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Jon woke up the morning after his promotion in a hospital room. The fluorescent lights above him were turned off and steadily silent. The walls were painted a lonely white. He was in pain. There was a lot of it. His entire body ached as it ebbed like the tide between his tingling skin and too-noticeable bones. There was a faint ringing in his ears that he would likely blame on the lights, if they were on, and faint pink stains on the sheets where the pain was sharpest. Jon put his hand to the place it hurt the most — his stomach, which felt like he was run over by a steamroller the way he had always perversely imagined as a child — without thinking. He flinched, but the new pain didn’t come. There was no IV in his hand to dislodge, he realized. Or anywhere else.He glanced at the side of the bed, frowning. The usual machines were all there, but none of them were attached to him. They stood silent and still like attendants at a funeral. There was no call button either; just a fresh-looking vase of poppies mixed with white periwinkle flowers that stood out against the bright, empty wall. The door to his room was shut, and oddly enough, that was the most alarming thing about the entire situation. Something had gone very wrong. He was completely alone.Jon struggled to push himself upward, and the stiff sheets sloughed off his stomach. His flesh beneath was a solid canvas of large, painful bruises. Their dark colors were visible through the white gown. What felt like small cuts were littered everywhere, and a few of them had started to bleed sluggishly. Well, that was one mystery solved, at least.His gown was short-sleeved, so he could see that the bruises continued up his left arm, interspersed with oddly circular holes around the shoulders. His right arm was different. The red, raised skin of it spread down his forearm and spilled onto his hand. It looked melted. Jon gaped openmouthed at the injuries. What the hell happened to him?He had been fine yesterday. Jon knew he had, because he remembered his entire day from waking up to falling asleep in vivid detail. He had gotten a promotion at work, for God’s sake, so he knew he was remembering the right Tuesday. What could have happened in the meantime to give him such extensive injuries? Why didn’t he remember it?Who had brought him to the hospital? And why was nothing right?Jon wasn’t sure why he was so angry. He just knew that he was. He screamed silently at the ceiling, which wasn’t a great idea. A wave of dizziness washed over him, and he tried to lean back against the headboard, but underestimated the distance. He ended up smacking his head into it, and couldn't even be surprised. This was clearly not his day. Jon sighed and awkwardly wriggled back down into a horizontal position, closing his eyes as he tried to ignore both the pain and dizziness.There was still a faint ringing in his ears, but at some point Jon must have given in to the heavy tugging at his limbs and fallen asleep, because anatomically impossible eyes with too many pupils blinked up from his mangled flesh. As he stared at them, horrified, they slowly melted away into puddles of wax that scarred him further. His skin was left hollow and pitted. It didn’t feel like a dream.When Jon next opened his eyes, adrenaline was pounding through his veins. It jolted him out of sleep with more force than he would have preferred. His hand was tingling with pins and needles, and the light in the room looked different. He was definitely going to be late for work. It was a ridiculous thing to think, but anxiety squeezed at his lungs regardless.Jon fiddled with the fastenings of the gown until he could see his stomach, which looked as bad as he expected. The bruises were purple and black. Trying to avoid further pain, Jon gingerly poked at the red-brown cuts. When he was satisfied that they had stopped bleeding, he dragged himself out of the bed. Every part of his body screamed at him to stop, but he gritted his teeth, refusing to give in to the pain. If things were different or normal in any way, Jon would be perfectly happy to lay back down and wait for someone to find him, but if this situation was normal he would have pain medication for his…everything, and a call button. And there would be a clock.Jon stood up, sweat beading on his temples and breath stuttering like he had just climbed a mountain. It certainly felt like he had. He swayed a bit after standing, but grabbed tightly to the bed frame. He’d gotten this far. He wasn’t going to stop now. Jon noticed a small, white card resting against the base of the green, eye-patterned vase. It made as good of a goal as any.Jon made his way to it in three quick steps. His last step could perhaps be more accurately categorized as a fall, but who was counting? He didn’t hit the ground and neither did the vase, so it was fine. Everything was fine. Jon picked the card up with clumsy fingers. He had to hold it up close to his face to read it, because his glasses were nowhere to be seen.In neatly printed letters, someone had written “Jon — good luck. I hope you’ll understand why I couldn’t deliver these in person. E. Bouchard.”Weird message for a get-well soon card, Jon thought, as he flipped the card over to see if there was anything else. There was. In a looping, barely readable cursive were the words “Elias asked me to deliver this to you. He picked the flowers out special. Winky face, Peter Lukas.”It actually said “winky face,” was the thing. Jon stared at the card incredulously. Squinting made his headache worse, but he read it again anyway. He had…a lot of questions. First of all, Peter Lukas? As in, financial-sponsor-Lukas Lukas? Second, why was his boss sending him flowers? Weird flowers, at that. This close up, he could see little red gooseberries peeking through the arrangement. Huh. They weren’t- something about them was- his brain would’t let him finish the thought. You’ve never given or gotten flowers in a hospital before. How would you know what’s normal? it said instead. Jon had to admit that was a decent point. Anxiety was crawling down his arms like tiny spiders, and he shuddered. He just - wasn’t going to think about that anymore.How long had he been here?He had just recognized that he was starting to panic when the distinct sound of the door clicking and swinging open filled the air. Jon flinched backward into the wall, anxiety successfully redirected, looking around blindly for a place to hide. There was a flare of pain in his elbow where it had knocked into the wall, and he swore. Calm down, he told himself. Everything is fine. He squinted up at the figure in the door.Martin Blackwood stood there, clutching a beaten-up book. The shock animated his face, but beneath it he looked bone-tired, like his skin was too loose. There were deep shadows under his eyes. He had recently gotten a haircut. “Jon,” he whispered, disbelief turning the word a vibrant purple.Jon frowned at him. “Where’s Sasha?” he asked — well, snapped, really; he’d had a stressful day — because he figured that if any of his new assistants were going to visit his hospital room, it would be the one he knew, not the one who was inherited with the position.Martin stared at Jon, his expression sliding so that his eyebrows drew up and his lips pressed together. Something about it reminded Jon of unexpectedly exposed bone. He couldn’t look away. “Jon,” Martin started, and his voice was very soft, despite the weird, rushed edge to it. “Sasha has been dead for two years.”Jon’s knees went soft, and he couldn’t hear anything over the rushing in his ears. Martin hurried forward to keep him upright, maneuvering him to the bed. Jon, he could see Martin saying, like he thought that would make it better. He pushed Jon’s shoulders gently down, a hand behind Jon’s head so it wouldn’t smack into the pillow. He clearly knew what he was doing. Jon wanted to resent him for it, but couldn’t think beyond the cold fear digging past the lining of his stomach. It didn’t even occur to him that Martin could be lying. He knew, somehow, that he wasn’t.He had seen Sasha yesterday. Jon had asked her to transfer with him to the Archives, to be his assistant along with Tim, and she had smiled and told him that it sounded fun and she was ready for a change of pace. And now he was here, in this weird hospital room with the least useful assistant in the history of archival assistants telling him that she was dead. Martin sat beside Jon’s legs, waiting. His fingers fluttered wildly at his sides before he clenched them into a fist. He looked scared and angry, and like he very much didn’t want Jon to know.“Martin,” Jon said, because Martin may be useless and bad at his job, but he was Jon’s only lifeline. “What happened?”Resentment flickered over Martin’s face, but was gone fast enough that Jon wasn’t sure what he’d seen. “You’ve been in a coma. The four of you went to stop the Unknowing. Only Basira came back. Elias,” he struggled for words, “Elias saw you.”“Saw me do what? How long have I been here?” Jon asked. He started to ask more questions, but shut up when Martin firmly clamped a hand over his mouth.“Get it under control or stop asking questions,” Martin snapped, kneading his other hand into his leg so hard it must have hurt. Jon realized just how much physical power Martin had over him. He felt his eyes go wide, and he nodded. He didn’t think Martin would really hurt him, but, unsure of what was happening, Jon didn’t want to piss off his one source of knowledge. Martin took his hand away, his lips pressed together. He looked either sad or angry, and unusually hard to read. Jon waited.Martin grimaced. “Sorry about that. You’re just such a — sorry,” he said again, noticing the incredulous way Jon was looking at him. “It’s been a while since I’ve talked to other people. It’s been — lonely at the Archives.” He laughed, sharp and staccato, though Jon couldn’t find the humor in it.When the silence dragged on too long, Martin sighed and said, “You can talk, Jon. Just — no questions, please? I’ll explain why. Later. Not here.” He was tapping his fingers against the plastic of the bed. The hollow sound raised the hair on the back of Jon’s neck.“Wh-,” Jon started, then licked his dry lips and rephrased. “I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t know how Sasha can be dead, when I just - I saw her yesterday.”The creases of Martin’s face softened, and Jon looked away. He couldn’t stand being pitied. “What’s the last thing you remember?” Martin asked softly, and Jon stared at him flatly. He refused to let his life become a soap opera. Even if he did have a sinking feeling that it might already be too late. He refused to make it easy for his life to become a soap opera.“Going to bed.”“Jon.” Martin said his name as a helpless exhale that Jon couldn’t help but feel vaguely guilty for. It was the exact tone his grandmother had used when he told her there was nothing left to read.“Elias asked me to take over in the Archives. I said yes.”“Right,” Martin said, his voice containing too many emotions for Jon to pick out any single one. “Can you walk?”“Of course I can walk,” Jon snapped. Martin sighed, disbelieving, but didn’t disagree.“Then I’ll tell you when we get back to the Archives. You should...be there, when you hear this.”“The Archives?” Jon echoed, but Martin let the question slide. He supposed he did technically work there now, but it still felt odd. When he first started in Research, he had been very firmly instructed to never enter the Archives without permission. And Martin wasn’t really qualified to give it.“Yeah. This wasn’t...supposed to happen. I mean, none of this was supposed to happen, but it did! Because our lives are just so...But nobody predicted,” he gestured at Jon, as if to encompass the situation they were now trapped in. Martin's voice was higher when he was being sarcastic. He sighed, the false humor draining out of him. “Except maybe Elias.”“Oh!” Jon said, pushing aside his lingering resentment. This was an area that he could be useful in. “The flowers are from him. There’s a card.”Martin’s brow furrowed, and he got off the bed to pick it up. He stared at the card as if deciphering some sort of code, reading it over several times. Martin’s jaw tightened, and his voice was high and angry when he spoke. “Elias knew,” he said, not to Jon. More to the room in general. His voice turned flat. “I’ll call a cab. Let’s go.”He helped Jon stand, and Jon clung to him for stability that he needed more than he was willing to admit. They walked out the front door with Martin’s arm around Jon’s waist in a well-practiced movement. Martin was wearing a sweater and a winter coat over it, but his skin was surprisingly cold through the thin fabric. When the receptionist saw them she tried to make them fill out an official form of some kind. But when Martin told her Jon’s name, she blanched and let them leave without further comment.“That was weird,” Jon said, attempting to make conversation because why the hell not? His life has fallen apart enough already that small talk seemed almost manageable.“A lot of things in our lives are weird,” Martin said flatly, staring ahead into the street. It was raining half-heartedly, water dribbling off of the awning above them.And that was another thing, Jon realized as Martin shuffled him into the cab. Martin kept talking about we and their life. It was all plural. Surely Jon wouldn’t…?He was not going to ask if they were dating. He refused to ask Martin Blackwood if he was dating Jon. He was going to look at Martin’s desk, and then maybe he would ask Sasha — or no, he couldn’t do that. Jon swallowed against the lump in his throat, tilting his head back to look at the ceiling. His hands curled tightly in his lap. Martin’s presence beside him was oddly reassuring.The cab ride passed in silence. When they pulled up at the Archives, Martin paid the driver and Jon shivered in the chilly air. He was still wearing only the thin gown the hospital had dressed him in. There had been real shoes under the bed, at least. They had odd stains that Jon didn’t want to think about too hard, but they were still better than nothing.Martin didn’t move after the cab pulled away from the curb, just stood staring at the Institute. His hair, hanging loose around his face, took on the appearance of a shield. The rain clung to it. There were more conflicting emotions on his face than Jon thought were really warranted for bringing one’s amnesic boss back to work. It was just a building. Eventually, Martin glanced hesitantly at Jon, who forced a smile and tried not to look condescending. He didn’t think he succeeded. Jon felt mildly guilty, but it did get Martin to start moving, which was a plus. “You keep clothes here,” Martin said as they crossed the threshold. Jon started to reply, even as he was unsure of what to say, but then stopped.The Institute felt odd. Suddenly, Martin’s reaction outside the building almost made sense. It was too quiet, and Rosie wasn’t sitting at her usual desk. The air was cold, possibly colder than outside had been. Why would anyone turn on the air conditioning in — what he thought was, at least — December?“And that would be Peter,” Martin said dryly. He didn’t seem bothered by the atmosphere. Jon frowned. There was no one else in the hallway, but he couldn’t think of a way to ask that wasn’t phrased as a question. Of course, sometimes Martin was just weird for no reason, so that might be it.Martin led him down a staircase, and Jon had to stop halfway to catch his breath. At least he felt less dizzy now. “It’s not much further,” Martin said apologetically, while he waited for Jon to stop wheezing. Eventually Jon used the handrail to pull himself to his feet, and let Martin take his arm.At the bottom of the staircase was a pair of solid wooden doors with small holes drilled around the edges. Above them was a plaque that read simply “The Archives.” Jon shivered. He hadn’t been inside before. The former archivist — Gretchen? Gertrude? — had been very protective of it. Only her assistants had been allowed in. He realized that he had stopped walking when Martin put a hand on his shoulder blade. It propelled him into movement, and he strode forward, pushing the doors open. They were surprisingly heavy, and made Jon’s arms ache.The Archives were silent. He expected to hear movement — Tim and the other assistant Martin had mentioned doing research or flipping pages or something — but there was only a heavy blanket of stillness. His neck prickled and he whirled around, suddenly certain that someone was standing just behind him. There was no one there, but the sensation came again, even stronger, from where he was just facing.Martin had stopped walking. There was pity in his eyes. “What?” Jon snapped.Martin just shook his head. “You’re very - different. From pre-coma Jon, I mean. It’s like looking into a funhouse mirror of my own past. I thought it was better, before - but I guess it was just a different kind of terror.” Jon couldn’t help the way his eyebrows rose skeptically. Martin looked embarrassed, running a hand through his hair. The water clung to his fingers, but he didn’t seem to mind. “Uh. Your clothes are in your office.”He led them briskly through stacks of files and, surprisingly, what looked like cassette tapes to another solid door. Martin pushed it open, motioning for Jon to go ahead. He didn’t follow.The pressure lessened a bit, once he was in a space that he had apparently made his own at some point. It certainly looked like an office he had decorated. Books lined the walls, and there were thick rugs on the floors. The analog clock from his apartment hung next to the door. Pushed to the opposite corner was a dark wooden desk with some papers, a old fashioned tape recorder, and a jar with what looked like ash in it. The tape recorder was running. Jon frowned and turned it off, but the button wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be stuck.There was another door off the side of the office, and Jon assumed that was where he would keep his clothes, because other than the overfilled bookshelves, there was no storage space. He fiddled with the handle, but couldn’t get the door to budge. He kept turning the handle fruitlessly, listening to the click click click of his growing frustration. He stopped and stared at it blankly for a long pause, a hot flush of embarrassment burning over his face. He didn’t want to admit to Martin that he couldn’t even open a door. But he did want to wear his own clothes. It was already awkward enough with only Martin to see him.In the end, he didn’t have to ask. Martin wandered in and pushed open the door without looking at Jon. “This door always sticks,” he muttered. “It’s sealed.”“Were you in here a lot with Gertrude?” Jon asked. He genuinely didn’t care about Martin’s life but felt strangely invested in the answer. The incongruity made his stomach twist.Martin laughed. Before today, Jon wouldn’t have expected the hard edge to it. Not that he had ever heard Martin laugh before, but he always seemed more - pathetic, than he did now. Too earnestly awkward to be bitter. “No, I was only her assistant for three months. I never even met her.” Jon frowned. That didn’t quite seem possible. “But I lived here for a while, during the stuff with Prentiss.”“Sorry?” Jon said sharply, and something inside him snapped into place.“Jane Prentiss,” Martin said casually. “She had us under siege for most of your first year here. My flat wasn’t safe, so.” Jane Prentiss! Jon wanted to wring the answers out of Martin, but he already looked too much like an overused dishrag. Instead, Jon bit his tongue and stepped through to the room. It was mostly bare. Impersonal. There was a wardrobe in the corner, the doors shut tightly. A fire extinguisher leaned casually against it. Along the far wall — which, like all the other walls, was a blank white that makes Jon’s stomach twist with anxiety — there was a cot with neatly folded blankets lined up on it. The floors were uncovered. Somewhere in the room, something was whirring. Jon hunted around until he found the source of the noise: another tape recorder hidden at the foot of the bed, also on.“Isn’t it expensive to keep them running all the time?” he asked Martin, who was standing in the doorway, looking uncomfortable. His lips quirked into a thin smile. “They’re happy to see you.”Jon couldn’t tell if Martin was joking or not. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. Instead, he moved to the wardrobe and pulled it open. Clearly, several people were keeping their clothes there, because there were at least two sizes of women’s clothing in the bottom drawer, and the first sweater he pulled out was too big to fit properly. Likely it belonged to Martin. He looked over to ask Martin how many people regularly stayed the night here, but he had vanished from the doorway, giving Jon privacy. He didn’t shut the door. Given the trouble Jon had with it earlier, he was secretly glad for it. Still, he wished he knew where Martin was. The Institute felt too empty for a place that got as much regular use as it did.Should’ve stuck to Research, he told himself grimly as he awkwardly tugged a sweater over his bruised torso. Nothing like this ever happened in Research. Not the parts he worked in, anyway. Archival Storage had always had an oddly high turnover rate. It was best to just avoid the people who worked there. There was always something wrong about the eyes.Jon put the shoes the hospital provided back on after he dug out a fresh pair of socks he was fairly sure were his, and dumped the gown in a laundry bin tucked beside the wardrobe. Seriously, how many people were living here?When he shut the lid, he noticed a cardboard box hidden behind it. Curiosity getting the better of him, Jon pulled it towards him. Inside were only more clothes, and Jon sighed. He shouldn’t feel disappointed. What else was he expecting? But he’d seen these clothes before, he realized. They were Tim’s. He frowned. Why would Tim’s clothes be hidden behind the dirty laundry?You know why, his traitorous brain whispered, and Jon pushed the thought away, tugging agitatedly at his too-short hair. No. Losing Sasha would be bad enough. And they didn’t exactly work in a job with a high mortality rate. Even if they did, it made no sense that Martin would survive the longest out of all of them. So no, the clothes were not there for the reason he thought they were.Even with that reassurance, it was still unsettling, and he scrambled — strode — out of the room as quickly as he could manage. He would just…deal with that mystery later. For now, his knee hurt when he put pressure on it. Jon focused on that. If he could be sure where it had come from — and that there wouldn’t be any lasting damage — it would almost have been soothing.When he left the room, feeling more secure now that he was out of the hospital gown and back in his own clothes, Martin was waiting outside the office, talking to a woman with curly hair that Jon didn’t recognize. Was this Basira? They both looked tense, arms crossed. Something about their posture made the word hunted echo in Jon’s mind.The woman glanced at Jon and made a face that somehow combined a sneer and a snarl. “So you’re back then?” She threw the words in Jon’s general direction, gaze moving steadily around the room, as if looking for something. She was holding a knife, Jon realized, and he glanced worriedly at Martin.Martin didn’t seem to have noticed; he just watched them both with a weary patience. “Yes,” Jon replied shortly. Nothing about her made him particularly want to reveal any weakness to her, medical or otherwise. Thank god for theater classes.The woman hummed in acknowledgement. It sounded like a threat. Jon realized that he was drawing closer to Martin, and forced himself to stop.“I’m just bringing him up to see Peter, Melanie,” Martin said. His arms tightened around his sides, making him hunch forward. “There are a few minor complications.”Jon frowned, but kept his mouth shut. Melanie sighed. “He going to be ready?”“Yeah,” Martin said, smiling tensely. “He should be fine.”I am standing right here, Jon wanted to tell them. But then Melanie wandered away, tapping the flat of her knife against her leg, and Martin was herding Jon towards the doors. “She had a knife,” Jon hissed at Martin when they were halfway there. “Why would you let her bring that to work? Honestly!”Martin’s mouth twitched down. “She didn’t really give us much of a choice.”By the elevator, Martin hesitated, clearly remembering how long it had taken them to go down the one flight of stairs earlier. Jon pushed the up button while he was deliberating. He was not doing the stairs again. The doors slid open immediately, almost like it had been waiting. Martin stepped in with obvious reluctance.The doors closed around them (swallowed, Jon’s hindbrain whispered), and Martin tensed. He was balanced on his toes, poised to run. His hand wrapped firmly around Jon’s bicep. When Jon tried to shake him off, annoyed, Martin looked at him with wide, distant eyes. Jon let the hand stay. Martin didn’t start breathing again until he’d dragged them both out of the elevator into the hallway outside Elias’s office. Martin dropped his hand, squaring his shoulders as he knocked on the door. It echoed in the empty hallway. Jon shivered. The cold seemed strongest here. The air had taken on the distinct quality of a walk-in freezer. He wanted to cling to Martin, but he refused to give into the impulse and appear weak in front of Elias. Or Peter. He needed them to not reconsider.A voice that was not Elias’s called, “Come in.” Jon’s stomach dropped.“We need-” Martin started, pushing open the door. Then he abruptly stilled, and Jon ran into his back. “What are you doing here?” Martin hissed, his voice very cold. Jon pushed past him, irritated.Elias’s office had gotten significantly more nautical themed than Jon remembered it. There was someone else standing with Elias, leaning against the desk. He was short, had a well-groomed graying beard, and oozed money. Peter Lukas, Jon guessed.Elias stood up, walking out from behind his desk to stand a few feet in front of them. Probably-Peter-Lukas just watched the three of them, an unsettling smile carving through his lips. “Something dreadful happened to the evidence, I’m afraid. All the tapes just...burned themselves up. Not enough left for a trial. Ah, Jon,” he said, as if just noticing him. Martin stood by the door, glowering. “Nice to see you awake. Did you like the flowers?” There was a sympathetic tilt to his mouth even as he radiated animosity at Martin, like he knew how weird this was for Jon and wanted to make sure he would be alright. Jon had always envied Elias’s ability to be completely unfazed by even the weirdest circumstance.“They were lovely,” Jon said on autopilot, then shook himself into awareness. “Elias, what happened to me? How long was I in that coma?”Elias shuddered as if he has just noticed the cold, and inhaled slowly. “Martin didn’t tell you?” he asked. The words sounded deliberate, and oddly weighted. Why was everyone determined to be so weird today?“No. Elias, please,” Jon said, impatience creeping into the words. Elias shot an strange, appraising look at Martin, who shrugged blankly. There was a curl to his mouth.“Hmm,” Elias said. “Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll answer your questions. Peter, Martin?”“I’m not leaving him with you,” Martin said quickly. Peter Lukas didn’t move. He still looked amused.“Fine,” Elias said coldly, something unfamiliar and sharp in his eyes. Jon felt like he ought to be unnerved by it. “Sit, then. Don’t interrupt.”Peter and Martin sat in two of the four decorative-looking chairs that lined the back of the room, like a school administrator’s office. Peter swung one of the chairs with a casualness that made Jon wince, settling it in front of Elias’s desk. Jon reluctantly sat, uncomfortable with the eyes on him. “Would someone please just tell me how long I was in a coma for?” he snapped at the room, impatient.Elias stilled for a moment. Then he adjusted his polite smile and said, “Three months.”“Oh,” Jon said quietly, overwhelmed at the thought that he had lost three full months of his life to an event he couldn’t even remember. “What happened?”Elias shivered again, tongue flicking out to wet his lips. He pressed a hand to his throat. “Stop that, Jon,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice.“Stop what?” Jon asked, bewildered and frustrated. He just wanted some answers. Surely that couldn’t be too much to ask. Elias’s smile flickered. From behind them came Martin’s voice. “He doesn’t remember anything for the past three years. Not Sasha, not the Unknowing, not anything.” Martin didn’t sound gleeful, exactly, but there was more vengeance in his tone than Jon thought was really warranted.“Ah,” Elias said. He looked dismayed. Jon could relate. “Ask me a question, Jon,” he said suddenly. He was still staring at Martin like he was making a challenge. Blinking, Jon tried to think of a question that he thought would satisfy whatever kind of test this was. It was difficult. There were so many buzzing around his head that they blurred together and he couldn’t think of just one to ask. Elias waited. So did Martin and Peter, evidently. The office was very quiet.“What happened to Sasha?” he eventually decided on, hands curled tightly around the arms of the chair. His voice was barely above a whisper, but it echoed in the still air.“She was killed and replaced,” Elias said promptly, then blinked. The callousness of it made Jon’s eyes sting. He grit his teeth and refused to look down. “Hm. Well, you certainly haven’t lost anything other than memories. And control.”“What are you talking about?” Jon nearly shouted. His voice was hoarse, and it broke in the middle. Elias sighed.“Sit down, Jon,” he said, and Jon realized that he was now standing, hands clenched into fists as he loomed above Elias. “Tell me the last thing you remember. Then we can deal with this.”Jon sat slowly. Something about Elias had always been soothing; it was particularly effective when he was actively trying. “You asked me to take over the Archives, because the previous one ‘died in the line of duty.’ I asked Sasha and Tim, because they are competent researchers, and they both agreed. I went home. I went to bed. Then I woke up in that weird hospital.”“Weird?” Elias prompted.“There weren’t any machines hooked up to me. And - Martin needed a key to get in,” Jon realized.Clearing his throat, Elias said, “Yes, well. You weren’t precisely in a coma, technically. More of an...anti-coma.”“What does that mean?”“Your body was dead. Your brain, on the other hand, was not. I assume the hospital wanted to keep unsuspecting people from your room. Please at least try to rein it in, Jon.”“Not so much fun to be on the other side, is it,” Martin said flatly. Jon wished he would just let Elias talk. Or leave.“How did I - die?” he asked, fumbling for the words.Again, Elias sighed. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be alone for this conversation?”“If it will get you to answer more of my questions, then fine,” Jon snapped. Someone behind him sighed, and one of them stood up, leaving quietly.“Martin?” Elias said, his smile a little too wide.“Jon, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Martin said. Jon didn’t respond. Eventually he sighed, getting to his feet with a creak of wood. His voice was hollow when he told Elias, “Next time, I let Melanie follow through with her plan.”“I’m sure you will,” Elias said. He was still smiling, but it was sharper at the edges. Jon shivered as the door clicked shut behind Martin, leaving him the sole focus of Elias’s attention. He couldn’t help glancing furtively behind him to make sure that both Martin and Peter had actually left, because it still felt like they were watching him. At least it had gotten a bit warmer.“So. Jon,” Elias said, drawing Jon’s attention back to him. “You’re missing about three years of memory, and unfortunately, a lot of very important things have happened in that time. As the Archivist, you have access to all of the tapes you have made in that span of time. I would suggest starting with the more recent ones.”“You said I could ask you questions,” Jon pointed out, feeling cheated.“I did,” Elias said calmly. Some of the tension left Jon’s body. “And you can. However, you’ve developed something of a…talent for it, and I cannot promise that I will be able to answer all of them. You are quite powerful. You’ve just forgotten how to wield that power with any degree of precision. Being on the receiving end is…somewhat distressing, for most people.”Jon narrowed his eyes, confused. Whether Elias believed it or not, he was in fact aware that his abrasiveness made people uncomfortable. He just didn’t care. “But I can ask,” he clarified.“Yes,” Elias said. There was a confusing, almost predatory edge to his face. Jon swallowed.“When did Sasha die?”“A year after you took the position. During Jane Prentiss’ attack on the Institute.”Jon nodded, pressing his lips together so he didn’t do something absurd, like cry. “Martin told me a bit about that,” he stalled. “He said she’s dead now?”“Yes,” Elias confirmed. “Dead, and cremated. The ashes are on your desk. Have you seen your office yet?”“Yes, Martin took me there to get my clothes.” Something occurred to Jon then. “Why hasn’t - I mean. Sasha was good at research, and she knew how to handle danger. So why aren’t Martin a-and Tim…?” He didn’t want to finish the question. He felt like a bad person for asking it, but Sasha was — had been — competent in a way that the others weren’t, and he couldn’t wrap his head around her being truly gone.“You were split up during the attack,” Elias told him gently. “Sasha wandered into Artifact Storage, and encountered something she shouldn’t have. Something like a Leitner.”Jon went very still. Elias watched him. “A Leitner?” he whispered, cobwebs heavy on his tongue.“Not quite. A living being, imbued with the same powers. The ‘Not-Them’, I believe you called it.”“But only the Leitners’ - the supernatural isn’t real, Elias. These statements, most of them - they’re complete fakes.” Why did no one else understand this?Elias looked at him like he was a small child who had just said something unintentionally vulgar. Disapproving, yes, but mostly amused. “Archivist,” he sighed, and Jon shivered as the title brushed against something deep within him. “Jon. You cannot truly believe that the only supernatural powers in the world are books that belonged to one man.”Jon stared at him stubbornly. Elias took in the set of his jaw and the angle of his chin, and sighed. He came around the desk to lean against it like Peter had before. “You were marked, deeply, in your quest for this knowledge the first time around. But we do have limited time, and so I will speed up this process.”He leaned down and picked up Jon’s right hand, with the oddly textured skin he had assumed was another recent injury because he hadn’t wanted to think about it in any depth. But now that he really looked at it, it was undeniably too old. Elias stroked his fingers over the palm. Jon went still. He wasn’t used to people touching him. Even though he couldn’t really feel it — which was incredibly disconcerting — he shivered as he let Elias manipulate his hand.And then, suddenly, he felt an intense surge of pain, and heard a woman’s laughter. He could see her face. Then her voice. Jon jolted forward, slamming his head painfully into Elias’s chest. Elias petted his hair until he stopped shaking, and his hand no longer felt like it had just been dropped in acid. “Do you believe me now, Jon?” he asked. His voice was perfectly sympathetic, but something about it rung false to Jon’s ears. There was a discordant note of excitement.“What was that?” Jon gasped instead of answering, pulling away from Elias. He kept his hand curled to his chest as if he could protect it from further agony.“I have…some measure of control over what memories you perceive. Since this one was recorded, I am aware of what transpired and was able to transfer it to you. However, most of the others don’t have such a concrete link, so I’m afraid I can’t do anything to help you with them. The belief will come in time, but it’s a head start.”Jon furrowed his brow, but didn’t say anything. Clearly, Elias did something that he couldn’t rationally explain right now. And Jon remembered something he didn’t before. Besides, if Elias believed in the supernatural, Jon wasn’t going to get any of his questions answered by arguing with him. “What else has a concrete tie, then?” Jon couldn’t quite keep the challenge out of his voice, and he winced.“Sorry?”“You said most don’t have a concrete link to me, so what else does?”Elias put a hand under his jaw, tilting his head up so Jon had to look at him. For a moment, he felt certain that Elias would kiss him. He tensed. But instead, Elias brushed at the skin above his lip gently with a thumb, then the corner of Jon’s jaw — and then Jon was running down the hallways of the Archives and risking his life for a tape recorder. There must be more holes — where worms had buried into his face — because Elias’s fingers were on his throat when Jon came back to himself. His pulse fluttered wildly under the solid weight of them, and Jon wondered how they got that particular worm out before it killed him.“How do you feel?” Elias asked, with an odd glint in his eyes.“I don’t feel any different,” Jon said, even though it wasn’t quite true, because now he knew what it felt like to be eaten alive. He corrected himself. “I don’t remember anything else.”Elias studied him for a moment. Then he leaned down and pressed his lips to Jon’s forehead like a blessing; a short, chaste kiss. His other hand rested heavily on the back of Jon’s neck, holding him still. The skin tingled after Elias pulled back, and Jon almost wanted to check that the blessing — the kiss, he corrected himself — didn’t burn itself into his skin like a brand. Marking him as belonging to Elias. Huh, Jon thought, as not-entirely-unpleasant frisson ran down his spine. “Give it time,” Elias said. “Go find Martin.”Jon frowned, pulling away. He - wasn’t going to ask, he decided. Just…he could wait. He’d think about this — this whole thing — later. “I don’t actually like Martin,” he confessed. Jon had always thought that Elias had been aware of that, honestly.Elias chuckled. “I Know,” he said. “But you will. And he has been...difficult, as of late. Talk to him, why don’t you?”Aware that Elias was not going to take no for an answer on this subject, Jon nodded. When he stood up, the carpet squished underneath his feet like so many tiny corpses. He shuddered. Jon got to the door before he turned back, fingers curled around the edges of the wood. “Elias? Do you know if I’ve been paying my bills? Or where my apartment is?” He was fairly sure he must have moved at some point in the last three years. Especially if Jane Prentiss knew where he lived.“I think it’s best if you stay here for now,” Elias said. “Your address is known to several other beings, and it’s best if you are at full strength before you face them.”“...Alright,” Jon agreed, a bit disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to get out of the Institute seemingly until his memories came back. Or were replaced with new knowledge. He didn’t want to fight Elias on it though, so he headed downstairs to his new-old office. Martin looked concerned when Jon approached him. “Are you alright?” he asked.“Of course I am.” Honestly, what kind of question was that? “Elias told me to listen to the tapes I made.”“Why?”“He said it’ll help with my memory, probably.” Jon didn’t mention the weird magic powers. Or the kiss. Either Martin would find out or he wouldn’t. Jon didn’t care either way.Martin looked unconvinced, but led him through a dizzying route of endless shelves, to a small cardboard box. “These are the most recent ones,” he said, handing them to Jon. “The ones about the Unknowing. The rest of the tapes are around here somewhere, I think. They have green stickers if you made them, blue stickers if one of us assistants made them, and Gertrude’s old ones are marked with red. Basira has been coming up with an additional filing system for which Power each belongs to, but it hasn’t been implemented yet. By the time we realized what it was doing…” Martin trailed off, looking distant. He started to say more, but then his face shuttered and he didn’t.Powers, Jon noted. Martin believed in it too. He spent the rest of the day wandering the uncomfortably comfortable shelves, pulling out all of the tapes marked with green stickers. A few had both green and red stickers, so he took those too. He wanted to devour them, and the intensity of the desire surprised him. It was unnerving and nearly all-consuming. But he restrained himself, ending up with an unsatisfactory but fairly large pile on the desk in front of him.Then he sorted them by date, and found a notepad and cassette player. He pulled out two randomly — although they almost seemed to glow, as if they were eager to be used — 0160729-A and 0160729-B. He couldn’t figure out what the numbers meant, and Martin hadn’t seen fit to tell him, so he hoped they at least contained reference numbers or something useful. Gooseberry means anticipation, Jon scrawled on the notepad without thinking, then frowned. He had no idea why he’d done that. But the information felt true, or at least true enough to not cross out.Someone was still watching him, he was sure of it; but Martin had vanished back into the shelves and there was no sign of Tim or the woman with the knife. Or the mysterious Basira. He hadn’t noticed the feeling in the daze he’d been in while collecting the tapes, or — no, Jon realized — he had noticed it then. But it had felt expected, and he’d been basking in it. The weight of the realization sat uncomfortably in his stomach. Jon tried to push the feelings down to focus on the tapes in front of him, but they wouldn’t stay. He knew he should get straight to work. He shouldn’t disappoint Elias. And so, with a thick, clotted emotion that wasn’t quite fear, Jon picked up the pen again and slowly circled ‘anticipation’.