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Fear is like skin for Jon. Not a second skin, not like air, not like a well worn shirt. It’s a part of him. It’s woven into his very being. It stretches, covers, moves like skin (like wax pretending to be skin pretending to be– ). Fear is such a large part of him now. Skin is the largest organ in the human body. Complex, too. It has layers. So does fear. Not all fears are the same, not even close. But they all are intertwined together like threads of yarn (like a spider’s web that’s had him since he was eight and stupid, pulling him to– ).
His skin has always - well, he’s always had a bit of a thing with his skin. Granted, he has a lot of things . Even when he wasn’t enveloped in fear or becoming something horrible (something that eats up the trauma of others and brings it close, brings it under a microscope so he can gorge himself– ). Even then, he was a difficult person to be around. Georgie always said he was like a bad shot, burning all the way down until it’s gone. She’d said it affectionately, but still.
So, he has a bit of a thing with his skin.
In short, he hates it. The way it pulls, itches, tears, burns, peels. All of it. He’s always been so aware of it. It’s driven him to scrub his skin raw in the shower, to pick at the divots and scabs until his skin is swollen and bleeding.
Fear is like skin for him, which is not to say that it slides easily towards the back of his mind.
It is to say – well, he’s not sure, honestly. It just makes sense. Fear is like skin in the way it always – always – sits at the edge of his awareness (like a hunter stalking prey, like Daisy holding the knife to his– ).
It crowds him. It reminds – always – of himself and he detests it.
The statement he’d read earlier was related to the Stranger. That was easy enough to puzzle out, but the details were going to be hell to verify. Very common for statements regarding the Stranger, he realizes and then immediately Knows why that would be the case. And then he feels stupid that he had to Know and that he couldn’t just figure it out on his own.
The statement had made his skin crawl, after. Perhaps part of it was the hollow feeling inside of him that feels almost like hunger but is more insidious. The bigger reason for it, he knows, is that the details made his skin crawl. Re-living them brought the fear that had been sewn into him to the surface and it itches. It itches like he picked a scab and now there’s an uneven ridge that can only be soothed if he scrapes the edge smooth.
He sits up on the cot. The threadbare blanket he’s been using falls down and pools in his lap. His arms aren’t colder without it - it hardly does anything at all. He’s used to the damp coolness of the Archives. He knows to accept it, even though it makes his joints stiff and his leg ache. All the goosebumps he has are due to the prickling fear, not the cold (the damp cold and fear always mix, somehow, pressing and pressing like dirt piled up and tight, squeezing– ).
It’s dark in the cramped corner he’s set up. He knows he set his bag down by his pillow with his cane propped against the wall and he Knows that Basira and Melanie sleep soundly in the old document room they’ve converted to a makeshift bedroom. He Knows exactly what the night guard in the library thinks of the Archives and what he’s planning to get his wife for their anniversary. She won’t like it. She’s unhappy in their marriage. The night guard doesn’t know this. He, for some reason, does.
He shuts his eyes, but the darkness doesn’t change and the Knowledge that he has no right to doesn’t stop leaking in.
The Eye seems to like these quiet moments. They’re moments that he would have otherwise enjoyed. He’s always found the late nights to be great opportunities to reset and settle. It makes sense that the Eye takes that with his humanity.
He scrubs his palms against his face and mentally shoves himself against the gap in the door in his mind. The Knowledge slows to a trickle. Maybe if he really tries, he can enjoy the quiet, peaceful dark of the Archives.
Except the blankness of the space he can’t see fills with the incomprehensible vision of the Dark Sun. It unfolds and bursts and bends and does the reverse of a glow with the same effect. It’s like the static that your eyes see if you stare into the dark long enough, but compressed and vengeful.
It makes his mouth dry just to think about and he’s struck with the same cloying irritation that comes when he spots a new patch of eczema on his skin.
Through the gap in the door, the Eye sends him Knowledge that he doesn’t want to Know, because if he Knows, he won’t be able to keep his damn mouth shut. But he also assumes the Eye enjoys that, as much as it can enjoy anything. It’s not giving Knowledge to help him.
Jon Seeing breeds fear in both the seer and the seen. It’s like a buffet for the thing that is making a monster of him.
He’s unsettled. The information he doesn’t want, but nonetheless has, only exacerbates the problem. He doesn’t know why he woke up in the first place. It’s rare that he can’t remember his dreams, but this one slips through his fingers like water. Cool and undoubtedly present, but ultimately unholdable.
It unnerves him and everything about him feels wrong. In some ways, it’s a very familiar feeling, but the desire to seek out the research assistant staying late to work on their thesis regarding the connections between color, fear, and the paranormal twists up his insides and makes the experience new in a way he loathes.
But maybe the old methods will still work. The root of the problem is the same, really. Maybe it will work.
His hands feel too dry. It’s a problem that can’t be solved by lotion for two distinct reasons: the first being that he hates the feeling of lotion on his skin and the second being that he will see the bottle of moisturizer that Basira has set in the break room and it will be the same brand used by Nikola Orsinov to make his skin too soft.
The stiffness in his legs means that it’s not worth it to get up and walk on the slight chance that the movement will settle him, so he resorts to cracking his knuckles and rubbing his hands over and over again on the rough texture of the thin blanket.
He rolls his neck, too, feeling how it stretches and pops and does it again until it is wrong instead of right and wishes feebly that he had been able to clear out his flat before he’d gone into the coma.
There’s not much he misses, but there is a shirt that he’s never felt unsettled in and not even the seam of the collar scratches, and there is a blanket that is thick and weighted and holds him in and together, and there is a pair of sweats that he has worn down to be soft and perfect, and there is the twisting metal keychain ring with a small, plastic charm that his grandmother had gotten for him when he wouldn’t stop picking at the annoying skin around is fingers.
There is none of that here.
Hopefully the repetitive movements will be enough. His shirt tag itches at the back of his neck and he is aware of himself in a way he hates and the fear squeezes him until his chest aches for a pressure he can only partially give in the form of his first rubbing tight, jerky circles on his chest.
He doesn’t realize he’s making noise until he spots the light turn on down the hall and the sound cuts off halfway out of his mouth. It’s a phrase he’d read in a statement and it rolls nicely in his mouth and he hadn’t realized he was making noise.
He Knows that he’s woken Basira and Melanie and he Knows that they are walking towards him. He goes still and quiet and the fear he’s always with assumes control. He can’t help clenching his jaw so tight it hurts. He will not compel them.
(He wants to. The Eye wants to. The exact point at which they diverge and become separate, independent beings is fuzzy - if it exists).
They open the door and flick on the light. It’s too bright, so he turns his head down.
“Jon,” Basira says tiredly. She’s alert, though. He can see it in her stance. “Is something the matter?”
He shakes his head even though the answer is more complicated. It’s nothing, he could say, it’s just my body doesn’t feel right and my hands are too dry and my hair is too long and nothing is right. It happens. And I’m also starving, starving, starving, starving.
Melanie is shorter than Basira and she peers out behind her shoulder, backlit by the hallway. “Could you do us a favor and shut up, then? Some of us are trying to sleep.” The venom that had made up her voice for so long is absent, but the words are still hostile. He Knows that they would be drenched in venom if they could be.
His hands itch.
Daisy leaves her cot then. He hadn’t Known she was sleeping before, but he Knows that she has woken up to the absence of Basira and is looking to see where they are.
“Jon,” Basira says again, just as tired.
He remembers that Melanie is still waiting for an answer and nods his agreement. “I’m sorry,” he says with effort. His mouth is tacky and tastes of interrupted sleep.
Melanie waves a hand at him and he knows it is a dismissal more than anything else. He shrugs his shoulders up to his ears, but they are tense and knotted and he resists the urge to roll them, because he will not stop if he starts.
Basira starts to leave and nearly runs into Daisy, who has snuck up to take Melanie’s place. She doesn’t startle, but Jon Knows that it was a close thing and attempts to shut the gap the Eye is speaking through with extra strength mental duct tape.
Daisy tips her head to the side in a way that reminds Jon unpleasantly of a hunting dog catching the scent of prey. “What happened?”
“He woke us up,” Basira explains.
“Oh,” Daisy locks eyes with him and he tries not to think about a clearing in the forest, seeing the hint of red in her eyes with a knife held to his throat. He is not successful. The Eye supplies him with Knowledge about how much harder she would’ve had to press to kill him. He dimly wishes she would have. “Why?”
“Hell if I know. We need to sleep.”
Basira catches Daisy’s arm and they both stop for a moment. “I think I’ll stay,” Daisy says.
He attempts to block out the transcript the Eye supplies of the internal debate Basira has as she sighs and shrugs, dropping her arm. “Alright. If you’re sure.”
Daisy just nods and Jon tucks his chin down as he spies the subtle way they embrace each other for the briefest moment. The interaction is soft and tender in a way that makes his chest ache. Try as he might, he can’t decipher exactly why.
The most likely explanation is there are many different things he is lacking and he can identify positive physical contact as one of them. It doesn’t mean that he deserves it. Desiring and deserving are very different.
“Didn’t I tell you to stop moping?” Daisy says. She’s perched in the doorway and he can’t read her expression. It makes him nervous. They are not close enough for it to remind him of the coffin, but he knows that specific scab yearns to be scratched and clawed off.
Words feel difficult. Not the actual words, but the effort to unclench his jaw and say them. The effort to transfer the pressure in his chest and the thoughts that are his own into verbal language is immense and yet all it would take is for him to open his mouth and he knows they would flood out.
He shrugs in lieu of an actual response. The patterns of the linoleum are ones that he has extensively studied. He returns to them even as he feels Daisy’s quiet stare bore into him.
There’s stain on the floor and he knows that it’s from when Martin had dropped the tea he’d brought to him while he was sorting out the discredited statements. A spider had crawled out of the box and onto his hand and he hadn’t noticed until it was creeping up his sleeve and he may have lost it - a bit. Scattered the bin of files and let out an undignified pleading yell to get it off.
Martin, previously unaware of his arachnophobia, had startled and dropped the mug when Jon, half out of his mind in the pure desire to get the creature off of him, had barreled into him.
He Knows the exact temperature of the tea Martin brought and that the spider had been a Lace Web spider, brought into the recesses of the Archives via a generation born in the walls. He knows Martin kept on switching between apologizing and laughing with such fervor that Jon had almost forgotten about the creeping, crawling feeling of the spider. (Taken outside, after Martin tracked it down).
He tears his gaze from the stain and to the specks that he can see on the gritty floors.
Daisy moves. He hears the sound of her feet moving across the floor, though she’s not wearing the steel-toed boots she tends to. The sneakers make a softer sound as she walks forward and sits beside him.
The cot dips with their combined weight and, though she left a respectable amount of space between them, her thigh comes to rest against his. They sit thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder. He stiffens. This moment has no right answer.
He wants to lean in. Daisy is warm and solid. Even the light pressure of them pressing together now is soothing. He wants to regain space. The memory of being weak and mere moments from death at her hands is prominent in his mind.
Daisy doesn’t move. She doesn’t speak, either. She doesn’t ask him questions that seem simple at first, but the longer he has to process it, the longer he has to dissect the possible answers and contingencies.
She inhales, loud and slow. After a moment, she exhales.
His hands are still too dry, too itchy, and every texture still feels like it is not what it should be, but as she continues to telegraph her breathing, he finds himself mirroring it. His chest aches still, hollow and ill fitting with the rest of his body, so he clenches one hand into a fist and holds it against his sternum. The rise and fall of his chest against the side of his fist helps. He presses harder.
Then, mortifyingly, his eyes sting and he squeezes them shut. It doesn’t even make sense. The breathing is helping, he feels less like everything is causing his skin to crawl and the fear has crept down from its spot crouched in his throat.
Why is he starting to cry now? Why can’t he just -
“It’s okay, Jon,” she says, which only makes his cheeks burn and the tears well up faster, propelled by a new and humiliating hitch in his breath. He presses harder, resuming rubbing circles in hopes to alleviate the increased ache.
It’s not from the overwhelming sensations, but from his finally processing them.
Daisy’s thigh presses more firmly against his. He pushes back. “You don’t have to talk, but if you can nod or shake your head, that’ll do. Is touch okay?”
His cheeks are wet and he bites his lip hard to keep in the high, keening noise that wants to escape him. Shakily, he nods. The Eye’s Knowledge has ebbed, just a bit. The ocean of Knowing that would drown him without hesitation still laps at the door in his mind, but it doesn’t smack the flimsy separation as harshly.
She takes his hand - the one not frantically pressing into his chest - and squeezes. His fingers almost spasm in his rush to squeeze back. With every inhale, she squeezes and holds, and, as she exhales, her grip relaxes.
The tears don’t stop, but his erratic breathing slows.
Eventually, they’re both breathing slowly, squeezing and relaxing their grip in tandem with their breath. His chest doesn’t hurt as badly, though he still holds his hand to it. His face is sticky with half-dried tears and his eyes are tired.
“Better?” Daisy asks.
He nods and swallows. His tongue still feels too large for his mouth and he pushes past the fear that any words he tries to speak will only strangle him. “I’m fine,” he whispers and his voice is too loud, too much, but a shallow sense of pride wells up in him.
It’s stupid, he tells himself, to be proud of being able to say two words. You’re not a child.
Daisy squeezes his hand as she inhales. He can feel tension in the air and he knows (or does he Know?) that she is about to speak. When she exhales, her grip still relaxes, but her hand curls around his fingers. He waits.
Recently, it’s been all he can do. Waiting for Basira to trust him or at least be willing to use him. Waiting for Melanie to snap at him again (that’s not fair, the bullet is gone. The blood on his hands was good, it had to be– ). Waiting for Martin to do whatever it is he’s doing with Peter Lukas. Waiting for the door in his mind to fail. Waiting for more proof that he is not what his body pretends to be. Waiting for a statement that will fill him.
He’s just been… doing a lot of waiting as of late.
“Why did you go into the coffin?” Daisy asks.
He stares at her out of the corner of his eye and shoves his fist hard into his chest. You’re not a goddamned child, Sims, use your words, he thinks. “I wanted to save you.”
The words aren’t loud. They’re barely loud enough to be called a whisper. Despite that, they feel like bricks launched into the dead night.
She turns, then. Her shoulders move and he feels their absence like a gaping wound. “Look at me, Jon.”
Her voice is not harsh, but it feels like it is. Though she’s staving off the Hunt, he feels the brutality he is used to receiving at her words. It’s safer to go along with it, he thinks. He’s always been too difficult for his own good. It’s just… It just makes sense that the last few years have finally given him the consequences he’s always deserved for his unpleasantness.
At least he knows now that it’s safer to just go along with it. Prevents the immediate pain, anyway (Pain like a hand engulfed in– ). He looks.
Daisy never looks how he imagines her. In his mind, she is sharp and harsh in a way that physically presents itself. In his mind, her teeth are bared and they are more pointed than they should be. In his mind, the angles of her face are severe and they shape her mouth into a snarl, her eyes into little infernos.
Looking at her now is different.
If he looks at her for too long, his eyes See things they shouldn’t. Veins, a burning, too vivid red, whisper the Hunt’s claim. The Eye is hyperactive in his mind, but the waves are not as harsh. He can look at her without Looking. He can.
Everything is softer, like a hunting dog that’s been retired, resting by a fireplace. The teeth, the ruthless physicality is still there. The Hunt still howls within her, he Knows, but she’s cut it off. It makes her softer.
She asks again, “Why did you go into the coffin?”
He exhales. Daisy’s grip relaxes, but he clutches her hand like a lifeline. Maybe the pressure will let the millions of reasons, of beginnings of explanations, fall into an order that his mouth can translate.
Daisy’s face is earnest. Her gaze still burns into him. He wonders if his eyes burn back.
“I wanted to save you,” he says again, but there’s more than that. He pauses, letting the words build in his throat, tasting them as they wash over his tongue. Are they the right words? Will they explain it? Will they suffice? “I wanted… I wanted to do something good. I haven’t – That is to say, I’ve been… I am not what I once was. Maybe this has been… fated for me, but… It doesn’t matter, does it?”
He stops again, and his eyes flicker down to their joined hands. Clinging to each other like that’s all that matters. Like anchors. Like humanity grasped and held and personified.
Daisy waits. He doesn’t know how to thank her for that. If he does, he’ll lose all the momentum he has.
“I am not what I once was. I don’t – It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I am not, not human. But I am not… fully changed by the Eye. All the work I’ve done, everything I’ve tried to become has been, been twisted for the Eye. The god that I – I have no choice – no, that I did, I did choose, but I don’t want. And I have caused so much pain. So much suffering. And I am not human, not really. And I am not good. But you were in the coffin and Basira would have never followed you, even though she, I think she wanted to, and I – worst case scenario, I don’t make it out and the world loses another monster. Best case scenario, I get you back and – even if I’m not human, I prove that maybe I can do something, something good.” He can barely stand to force the words out, but Daisy is holding his hand and if that was enough to pry each other out of the Buried, then it’s enough to explain why he’d gone down in the first place.
Fear chants and crawls and screams. It’s part of him. But he will not let it choke him.
“I was going to kill you,” Daisy responds after a few moments.
He already knows that. She’s already told him.
He looks down at their hands again. “It wouldn’t have been the worst thing.”
It’s true, even if his stomach cramps with the thought and the fear that lives like skin with him reminds him how much he’s truly terrified of the End. But it wouldn’t have been the worst thing.
“Look at me, Sims,” she says, “Look at me.”
He does.
Her mouth is set in a firm line. “Don’t you dare say that. Don’t you dare. I’m not exactly human myself, but you still saved me from the Buried. You, of all people, had every reason to let me suffer – and don’t try to deny it. Don’t try and say that you did it because Basira deserved it. You have every reason to let her wallow the way she’s let you.”
Jon opens his mouth, ready to argue, but Daisy squeezes his hands.
“Don’t – Just listen, okay. The truth of the matter is that I’ve been awful, Basira’s been awful, Melanie has been awful. To others, yes, but to you, especially. I am not blind. It’s the truth. God knows others would have snapped by now. But the point is, Basira loves me. I know she does. She wasn’t going to follow me. But you saw that she wanted to. You saw and you didn’t let her torture herself with the decision to leave me. You saved me.”
Daisy pulls him closer, until the warmth of her seeps through. “You’re afraid of me, but you saved me. You comforted me. That’s pretty damn good to me. And who decides what being human is? Who’s to say that your want to be human isn’t enough? I can see you clinging to it and that’s human to me. So don’t you fucking dare give up, Sims.”
He feels undeserving under the intensity of her eyes and words. His eyes sting again and he clamps them shut, hoping to push down the slightly hysterical sound working its way up his throat.
She rubs her thumb over his knuckles and he presses his first down harder into his chest. It doesn’t stop the choked cry and he removes his hand from his chest to clamp it over his mouth as the tears start again, faster and heavier, his chest wracked with the weight of his sobs.
How long? How long has he wanted to hear that?
It feels like years.
Daisy shifts and he can’t stop the sound that claws out of his mouth at the thought of her moving away. She stills and he hears her ask in a softer voice, “What can I do?”
He heaves in a breath, feeling so much of an emotion that he can’t name and it flows out of him. He sounds like a child when he talks, his voice small and wobbling.
“Don’t leave,” he begs, too overwhelmed to be ashamed, and his breath hitches, “Please don’t, don’t let go.”
She says something back, soft and sad, but he doesn’t hear it as she pulls him fully against her and he is wrapped in a hug for the first time in… how long has it been?
He can’t stop and he’s distantly aware that he’s probably being loud. The way he’s crying is not quiet. It’s loud and ugly, and he’s sure he’s making a mess of Daisy’s night shirt. It feels like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. His hands are fisted in the soft, well worn fabric, even though it hurts his bad hand. He can’t make himself stop.
She doesn’t seem to care. Her arms remain firmly wrapped around him, like they’re holding him together. She’s so warm. Warm enough to chase away the ever present cold.
Vaguely, he hears other voices. Other external stimuli, but it’s as though he’s underwater and it’s all he can do to just cry and let his body shake and heave and be held. He might be speaking, babbling, or maybe he’s crying too hard and the only sounds he’s making are sharp, desperate gasps.
There’s no way for him to tell how much time has passed by the time he cries himself out. All he can make sense of is the bone deep fatigue that comes after such a deep, whole-body breakdown. His face feels gross and sticky, when he’s aware enough to feel that, and his hands are stiff from how hard they’ve gripped her shirt. His chest burns and his eyes are dry.
Clumsily, he releases her shirt, attempting to smooth it down in a way that only exacerbates the stretched wrinkles.
“Back with me?” she asks and her voice is hushed. It’s strange, he thinks. He hadn’t thought Daisy would have been capable of that until recently.
He nods. “’M sorry.” His voice is thick and clogged. He wrinkles his nose at the sound.
He feels her shake her head. “Don’t apologize. It’s been a long time coming, I think.”
Unsure of how to respond, he just hums and leans back. He’s so tired.
The room is dimly lit. The overhead light has been turned off, but an electric lantern has been set in the middle of the floor. Its dim yellow glow barely reaches wall to wall in the small room, but it gives enough light to see by.
Beside the cot is a mug. He reaches for it, because now that he’s processing the way his body feels, his mouth is still tacky and it feels like he hasn’t had anything to drink in days. It’s still faintly warm and he soaks it in, though he’s not chilled like before.
The moment he tastes it, he knows Martin made it and is halfway towards running for the door to see if maybe – maybe – he’s waiting just outside, but Daisy catches his arm.
“He’s left,” she says. “Melanie messaged him and he came down. He was worried, I think, but he saw we had, I guess, a good handle on things, and made the tea and left.”
He wilts, sitting back down, and cradles the tea a bit closer. “How did he look?” he asks. As the various possible responses float through his head, he realizes he doesn’t know what he hopes to hear.
He hopes he looks well. He hopes he doesn’t look too well.
Daisy huffs, leaning her head back against the wall. She’s smaller than she used to be. The muscle she’d developed had atrophied considerably during her time in the coffin and the lines of her face are not sharp like a predator, but just as hungry.
“Better than you,” she eventually responds, but they both know that’s not exactly difficult. “He didn’t exactly linger.”
After another sip, he can’t help but smile. “But he came.” The words are so soft, spoken into the tea with gentle reverence, and he decides to focus on that. He came.
Daisy doesn’t respond, except to say, “There’s a team meeting tomorrow.”
“About what? Did something happen?”
“About you,” she says and he’s glad he can’t see her face, because her tone says that he’s missed something obvious.
He tucks his shoulders up by his ears. The memory of the last “team meeting” they had playing in his head. It was – He knows it was necessary, but. Well, they don’t tend to be the most relaxing things. And he feels so wrung out already.
She sighs and he focuses on the mug so he doesn’t have to think about what it means. “Not - Jon, it’s about providing a more supportive environment.”
“That’s – that’s fair, I suppose. I have created a, hm, stressful –”
“ Jon,” Daisy says again, frustrated. He stops. “Providing a more supportive environment for you. ”
He pauses, processing. He tries to imagine Melanie and Basira tomorrow morning, planning a more supportive environment for him. It’s difficult. His shoulder pulses, dully reminding him that the scalpel wound has not fully healed and doesn’t appreciate the way he’s tensed the muscle. He’s… confused.
Knowledge that he doesn’t want or need trickles through the door and he’s too tired to sort through it.
Would you create a more supportive environment for a virus? For a rabid dog? The kind thing would be to kill it. It’s not totally fair to compare him to a virus, but there is something growing in him (or maybe it’s pushing in from the outside, hoping to smother the original inhabitant).
That thing, the piece of him that has been converted for or implanted by Beholding grows and it is hungry. It is rabid. How far has it expanded now? If fear is his skin, then how much of him is the Archivist and how much of is just him?
“Alright, it’s – Christ – it’s late. Get up. You’ll only feel worse if you go to sleep without having cleaned up at all,” she says, oblivious to his internal conflict.
He follows, numbly, letting her guide him towards the sink. Her previous statement swims in his head and he twists it around, trying to make it make sense. It doesn’t.
On the bright side, he feels so tired and numb that the previous over-stimulation has mellowed out. So. Pros and cons, he supposes.
He’s still turning the phrase around in his head when Daisy sets him back on the cot. She mutters something as she pulls the thin blanket up over him, but he doesn’t catch it. She turns out the light and he’s out.
He dreams. But they’re not coherent. It’s the normal nonsense that people dream about and not the call of the Archivist. He’s not all eyes.
Instead he’s stuck with the dream logic of trying to make tea, but the kettle keeps turning off and so he has to keep an eye on it, but then he can’t find the tea bags, and the mug he wants is too far back and he keeps on slipping as he tries to climb on the counter, and then, because he had to grab his mug, the kettle turned off again, but then the mug is somehow not where he left it, but the tea bags are on the counter.
Confusing, sure, but he wakes feeling rested for the first time in months.
He can hear someone slamming doors in the break room. The cabinet doors smack closed and he hasn’t been awake long enough to focus on what it is they’re doing, even as he focuses on finding his cane and his glasses.
Luckily, his glasses are folded gently beside his bag. A few years ago, the sight would have made him cringe and he would have chided himself for not using the glasses case. Things change. After being kidnapped and unconscious for a truly ungodly amount of time, he’s lost the regular access to luxuries like glasses cases and a wardrobe. His cane is propped beside it and having both within his reach steadies him.
Speaking of clothes, though…
He gives his shirt a sniff and decides it’s probably fine(?) for another day. At the very least, he can’t smell himself. He still ends up rifling through his bag for his deodorant and toiletries. They all fit in a small bag that he’s somehow kept with him through getting kidnapped, getting kidnapped (again), traveling to the United States, getting kidnapped (again again), falling into a six month long coma, and various other workplace hazards (provided that workplace is the Magnus Institute and you’re really unlucky – like him).
He shoves his glasses onto his face and fumbles for his cane before walking towards the communal bathroom. Hopefully, it will be unoccupied, but in the event that it’s not, he’s made do with worse, and far be it from his place to complain.
The door is, somewhat predictably, locked, and he can hear that the break room is still occupied. As cowardly as it may be, he doesn’t want to engage with others quite yet. He’s hardly ever been a brave person, though, so this should come as no surprise to him.
Daisy’s company was… shockingly pleasant – comforting, even. He wouldn’t have thought her capable, not to him, but then again, she never needed an intervention, so perhaps he held some personal bias.
That didn’t stop the fear from springing fresh and bright to the surface every time she moved towards him, but then the sheer warmth of her presence had enveloped him and there was something about the pressing together, the gentle pressure of her hand holding his that made him able to exhale.
How long had it been before last night? How long had it been since someone patted his shoulder, held his hand (even his burned one, even with the texture that he thinks people find unsettling), leaned against him, draped their arm across him, or any of the other casual contact that he hadn’t even known he was missing?
And not to hold on out of fear, but because someone wanted to, even if that want was born out of a desire to comfort him. Especially if it was born out of a desire to comfort him.
It’s dizzying to think about and realize, with the same abruptness as a bird hitting a windshield, that he misses it terribly. He thinks of warmth and thinks of touching hands, ever so briefly, while grabbing tea. He thinks of a teasing poke at his ribs. It’s equally disorienting to realize he can’t think of comforting touch without thinking of searing, inevitable pain.
A hand waves in front of his face and he blinks before immediately startling as he takes note of how Basira and Melanie have gathered around him.
Melanie narrows her eyes. “You with us, Sims?”
He shakes his head to dislodge the lingering parts of him wondering and missing something that he may want, but knows he doesn’t have the right to ask for, then nods. “I, err, yes, just waiting for the bathroom.”
“Just woke up, then?” Basira asks.
“Yes?” he answers. That seems obvious to him, but he supposes his general state has been unkempt enough to warrant the question. “About five minutes ago.”
She nods, but doesn’t say anything further. After a moment of waiting awkwardly for the conversation to continue, he realizes he’s being studied. Basira is searching his face for something, looking for an answer to a question he doesn’t know. It’s not as intense as being pinned under Elias’s eyes, but he doesn’t think there’s much that could compare to that. The pressure makes his hair raise nonetheless and he finds himself looking down at the floor.
He vaguely notes that he should get around to buying new shoes.
When she finally looks away, he can’t tell if she found what she was looking for. She doesn’t say anything more to him. He doesn’t get the chance to ask, because Daisy opens the door and startles at the three of them herded outside.
“Bathroom’s free,” she says and loops her arm in with Basira’s.
He darts inside and closes the door before anything else can happen.
His morning routine is efficient and contains only the barest hint of self care, but it always manages to make him feel better despite that.
The water from the sink stays stubbornly just below room temperature and he splashes it up on his face, scrubbing off the grime that had accumulated while he slept. Thankfully, he still has half a tiny bottle of hotel body wash and he uses it to cleanse his face.
Before everything, he used to have a detailed routine. Especially for his hair. It’s not curly, but it’s densely thick and if treated is just right, he could create a soft wave. Now he forgoes any hair masks or products that he might have otherwise used and pulls the frizzy mess into a lopsided bun. During his time in the coma, his hair had grown long with uneven, split ends, but he hasn’t had the chance or the motivation to fix it. All it would really take is an even trim and a healthy, routine application of texturizing spray to help give his hair back volume and wave he’d grown used to.
The faucet sprays the same water, too hard to be good for his skin or the plumbing, and he ignores the way his hair looks in the mirror as he starts brushing his teeth.
His bag of toiletries, which he guesses he could reasonably define as body soap, shampoo, and toothpaste with a comb and toothbrush, needs to be restocked. He squeezes out the last bit of the toothpaste and tries not to think of the meeting he knows they will have.
All he can do is wait.
He spits, rinses his mouth, and looks at his reflection for the first time. Dry brown skin, round, puckered scars on his cheeks and forehead, his hair is a frizzy, graying mess, and he avoids looking too hard at his eyes, waiting for a change.
No use in worrying, he tries to remind himself. People will do what they will do, the stern voice of his grandmother whispers in his mind, and you can only control how you act.
No, he mentally responds, I can’t even do that .
But what he can do is wait.
Basira knows very little personal information about Jonathan Sims. She knows his preferred organizational system, his previous addresses, and could probably recite from memory all of his previous employers. She knows the hard facts about him.
As she looks at the man sitting across from her in the break room, entirely hunched in on himself and looking steadfastly at the fake wooden grain on the table, she realizes she knows very little about him as a person.
Melanie slouches beside her, face set in a firm expression.
“This is stupid,” she says and Barisa shrugs. Daisy insisted and there is very little she asks for nowadays – it’s an explanation she’s already given and it’s the truth. If Melanie wants more, she’s going to have a hard time fishing in an empty pond.
Instead, she turns to look at Jon, noting how he tucks even further in on himself at the words. She has seen him at death’s door and staring down Elias. She’s seen him paranoid and oblivious all at once. She’s seen him guilty and indignant. She’s even seen him triumphant and caked in dirt, hauling himself and Daisy out of the chest of fear.
He’s never talked to her about himself in great depth and she’s never asked. She knows his flaws, his expressions, and the factual information of his life splayed out on a piece of paper - small and insignificant.
She has seen him panicked and proud and obsessed. Even after he cleared his name, she took great pains to familiarize herself with his body language, his tells and tics. Somehow it escaped her notice just how small he’d become.
His shirt is not his own, but she couldn’t say who it belongs to. Honestly, she thinks that he might have raided the Institute lost and found after his coma, but she’s never actually checked.
Like his demeanor, she’d deemed the clothing insignificant.
He fusses with the collar, undoing the top button before inevitably fixing it again. She tracks his movement, but it’s his actual body she’s observing.
She casts her mind back to her first meetings with Jon and attempts to recall what he looked like. Ragged, she remembers, and almost hyperactive with lack of sleep. He had deep bags under his eyes and kept himself hunched and tense. He’s still hunched, she notes. Still tense. But it’s different.
He had been fearful and paranoid when they first met. The first two things she thought upon meeting him were Jesus, he needs sleep and this is a man who is undoubtedly hiding something. She had made the wrong connection then. Her most significant observation did not occur in their first meeting, but when she said she was done giving him tapes.
He had stared her down and beyond the crazed desperation, she saw a stubbornness she couldn’t quantify. She had thought, he is going to kill himself before he stops working.
It was that stubbornness she had characterized as simultaneously his most useful and dangerous trait. His stubbornness is why she knew he could stand toe to toe with Elias without flinching and was likewise the reason why she saw such a risk with him taking live statements.
She looks for it in all the places she’d been able to find it before and finds it missing. He holds himself like someone going before a firing squad. He holds himself like his very core hurts and he’s deathly afraid that the people around him will take advantage of it. He holds himself like he wouldn’t do a thing to stop it if they tried.
Daisy puts a hand on her shoulder before she can fully puzzle out the meaning and weight behind that observation.
Melanie turns her exasperated glare to her and Basira simply waits.
She knows Daisy. However much she’s changed, she knows her well enough to know that she didn’t insist without due reason.
After a moment of silence, during which Daisy seems uninclined to speak and Jon rebuttons the same button on his shirt three times, Melanie loses patience.
“So… Why are we having a ‘formal’ chat, again?” she asks, with a large amount of disdain.
Daisy squeezes her shoulder once before she releases and goes to stand beside Jon. “Last night, I was made aware of the extent that we have been… willingly blind to the extremes of our treatment of Jon and his circumstances.” She says it all at once, though it’s not rushed. She sounds measured, reasonable, and certain.
Basira watches Jon. He’s looking up at Daisy as though he can will her to stop, eyes wide and pleading. She doesn’t have to pay special attention to Melanie. She’s already laughed at the statement and is readily recycling her regular complaints.
“He,” Melanie asserts, “is a prick. Who serves an evil fear god, mind you! And, oh yeah, we’re all tied to him against our will.”
Nothing untrue, but she detaches herself from the situation and watches how Daisy and Jon receive the words. It feels a bit like police work, in a way she is becoming aware will never stop being true. The skills are useful, nonetheless.
Daisy’s face barely twists, but her brown furrows and the slight tightening of the skin around her mouth belies an anger Basira has learned to pick up on. She stands taller than she has in a long time and sets her shoulders back. This is Daisy ready to fight, she notes. The anger makes her potentially useful, the detached part of her argues. The part of her that lost her to the coffin, grieved, regained her, and loves her wants very badly to shut this whole thing down and whisk her away to where they can be out of danger forever.
The rest of her is watching Jon. He opens his mouth, but Daisy’s hand grabs him and he stops. His whole body turns to focus on the contact, as if trying to melt into it. He folds his other arm across his torso and presses a fist to his chest.
She recognizes his expression, but can’t make sense of it in this context. Or maybe she doesn’t want to. Or maybe she’s reading him entirely wrong (unlikely, he could never lie very well and every emotion played out plainly on his face).
“I’m not denying any of that - and neither is he,” Daisy responds. “But last night, you guys woke up to him in the middle of a breakdown and your response was to tell him to knock it off. Because it was disturbing your sleep. In my opinion, that goes far beyond the bounds of how to responsibly and maturely deal with your distaste for him.”
“He carved a bloody hole in my leg!” she shouts, “And! If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have met Elias motherfucking Bouchard. And I wouldn’t be unwillingly serving some eldritch horror. He can handle a breakdown or two - it’s just a bit of what the rest of us dealt with!”
Basira recognizes that’s not fair and she thinks Melanie could, too, if she gave herself time to think. She can acknowledge that he hasn’t exactly had a great time while being the Archivist.
She expects him to say that. To argue. Instead of that, she sees him squeezing Daisy’s hand with a white knuckled grip and biting his bottom lip, like he’s holding himself back – at Daisy’s nonverbal request, no less. She watches his fist rub small circles on his chest and notes, with an emotion she is not able to name yet, that he is abjectly terrified.
Daisy’s talking, she realizes and abruptly turns her attention back to the conversion.
“– is not fair and you know it. You know that he hasn’t just been waiting here, pampered and unscathed.”
“Why are you speaking for him?” Melanie argues.
“Because if he speaks, we’re going to get nowhere.” Daisy pauses, but cuts off Melanie before she can take advantage of it. “And not because he’s evil or antagonistic towards us. If he speaks, he’s going to just apologize until the cows come home or get defensive and neither would be productive.”
“I quite think an apology is in order, actually.”
She sighs, “No, you don’t. You don’t want to hear anything he has to say, especially anything you could hear as pity. And it solves nothing for him to apologize for things that aren’t his fault.”
Melanie sputters. “What do you mean? It’s his fault that–”
“Did he suggest you work here?” Daisy asks.
“Well, no, but –”
“Did he sign your contract?”
“No, but he still –”
“What did he do, besides being the one who took your statement - which I believe you gave willingly, mind you – that caused you to work here?”
Melanie stands up, her chair tips and knocks to the floor. “He’s the goddamned Archivist!”
Jon’s eyes are screwed shut. Basira wonders if anyone else has noticed.
Daisy continues, undeterred. “And that’s his fault?”
This is going nowhere fast, she recognizes. She’s never seen Melanie and Daisy in a screaming match, but she can feel one knocking at the door.
“Yeah, it bloody well is –”
“Enough,” Basira interrupts. “This isn’t working.”
They both freeze and turn to her. Melanie huffs, but appears to set aside her anger for the moment being. Jon opens his eyes, fixing his unnerving focus on her. Daisy turns to her and her face is blank. To anyone else, she would look completely neutral, but Basira has seen that blank expression enough to discern what it’s hiding. She’s having an internal debate, likely deciding who she would defend, if it came to it. Would she insist on this meeting, would she stick by Jon’s side, or would she relent and let Basira take the lead, regardless of what it meant for him?
She doesn’t want to force Daisy to make that choice. Running a hand through her hair, she leans forward. “Let’s start again. One person at a time.”
Melanie mutters something unsavory under her breath, but motions for them to continue.
“Thank you,” she says. “Okay, Daisy, you said you called this meeting because…”
“Because the way we’ve been treating Jon is inhumane. And, if you think about it, it’s probably not helping him resist the call of the Eye,” she explains again. At the mention of the Eye, Jon winces and averts his gaze to the floor again.
“He is a grown man! It is not our responsibility to –” Melanie cuts in.
“Stop, we’ll all have a chance to respond. Let Daisy talk.”
Daisy waits for Melanie to lean back before continuing. “It’s not… easy for me to resist the Hunt, even with my severed connection. And I have a support system, I’m not actively put into situations where it is easier to… to return. Jon’s situation is different, but it’s – he’s –” she pauses and the corners of her mouth tighten with frustration. “We’ve told him to stop taking live statements, even though they act like – like food. I guess you could view it as withdrawal, but it’s not a perfect comparison.”
She stops again and this time her frustration is more obvious. Whatever she is trying to explain, Basira thinks she can grasp the shape of it, and she can definitely feel her frustration at not being able to aptly express it.
She leans forward, taking her hand and giving it a grounding squeeze. “Take your time,” she whispers.
Daisy latches onto that and barrels onward, “It’s like withdrawal and it’s important to have a – a support system. And my point is, who does he have? We’re all living here, I’m not sure Jon has any other connections outside the Institute that wouldn’t kill or torch him on sight. I’m not asking for us to be… like best friends or anything, but we shouldn’t be actively hostile towards him. We shouldn’t walk in on him having a breakdown and tell him to knock it off. And even if he wasn’t going through statement withdrawal, that behavior would still be unacceptable.”
People forget that Daisy is more than brute strength. She’s incredibly shrewd, good at thinking on her feet, and, in rare moments, possesses such a unique and powerful emotional intelligence that Basira is sometimes left stunned. The Hunt had robbed her of some of that, taking her impulsivity, her natural talent at finding and following leads to their source to its supernatural extreme. She lost some of her softer skills as a result.
Now, Basira is reminded of that again.
And she is forced to accept that she makes a pretty damn good point, even if her automatic reaction is to dismiss Jon’s struggle. It is so much easier for her to deal with him when she removes his lingering humanity. It’s so much easier to think of him in terms of usefulness than as a person.
It sounds like a shitty thing to do, she knows. She’s never claimed to be a good person. After the Unknowing, things had to be reduced to being necessary or unnecessary risks. Nothing more.
When she’s confronted with his humanity, when Daisy proposes the situation in a way that frames him not as a tool to be used, but as a person they must coexist with, everything becomes so much harder.
But she’s not cruel. She’s never been and she doesn’t intend to start being so. That said, she can see that she has been cruel to him.
Jon doesn’t meet her eyes, but he’s not avoiding her gaze. He doesn’t seem to be looking at much of anything. The only thing he’s doing is leaning ever so slightly into Daisy’s side, his expression is creased with an anxiety that she doesn’t fully understand the cause of.
Melanie sardonically raises her hand and eyebrows in tandem, asking if she has permission to speak. She motions forward in response, giving her free reign.
“I’m not going to be part of ‘support system’ for him, first of all. I don’t care what supernatural addiction, compulsion, whatever he has – I’m not going to be part of a support system. I’ve worked hard to become as detached from this nonsense as I am and I will not be dragged into it again – especially not by him ,” she says, but the cutting edge she’d been arguing with before is absent. “That said, why isn’t he saying any of this? Why are you talking for him?”
“I already said,” Daisy responds, sharp and absolute.
Luckily, Basira has known her for too long to be cowed by her tone. “It’s a fair question. I think it’s worth an explanation. Jon?”
He looks up at his name and his face shutters to a neutral expression at their collective attention.
“Yes?” he says when no one says anything more.
“Why is Daisy speaking for you?” Melanie asks. She knows her well enough to sense the restraint it takes to just ask that one question.
He looks to Daisy first before responding. His arms come to wrap around his torso in a parody of a hug. “I don’t – She just told me that there would be a meeting about a supportive workplace environment, uh, for me. I don’t –” he tucks his chin down, collecting his breath before continuing. “I didn’t know what she meant, really.”
“You didn’t Know? ” Melanie asks.
“No.” He takes another breath, holding it for a few seconds before he exhales.
“So, what?” Melanie starts before Basira can figure out how to productively move this conversation along. “You weren’t upset that we basically spit in your face last night, despite the fact that we should’ve noticed that you were going through something?” She says it like it’s outlandish, but Jon just tucks his shoulders a bit higher.
“I’m always going through something.”
Melanie shakes her head, glaring like she can make him stop being cryptic and avoidant if she wills it hard enough. “You know what I mean.”
Basira watches with apt fascination as the first flicker of irritation crosses his face. “I don’t, actually.”
“Jon,” Basira warns, even though a part of her just wants to watch the argument unfold.
He wilts. “It didn’t – that’s a harder question than you realize,” he says at last.
“I don’t see how it is. Were or weren’t you?”
“It’s not that simple,” he argues. His lip curls as he begins to try and describe his feelings , something she just knows is like pulling teeth for him. “It’s not just – It’s – Okay, it hurt, because, I mean, I was overwhelmed and overstimulated and, and whatever, but also – Also, it wasn’t unexpected. So, you know. It was… It’s not like it made the situation worse.”
“What does that mean?” Melanie erupts and this time her voice is weighted in anger and accusation.
He pulls keeps his chin tucked down. His chest is nearly folded over his stomach, his arms holding himself so tight it’s looks painful. “It’s not – You just reacted with the information you had,” he offers, as if that makes it better.
Basira doesn’t stop Melanie from standing up. She could. It wouldn’t even really be difficult, now that the bullet has been removed. She doesn’t. She lets Melanie work herself up, get into his space.
“For the love of –” Melanie barks out a sharp laugh, “Drop the passive victim thing, it really doesn’t do anything for you. Georgie said that you do this –”
Basira was prepared for a few different outcomes. She’d been cataloging them as she observed Daisy tense and Melanie encroach on the careful bubble she’d been enforcing. She’s not prepared for Jon to spring from his seat, coiled and shaking, but angry.
“I would appreciate if you would stop talking about what Georgie knows about me,” he snarls and his eyes flash a vibrant, deadly green.
Daisy looks shocked at the display of anger. Jon looks like a rabid alley cat, teeth bared and claws flexed on a skin and bones body.
“Oh, you don’t like people knowing things about you? Ironic, truly–”
“Not when it involves them outing me to my coworkers,” Jon snaps.
Melanie falters. Whatever comeback she’d expected, it wasn’t this. “I – I didn’t –”
Jon doesn’t stop. “I have respected Georgie’s wishes to be left alone. I have respected that you are setting professional boundaries. I understand that none of us want to be here and I hardly expect any of you be empathetic to me. What I ask is that you don’t weaponize my and Georgie’s past relationship.”
With that, he deflates and Basira is certain he would have fled back to his office if he’d been able to. As it is, Daisy grabs his arm and hauls him back onto his chair. He closes his eyes then and, with the anger gone, he just looks tired.
Melanie swallows. She looks lost in the middle of their apathetic circle. Shame floods her face and she backs up onto her chair.
“That’s fair,” she says at last, voice small.
Jon dips his head down. “Thank you.”
Daisy shifts her weight and Basira feels equally wrong-footed. While this development is likely worthwhile to Jon, it doesn’t address what she views as the larger problem. He expects their apathy, their scorn. She can see it in the way his shoulders, even now when he’s as relaxed as he’s been all morning, are tense, pulled up close to his ears.
She wouldn’t describe herself as a cruel person. She has been cruel to him.
These two facts swim in her mind, meeting with the larger realization that has been stubbornly pressing at her, no matter how much she tried to push it away. He thinks it’s deserved.
He’s defensive, yes, but more than that, he’s dejected. As though he’s seen the outcome of this conversation and knows that their mentioning this dynamic changes nothing. As though they would consciously kick him while he’s down.
It makes her feel vaguely sick.
“Right,” she starts and her voice doesn’t waver. She knows better than to let it. “I’m glad you both came to an agreement, but Daisy’s right. There’s a larger problem at hand.”
Jon peaks up at her, puzzled. “There is?"
Daisy, with her renewed sense of patience, just grasps his hand and holds it. He’s just as confused by that as he is by her statement.
“Yes. Regardless of our own personal feelings, we shouldn’t be cruel to you.”
“You haven’t been –” he begins.
Daisy cuts him off. “We may not have tortured you, but it’s still inhumane to treat someone just as trapped as us with open hostility.”
She nods, thankful for the intervention. “We shouldn’t have dismissed you like that last night. I knew something was wrong. I mean, you weren’t exactly subtle, but I didn’t care. That’s not fair to you.”
“Nothing about this situation is fair,” he points out.
“True, but that doesn’t mean we should add to it. And don’t say that you expect it, that just makes it worse. That just means that it’s habitual. I trust Daisy’s assessment. If she says you’re essentially going through withdrawal, then I agree that our response has been less than helpful. We don’t have to be close friends, but I, for one, don’t like the idea of encouraging dependence on an Eldritch god by being an asshole,” she says.
She watches him work through her words, a wary expression plainly displayed on his face.
Melanie sighs and, for the first time, appears to be seriously considering the argument. “Basira’s right,” she admits. “I maintain that I will not be a part of any support system, but that doesn’t mean that I should tell you to shut up for being overwhelmed. I… am sorry about that, by the way. So, maybe there is a point to working to be neutral with one another.”
Jon shakes his head, loose hair hanging in front of his face. “You don’t have to –”
Daisy cuts him off again and whispers something quickly in his ear. He returns a fist to his chest and rubs a few circles in the space.
“If you’re all sure,” he says.
This is good, she knows. Objectively, it’s good. It prevents him from being fed to the Eye as quickly, but she worries. His obvious desire for affection, for understanding, is coupled with what she can now see as a crippling amount of self loathing. It makes him easy to manipulate. He is an open nerve and an abused dog wrapped in a questionably human body.
“I think some rest would do us all good,” Daisy says.
Melanie slumps in her chair. “Thank God. I’m getting coffee.”
She could use the caffeine, not to mention some time outside of the Institute to process this conversation. “Mind if I tag along?”
“Not at all,” she says, “Safety in numbers and all that.”
She turns to invite Daisy as well, but sees her fully engrossed in a hushed conversation with Jon. She can’t make out the words, but it ends with Jon following her into the break room, an exhausted slump overtaking the previous tension. For now, she’ll let Daisy take the lead in support.
There is a part of her mind that is always jumping to the logistics of a problem and it has already begun planning on making changes. For now, though, she lets Daisy give Jon comfort as best she can.
Right now, she goes for coffee.