaks. Not able to save the man he loves from this ending. He sobs bitterly, head on what would have been Martin's lap if he were physically present. It feels like hours. Maybe days. Before his voice finally begins to whisper. "Ceaseless Watcher... Please... See my own torment here. And turn your gaze upon this shade. Please... Grant him an exit. There is nothing left to See of him."
There's no response for a moment. But the shade stiffens, then seems to... blow away in the wind, leaving Jon leaning on an empty wooden chair.
Season 3, ep 89 - shake my hand
Date: 2023-05-07 10:13 am (UTC)"Corridors, weird limbs, laughs like a... headache?" Jon thinks to the various Michaels he's come into contact with. Jude looks at him confused.
"What? No. He's pale, got a big weird scar. Smells of, um..."
Jon thinks for a moment before it strikes a chord. "Oh, ozone!"
"Yeah, that's the one. Hangs around with the Fairchilds sometimes."
"Michael Crew," Jon almost sneers. Those of the Vast were hard to track down and didn't like being bothered.
"That's him. I know where you can find him."
"Where?"
Jude smiles. "Not for free."
Of course. It's never that simple. "Okay. What do you want?" The faster he can be on his way, the better. Jon is nervous the longer he's around Jude Perry.
"Oh, nothing much. Just shake my hand." Jude says it so casually. Simply.
"W-what?"
There has to be something else to this. But she has her hand out, waiting for Jon to take it. It'd be rude not to a second time. "You hurt my feelings earlier. I want you to shake my hand." She waits for him, then smiles so sweetly. "Come on. It won't hurt."
Fine. Fine, why not. Get thisover with. "Fine."
Jon takes her hand with his left firmly, ready to shake it. But there's the sound of meat sizzling, and a heat.
Jude's smile widens, her voice sneering at him. "I lied."
The heat intensifies, his hand covered in flames. Jon screams, an indescribable agony taking his entire hand.
Season 3, ep 119 - Unknowing - rip to gertrude but im depressed
Date: 2023-05-08 05:09 am (UTC)The calliope music is haunting and melodic in a way that makes one want to tear your ears off. Where does he begin, where does everyone else end? The liens are being blurred in a mass of color and motion. The choir of victims without skin sing a chorus Jon can't understand the words to because there aren't words anymore. There isn't anything concrete anymore, not without his eye helping him, but there's only so much the Beholder can do. The Stranger is antithetical to the Eye, and the Unknowing is just that: how to no longer know anything.
Jon doesn't know where Tim or Basira or Daisy went. He can hear them, he thinks, but he can't see them, not really.
"It isn't - it isn't real."
Nikola, the Russian clown marionette thing dances around him in a painting where the oils were smeared to give an illusion of motion around him. "What isn't real, Jon?"
"I-i-i don't know. None of this is real."
"But it is! Just because you don't understand doesn't mean it's a lie." They sound so perfectly amenable.
"Who are you?"
The clown's form shifts just slightly just a hint of something different. "Why, I'm... I'm Tim, of course! Who else would I be?"
Jon squint, trying to make sense of it. "You're not. You're not Tim."
"Oooh, you caught me! I'm Sasha!"
His blood boils, a nerve clearly hit. "Shut up!"
Nikola giggles, dancing around him in a stop motion animatronic way of moving, nothing quite human but not still either. "Really, it's me! Sasha... whatever-her-name-was! Back from the dead, just like you wanted!"
"Get away from me or I swear, or I'll-"
"Or you'll what? Hit me? Go on then, try it - make a fist."
Jon stares ahead at the swirling mass of nothing end everything in front of him. He looks down and... are there hands? Are there anything for him to make into a... what was it? What word?
"I... I...." The words are getting more difficult. Not just to say but to even comprehend. Nikola giggles.
"Do you even know which of these hands is yours?"
"Stop... Stop, stand still."
Nikola leans in close, her plastic, fake mannequin face right next to Jon's. "Do you even know what a hand is?"
Does he? Does he know what ...that... word she said even is? The scene doesn't change or shift, but something about Nikola changes, a face he .... thinks he recognizes, if he squints hard enough to see through the tangled mess of unreality.
"Wait. Wait, I- I know you."
"I would hope you do."
"How are you here?" Jon stares at the vague shape of his predecessor's face glowering back at him through the nonsense.
"Don't be obtuse, Jon. I'm here because you failed."
"I-i tried. I tried, I almost-"
"You almost what? You almost didn't doom the world? No, you almost let reality be the plaything of a lazy, foolish liar."
Her words are striking up that age old hurt of being blamed. Everything, everything wrong is his fault. Always his fault somehow. "No, no - I would - I could have stopped them."
Nikola wearing Gertrude's face stares down at him harder as the music continues to swell and rise around them. Shouting and screaming is happening somewhere else, but Jon's focus is squarely right here.
"How? You didn't even know what it was. Do you know how many people I killed to keep the world in one piece? The sacrifices I made, and you didn't even know what you were fighting."
"N-no, I didn't-" She's right. He had no idea what they were fighting. He still doesn't. If the Unknowing continues, they might never know anything ever again.
"I suppose it's of no consequence now, it's far too late."
Jon stares at her desperately. "What can I do?"
Gertrude!Nikola's face widens into a dangerous grin. "You can scream, I suppose. Weep, maybe. Have you considered curling into a ball?"
"Why are you doing this?"
"I'm not. You know, it's probably for the best I'm dead. Can you imagine how I'd hate having to watch you fumble around as my replacement? I really cannot express how much of a disappointment you are."
The words strike hard, sharp in the center of his chest. His grandmother had died not that long ago, and then Gertrude's body bound not long after.
"I'm sorry, I didn't even-"
"I fought for years to stop the Stranger in its tracks, and you didn't even notice when they desecrated my corpse. And now look at me. You've made me part of their ritual. This is your fault."
The word are lead in his stomach. The unknowing swirls and distorts reality around him even further as he sinks deeper into knowing nothing anymore.