Chapter Text
───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────
“Statement, um… statement ends.”
Jon’s finger slips against the stop button on the tape recorder. For a moment, his hands stutter uncertainly in front of him — take off his glasses? Drop the papers? He has to drop the papers to take off his glasses. That should come first, yes. Papers, glasses, and then he can drop his face into his palms. Three steps. Easy.
The moment he does, his stomach turns. There’s a feeling at the back of his neck not unlike there already has been from time to time, but now— now. Now, it feels worse. Feels — tangible, feels like he read something off the page and into the room. That can’t be possible, except— except.
Except that he knows it is.
Had he taken his meds today?
Better check. Better check. Better check.
He’s wrist-deep in his bag when a presence in the doorway causes him so much alarm that he jerks backwards in his chair with a gasp. He rolls back from his desk and drags his bag with him, the sound of small items clattering to the tile clashing disorientingly with the feeling of its remaining weight hitting his sore knee. His hand flies up to clutch at his chest, the other scrambling to pull the bag onto his lap without dropping anything else onto the floor.
“Jesus Christ, Jon!” Sasha’s hands grip the doorframes on either side of her, hanging onto them to keep herself back and still through his scare. “What’s the matter with you? I was barely gone twenty minutes.”
“Sorry, I-I’m sorry.” Jon grabs his bag to shove it back onto his desk with a bit more force than necessary, eyes cast down and away from her as he scans the floor for what had fallen. Ah, yes, his pill case. “You startled me, is all.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Sasha crosses over to their desks, peeling her coat off to sling over the back of her chair. She frowns at his biryani, untouched in the tiffin box. “You didn’t eat your lunch?”
Jon blinks at the food. Oh. He’d taken it out with the intention of eating it, yes, but— “I got distracted.”
Sasha sits down and folds her hands. “With?”
“Case number… 9721207,” Jon recites, squinting at the top of the file as he puts his glasses back on. “I was scouring to see how we should tab it, but then I thought… I-I wanted to see what might happen if I… read past the warp mark.”
Not unusual, considering they need to read the statements to decipher their roots. He looks down at the tape recorder in indication of why this is different.
Sasha’s brows twitch down. “That why you look so rattled?”
Compulsively, Jon reaches up to smooth his hair down around his ears. It’s been a while since his last trim. There’s no reason to fib now. “I… Yes, probably.”
“Do we know how we’re tabbing it?” Sasha reaches out a hand for the statement. Jon holds up the folder to show her before he gives it over; he’s already stuck an aqua blue Post-It tab on the right hand side.
“Beholding, no question. It’s literally about feeling watched.” He leans over the desk to point out a sentence in the ninth paragraph. “And this — ‘Perhaps you could say that my curiosity was the fault that brought this on me?’ That— That feels thematic, as well. Curiosity.”
Sasha flicks the white tab underneath. “Why did you mark it Lonely, too?”
“Ah— That’s tentative, I’m not sure about it. I might be reading too much into it, but see here… ‘The place was so quiet, a lonely testament to Christopher’s isolation.’ It just… stuck out to me as I was reading, before I—”
“Read it.”
Jon lowers the file to push his glasses up on his nose. “Yes, exactly.”
Sasha sucks her teeth for a moment. She pulls the statement over with her as she leans back in her chair, eyes narrowed as she scans the top of the first page. She flicks the plastic tab at the top of the folder; a red arrow, stuck next to a green one.
“What’s the object?”
“A hand mirror,” Jon says. “But actually, what really stuck with me about this is… hang on, can you hand it back to me, please?”
She does, and he readjusts himself in his chair again to find the paragraph he’s thinking of. A nauseous wave stops him from reading again, a shudder crawling up his back like a xylophone trill.
“What’s the matter?”
Sasha is watching him closely. He really wishes she wouldn’t, right now.
“Sorry,” he says again, looking down and away from her. “I just— It felt… I felt something, reading it aloud. I-It just hit me, looking at it again with the intention of reading more than one line.”
“I can just read it myself, Jon.” She holds her hand out again.
He shakes his head. “No, I think you’d better not. It’s committed to tape, it’s finished.”
Gerry has said that he’d handle full recordings of the verified statements, and not to read past whatever it takes to see whether or not something takes digitally. He’d been candid about it: reading statements would affect all of them differently, and that as the Archivist, he’s the only one equipped to handle it. He hadn’t said it in a way that implies the rest of them are incompetent, but there was an air to the way he did say it that left Jon doubtful. Why shouldn’t they be able to disperse more of the work equally, wouldn’t that help with how little Gerry seems to want to record them in the first place? What made the rest of them ill-equipped?
There was only one way to find out, if Gerry wouldn’t elaborate. Though, now that he’s gone and done it, Jon isn’t too sure he’s done anyone a favour.
“I didn’t mean aloud,” Sasha clarifies. She’s raising her eyebrow at him again, head inclined. “What did you feel, reading it?”
Jon opens his mouth, wordless and lost. “I— I’m not sure how to describe it. Maybe nothing? Just… uneasy. It might just be what it was about.”
The other brow now. “A hand mirror?”
“A hand mirror that left a woman with an omnipresent feeling of being watched after she saw some horrible thing in the reflection behind her, until she suffered a mental breakdown on live television.”
Jon drops the folder back onto the desk. Sasha reaches for the folder now that he’s abandoned it. He lets her, rubbing his eyes under his glasses.
“Oh,” she says, after a few moments of reading. “Wow. Okay, I see why you’d flag it green.”
The system they’ve devised to reorganize the Archives is largely colour and placement based. There’s a chart pinned up on the cork side of the bulletin board hanging up on the wall next to Gerry’s office door, with Smirke’s Fourteen listed in two columns and enough space to put a uniquely coloured Post-It tab on the edge next to each of them. Underneath is another paper with four plastic arrow tabs denoting the major subjects featured in statements — blue for someones, yellow for somewheres, red for somethings, green for… creatures, somewhere between someone and something.
Being able to order Post-It tabs in all those colours was something of a joyful moment for Jon, but he can’t say he’s entirely happy with the way they’ve been assigned. Some of the words don’t match, but it was his synesthesia against Gerry’s. It’s a losing battle, as evidenced by the mocking stick figure that Tim drew of him underneath his written complaint, with the colour tab for the Slaughter stuck to his forehead.
So far, Gerry has done exactly nothing to intervene, even when the dry-erase side of the board seems to be designated for tormenting him as much as Jon is targeted by the “Days Since Last Tea Incident” counter. There is no number today in the blank space where it says “The Archivist Will Be Asleep For __ Hours” because he and Tim are out on their first ‘mission’ since starting to dial back on how often they leave the Institute. Jon doesn’t actually remember where they’ve gone.
“Yes,” he says, shaking his head. “He’d written books on ancient myths and fetishes, and— alright, that is deeply immature, Sasha.”
Sasha waves a hand, berry pink smile bitten tight. “Go on, go on.”
Jon rolls his eyes. “He had come here numerous times, no doubt to crosscheck his research with ours about the items we keep up in storage. I want to know what he was looking into, a-and what he might have been studying right around the time of his death. He had a stroke at thirty-eight, isn’t that strange?”
“You’re the last person I’d have ever imagined suggesting that someone died of a magical stroke.”
“Well, I’m not saying it was—” A frustrated noise catches in his throat. He centers himself with a sharp breath. “I mean. It might not have been a stroke at all. You of all people should know that any number of items up in Artefact Storage could kill a person.”
“And make it look like an accident?” There’s no joke to her tone. Sasha nods, chewing her cheek. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Do you think he got that mirror from here, then?” Jon leans forward on his elbows. “What might we have had here back in the ‘70s? Do we ever get rid of anything, transfer it to other facilities? Have we lost anything from around the time this was recorded?”
“This place is as old as Methuselah, Jon,” Sasha sighs. “There’s stuff up there from when it was first established.”
“Would you say it’s overcrowded, then, o-or does it still have room for more? Rather, does it feel like it’s expecting more?” Somehow, there’s a pen in his hand. He taps it on the pile of other papers near enough to draw in front of him. “Gerry says he goes up to check every now and then, but he doesn’t say much about what he’s noticed, just… writes it down in letters he sends out to that old man.”
Now Sasha’s mouth is downset in a muted frown. “I’ve spoken to him about it. There’s only been one new delivery in since the last sweep he did.”
“What was it?”
“Uh… a table, of some kind? Some sort of design carved in, really dangerous. I’m not about to go look at it myself.” She looks at him sternly. “I don’t think you should, either.”
Jon pouts. He supposes it would be hypocritical to pry. Then again, it’s a bit strange for either of them to find themselves wary enough to keep a distance. He’s gotten to know Sasha well enough, working side by side almost nonstop since her transfer. She’s not afraid of very much, but she does hate Artefact Storage.
“I won’t,” he decides. From the look he feels her give him, she can hear the inherent yet.
He can feel her look at him, is the issue. Dropping the pen, he frowns at the tape recorder between them.
“Let’s go over this again.” Pushing himself back from the desk, he wheels himself over to the rolling book cart he’d taken Case #9721207 from in the first place. The verified statement folders are stored on the second shelf and held upright by a box of tapes. “What’s the total tally?”
He hears Sasha wheel her chair over to the bulletin board behind him. “Twenty-four.”
Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty…
“I’ve only got twenty-two here, counting the one I just read.” He reaches into the box of tapes to count them, too, walking his fingertips along their edges where he’s stacked them against each other inside. “Same with the tapes.”
“Huh.” Sasha rolls back towards the desks. “Didn’t Gerry take a few into his office a while back to record them?”
“I thought he already put them back.” Frowning, Jon sits back in his chair. He swivels to face Sasha with confusion. “Maybe he was putting them back here one by one as he went?”
She shrugs, and pulls out her phone. “Might as well ask. Let’s hope they actually answer, given it’s broad daylight and all.”
Jon shuts his eyes to keep from showing that he’s rolled them. Surely, she means monster hunting can’t be done during the daytime.
While he waits for Sasha to relay a response, Jon counts the statements again. And then a third time, just to be sure. Twenty-two. Damn.
He turns around again when he hears Sasha stand up. “Any luck?”
“They’re on his desk,” she says, making her way over to Gerry’s office. Jon wheels his chair back to his desk so that he can grab his cane before he stands up.
Gerry’s office door is never actually locked when there’s at least one person left in the Archives, even when he’s asleep. It’s not uncommon for him to just leave the door wide open if he’s doing something at his desk, and for all three of the rest of them to cycle in and out if they need something from him. More common, though, is for Gerry to just sit outside at the empty fourth desk with them. He seems more at home there, with everyone else. There are times that Jon genuinely forgets the cosmetic hierarchy they’re pretending to work under.
By the time Jon gets into the office and flicks the light on himself, Sasha is moving items around on the desk. It’s messy, for all the time Gerry doesn’t spend working at it, and it doesn’t take long for Sasha to step back with a folder in her hand.
“Is that one of them?” Jon asks, stepping around to stand in front of her.
“Looks like,” she says. “Case #0133112, Antonio Blake.”
She closes the folder to hand it to him when he reaches out, turning her attention to another that she picked up along with it. Jon moves towards Gerry’s desk chair to sit down and read. He spares a scathing glance at the little ceramic bowl Tim had brought in to pour the Werther’s into. The Post-It note that says “MAYBE POISON” stuck to the side does absolutely nothing to make Jon worry any less that one day, someone really will just take one. And die.
Speaking of dying, this statement is tabbed with black. The End, then. There’s a blue arrow at the top, and so Antonio Blake must have either encountered someone, or is someone. There’s no purple paperclip at the bottom to indicate that he’s alive and reachable, which means that he either isn’t, or Gerry hasn’t done any followup after whisking this into his office.
Jon is too busy reading to roll his eyes. He barely makes it past the first paragraph before his stomach goes cold. Clearing his throat doesn’t help.
“Do you think he recorded this?”
He can’t take back the tremor to his voice, but it doesn’t appear that Sasha even heard it. She’s opened the other folder to read it standing up, her eyes flickering intently across the page. Jon shuts his mouth quickly, turning his focus to the desk to search it himself.
Nothing on the surface at first glance, so perhaps a drawer. He knows Gerry keeps a recorder in there somewhere. Maybe he left the tape loaded into it.
No luck until the third drawer down, and it isn’t a recorder he finds, but another folder. Untabbed, unmarked, but when Jon opens it up to check inside, there’s a statement tucked inside it like all the others. From 2012, judging by the case number.
Hidden? Was this deliberate, or had it just… been there?
Doubt flitters around in that cold rush in Jon’s stomach like an Arctic bird. Agitation could warm the space, but indecision blocks its way and keeps it frozen.
Sasha is still silent, and Jon doesn’t think he has the nerve to ask her what her opinion is yet. He doesn’t know what his own opinion is.
What he does know is that he’s not ready to read something that was written specifically to Gertrude Robinson just this past December, the paper reeking of omens. He’ll just start with Dominic Swain.
───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────
In late-February, Sasha almost took a live statement. Almost.
The woman was slouched, clutching at herself and shaking, her long, black hair curled in unwashed snarls around her shoulders. She had seemed to sway where she stood by Rosie’s desk, rocking to the humming tune trapped inside her pale mouth. She’d looked up just long enough for Sasha to meet her eyes from across the lobby.
There was a moment, then; suspension. The starburst tile floor between them seemed to spin round and round and ringing, singing, unsound and spilling over. Sound spilling across the floor like tumbling marbles of soft glass, twinkling and whispering and beautiful. The tickle in the back of Sasha’s throat opened its wings.
The woman undid a scratching hand from her sleeve to push her hair from one side of her face, her stare wide and dark and pleading. She took a shambling step forward. Sasha stepped forward, too, ready to ask what was wrong, what did she need, who was she?
Gerry’s hand wrapped around her elbow before she even realized he was behind her, let alone upstairs at all. I’ll take this, he’d said. Stay back.
None of them turned their heads to change where they were looking. Sasha watched the woman’s eye snap onto Gerry beside her and go dull and confused before she let her hair drop into her face again. She stayed still as Gerry crossed coolly over to Rosie and talked her back into her chair, and couldn’t hear what he said to the woman in the long skirt. What Sasha remembers most is that he never reached out to touch her. Not like she might have, if she’d gotten close enough.
The woman kept her head down. Gerry kept his up, and walked alongside her down the hall to an empty room.
Only now, holding her statement, does Sasha realize that she was Jane Prentiss.
The date lines up. The feeling. Not the sound, though; that sound left down the hall with her. The one that Sasha hears now comes from somewhere else.
Tim’s voice from the doorway cuts through it.
“Well, that was a bloody walk in the park.” He sweeps into the Archives with a great sigh, pulling off his jacket as he walks. Gerry steps in more quietly behind him, making no moves to shed his.
“You announce that as if we have any idea where you two even went,” Jon pipes up. Right, right. He’s been sitting at his desk right next to her for the past hour. If they talked about anything at all, Sasha doesn’t quite remember it. There must have been something.
Tim groans, dropping his jacket onto his chair. “Do we need to start writing it down on the board before we go so you two don’t forget?”
“I really don’t even think you told us.”
“Honestly, Jon, this time? I think you’re better off not knowing.”
“You know saying that never works down here.”
“Point. But seriously, I don’t even know where to start this time. Did we really not tell you?”
“Gerry,” Sasha hears herself cut in. “Can I talk to you?”
Everyone goes still. Even the buzz of the fluorescent bulbs overhead seems to stifle and hush. Gerry looks at her and stares, like he does sometimes when he thinks she isn’t looking back. Rather — like he knows when she does, and doesn’t care to stop. Like he’s looking for something, and hasn’t found it yet.
It’s Sasha’s turn, now. She hasn’t torn her eyes off him since he walked in. He doesn’t seem at all unsettled by that.
“Yeah, sure.” He tilts his head. “My office?”
“No.” Said too quickly, too coiled. “Somewhere alone, please. More alone.”
Tim straightens up from where he’d come to lean on their desks, watching her with shock and concern. His expression is almost too much, even so muted as it is. Sasha drags Jane’s folder off of her desk as she stands, sparing neither he nor Jon another glance.
“What’s going on?” she hears Tim ask under his breath as she turns the corner out into the hall after Gerry.
“I couldn’t say,” Jon whispers back, quieting with every step she takes away from the Archives. “But I have something I need to ask you about, actually.”
Gerry leads her to an empty office a few doors down. She watches the back of his head, his posture. No words while they walk.
Does he know what she’s got in her hands? Did he find what he was looking for in one of those times he’d searched her face? Does he hear it, too, or is it drowned out by his own music? He’s told them about it. Spiral Radio in his left ear, a fractal staff branded into his head that sings in colourful mathematics.
It’s not like what Jane described.
He holds the door open for her, and turns on the light. The cheap computer chair creaks when he sits down behind the empty desk. Sasha can’t bring herself to sit down across from him yet, pacing with the folder bouncing in her hands.
“You wanted to talk?” The sound of his voice somehow sends a shock through her, even knowing he would speak eventually.
“Jane Prentiss,” she says tightly. She lifts the folder up to show him its kiwi green Post-It tab and blue arrow flag. “I found her statement on your desk.”
Gerry’s expression stays neutral. “Yeah. You asked me where the statements I hadn’t recorded yet were, and I told you where to find them. What’s bothering you about hers?”
“Why didn’t you tell us it was this bad?”
He blinks once. Otherwise, nothing. “How bad does it seem to you?”
Sasha’s jaw creaks open and shut on nothing for a moment. She clears her throat, shakes her head. “Bad, Gerry. Did you even read it?”
“Of course I read it.” His eyes narrow, like it was hurtful to suggest otherwise. “She’s in a lot of trouble.”
A bitter laugh staggers unbidden from Sasha’s mouth. “So, why aren’t we doing anything?”
Gerry tips his head, his eyes still narrow and clear. “We are.”
A cold, clammy fist closes around Sasha’s windpipe from the inside. She drops her arms, stops her pacing to stare at him anew. “Oh. Okay, then— No, wait, what are we doing, though? It’s been a month, why didn’t you say anything?”
An aborted shrug. “I wanted to comb through it first. See if there was anything that could be done before getting any of you involved.”
“Couldn’t we have found a way faster all together? I mean, reading this, it feels—” Sasha looks down at the folder, tongue pressing up against the flat of her front teeth. “What actually happened when she came in here?”
Why did he usher her away? Why was the statement written down, and not recorded? Why did Jane seem so angry towards the end, angry at him? It seemed too intensely directed to have gone unmentioned, unchecked. It doesn’t seem fair.
He stares back at her. Always staring.
“You’re taking this very personally.”
Sasha stiffens her jaw and picks up her pace again. “It just seemed negligent, is all. For a woman to come in and give a statement like this, and then we don’t even talk about it.”
“No.” Gerry shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re actually this worked up about finding a statement on my desk and being curious about the followup. What’s actually the problem, Sasha?”
“The problem is that I feel like you’re hiding something,” she snaps. She claps a hand over her mouth, eyes big. Gerry stares.
Swallowing, she lowers her hand. “Did you make me say that?”
He finally glances down at the desk, shame flickering. “I’m sorry. Probably.” And then back up at her, gone again. “But I didn’t make you think it.”
For the first time, Sasha takes a moment to try and put words to the weight in his eyes. She doesn’t see accusation, or judgment. No mocking, no taunt, no malice.
Just recognition. But not the same kind she saw in Jane Prentiss’ face across the lobby. Not the same hope.
Sasha straightens her back.
“I’m going to need you to do that again.”
Gerry’s head straightens. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says, no hesitation. “I don’t know if I’ll get it out otherwise.”
He nods, then. “Take it you want this on tape.”
She drops Jane’s folder onto his the desk. “That’s what we’re doing with all the statements, isn’t it? I don’t see why I would be the exception.”
Gerry stands up from the creaking chair. “I’ll go get the recorder.”
His eyes stay firmly locked on her until he passes by her to reach the door. Sasha’s hand curls around the back of one of the chairs on her side of the desk, pulling it out to finally sit. The scrape of its legs on the floor is as muffled in her ears as the sound of Gerry’s footsteps receding down the hall.
She might not get another chance to put her head in her hands and listen. Not today, not with all of them in the Archives now and watching her, paying attention to her. She would love to ask herself why she’s making such a scene about this, but she knows.
There is a tickle walking up the back of her calf. It’s not a butterfly, but it’s still something like a kiss. Sasha breathes out easier than she breathes in.
She sits up to look over her shoulder when the door opens. Gerry comes back around to the other side of the desk and places the recorder down between them. The moment he sits, he lifts his hands to gather his hair into an elastic up high on the back of his head.
“That was fast.” Sasha gives a halfhearted huff of a laugh. “Surprised those two didn’t try to hold you hostage for questioning.”
“They did,” Gerry says, tightening his ponytail. He settles his arms on the desk and looks up at her, stormless. “I just don’t care to indulge.”
Sasha isn’t sure if she should be grateful for the implication that he didn’t just throw her under the bus for the state she’s in. Maybe it’s her fault for taking the honesty policy a little too seriously. Clearly, Gerry is comfortable keeping plenty of things to himself.
She clears her throat to break the silence, and again to dislodge the feeling still stuck to the back of it. “Are we going to start, then?”
“When you’re ready.”
She nods her chin at the recorder, shifting to sit up straighter in her chair. “Turn it on, then.”
Gerry watches her for a beat longer before reaching for the start button, and settling back in his chair.
“Third of April, 2014. This is Gerard Keay, here with Sasha James to collect her account about…”
“A long history with… things with wings, that I think matters now more than ever.”
The crawling thing on the back of her leg tucks itself just under the bend of her knee.
“When I was little, I raised butterflies. Monarchs, usually, before they were supposed to fly south. Timed it perfectly, so they’d be ready when they had to be. I had my own little patch of garden just for all the milkweed I burned through to feed the caterpillars.
“Watching them take off together in this… cloud of bright orange, was always a little beyond words, for me. It always made me feel something. Pride, awe? Something important, right in my chest.
“But the thing that always made it feel really special was the moment they’d come back. They’d cluster up against my windowsill until I opened it and let them back in. I only heard later they don’t do that. Not normally. Just for me.
“My parents thought I was imagining things at first. They didn’t study the migration patterns of butterflies the way I did. They just knew it made me happy, so they kept buying me the kit every year. They never saw them in my room whenever they dropped by. I never told them, either. I think that whenever there was a knock on the door, they would all… hide somewhere, and camouflage. So would I, by sitting up and smiling and pretending I was alone.
“I didn’t think I was being sneaky, or lying. What could be so wrong about trying to keep something safe? They’re so fragile. They don’t live very long. If they wanted to spend that time with me, then why would I throw them away?
“Everyone says they all look the same, but they don’t. I could always tell the difference in the spots and markings, a short leg, a malformed wing. That’s how I knew they weren’t just different butterflies when they turned up before the season was even over. I knew them, and they knew me, and it always made me feel… valued. Like they decided halfway across the ocean that they’d rather be with me instead, and turned around.
“But you already know this isn’t about butterflies. You know. You’ve seen them.
“The first moth I raised was an accident. I found the caterpillar outside in my garden and just assumed it would turn into a butterfly. My dad tried to help me identify it in the books I had, but we had to go to the library to find one that actually told us it was a fox moth. I endeavoured to learn all about the species to prepare for keeping it as healthy and happy as I could, because it wasn’t the same as what I was used to. Every species is different, they all have specific needs. We fed it heathers and meadowsweet and when it was finished overwintering, I set it up so it could bask in the sun. It took a month after that for him to pupate and emerge again.
“I’d never seen anything like it. When he finally broke free of his cocoon in the spring and I first saw those feathered antennae, I fell in love. It didn’t matter to me that he wasn’t shiny and powder-scaled and glittering. He was the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. It really did look like fox fur.
“It occurred to me when I saw him that my brother had a habit of killing moths when they flew too close. I’d always been sensitive about it, but holding my little fox moth in my hands, I wondered how anyone could have the heart. What was their crime? Aimlessness? What was the difference between them, and a butterfly?
“No one wants to smack a butterfly, but moths are easy. The comparison is fairly simple. You don’t want to step on a rosebud, but once it’s a dandelion? No one cares. I think it says a lot about beauty and autonomy, and respect.
“How do we decide what deserves to live? Where do we draw the line between a house moth and a rosy maple? I think a lot of it is the fuzz. I think the bigger they are, the harder it is to reconcile. The harder it is to pretend it’s insignificant, and justify it.
“I get that you think I sound mental. Who cares this much about a bunch of bugs, Sasha? Well, I do, so don’t look at me like that.
“I switched to moths completely. I wanted to raise one of every kind native to the climate I lived in. To keep them safe, and make sure they’d survive. Giant silk moths native to North America are usually the first things people think of when they think of rearing moths as pets, I mean — of course they are. They look a lot like butterflies. They’re gorgeous, and I didn’t want anything to do with them. They didn’t need me like the less distinctive hawk-moths, or small dusty waves.
“It became sort of a frame of reference, in my head. I compared myself to them, I mean, obviously. I don’t know many other trans people who don’t identify with metamorphosis. I just identified the most with moths. I loved them for all sorts of reasons, and a lot of them were reasons I should have been able to love myself, too. The bushy antennae, the downy colours so many of them came in… I think as a kid realizing who I was, I felt like if I could get someone to understand why they’re so wonderful, I could get them to understand me.
“That was never something I struggled with at home. My parents were the ones who bought me those butterfly kits as a young child. My brother got into a fight once with a classmate of mine who teased me over it. He was just as unwavering a supporter of the things I loved as our parents were. It’s been a while since I’ve called him.
“I got lucky in the ‘good parents’ department. Really lucky, I mean… the amount of time that Tim needed to spend sleeping on my couch in secondary school was more than enough to prove that to me. But I’d never doubted it to begin with, how much they loved me. They really, really loved me. The first question they asked me when I came out to them was what my real name was.
“When they died, I completely came apart. I still had Mateo, but… Something gets torn out of you, you know? When that kind of love just disappears forever. He withdrew, too. Moved to Florida to be closer to our mum’s family. It seemed like this beautiful thing, but it wasn’t something I could do for myself. I couldn’t leave here, so I had to stay alone.
“I fell into the worst depression of my life. It was near impossible to get a hold of me, I just… stopped. I barely remember most of it. Some part of me wonders how I managed my degree, but I think even when I’m really far gone, it’s even harder to get me to stop working. I just didn’t have time for people, for the family I had left.
“It was my therapist who suggested I do something for myself that my parents and I used to do together, to help me feel close to them. Something small, to comfort myself in the everyday. So, when the time was right, I set up a mercury vapor lamp outside my flat to catch whatever wild thing might come my way.
“I was lucky enough to catch a privet hawk-moth, and she left me a few eggs in a paper grocery bag overnight. I tried to set her free, of course, but she insisted upon staying. I credited the jasmine in my backyard, at the time.
“It helped. Gave me a kind of purpose for a while. Getting the habitats all set up, setting up the food plants, cleaning up after them. I had to keep the larvae separated, too. Did you know they’ll fight to the death if they meet? I had to keep them alone to save their lives, so they could keep saving mine. I don’t know what that’s even supposed to mean, but it feels like something.
“I took so many photographs I never even did anything productive with. I could have probably run a blog or something with all the documentation I had, but I just kept it all to myself. Flicked through them if I couldn’t get to sleep, to see how many life cycles it would take for me to finally feel peaceful enough to shut my eyes.
“I don’t remember when the music started. I just know it hasn’t gone away.
“Maybe it’s nothing like Jane’s. It’s nothing like yours, that’s for sure, I mean… it couldn’t be. There’s nothing branded into my scalp. There’s just something at the back of my throat. Sometimes I feel it in my ears, but it’s never anything I can cough out or find with a tweezer. All in my head, I guess. I hope, anyway, because I don’t want it to be what my brain keeps suggesting.
“Sorry, distracted.
“Adult privet hawk-moths only last about five weeks. The moment they were all gone, I felt empty again. I went out to catch another wild one and start over, and wound up with a hummingbird hawk-moth.
“Hawk-moths were my favourites, to start. Their shape is very distinct, almost bullet-like, very stout. Narrow forewings, shorter hindwings. More like beetles and birds and bees than butterflies, somehow all at once. Lot of them really do look like hummingbirds. It’s almost uncanny. Maybe you should keep your eyes peeled for those the next time you’re hunting the Stranger.
“That second mother stayed until her time was up, too. For whatever reason, I still didn’t question it. She laid more eggs than the privet did, and I kept all of them. Too many to fit into the spaces I’d designated for them. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking when I decided to let a few of them out. It went against everything I’d ever been such a stickler about as a kid, but I trusted them. I trusted them to trust me.
“I didn’t mind letting them fly around the house. You know when you go into a butterfly house at a zoo or something because you want them to land on you, and if they do, you feel… chosen? I never worried they would get lost or that I would hurt them, I always knew where they were. If they just sat nearby while I read, it was nice. And I’d hum with them, and that was fine. I could even leave the windows open, and they’d never fly out. Some would fly in, but that was fine, too.
“I know, it isn’t fine. I knew it wasn’t fine, but I didn’t care. Being at home was like… a different world, you know? I don’t think about it as much here. They usually stayed there, and I didn’t hear them outside. I could have my life, I have friends. Less friends than I did before my parents, but… well, I have Tim again.
“I didn’t notice how many there were until they did start leaving a little bit. Visiting the neighbours. My landlord came knocking one day to investigate. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he looked over my shoulder at the room behind me. It didn’t occur to me that anyone could be so afraid of these things that brought me so much peace.
“They didn’t hide the way that the butterflies did when my parents came into my room to fetch me for supper. Some of them were too big to masquerade indoors, and the smaller ones were… teeming, he said, so shaken and disgusted. On the ceiling, on the walls. There were a few in my hair. In my hair, Gerry, and I—
“I sent them away before the exterminator could get to them. I don’t know how I did it, I just — asked. Okay, no, I didn’t ask them, necessarily, but I knew I needed them to go. And they left.
“That was the first time it scared me. Seeing that it wasn’t just… this passive presence, or some spiritual nonsense. Like when my first girlfriend lost her aunt, she took me with her to a little backyard service at the house. There was this moment when the sun broke through, and a cardinal dropped down from a tree to sit on the back of a picnic chair. All her cousins just burst into tears, and everyone started hugging and laughing and talking about how it meant that there was an angel nearby.
“I think some part of me was hoping it was just something like that. Easy to believe when I only ever noticed one or two at a time. I never saw the mass. I don’t know why it didn’t scare me when they started slowly coming back.
“Maybe that was why I tried to brush it off for so long. Long enough that I didn’t even realize how long it had been. I didn’t want to think anything of it, but the look on the landlord’s face… I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. That maybe I’m wrong, or losing myself in something unnatural. Stuck in the denial stage, maybe. Still grieving. I’d believe it, if I hadn’t read Jane’s statement today.
“Reading that… I didn’t like that I understood what she was saying. I don’t itch, not like that, but I— I already said it, the tickle. I feel things walking up my legs, and I’m fine with it. I don’t know how it slipped past me that I’m not supposed to be fine with it. It sounds so obvious, actually saying it aloud, but I’ve never said it. Which… I suppose is very hypocritical of me, given everything with Tim, and Danny.
“That reminds me: I’ve been revisiting my own behaviour lately. You know, some years ago, I never would have encouraged Tim to pursue a relationship with you. Of any kind, really, much less whatever you two have going on now.
“And— And isn’t one of the things we look for when tabbing statements with the Corruption? Themes of love and connection, and family, a-and… unorthodox ways of achieving and maintaining them?
“I don’t want to say toxic. I don’t want to say unhealthy, not when… It isn’t you, I don’t think. I think he’s really happy since you two started seeing each other, and I support that. I just don’t know when I started being so relaxed about the boundaries there, about the logistics of it, the consequences.
“It isn’t really about you two. I’m just telling you that encouragement might not have been my first response, before all this. Before my parents died, before I started keeping moths again, before they started finding me on their own. Before I started getting… desperate, I suppose. For comfort, and… and family.
“I think… I saw him going through the same thing, and my first instinct was to tell him to… It’s not the same. It’s just one relationship, it’s not bringing in this new, big family when you already have one, it’s just—
“When did my focus shift? When did I pick one over the other? When do we make these decisions?
“Because it wasn’t just hawk-moths. After a while, the species of moths that ended up in my flat were ones that aren’t native to this climate, this country, this continent. Saturniids that shouldn’t be here — there are only twelve documented species in Europe, and sixty-eight in North America, forty-two of those being just above Mexico. The climates are all wrong. I’ve even found domestic silk moths in my kitchen before. Those are deliberately bred in Asian countries, they landrace in South Africa, they can’t fly. They don’t just… appear in places like Victoria, London.
“I don’t know how they found me, or why, or how they’ve adapted to the same life cycles as the ones that are used to our weather, but that’s the other thing.
“A lot of them came to me during the winter. Fully grown adults, giant silk moths, Atlas moths, flying up to my window in the dead of December. You have to know how unbelievable that is.
“That stopped, though. The big ones. The pretty ones with value.
“Maybe they were just trying to tell me something. Maybe waiting for me to shun them because my standards were different. Of course I found them beautiful, of course I wanted to love them, but most of all I wanted them to be home. To be safe, to live to their fullest extent even if it meant I didn’t get to see it.
“I couldn’t very well send them away, though. It was the wrong season for that, even if I found that they could maybe listen to me. The best I could do was keep them comfortable for the few days or weeks they even got to be fully alive.
“And maybe they were never all those species of moth to begin with anyway, and just… took on their forms, while I was still interested in telling the differences. They don’t do that anymore, since my perspective changed. I can’t tell what they are now, or where they came from.”
Sasha reaches down to cup a hand behind her knee, and wait for the footsteps on her palm. Gently, she lifts the moth into view between them to show Gerry its plain brown wings, and quiet temperament. It’s as ambiguous as the moth named for that word, but it isn’t that. There’s a bit of flannel in it. There’s a bit of hawk.
“And I don’t think it matters.”
Gerry stares down at it, always staring, and then back up at her face. She remains just as blank as he does. The moth in her hand shies away from him.
He stops the recorder. The whir of the tape echoes in her ears even after it clicks silent.
“Okay, so.” Gerry crosses his arms on the desk. “What are you looking for? Do you want them gone?”
Sasha curls her fingers over the moth in her hand, drawing back. “I want to know what you’re doing about Jane. How are we going to help her?”
“Sasha, she killed seven people.” He says it like he’s sorry. “Tim and I were at the hospital today, following her trail.”
Her windpipe bends like metal. “What?”
“She was admitted a few weeks ago after they found her with that wasps nest, and she was the new Hive. Larvae, everywhere. Six of the staff got them to the eyes, their tongues, soft tissue. Seventh broke his neck falling down the stairs trying to run.”
No euphemisms, no expressions. He’s not cautious in his retelling, or frantic either. It’s just the truth. It’s not the future Sasha wants, but the way he says it, it sounds like a possibility.
That scares her more than the way her landlord recoiled from her door.
Gerry seems to know that. Again, again, he’s just watching her.
“How did you not notice?” she asks, surprising herself. “You— You see things on people, you saw why Tim was here. How did you miss this about me?”
“How did you miss it?” Rhetorical. “I think that’s just the nature of your mark.”
Sasha nods, biting down on the inside of her cheek. “And how different is my mark from hers? How did I even get it?”
Gerry shrugs, finally sighing as he looks away. “Sometimes these things just happen. We don’t always choose to be chosen. We just choose whether to give in or not.”
“So Jane gave in,” Sasha guesses. “And now she’s gone.”
Silence. It takes a moment, this time, for him to look up at her again. Sasha’s leg bounces, restless and discontented. She doesn’t want to just sit here. Her eyes fall onto the kiwi green tab on Jane’s folder, the blue arrow.
Blue arrow, for a someone. She’s a someone. Maybe not to anyone else anymore, but Sasha only has one image of her, and the hopeful recognition in her eyes.
“I’ll just try and find her, too.” Sasha clears her throat, straightening her head. “No offense, Gerry, but I’m still not sure you really understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” His brow creases. “I heard everything you said.”
“It’s not the same, and you know it’s not.” Sasha pushes Jane’s folder across the desk towards him, nodding to the recorder. “You didn’t get around to recording this. You didn’t get to feel it. And maybe you don’t want to, maybe it’s not fair that you even could, but I think it’s the best chance you have at really seeing what she’s going through.”
Gerry’s head always tips to the right. “Getting me to empathize with her doesn’t change the fact that she’s killing. That she’s going to kill more, and that even if she doesn’t, the people she’s infected will. It’ll keep spreading, and it won’t stop.”
“What, so you’ll just kill her?” Sasha laughs, a pain in her throat.
Gerry just looks at her.
“You want to believe she can be saved because you want to believe you can be saved. And you can be.” He shakes his head, eyes still stuck on her. “You’re not where she is. You’re asking for help.”
Sasha points to the folder. “So did Jane.”
Gerry shakes his head again. “Too much of her didn’t want it. I’m telling you she’s too far gone. You have to let her go. The sooner the better.”
When did the moth leave her hand? Sasha clenches her fists.
“Maybe you understand a lot of this world better than I ever will,” she says. “But I still don’t think you understand her.”
“Maybe I don’t,” he agrees.
Sasha shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath. Gerry doesn’t put up any further argument. He’s waiting for her to ask a different question.
“Alright.” She straightens up in her seat, squaring her shoulders. “What do I have to do to avoid killing seven people, then?”
He leans back in his chair, hands laced. “You have to let them go, too.”
───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────
Gerry holds the door for her when they walk out. He’s pulling open the door to the Archives when Elias clears his throat from the bottom of the stairwell.
“Miss James,” he says, cheery as he steps over to meet them. “Mr. Delano, glad I caught you both.”
Gerry angles himself back out into the hall, stepping in front of Sasha. “And why’s that?”
Elias clasps his hands in front of him. He bends forward to peer into the Archives, and Gerry moves to pull the door shut. Tim catches it before he can and props it back open. Elias smiles past him at Jon, half-standing from his desk in the bullpen.
“I just wanted to check in on your progress with recording statements. Making sure there are no slips or missings.”
Sasha pipes up from over Gerry’s shoulder. “We’re keeping a strict count, yes.”
“Ah, yes, a solid twenty-six, correct?” Elias looks up at Tim. “Counting Miss James and Mr. Swain?”
Gerry feels Sasha go rigid behind him. He won’t give Elias the satisfaction of glancing into the room with accusation. He stays angled in front of Sasha, and Tim stays looming in the doorway.
That seems to be enough for Elias. The smile never quite leaves his face, subtle and smug and extremely punchable. The thought must show on Gerry’s face, too, because it’s then that Elias takes a pointed step backwards.
“Excellent,” he says. “Keep up the good work.”
“Will do,” Gerry grinds out.
Elias spins around to make his way back towards the stairs. He doesn’t bother to pause as he calls back over his shoulder.
“And Mr. Delano, you may want to say your name accurately when recording. Let’s not stand for any errors in our work.”
Gerry’s brow twitches down. Sasha’s fingers are curled tightly in his sleeve. She’s the one to push him through the doorway, and Tim is pulling him the rest of the way by his other arm.
“So, do either of you want to explain what the fuck that was about?”
Sasha is frowning at the both of them, indecision in her eyes. When he looks over to the bullpen, he sees Jon still half-risen from his seat with a balking look frozen on his face. Appropriate, given that he’s just been thrown under a bus, too.
Gerry straightens away from Tim to squint at Jon in confusion.
“…You went through my drawers?”
───── ⋅◆⋅ ─────