Archive of Our Own

Jon was nine when he got the first call. It cut through the heavy silence that only falls in those single digits of morning, awakening him—or perhaps he had already been awake. It was hard to tell.

The phone sat on the wall, where Jon was sure there had not been a phone before. It was cherry red and sat nestled in a cradle of the same color. Where Jon expected a cord, spiraling into the wall, there was simply more of that shining plastic. Its ring was unobtrusive, like a polite question.

Jon did not answer. It was just a feeling, a tug in his gut, almost instinctual. He should not answer. He did not think he would like what whoever was on the other end had to say.

He lay back in bed and closed his eyes. After a moment, the ringing cut off with something that was almost a sigh—if phones could sigh—and Jon, hesitantly, cracked one eye open. The wall was blank, its unmarred eggshell-white paint shadowed by the moonlight streaming in through the window. It had always been blank. There had never been a phone, and Jon had never heard the ringing that still, now, echoed through his mind.

He did not sleep that night.

“Statement ends.”

Jon sighs, feeling the weight of… something slide off his shoulders, and presses the ‘end recording’ button on his laptop. “Let’s just make sure…” he mumbles, navigating to the audio playback. He presses play.

His voice is so distorted he almost doesn’t recognize it. With a sigh, he leans back in his chair—uncomfortable, too hard; maybe he can requisition a new one?—and pinches his nose, feeling that knot of frustration between his shoulder blades tighten. Great. First day as Head Archivist, and he’s already failed at the actual archiving part.

“Hey, sorry—you haven’t seen a dog, have you?”

Jon sits up so quickly he thinks he might have pulled something. He steels his face into something resembling authority and glances at the figure standing in his doorway. He doesn’t recognize the red-faced, flustered man standing there, looking slightly out of breath and just a touch nervous. He… doesn’t know quite what to say. “I’m s- sorry, what?” Banner start, Jon.

The man clears his throat. “Um- uh, a dog. A- a spaniel, I think.”

What? “In… in general, or…?”

“N- no, in the Archives.”

Oh, of course. Because nothing in his life can ever be easy. “Why would there be a dog in the Archives?”

The man rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Oh, ‘cause well, I—“

Jon decides he has a more important question, so he interrupts, “Who are you?”

The man lets out a nervous laugh. “Uh, M- Martin, I- and ‘cause… I may have… let him in?”

Jon really can’t deal with this today. He stands, too quickly, and fixes the man in the doorway—Martin—with the best glare he can muster. “What? Why?”

“Oh… heh. Well, I didn’t- I didn’t mean to! You know, uh- I- we were outside, making friends, and- and then- I, I had to come in, but—“

Martin keeps stammering out explanations, excuses, but Jon can’t hear him anymore, because now there is a phone. There is a cherry red phone, and there has always been a phone there—or there has never been a phone there, just behind Martin’s shoulder, sitting on the wall. Waiting. And then it begins to ring—or it’s been ringing the whole time. Jon can’t be sure. The sound nestles in Jon’s mind, like it always does, slotting neatly into his senses like it’s always been there, beckoning him, but never pushing. Never forcing. Always waiting. It’s hard to hear anything else but the ringing, but Jon’s used to this. He knows how to pretend, to act like he can’t hear it calling to him, to compartmentalize his world into phone and not-phone.

Right now, not-phone is Martin, still standing in his doorway, and it occurs to Jon that he still really has no idea who he is.

“Why were you coming into the Archives?” he bites out, perhaps a little too harsh, but it’s hard to focus on softening his words with that ringing in his ears.

Martin looks distracted, but he shakes his head as if to clear it before saying, “Oh, uh… I work here.”

Jon tries to reconcile this with what he knows and comes up blank. “No you don’t,” is all he can think to say. “I requested Tim and I requested Sasha, and you are neither.”

The phone is still ringing. Why is it still ringing? Has it always been ringing? It’s never rung this long before. Perhaps this time, it will never stop. Perhaps he’s been ignoring it for too long.

“Oh.” Martin’s eyes grow wide, then. “Oh! Oh, you’re- Jonathan Sims. Yeah. Um- Mr. Bouchard said I’d- I’d be working for you.” He looks panicked, and a little bit of something else that Jon can’t quite put his finger on. His eyes flick to the side, like a nervous twitch.

Annoyance works its way through the cacophony in Jon’s ears. When did the ringing get so loud? “Well, he didn’t tell me anything about it!” Did he shout that? It’s hard to tell.

He must have, because Martin winces. “He, uh- he said that… um. Well, he transferred me from the Library, so.” Another glance to the side.

Jon wants Martin to leave. He needs Martin to leave. Then, he realizes he can. “So I’m your boss.”

Martin pauses, unsure. “I mean… I guess.” He lets out a nervous chuckle. Yet another glance. Irritation spikes, amplified by the cacophony in his mind.

“Which means that technically—“ ringing, louder and louder, why was it so loud? it had never been this loud “—I have the power to dismiss you, if this dog situation is not resolved immediately.”

“I mean, yeah. Probably.”

Really? Jon fixes Martin with another glare.

Martin’s eyes widen in understanding. “Oh! Oh, yes! R- right, sorry, uh, I- I’ll- sorry!”

He takes a few steps back, as if to leave, and nearly knocks the phone from its cradle. “Ah, sorry!” He stumbles away, his hands up in an apologetic gesture. “I- I’ve been in the way, haven’t I? You probably need to answer that, and here I’ve been, just stammering away like a- well, I’ll just- let you get on with it, then, and I’ll- get on with- my business.” He backs fully into the hall, nearly tripping over the raised threshold. “Nice to- nice to meet you, I guess. Sorry!”

Then, he’s gone, and Jon should be glad, but all he can feel is an uncomfortable squeezing in his chest, his breath caught in his throat, his eyes trained on the space Martin had once occupied, on the cherry red phone on the wall. There was no cherry red phone on the wall, and there was no ringing. Jon could have convinced himself that there had never been a phone, that it had never filled his head with a sound that was at once a cacophony and a murmur.

Except.

Martin had heard it. Jon sinks back into his chair, feeling detached from himself. Martin had heard it ring, had seen that shining plastic where there should not have been plastic, and he had known. He had seen.

No one had ever heard the ringing but Jon, and now someone had. And it makes him very, very afraid.

Jon was thirteen when he began to consider that there might be something wrong with him.

He sat in the back of the classroom, near the window, so that when he couldn’t focus on the lecture he could look out at the street it faced, watching the cars whisk by in a blur of color and shape. The teacher’s voice would fade to a pleasant drone in the background, and he would get lost in thought, living inside his own mind for as long as he could, until something interrupted and he would get pulled back into reality.

That day, something was the ringing of a phone, both suddenly and gradually returning him to the classroom in which he sat. He knew it, by now—that familiar cadence, that spot of cherry red on the wall where it had simultaneously never been and always been. It did not frighten him like maybe it should have; maybe it was just because he’d seen worse. Though he tried not to think about that.

This was, though, the first time it had appeared outside of the dark of his bedroom, and though he couldn’t say why, a small shiver ran up his spine. The ringing was quiet, still, but louder than the voice coming from the front of the classroom; the teacher had to hear it, certainly, and she would know that the phone was his, and they would call his grandmother, and he would be in trouble. He sat there stiffly, staring at the phone as it rang and rang and rang, waiting for the stern words he was sure were to come.

And it continued to ring. And the teacher continued to speak under it, the cadence of her voice uncomfortably out of time with the ringing, and nobody looked at the cherry red phone that sat on the wall at the front of the classroom, where there had never been a phone. A new tension settled in Jon’s chest, and he tore his eyes away from the phone to glance at the boy sitting next to him, his pencil tapping on the table they shared in a rhythm that grated against Jon’s nerves.

“Can… can you hear it?” Jon whispered, and immediately felt silly. Of course he could hear it. They all could, and they were ignoring it, because that’s what you did when something was out of place, and he should ignore it too, and would be told as such.

The kid—whose name Jon couldn’t quite remember—squinted at him, like he wasn’t sure what Jon was asking. “Uh, hear what?”

The phone rang a little bit louder, a bit more insistent. Almost mocking.

Still, Jon persisted, because they had to hear it. They just… they just had to. “The phone. The… the ringing.”

The kid—maybe Deacon? Or maybe not—gave Jon a look halfway between confusion and irritation. “This room doesn’t have a phone.”

“Yes, it—“ Jon’s voice grew in volume slightly, and he forced it down again. “It’s right there—“

He pointed, to where the cherry red phone was, but the wall was smooth, white stone. There was no phone. There had never been a phone.

“Oh,” Jon said, his voice small. He crumpled a bit into himself. There… there had never been a phone, and the metallic ringing in his ears had never come from a cherry red handset.

Maybe-Deacon muttered something that Jon didn’t quite catch, though the words bit into him anyway, and resumed tapping his pencil. Jon stared at that spot on the wall for the rest of the lesson, red dancing just at the edge of his vision. Not corporeal enough to focus on—just enough to convince him that there had, in fact, been a phone where there was not a phone anymore.

There was a phone, and then there wasn’t, and nobody knew but him.

He never asked anyone about it again.

Jon fiddles with the tape recorder in his hands. It isn’t running at the moment—he doesn’t know how much tape they have left, and they might need it… later. Whenever that will be. His leg throbs in pain, but at least it’s stopped bleeding. It helps that Martin wrapped it in a strip of cloth he’d torn off one of the shirts laying on the ground in document storage—one of Martin’s shirts, probably. Since he’s been living here.

Jon would like to say that he’d invited Martin to stay in the Archives solely because of the incident at his apartment, but that would be a lie. Jon still doesn’t know why Martin had… had heard what he heard. The more he reads, the more the sinking feeling in his stomach that there is something else going on grows, and the more certain he becomes that that phone that is and isn’t is a part of it. And if Martin could hear it too, when it had been following Jon for almost as long as he could remember… well, then Jon would rather keep Martin close, where he can watch him.

He’d flinched, when Martin’s fingers had touched the skin of his leg. “Sorry, sorry!” Martin had said, pulling his hand back. “I- yeah, it looks bad, like it hurts, and we don’t really have bandages—though I don’t think if we did, they would be big enough—but I don’t have to—“

“It’s fine,” Jon had said through grit teeth. The flinch had only half been because of the pain. “Just- just be quick about it.”

And Martin had been, surprisingly so. At Jon’s questioning look, he’d stammered something about his mother, before flushing and scooting back so there were a few feet between him and Jon.

“Do you think they’re okay?” Martin says now, breaking the silence, and Jon’s fingers still over the tape recorder. “I mean, obviously none of us are okay, but- but you don’t think they’re…”

“I—“ Jon wants to say that they’re fine. He wants to say that this is just a parasite, that there’s nothing supernatural going on. He wants to ask Martin what he is. Instead, he just sighs. “I don’t know.”

“Right, yeah.” Martin leans back, and there’s silence for a moment.

“Why are you here, Martin?” Jon doesn’t mean to break the silence, but the question has been sitting on the tip of his tongue for months, and apparently now is the time it slips free.

Martin looks surprised. “Well… well, Prentiss is out there and you can’t run, so—“

Jon sighs. “I mean at the Archives in general. Why haven’t you quit?”

Martin blinks at Jon. “Are you giving me my review now?”

“No, I just—“ Jon lets out a breath of frustration. “It’s been bothering me. You’ve been living in the Archives for four months, constant threat of… this.” He gestures vaguely to the door, and Martin winces. “Sleeping with a fire extinguisher and a corkscrew. Even you must be aware that that’s not normal for an archiving job. Why are you still here?”

Martin hums. “Don’t really know. I just… am. It didn’t really feel right to just leave. I’ve typed up a few resignation letters, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hand them in.” He pauses; the silence is heavy. “I’m… trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck.”

Like a fly in a web. The thought comes to Jon, unbidden, and he shudders. “I know how you feel.”

They settle back into silence. It’s a blessing, surely, that they can’t hear the worms. Still, the absence of any noise at all makes the air that much heavier. It weighs on his chest, settling between his ribs and filling the open spaces within him. He’s never really liked silence. He considers running the tape recorder, just to hear the constant whir of it, to break through the gentle ringing in his ears, to fall into that familiar cadence of speech—

Wait. When… when had the ringing started?

Jon’s eyes snap to the wall, and there, like a splash of cherry red blood, sits the phone. The ringing fills the room, echoing through the shelves and bouncing back to his ears, and—was he always standing? Surely he was, though he shouldn’t be—his leg hurts, and he should be sitting. He shouldn’t be walking over to the wall. Has the ringing always been this… insistent? No, no, it had been gentle. Patient. Waiting. What had changed? He wants to answer. He wants to glue his hands to his sides so they can’t reach for that smooth plastic, so they can’t feel the comforting weight of the receiver in his palm, so they can’t lift it, oh so carefully, from its cradle—

He’s yanked backward, and like the snap of a rubber band pulled too tight, his mind breaks free from cherry red. There’s a hand wrapped around his upper arm, and his name echoes in his ears, barely discernable from the ringing that still consumes them. There’s- there’s a face…

“Martin?”

“Oh, thank god.” Martin’s grip is still tight on Jon’s arm. He glances at something behind Jon, and his anxious expression relaxes slightly. “It’s okay, it’s gone.”

“It…?” Jon turns, slightly, to see… nothing. Just a wall. Had there… had there been a phone there? “I don’t…”

“Yeah, there was a- well, I don’t know, exactly. A phone? And, um, well you went sort of blank? And just stood and went to answer it, but you didn’t really—“ Martin sucks in a shaky breath. “Well, you didn’t… move right?”

Jon’s head is beginning to clear, slightly, and he’s himself enough to shake off Martin’s hand. “Move right?” He shakes his head. “Wait, so you- you saw it again?”

“What do you mean, ‘again’?” Martin looks alarmed. “Has this happened before?”

“Well, not the- the ‘moving right’ part, but the ringing…” Jon hesitates, but Martin’s eyes have grown wide.

“Wait. I- I think I- that first day in the Archives, with the dog, and your office- there was a phone, and it just kept ringing and I thought you just couldn’t hear it, or that you were too annoyed with me to pay any attention to it, but- that was the same phone, wasn’t it?”

No use denying it. Jon nods mutely.

“And you didn’t…”

“No, I didn’t answer it.”

“How many times—“

“Look, Martin, just- just stop talking, okay!” Jon’s breathing is ragged. “I… I don’t…” I don’t trust you. I don’t know why you can hear it. I don’t know what you are.

Martin stares at him, and Jon stares back, and neither of them seem to have the right words.

Then, the wall begins to shudder under the force of something heavy hitting the other side, and the need for right words is forgotten.

Gertrude’s dead. Gertrude was murdered. By… by someone at the Institute.

And in the corner of his eye, cherry red. Back to waiting. That careful patience. But now, he knows what happens when that patience wears thin.

He knows that he’s wearing thin.

It has to be Martin. It has to be. There are too many things swirling around him, too many things that don’t make sense, too many unanswered questions. When he finally pulls Martin in to demand answers, and Martin starts babbling about his CV, Jon snaps.

“Stop, just- just stop!” Jon slams his hands on his desk, and Martin jumps. Jon feels a small pang of guilt run through him, but the ringing in his ears quickly drowns it out. Is the phone ringing, or has he just come to expect it, fabricating the sound even when it isn’t there?

He could ask Martin.

He can’t ask Martin.

“I don’t care about you- you lying to get a job here!” Jon tries to breathe, but it’s hot in his throat. “I need to know what you are.”

Martin looks shocked, which makes a strangled laugh build in Jon’s throat. “I- I’m sorry, what?”

“I- I know there are things out there, things like Michael and Prentiss and god knows what else, things- things that watch us, and things that keep calling me, and you- you are a part of it, somehow, so just tell me what you are!”

“O- okay, just- please, I don’t know what you’re talking about—“

“Don’t lie to me!” Jon sucks in a shaky breath. “I know you can hear it.”

Martin’s quiet for a moment. “I don’t…”

As if on some terrible, terrible cue, ringing fills his office, and the phone is on his desk, where it’s always been. The sound bounces around the small space, echoing back to his ears, and it almost sounds like laughter.

“Oh,” Martin says in a small voice. Then, with a touch of anxiety: “Wait, are you going to—?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Jon’s voice is like ice.

A beat. “Wait, you think that I- that I have something to do with this?”

“I know you do.” No point in holding back now, he supposes. “For twenty years, that thing has been following me, ringing and ringing and ringing, and no one notices. It- it’s been in my head, and I’ve been ignoring it, trying to ignore it, but it- it still feels like…” He takes a breath. “Like I’m just doing what it wants. Like I’m caught in… in some sort of web, and that even if I do nothing, I’ll still be doing exactly what it wants. I… I can feel them.” He shudders. “The threads. The… the hooks. I don’t know if answering it would break them, or just make them tighter. But I suppose none of that really matters.” He laughs humorously. “The point is that in all that time, you are the only other person who has ever been able to hear it. And that- that has to mean that you’re involved, somehow, because why else would- would you be able to-“

Jon runs a frustrated hand through his hair. He’s a mess. How long has he been like this? How… how long has his office been quiet?

“Just- just tell me why,” he finally says, the tightness in his throat strangling the words slightly as they leave him.

Martin is staring at him, eyes wide with shock. Finally, he manages to say, “Twenty years? Jesus, Jon-“

“Martin.”

“Don’t ‘Martin’ me! Look, I don’t know why I can hear your- your ghost phone, or whatever you want to call it, but it’s a good thing I can, because I am sure that whatever’s on the other end is a hell of a lot worse than whatever you think I am. And maybe you’re forgetting, but I’m the one who- who kept you from answering the thing back when Prentiss attacked! So if I’m involved with what’s on the other end, I’m doing a pretty shit job of helping them, don’t you think?”

“I- I suppose, but—“

“No, just- just listen to me, for once, okay? Please?” Martin pauses, waiting, and Jon begrudgingly nods. “Great. I know things have been… a lot, lately, and I’m not going to pretend to understand how you feel about… Gertrude, or anything, but I need you to believe me when I say that I have nothing to do with this.” He lets out a small laugh. “I didn’t even know you when you were seventeen.”

“Nine,” Jon says absently.

“You’re twenty-nine? You know what—never mind, not important right now. I just- I just need you to believe me.” Martin pauses. “Do you believe me?”

Jon wants to. He really does.

“I- I’ll try.” He guesses that’s just going to have to be enough, for now.

Martin purses his lips, like he knows that’s not an answer, but he doesn’t say anything beyond, “Okay. I’m going to- to go make some tea. I’ll be back.”

Jon knows he will. He wishes it didn’t make him feel so uneasy.

Jon doesn’t answer the phone when it rings through Artifact Storage, its chimes sounding an awful lot like a warning. He cleaves the table in two, and things slant sideways.

He doesn’t answer the phone when he’s standing outside the Institute, cigarette held between two shaking fingers, Leitner’s words running on a loop through his head. Does he belong to it, too? Cherry red runs into crimson, pooling on his desk, and he runs.

He doesn’t answer the phone as he sits in Georgie’s apartment, the wheels of the recorder still spinning, the image of long, spindly legs fresh in his mind again. He hadn’t knocked, but he begins to consider that perhaps he never did escape its thin, silky threads.

It rings in the café, and Melanie doesn’t blink, her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee. It rings when Jon’s reaching for Jude Perry’s hand, already feeling the heat radiating off it but unable to stop his hand’s doomed trajectory. It rings in free fall, where sound barely penetrates the pressure in Jon’s ears and the tugging of gravity on his stomach and the terror pulsing through his every nerve. It rings through a dark basement, through a too-large wax museum, through an Institute thousands of miles from his own.

He asks, his voice shaking slightly, if he’s still human, and it rings through the cramped office, as if to mock him. All he can see is cherry red.

Elias doesn’t answer him; his fingers are steepled beneath his chin, and the corner of his mouth quirks upward. “Are you going to get that?”

Jon should probably be surprised that Elias can hear it. He should probably be a lot of things. “Who… who’s on the other end?”

“I’m afraid that’s something you’ll have to find out for yourself.”

Jon lets out a breath. “Of course it is.” He doesn’t know what he expected.

Jon doesn’t answer, and like a sigh, the ringing folds back into unreality, until it was never there at all. Elias’s smile deepens. “The thing about humanity,” he says, “is that it all comes down to will. You can bleed like anyone else; you can die like anyone else. And your will is still your own.” A beat. “Mostly. That’s more than can be said for a lot of the ‘real’ humans out there.”

Jon thinks about a hand, reaching. About threads and webs and puppet strings and hooks that pull and stretch and guide. About the patience of something that knows what you’ll do next because the script has already been written, and it holds the pen.

He tries not to think at all.

“I… I suppose so.”

Then, he meets Gerard Keay, and everything slots into place.

“Being manipulated or puppeted. The worry you’re caught in a trap you can’t see,” Gerard says. The Web. There’s a moment of silence. No, not silence, Jon realizes. A moment of ringing. Not a moment—an always. Has the ringing every really stopped, since the first time he saw that splash of cherry red against his bedroom wall? Or has it just faded to something you could call silence if you lied to yourself enough? Maybe it had always been tugging at him, in ways he could never know, had never realized.

If he answered it, would that truly be a choice of his own, or just another hook through his skin, just another tug?

He asks another question, then another, until there is no phone anymore. Until there had never been a phone at all. Though his eyes are too wide to believe the lie anymore.

The ringing, loud and insistent and desperate, is the last thing he hears, cutting through the nothing and everything and spinning wrongright of the Unknowing, before Tim’s thumb depresses the button on the detonator and everything goes dark.

In the blackness, his eyes open, and he begins to dream.

Jon was twenty-one when he first began to wonder who was on the other side.

It had taken too long, perhaps, for the thought to cross his mind. Maybe it was because he still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t experiencing a very long, very persistent delusion. He’d done a lot of research about delusions and psychosis, thought a lot about seeing someone about it, but every time he thought he’d finally decided to do something about it, he… couldn’t. The thought just slipped away, like condensation down the side of a glass.

Eventually, he decided it was fine. He wasn’t going to hurt himself; he wasn’t going to hurt anyone else. He just experienced the presence of a cherry red, old-fashioned telephone, sometimes, and he would just have to get used to it. Since he couldn’t seem to bring himself to do anything about it, anyway. It would have to be fine. Even if it didn’t feel fine.

He was backstage, fiddling with his eyeliner, when the sound cut through the air, startling the careful line above his eye into a jagged scar across his forehead. And he just… snapped.

He stalked over to the phone, still that same shining cherry red despite the near-absence of lights backstage, and with a quick, furious motion, knocked it off its cradle and onto the ground. The ringing cut off abruptly, leaving his head pounding and his heart racing in his chest. Faintly, he could hear a static, buzzing sound, and he was half-convinced it was his own angry terror, echoing in his ears. Then, a barely-there tinny voice that was at once high and low and gravely and smooth: “Hello, Jon.”

He stumbled into the cold London night, managing to open the door despite the tight grip of his hands around his ears, and tried desperately to forget.

There’s no time, no where or when when living in one’s own mind, so Jon doesn’t know if it’s been minutes or months or centuries when he sees it. As soon as he can see it, he can hear it. Or maybe he’s always heard it. He doesn’t even know if he is.

But the phone is. It’s sitting on a wall in a home that might be familiar, if Jon still felt things like familiar and I know you. He Sees. He Knows. But to turn that within himself feels like trying to turn a single sheet of paper inside out, so he ceases to try.

There’s a woman standing next to it. He Knows her—Knows her and hates her, because she is here but she is not afraid, and so she is useless to him, but still she passes him, watching, worrying, and he wishes she would leave.

The phone is ringing. The phone is not afraid, but he can feel fear. Is it hers? He turns to her eagerly, but she is looking at the phone, and she only tastes of that same cloying, sickening concern. Then, she looks at him, and he can see fear reflected in her eyes, and he lurches.

He is the one that is afraid.

His limbs jerk, and he must be, because how else can he be pulled to that wall like a stringed marionette, walked by some invisible hand to the clanging, cherry red no, please don’t, I don’t want to sitting there on the wall.

The woman is gone.

A tape recorder is running, somewhere in this place that doesn’t have a where and isn’t a place. A voice speaks, rhythmic and smooth, and Jon listens. He Sees the fear, leaking through the plastic handset and spinning webs in his mind, and it’s fresh and inviting and he drinks it in. A where becomes a where and a when becomes a when and he becomes.

“But you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head,” Oliver Banks says, voice marred by the crackle of a tape and cherry red plastic. “Easier to just do what she asks.”

A clock ticks.

The Archivist begins to breathe.

Life in the Archives is… well, rough is a word, Jon supposes. Melanie is all anger, red-hot and boiling and threatening to burn Jon if he gets too close. Basira is subtler, but he can tell she doesn’t trust him, doesn’t think he’s…

And Martin…

And he hasn’t seen the phone since he woke up. He might be relieved, if his only memory from those six months he spent motionless on a hospital bed wasn’t a flash of cherry red.

It’s going to come back. He’s certain of that. What he’ll do when it does… of that, he’s less certain.

He’s sitting in his office, the words of a statement still lingering on his lips, when he Sees him. Quicker than he thought possible, he’s out of his chair and out the door.

“Martin. Martin!”

Martin stops mid-step, a small wince passing over his face. “Oh.” He turns to face Jon, mouth twisting into what Jon thinks is meant to be a smile but doesn’t quite hit the mark. “Hi, Jon.”

Thank god. “Martin, i- i- it’s… I- I, I haven’t seen you!”

Martin’s shoulders hunch slightly, like he’s trying to hide. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“W- what… where have you been, I- I mean, I thought—“ He’s so desperate for answers. Where have you been? Why are you working for Peter Lukas? What happened to you while I was gone?

When did I decide that I trusted you, more than I trusted myself?

Martin interrupts his stuttered half-attempt at a question. “Oh- no, no, I’ve… I’ve been here. I just, um, you know… been busy.”

Oh. “Busy.”

“Yeah.”

“Right. Working for Lukas.”

Martin winces again. “Ah, n- no. Peter’s…” He sighs, and Jon feels sort of like he’s falling. “It’s complicated.”

Jon finds himself wishing, desperately, for cherry red. It hadn’t been a comfort, before, to know that Martin could hear it, but now, Jon clings to it like a lifeline. Maybe, if Martin heard it, he would remember when he’d burst into Jon’s office, frantic and disheveled. Maybe he’d remember gripping Jon’s arm like a lifeline, the only thing keeping Jon anchored when his body wasn’t quite his own. Maybe he’d anchor Jon now, if it rang. Jon feels like he’s floating, and the ground is so, so far out of reach.

He knows that if he reached for Martin now, he’d fall short.

The phone does not ring, and there is no cherry red on the walls. Jon has never felt so empty.

“Right.” It’s not. But he doesn’t know what else to say.

Maybe he says something else. Maybe he asks Martin how he is, how the poetry is, and maybe Martin answers. But in the end, Martin leaves, and Jon thinks he finally knows what Martin is. What Martin is to him.

He just wishes it hadn’t taken him so long to figure it out.

It’s… so hard to breathe, in the Lonely. The fog curls into Jon’s lungs, and he thinks that it should make him cough, but it just makes him shiver from the inside out, like his lungs have iced over.

Martin. He needs to find Martin.

“Martin!” His voice gets sucked up by the fog, falling flat and dying before it can penetrate the cloying grey that surrounds him. Louder: “Martin!”

Peter’s voice drifts through the fog, like wispy tendrils of its own. “He doesn’t want to see you.”

Jon looks around; nothing but endless nothing. “Where are you?”

“I’m not here, Archivist. No one is. It’s only you.”

His voice echoes through the nothing that surrounds them, like a specter of itself. It makes something tight and angry coil in Jon’s chest.

“Fine. Then maybe no one can answer some questions.”

From a different direction this time: “You’ve still got time, Archivist. Turn around. Leave. You’ve played your part—now go.”

Jon Looks, trying and failing to find the source of Peter’s voice. “What’s wrong, Lukas? Afraid of talking face-to-face?”

Peter’s chuckle bounces off of a hundred different invisible facets, spinning off into the fog. “Of course. Or haven’t you been paying attention?”

Jon can’t help the growl of frustration that escapes him. “Martin!”

Peter’s voice sounds thoughtful. “It’s odd, really. You each think you’re so focused on the other, but how much do you really know each other? How much time have you spent together when not working, or bickering, or fleeing from the latest thing that wants to kill you?” He chuckles again, each echo grating on Jon’s nerves. “Or, have you convinced yourself that the spider’s obsession with you both is some sort of connection?”

“Shut up,” Jon snaps. “Martin!”

“Oh, is that it?” Peter almost sounds sad. “You’re being manipulated, Archivist. You’ve been a puppet for so long you don’t know what’s your will and what’s hers. How can you know, truly, that what you feel is genuine, and not just another thread pulling you where she wants you to go? The love you think you have for each other, it doesn’t exist. Not really. And that’s a very lonely place to be.” Another echoing chuckle. “But don’t worry, Archivist. In here, the strings all fall away. For him, at least. He’ll finally be at peace.”

“Just shut up!” His voice is starting to go hoarse, but he doesn’t care. “Martin, where are you?”

With slow, careful diction, Peter says, “He doesn’t. Want. To see you.”

“Then let me hear that from him,” Jon snaps. “Because from where I stand, the only person manipulating him has been you. And I’ll find you eventually. You know I will.”

Silence. Jon waits for a moment, then hums in a sort of smug pride. “Thought so.” He makes his way through the fog, wet sand crunching underfoot. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees a shadow pass through the fog.

“Martin!” Jon takes quick steps toward the shadow, and it resolves into something that could be Martin, if all the color were sucked out of him and he were smudged at the edges, like a black-and-white charcoal drawing.

“Jon?” It echoes, and each repetition makes the knot in Jon’s chest grow tighter.

He takes a few more steps toward Martin, a hand instinctively reaching for him. “I- I’m here. I came for you.”

Martin stares through Jon, like he’s not quite aware that Jon’s there. “Why?”

Why, indeed. “I… thought you might be lost.”

Martin’s eyes focus a little more on Jon’s face, and Jon swears he sees a flash of color—just a bit of red, spreading across Martin’s cheeks. “Are you real?”

“Yes!” Jon takes another step forward, desperately. “Yes, I- I am. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”

His hand brushes against Martin’s cheek—it’s cold, so cold, but real, not made of fog—and he sees that flash of color again, adding a temporary hue to Martin’s skin. They’re safe. They’re going to—

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

Jon’s hand flinches away from Martin like he’s been shocked. The color has drained away, even more so than before, and Jon realizes that it’s bled onto his hand, staining his palm cherry red. No, no. “Why?” he says, desperation choking the words in his throat.

“This is where I should be.” Martin’s looking into the middle distance again. “I can’t feel her here. Ever since I met you, I could feel her. Maybe before then. Maybe my whole life. But not here. Here…” He sighs, and it sounds like every lost soul that’s ever wandered in the Lonely. “Nothing hurts here. There’s no one to pull any strings. There’s no wondering why I did what I did, or worrying about whether my will is my own. It’s just… quiet. Even the fear is gentle, here.”

Jon shakes his head, his thoughts spinning and tripping over each other. He reaches for Martin again, but he can’t reach him anymore. When did they drift further apart? “This… this isn’t right. This isn’t you.”

“It is, though.” Martin smiles slightly. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Maybe the strings were pulling me here all along. Maybe they knew I belonged here.”

“You don’t. You—“ He wants to say that they haven’t been manipulated. He wants to give Martin some reason why the web the spider has caught them in hasn’t brought them exactly where it wants them. He wants to say that he’s never answered that call.

The words stick in his throat.

Martin sighs, a light, lilting sound that wraps around Jon like a soft blanket. “I really loved you, you know? I… I don’t think that was a manipulation, at least. Then again, I suppose I wouldn’t be able to tell.”

Jon’s heart falls through the bottom of his feet. “No, no, it wasn’t! Obviously he’s- he’s done something. Peter’s done something to, to mess with you—“

But Martin’s gone. Maybe he was never there at all.

Peter’s back, and Jon extracts a statement from him as easily as plucking a ripe tomato from the vine. And, when he pushes too far, the pop and rip as Peter ceases to exist is like a ripe tomato, as well, crushed resolutely underfoot.

And Martin’s there, again, resolving out of the fog like a photo slowly developing. “Martin,” Jon says, relief flooding over him. “He’s gone, Martin. He- he’s gone. He can’t manipulate you any more.”

“He never was.” That echo, again, bouncing over and over again through the fog.

“Listen to me, Martin.” More firmly: “Listen. I’m not going to pretend like we were never- like we haven’t been caught in a web this whole time. God knows how many actions weren’t our own. And I’m not going to- to try to convince you that it’s safer out there, because we both know it’s not. But I- I know—“ He takes a deep breath. “I know that our feelings are our own. I Know they are. I need you to believe me, Martin. I- I need you to trust me.” He places a gentle hand on Martin’s cheek again; it’s still stained that cherry red, and a bit of color returns to Martin’s face with the touch. “I need you.”

“No, you don’t.” Martin’s eyes are unfocused, empty. “Not really. Everyone’s alone, but we all survive.”

“I don’t just want to survive!” Jon cups Martin’s other cheek with his other hand. He cuts off Martin’s soft, “I’m sorry,” with an insistent, “Martin. Martin, look at me. Look at me and tell me what you see.”

Red spreads through Martin’s face like a deep flush; in the distance, Jon thinks he hears that soft, metallic ringing, cutting through the fog. Like a beacon.

“I see…” Martin blinks, his eyes focusing and unfocusing as Jon stares intently into them. “I see you, Jon.” A small, disbelieving laugh escapes his lips. “I see you.”

“Martin.” Halfway between a sigh and a smile.

The path out of the Lonely is lined with cherry red.

Let me know if you see any good cows.

God, were those going to be his last words to Martin? He hadn’t even… so much had happened, so quickly, and he hadn’t gotten the chance to…

Words spill from his lips unbidden, unwanted, unstoppable. They burn his tongue on their way out, ripping past his lips and leaving him screaming, screaming, screaming for it to stop, but the words are steady, constant, unyielding. He can’t do anything but consume, the statement of Jonah Magnus flowing from him and through him, storing itself in the Archive that he’s become, unwillingly, yet entirely by choice.

Had he really chosen this? Or is this just another tug of the strings, another twitch of the web, another ring of a cherry red telephone?

He isn’t even going to get the chance to tell Martin that he loves him.

Obviously, I’m going to tell you if I see any good cows! Said with a smile. They were comfortable. They were safe. They… they could stay here, walking through the countryside, for as long as they needed. Maybe their whole lives. He… he would have liked that.

And then the statements had arrived. Like he’d requested. Like he’d chosen.

“Now,” his own voice incants, pulled from him by a thousand threads. The laugh rips through his throat like a knife. “Repeat after me.”

Everything twists and bends, and nothing is everything is wrong is right is seen. Words spin around him, choking him and setting him free and lifting him high above everything else and trapping him in a thick mass of knotted string. The door in his mind is trembling under the force of the waves that hit it with the strength of a thousand tsunamis, and it cracks, water coming through in trickles and rivulets and streams and floods. An eye opens, then another, and another, and he might be screaming, or he might be chanting. Everything is screaming and spinning and crashing and swirling and cracking and ringing and ringing and ringing and—

“Stop talking, Archivist.”

Everything snaps back into place with a sudden, reverberating impact, and Jon barely has time to register the cherry red phone clutched in his hand before he collapses into inky darkness.

Jon. Oh my god, Jon. Jon, wake up. Jon? Jon!

A sharp crack of pain against Jon’s face sends him reeling back into consciousness, a half-finished scream ripping from him before he can register that he’s lying on the floor in the cabin, papers scattered around him haphazardly. He feels… sticky, somehow, and he realizes with a jolt that he’s covered in cobwebs, their wispy tendrils clinging to his skin even as he desperately tries to shake them off.

“Jon!” Martin’s arms wrap around Jon tightly, squeezing so hard Jon can barely breathe. “Oh, thank god. I- I thought maybe you were- you were d- and I didn’t know what to do- the world was- it was wrong, and the sky- I started running, but the ground was, was collapsing, and there was this screaming, coming from everywhere, and I- I swear, there was something in the sky, looking at me, and I- I didn’t know what to do!” Martin stops babbling to breathe, but his grip on Jon doesn’t loosen. “But then it just- it just snapped back, like- I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t- I don’t think there are words to describe it. And then you were here, on the ground, and the webs and the statement and the- the, um.”

And Jon sees the phone, sitting on the ground next to him, static spilling out quietly from the speaker, and his stomach twists.

“I…” he croaks, his voice barely escaping from his ragged throat. “Oh god. I- I think I almost ended the world, Martin.”

Martin stills; when Jon manages to extract himself from Martin’s grip, he sees Martin’s eyes, wide and full of horror. “What?” he finally says.

And then, another voice, tinny but crystal-clear in its intent: “Hello, Archivist.”

Martin looks at the phone like it might grow teeth and attack them. “Did- did you answer it?”

Jon doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember standing, or walking with stilted motions over to the wall, where the cherry red phone sat, its ringing cutting through the nothing everything where when none timeless looking seeing understanding fear. He doesn’t remember taking the handset in his hand and raising it to his ear, offering no greeting but the ritual spilling unbidden from his lips.

Then, the instruction, like a string attached to his jaw, pulling it shut. And that was it.

Wordlessly, he picks up the phone, despite Martin’s stuttered protests, and holds it up to his ear yet again.

“I’m so glad you finally decided to pick up.” The voice on the other end laughs softly. “Though it did, ultimately, require a bit of a… tug, on my end.”

“Who… who are you?” Perhaps not the most pressing question, but the most important to Jon.

“Currently, I’m Annabelle Cane.”

“What do you mean, ‘currently’?”

“A bit of an obvious question, don’t you think?” A small laugh. “Though, when we first met, I was Raymond Fielding—not that you would have known that. You never answered when I called. Of course, you never really needed to answer. A professional courtesy, you could call it.”

“I don’t think you’ve answered my question.” His voice comes out thick, crackling: “Who are you?”

“You don’t have to compel me, Archivist. I have never lied to you.” The voice hums. “But I suppose I have been a bit unfair. I believe I’ve been described to your Institute as ‘the Mother,’ which is an apt a name as any.”

“The Mother.” It comes out softly, like a question. “What… how did you stop me?”

“Oh, I can be quite persuasive. Particularly with someone so… caught up in my web, if you’ll excuse the awful metaphor.”

Jon wants to protest, to deny that the spider has any hold over him. He knows he can’t. “Then why? Don’t- wouldn’t it be advantageous for you, if the world were remade?”

“Mm, perhaps. But I do rather prefer the world the way it is. It is much easier to weave an invisible web when you’re not being watched.”

“Well—“ Jon pauses, unsure. For so, so many years he’s lived with a ringing in his ears, followed by something he couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t understand, couldn’t ignore. It drove him to the Institute, desperate to understand, to explain what he couldn’t pretend didn’t exist anymore. If the Web didn’t want this, then why—

“It is much easier to control a loose thread when you control the web it is attached to,” the voice—the Mother—says, answering an unanswered question. “Do you understand, Archivist?”

Jon thinks, finally, that he does. “I wish I didn’t.” And for a being so tied to the desire for knowledge and understanding, he’s surprised to find that he means it.

The Mother hums. “I would burn that statement, if I were you. Though, you were already thinking about doing so, I suppose.” She lets out another soft, tinkling laugh. “I’ve enjoyed our chat. Please do consider picking up again next time.”

Jon’s voice is hard. “I don’t suppose I’ll have a choice.”

Amused, she says, “That’s entirely up to you, Archivist. Choice is such a funny thing, after all.”

Silence fills Jon’s ear, and he realizes he’s no longer holding a phone. Perhaps he never was.

Martin’s still staring at him, eyes wide with confusion and something a bit sharper. “Okay, what the hell was that?”

Jon sucks in a breath. “I suppose… it was the final stitch, in a way. The last thread, tucked away.”

“What- what does that even mean?”

Jon glances at the papers strewn around him. He’s careful not to read the words, though he can feel himself drawn to them, now that the spider’s presence isn’t as strong. He forces himself to look away. “It means that the spider won. And the Eye… Jonah lost.”

Martin looks at Jon, then at the pages scattered around him. “Oh.” His voice is small and shaking, like someone who’s looked over the edge of a cliff and almost slipped, just barely regaining their footing. Jon supposes, in a way, they have. “So… so what now?”

Jon stands with a grimace, his head still throbbing like it’s going to burst, and glances out the window. The sky is beginning to turn the orange-red-yellow of sunset, and golden light filters through into the cabin, illuminating the dust floating gently in the air and the stringy cobwebs that sit in the corners of the window. For a moment, Jon can see another sky, one tinged with reds and greens and covered with eyes, endless, staring, unblinking eyes, whose tears turn to rain and soak the ground below with thick and oily drops that taste of bitter salt. It disappears with a shiver.

“I think,” Jon says, turning back to smile wryly at Martin, “that it’s time to burn some statements.”

Relief colors Martin’s face, and he returns the smile hesitantly. “Good thing I have experience in that department.”

The orange-red-yellow of the flames that consume the Watcher’s Crown mirrors the sky, and Jon slips his hand into Martin’s, feeling a weight he didn’t know was there lift from his chest. He feels Martin’s thumb rub small circles over his, and he Knows with absolutely clarity that whatever events led them here, he’d chosen this. This is his.

Orange-red-yellow consumes cherry red, and the cabin welcomes them home.