Chapter Text
Prologue
It was a mild September afternoon, a Thursday afternoon to be exact, and Elias Bouchard was making a list. His pen, a plain blue ballpoint, rasped over the cream-coloured stationary as he wrote down two more items in a tight, neat scrawl.
Black coffee.
Heated blankets.
His office was quiet and still, save for the aged grandfather clock ticking rheumatically against the far wall. It was already 3:45 PM. Elias rubbed his eyes with one hand, knocking his silver-rimmed bifocals up against his forehead.
“Ah,” he murmured. Another item joined his list.
Modern Ophthalmology.
It was a strange addition. He knew that. But it would work. After all, this was a private endeavor. No one needed to see it. And at the end of the day, it was something. Something that was hi-
Elias's train of thought was interrupted, quite rudely, as the door to his office door rattled open with the force of a kick.
He jerked up in his seat as if propelled, grabbing for his left desk drawer, where a not entirely legal Walther P38 he’d come by after the second World War, lay nestled and loaded beside his sticky notes. But he needn't have bothered. Elias shuffled his face out of its grimace, finger resting against the barrel, as a flick of blond hair entered his office. It was accompanied by a needling glare that dared him to say a single thing about its method of entry. Elias straightened and sighed.
Of course, there was only one person who’d ever enter his office that way. He subtly closed the desk drawer, noting that in his hurry, his pen had rolled under his desk. Another inconvenience.
“Miss Tonner.” The woman curled her lip at him. Elias laced his fingers together over his list. He didn’t miss the way Daisy’s eyes honed in on the small movement.“To what do I owe the-.”
“Basira and I are taking a vacation. Tomorrow.”
It was not a request.
Daisy's tense stance conveyed that much.
“I see.” Elias pressed his lips together.
“Prague. A week.”
“You know, it is company policy to give two to three months advance notice of any vacation plans.” He said the words lightly. A tendon jumped in Daisy's jaw, rippling the pink scar tissue there. “Unless...you are going on Institute business?”
“...technically.”
“Ah. I see,” Elias nodded, “you were merely extending your stay then.” Daisy twitched at his tone, a stalled spasm of anger. It looked like some things then, even after all that had transpired, remained the same. He savoured the thread of that knowledge appreciatively. “I will approve your additional leave. It will do you both some good, to take a break from London for a while. I'm sure you'd agree.” Elias made no move towards the appropriate paperwork, preferring to keep his hands over his list. Daisy's nostrils flared as she sucked in a deep breath.
“You owe us that much.”
Elias hummed. Noncommittal.
“Give Basira my regards.”
Daisy glared over her shoulder as she swung the door shut behind her with a sharp snap. Elias listened to her footsteps squeak over the hardwood until she reached the stairs. It was a strange sensation, not being able to See. It felt like his senses were layered with cotton. Dimmed and blinded. Which, he supposed, they were. Ever since the catastrophic mistake that had been the Ritual.
The five pink lines below his ribs ached at the memory of his Archivist’s knife sliding through the sinew of his stomach. It had been...unfortunate. Elias's fingers tapped over his desk. By all accounts, he should have died that day.
He'd been close. Everything had been swathed in haze; he'd still been reeling from his time in his Masters--Elias caught himself--The Beholding’s pupil. It had been fantastic, horrific, painful and blissful and obliterating. He'd been utterly overwhelmed. And then there had been Jon, furious, perfectly moulded to be the Eye’s favoured, snarling into his face. Compared to his Archivist’s anger, the knife had felt small as it punched its way through his skin. Elias wrinkled his nose. There had been entirely too much blood afterwards. His last memory was of the warmth leaking out of his body, listening to the groan of cement and steel as it shuddered down to earth.
Which was why Elias Bouchard was confused.
It was a feeling he had not felt in ages, but he was begrudgingly relearning it.
He'd woken up in his office, splayed out on the floor, dress shirts soaked through with scarlet, very much alive. More than that, the Institute was not in pieces around him. It was as if the Ritual had never occurred. His office was exactly as he left it. His files in neat stacks, a salary spreadsheet open on his laptop. More than that, the ever-constant presence of The Beholding was gone. Elias had felt lighter in that moment than he had in decades.
Elias picked up his pen.
Being unseen .
It was liberating as it was terrifying. But the world was full of New Things, now, and many of those changes were the same. Recovery was slow going, many buildings not under the domain of the Eye hadn’t been rebuilt in the subsequent collapse of the nightmare world. People were still missing, others deeply traumatised. Search parties were underway, but governmental restructuring and responses were overtaxed. In short, healing was moving along glacially. Which is where The Magnus Institute was offering its services.
While the 14 Powers, and the emergent 15th, were gone, their aftereffects remained. Avatars and creatures still skittered around the edges, sucking up whatever remnants of their gods lingered. Still trying to feed on the fear fermenting in people after the collapse. Elias wrinkled his nose. It was run-of-the-mill murder usually, but every so often they got a genuine artefact. Some group of idiots trying to hook one of their gods back through the infinite dimensions. Elias's fingers went white on his pen. It was nigh impossible. But not completely. In theory.
Certainty. He pressed the word into the paper so hard he could feel the wood grain of his desk through the pin's nib.
Elias glared at it as if it offended him. His fingers twitched, the nagging desire to cross it out plucking at his tendons.
Certainty.
That indeed made his list more complicated. Elias rubbed his face again.
How was this miniscule exercise so difficult? He lived for over 2 human lifetimes; he had communed with the embodiment of sentient fear.
Indignant, Elias capped his pin and placed it beside his desk calendar. The psychology website on his laptop pinged, asking him if it could send notifications to his email. He declined.
Had this been an exercise in futility? Elias thought of Melanie. This 21st century therapy had allegedly helped her. It had given her the resolve to free herself from The Beholding. The familiar vice of an oncoming headache began to pulse up the back of Elias's neck. He looked back down at his meagre list.
Black coffee.
Heated blankets.
Modern Ophthalmology.
Being unseen.
Certainty.
He'd gone a bit metaphysical, hadn't he? Perhaps he should have kept his list to the concrete. That was simplest. That was easiest to tell what was him, and what wasn't. Elias slid his eyes back to the laptop at the article in front of him as he surveyed it again.
“Enmeshment” was what Psychology Today had dubbed it. Characterised by a lack of privacy, lack of sense of self, a disconnect with internal needs and feelings, anxiety, depression, and guilt.
And so far, it was the closest word that he had to describe his relationship with The Beholding, though it lacked the specificity and nuance Elias craved. Perhaps, that was why the “therapeutic exercise” wasn't working.
Elias’s mouth thinned. The psychologists and all their studies had never faced a problem like his. Not until now. And with so many desperate people on their doorsteps in the wake of the Ritual, the learning curve would be unforgiving. But... it had worked for Melanie. That was the crux of it.
Elias picked up his pen again and thought hard. What did he like? Thinking of it felt like pushing his hand into a nebulous void. Even his recollections flitted away from him. It was so hard to remember things before this: whatever he had become in the service of The Eye. He liked... candy, maybe? Many people did. But he wasn't much for sweet. He took his coffee straight, no frills, no cream, and certainly no caramel. And he liked that. He knew he liked that. Even when he hadn't needed to eat anymore, sustained by his Patron, he gotten coffee. Simple. Hot. Bitter. Elias's pen hovered over the page. But there had been a time, over two lifetimes ago, when he was just a boy...
The memory swooped down on him like a bird of prey.
His breath had fogged the glass of the shop window. Under his newly cobbled boots the chill of snow seeped into his toes. There had been music? No, Elias shook his head. Carolers. It’d been Christmas time. And the shop had been a Confectionery. He'd been barely hip-height to his father, who'd stood behind him. Though time had stolen the sight of his father's face, he knew his father had smiled down at him.
In the window were stacks of bright, wrapped sweets all in perfect little rows. He'd asked for his favourite. His father had pressed a skin-warm coin into his small palm and Elias had hurried into the shop. He remembered the smell of the shop, warm and syrupy, and he’d asked for one of those little dried cherry candies, spiced with cardamom and coated in sugar. Cardamom comfits, sometimes called sugar plums. The candies were excitingly exotic to him as a child. Cardamom, after all, was native to the forests of southern India. He’d eaten his candy at the counter, smiling at the clerk and at his father, his lips covered in sugar granules.
Cardamom sugar plums.
Elias sat back in his chair with an air of satisfaction. It was a small list but it was a start. And he knew at least most of the items were all truly him. He would eventually find out more, seek out the bits in him that hadn't been touched by the Eye. Elias closed his laptop gently and plugged it into its charger. His list he carefully slid in his right desk drawer and made sure it was locked securely. Much like Jon had been, Elias felt he was in a delicate stage of his becoming. Daisy's sharp eyes came to mind and Elias pocketed the desk key. He'd rather not have an audience prodding around. Interfering.
Elias shrugged on his coat. It was still 15 minutes from 5:00. But the headache had burrowed deeply enough to be a migraine. A year ago, he had barely left the Institute. Often, he'd slept on his chaise lounge overnight, when he’d slept at all.
Elias closed his eyes against the sun's aching glare that came through the massive circular window behind his desk. He opened the door and stepped out into the cool, dim hallway. Those days were over. Forever. And maybe, Elias locked his office, maybe he liked that too.