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It’s all still going to plan, Sasha reminded herself as Jon’s eyes shot open. The brown was replaced by a radioactive green, not so much glowing as seeming as though they should be glowing. Yes, this is a gamble, but we need a gamble, and it’s all still going to plan. A faint voice at the back of her head pointed out that just because events were going to plan didn’t mean that the plan wasn’t shit. She ignored that voice. Instead, she tentatively drew closer to the center of the library, where Jon was now sitting bolt upright.
(It felt weird to be doing this in the main library, where none of them had ever spent much time, but this, too, was a part of the meticulously crafted and possibly insane plan.)
“…You okay?” she ventured.
The eyes in Jon’s face snapped to her.
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Three pairs of eyes went to the door of the Archives as it slammed shut of its own accord.
“Well!” Tim said, voice full of forced cheer. “I guess it’s starting!” He slapped his hands on his thighs and rubbed briskly. “Anyone want to get the ball rolling?”
Gerry looked at him with bemusement. Daisy looked at him with bored vitriol. Neither said anything.
“Guess I’ll go first, then.”
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The green eyes that had replaced Jon’s – Sasha could not make herself think of those eyes as Jon’s, could not accept that they belonged to him or that he belonged to them, plan be damned – were quickly making her feel sick. Not the nauseated sickness of the Spiral or the Flesh, but an anxious sour knot that started in her stomach and spilled up the back of her throat. She knew why, which made the feeling worse, so she ignored it and returned to the plan.
The plan. What was the next step of the plan? Sasha ran through it again in her head. Right, phase 2 step 1 subsection B: shepherd Jon through his apotheosis while ensuring he didn’t shed entirely his last vestiges of human morality.
It was possible, Sasha reflected, that the little voice in her head had a point about the plan being the tiniest bit shit.
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Tim had kind of expected to feel the compulsion as he talked. Had been relying on it, even. If he was being compelled, this whole endeavor was a spooky supernatural Encounter, his ramblings the food sustaining the nascent god of fear being born over their heads.
Without the compulsion, Tim was just baring his heart to his most judgmental colleague and an unimpressed dead guy.
“—and then he opened the door and saw me and I died a little inside!” Tim finished, and gave a bright brittle smile. Neither Daisy nor Gerry gave any appearance of listening to him, which Tim sort of appreciated. But also, like, was this not awkward enough without being ignored?
Something slammed into the floorboards above them, and all three heads jerked towards the noise in unison. There was nothing to see, of course, not even for Gerry. That was sort of the point of this all.
No noises followed the bump, though, and Tim relaxed. Only to see Daisy staring at him, which made him jump again. Tim offered her a polite, close-lipped smile – a white person smile, Sasha would call it – which Daisy of course did not return. Instead, she continued to scrutinize him. Tim respected that about her. Most people would pretend not to have been looking, or immediately start a conversation to downplay the social faux pas. Daisy just watched him with those pale blue eyes until she saw…whatever it was she was looking for.
“Tim,” she said. “Do you like being an avatar of the Spiral?”
Tim considered this for a minute. Nobody had ever asked him that before. They’d asked him why he joined the Spiral, or what it was like, or please can you get your hands to stop doing that or is that just part of being an avatar. But not if he liked it. Gerry and Daisy sat in silence as he thought it over. Another thing he liked about them.
“I guess I do,” Tim said finally. “’like’ isn’t maybe the right word for it. It’s not like I roll out of bed every day, especially psyched out of my mind to go work another day at the gaslighting factory. But it…it’s freeing, I guess. Like a Bacchanal. The idea that I’m so lost in madness that I can’t be responsible for anything I do. Or that…that I don’t have to be myself, I guess? Like, I don’t have to decide what to do with my future or worry about my credit score or carefully monitor how other people are perceiving me. I’m just freed from society. I don’t know, I don’t think I’m explaining it well. I sound like some rich asshole who lets the Bank of Mum and Dad buy him out of trouble.”
“It’s the feeling of relief,” Daisy said softly, and Tim’s eyes snapped back to her.
“Yeah, that’s it exactly! Relief.”
Daisy’s eyes were fixed on a point in the distance, and her face was full of some strange and foreign joy. “It’s how I feel on the hunt. The hunt is the only thing that matters, so I don’t have to worry about if my actions are good or moral or whatever. I do what needs to be done for the hunt to be successful, and that’s all there is to it. No worrying about the unintentional consequences or trying to predict what someone else secretly wants me to do. Just the prey in front of me.”
Tim knew he should be concerned by that – Daisy had a track record of picking humans of various levels of innocence as her prey – but honestly, he got it. “It’s not all the time,” he said. “But when you are submerged in it…”
“It’s pure relief,” Daisy whispers.
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Sasha tried to focus under the onslaught of the Eyes, to pull herself together. Yes, alright, the plan was a bit sparse on actual details. More of an outline than an actual plan. But that’s just because an outline is all they needed. Tim, Gerry, and Daisy didn’t need micromanaging to figure out how to divulge secrets in the basement, and the rest of the team was operating more based off of instinct than any “How To Stop The Apocalypse Now That The Fear God Who Was Watching You Has Been Replaced By Your Friend” guide. Really, it was only Sasha who could have perhaps used a few more steps. But it was HER plan, and she didn’t need anyone holding her hand as she executed it. If the plan was short on details, that’s just because she didn’t need to keep anyone else on track. She could do this. Sasha took a deep breath and approached Jon again.
“Jon. Can you hear me?”
“Of course I can hear you, Sasha.” Jon sounded so much like himself – amused, stuffy, slightly condescending but not meaning to be. The familiarity made Sasha’s utter conviction that this was no longer Jon so much worse.
“Do you- what’s the last thing you remember?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice steady.
“I remember the plan,” Jon said. “I remember that Martin, Melanie, Basira, and Georgie are trying to stop the Unbecoming. I remember that Tim, Daisy, and Gerry are in the Archives, feeding the Eye. I remember that I was meant to become the Eye’s Avatar, to usurp Elias so he wouldn’t See our plan. I remember the ceremony. I remember the moment I ceased to be Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. I remember how afraid you were when my eyes opened, how you knew what had happened, how you suddenly realized that your plan was laughably flimsy. I remember the spike of adrenaline that washed through your bloodstream when you heard about what happened to the others, how it joined all the adrenaline and cortisol already in your blood and nearly saturated your adrenergic receptors. I remember-“
“Stop, stop, stop.” Sasha said, the anxious slick rising further up her throat. “Jesus.” She sank into a crouch, resting her elbows on her knees and burying her face in her hands. She had to breathe. She had to- “You know what’s going to happen?” she demanded.
“Your plan called for you to be my handler. You realize now how ridiculous the entire premise was.”
“That’s not an answer. Do you know?”
“Yes, Sasha, I know how your plan will play out.” Jon’s voice suggested he was humouring her, which ordinarily would have pissed Sasha off.
“And it’s…bad?”
Jon considered. “Depends on your point of view. From yours? Yeah, probably bad.”
Sasha took a few moments to breathe in 4 hold 4 out 4 hold 4. It didn’t seem to do anything. She sat down from her crouch in an ungraceful sprawl.
“Do you want to know what happens?” Jon asked politely.
“I don’t know,” Sasha said. “Do I?”
“Ah, probably not.”
Sasha tried a few more breaths, with even less success. She could feel Jon watching her, could feel him rifling through her memories and her secrets. She waited miserably for him to do something, to tell her anyways or to force her to tell him something, but he just kept watching her, tilting his head as if he was trying to figure something out. She shook her head.
“I just- I just didn’t think you could stop caring about them. About us. I thought that even if you went fully to the Eye, some part of you would remember how much you loved us. How much we loved you.”
Jon approached Sasha with slow, measured steps, crouched down to her level. She met his eyes – they were becoming easier to bear, just a bit. Then Jon spoke.
“Do you think I’m a monster, Sasha?”
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Gerry shifted, and Tim abruptly remembered that he was there. He waited for the condemnation, the familiar refrains that Basira and Melanie have been aiming at Jon, the implorations to leave his monstrousness behind and run back to humanity with open arms. But there was no sign of that in Gerry’s face, no sign of anything other than a frank curiosity.
“Is that what it feels like for you?” Tim asked, clearing his throat.
“Sort of,” Gerry said. “It’s like…have you ever gotten so into a book or a TV program or something that you can’t put it down and you stay up half the night?” Both Daisy and Tim nodded. “It’s like that. I don’t quite lose sight of other people when I’m wrapped up in the Eye, like you two with your Fears. But it’s a similar feeling, that the only thing that matters is Seeing more and more and more. Less freeing, I think, but you do sort of forget that you’re also a person who can live stories, the same as the people you’re watching.”
Tim pondered this for a while. He knew the others regarded Daisy as dangerous, unredeemable no matter how sorry she was. And while nobody really knew what to make of Gerry, Tim knew that Melanie and Basira hated Jon a little more every time he was pulled closer to the Eye. Tim also knew that if any of the others knew the details of his involvement with the Spiral, they would probably hate him too, hate him as much as Tim hated himself. But listening to Gerry and Daisy talk, Tim couldn’t find it in himself to hate them. Sure, maybe it was a bit selfish to chase the relief of freedom from consequences. But plenty of people were selfish. Did that make them all monsters?
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Sasha gaped at Jon for a bit. “What?” she asked, less articulate than she usually aimed for.
“Do you think I’m a monster?” Jon repeated.
Maybe it was compulsion, maybe it was confusion, maybe Sasha had just been wanting to say it for a while, but she found herself answering honestly and immediately.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You- you’re no longer human. You feed on the pain and the trauma of others. That makes you evil.”
“I don’t.”
“What?”
“I don’t feed on the pain and trauma of others. I feed on watching them. It’s not my fault if they sometimes end up traumatized.”
Sasha squinted at Jon. “That’s a very selfish way of looking at it.”
“What is more human than elaborate, convoluted ways of excusing our own selfishness?”
Sasha rolled her eyes. “That’s a very cynical way of looking at it.”
Jon smiled slightly. “Fine. Selfish and cynical, I’ll accept. But I’m not a monster. You would do the same.”
“I would not.”
“I think you would, so let’s put it to the test. I have a proposition. I’m no longer Jonathan Sims, Head archivist of the Magnus Institute. I’m now the Head of the Institute. I’ll need an Archivist, and I understand that you were being groomed for the position before Elias found me. So become my Archivist, receive the power from the Eye. If not-“
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Maybe there was some compulsion in the air, because Tim said what he had never said out loud before: “I hate myself a lot of the time.” Gerry looked at Tim quickly, but neither he nor Daisy interrupted, so Tim continued. “Not all of the time. Sometimes I get distracted and don’t think about it for a while. But I hate myself more than I’ve ever hated anyone else.”
“Why?” Daisy asked, when it was clear Tim wasn’t going to say any more.
“I just- I disgust myself. Every time I return to the Spiral. Every time I decide that I don’t care if someone else is driven insane by fear, as long as I can keep feeling that freedom. I don’t deserve to be happy. I deserve to be devoured by fear like my victims are.”
“What if it was Sasha taken by the Spiral?” Daisy asked. “Would you care then?”
“Of course I would care,” Tim said, a little taken aback by his own vehemence. Daisy just shrugged.
“Well then. You’re not a monster and you shouldn’t hate yourself. If it was Sasha in danger, you would use your power to keep her safe. Maybe it would be nicer of you to save everyone, but we can’t all be saints.”
“So you think it’s okay that other people are getting hurt because of me, as long as I have people I love?”
“Yeah, pretty much. We all make decisions that hurt people. We’re all hurt by other people’s decisions. As long as you have lines you won’t cross, people you won’t hurt, you’re a human the same as the rest of us.”
“I feel like a monster,” Tim whispered.
“Well, maybe you are a monster. But life isn’t some fairy tale. You’re not part of the dark forces of evil just because there are some people you don’t love. Sometimes it’s good to be a monster.” Daisy sighed. “Listen. If you ever become so corrupted that there’s nothing left of you, I promise I’ll take you out without even hesitating. I’ll enjoy it, in fact. And that might make me a monster, but you know what? I don’t care.”
The silence rose again as Tim turned this over in his mind. Daisy’s philosophy was comforting, but he couldn’t tell if it was comforting because she was right or if it was comforting in the way of someone else saying they haven’t started the homework yet either. He wasn’t sure if he believed in life after death anymore, but he was starting to suspect that wherever he ended up, he would have plenty of friends there.
Above their heads, a battle raged on.
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Jon finished telling Sasha what would happen if she stuck to her plan, and she leaned back against the wall. She was suddenly exhausted. The pain and fear and trauma that Jon described were only too easy to picture; she had felt them enough in the past to be able to extrapolate to what was in store. Jon leaned forward to swipe away the tears on her cheeks, and she didn’t even flinch.
“You think I’m a monster,” he said. “You think that I’m no longer human and that I’ve forgotten my friends. But sometimes power means that you can damn the consequences, you can be selfish and only take care of what you care about. And I care about you, Sasha. I care about all of you. So it doesn’t bother me that a few people end up seeing me in their nightmares for the rest of their lives. I have enough power now to keep you all safe, so frankly, everyone else can get fucked.”
Sasha laughed a bit to hear Sims swear, in spite of herself. Jon grinned as well and continued.
“So. Continue on with your plan. Go through all that horror and grief, just to move the needle a scarcely perceptible amount towards the good side. Or become my Archivist, be cynical and selfish and ignore everyone except the ones you care about. Become a monster with me.”
And how could Sasha say no?