Chapter Text
Jon woke with a start to the quiet chatter behind his closed office door.
For several long, blissful moments, he didn’t remember what day it was. The Archives were a familiar, comforting presence around him before he even opened his eyes – the dusty smell of old paper and ink, the warm, hard plastic of the tape recorder under his burned hand, the cheap wood of his desk under his cheek, where he had so unceremoniously fallen asleep last night, listening to the goodbye statements of his assistants.
Right. The goodbye statements. The ones Jon had chased his assistants into recording – because, apparently, no one else cared about archiving what could very well be their last day on this fear-ridden earth. What could be the last day for everyone, if they failed to stop the Unknowing today.
Jon sat up in his chair and stretched slowly. His neck and back definitely did not approve of yet another night spent at his office desk. Martin would not approve either, he thought, and his eyes fell on the recorder still lying under his hand on the desk. Martin’s statement had been the first one Jon listened to. It was also the last – however embarrassed he was to admit it – the one he had fallen asleep to.
"I need them to be safe, I need him to be okay."
"Just… just don’t die, Jon."
He shouldn’t read too deeply into this, of course. Martin was just worried, understandably so! Worried like anyone else— Well, no. Actually, Martin was pretty much the only one worried. Sure, Basira was worried about the mission, but only Martin was worried about them. And Tim, well... Tim was Tim.
Maybe that's why Jon couldn’t get Martin’s statement out of his head. After all the horrors over the last two years, after they had been faced with a literal end of the world, it was... nice to know someone still cared.
God, Jon was so pathetic.
The door to his office opened slightly, letting in the sounds of the measured chatter from the main room of the Archives. "Jon? Are you awake yet?" Martin peeked through the opening, before gently kicking the door fully open. "I brought tea. The others are gathering things – I think you have about half an hour before you must go?"
Jon jerked his hand back from where it still rested on top of the recorder, as if Martin would somehow know what tape was inside. "Ah! Tea. Good!" He forced a smile onto his face, and he was sure it looked awful. "No scolding today?" he tried to joke, because Martin was never shy about telling Jon off for spending the night in the Archives. Jon had even started keeping a change of clothes under his desk, but that had regretfully never worked to fool Martin.
"I don't think anyone left the Archives last night," Martin said, shaking his head in clear disapproval as he set the familiar mug of steaming tea on Jon's desk. "Daisy left for a few hours, I think? I don't, don't know where. But she's back now."
Jon nodded. It made sense, of course. After Elias had failed to secure them a night in Great Yarmouth, they had no choice but to simply catch a three-hour train there first thing this morning, and the Institute was close to the railway station. One would think that their plan to prevent a literal apocalypse shouldn’t depend so much on the timeliness of British railways – but then, if the world had made sense, there wouldn’t be an apocalypse to prevent in the first place.
Jon warmed his hands around the mug, thumbs sliding over the pastel-coloured cats covering its surface. "Thank you," he said belatedly to Martin’s retreating back.
Martin stumbled at the door, glancing over his shoulder in surprise. God, was Jon really usually so rude that a simple 'thank you' warranted such a reaction? Surely not.
"Ah, of course!" Martin smiled brightly, his cheeks dusting slightly pink. Then his smile sobered into something more serious. "Take care today, Jon."
Jon found himself smiling back as the door closed behind him.
The smell of lemon and Yorkshire tea blended seamlessly into the reassuring air of his Archives, as Jon took a deep breath and steeled himself for the day.
A painfully awkward train ride later, and the four of them were in Great Yarmouth, in the closed wax museum surrounded by the poorly made yet vaguely horrifying wax statues. Daisy was slowly planting the plastic explosives, while Jon, Tim, and Basira hovered around uselessly, having nothing to do but pass Daisy a new box of explosives from time to time.
Things were going smoothly for them. Too smoothly. So of course, it had to end at some point.
"We can't help them!" Jon insisted, clutching Tim's wrist before he could throw himself into the auditorium with the Anglerfish victims.
"So what, we’re just going to leave them to be skinned alive?" Tim whispered furiously back, just barely remembering that they had to stay quiet so as not to expose themselves to the Circus.
"Done," Daisy interrupted their argument and placed the remote detonator in Jon's free hand.
Jon looked at it, confused. "Oh. I– I thought you would want to do the honours."
"It’s safer with you," Daisy shrugged. "You know when it needs to happen."
Tim chose that moment to speak again. "Look, you brought me in as a distraction, right? Let me do it. Go in, maybe you can get some of them –"
"Tim, contrary to what you think, I did not bring you here to indulge your death wish," Jon snapped back.
"That’s not what this is."
"No? Well, it doesn't matter now. We have everything ready. Let's go," Jon tugged at the wrist he was still holding.
Tim didn't move. "This isn't right."
Jon looked him in the eyes and he knew what would happen next. Tim would pull away and throw himself directly into the centre of the future ritual. He would kill a few of the mannequins with his axe, fuelled by nothing but hatred and revenge, but he would quickly lose focus under the influence of the Stranger and end up killed. Just like Sasha. Reduced to nothing but another voice of fear to feed the Unknowing.
And Jon refused to watch it happen.
He pulled on Tim's wrist, using it to lean in against the unmoving body of his assistant. "You want to hurt them, don't you? To hurt that thing that stole your brother? That stole Sasha?" he whispered, forcing Tim to look him in the eyes, Tim's statement from another night loud in Jon's ears. "This isn't how you do it, Tim. They won't even notice it. But you know what will hurt?" Jon pressed on Tim's wrist until his fingers spasmed open and pushed the detonator into his hand. He never once looked away from Tim's wide eyes. "Blowing them up. Stopping them from ever hurting anyone else."
Jon let go of the wrist and leaned back. Tim stared, the axe in one hand and the detonator in the other. The music was growing louder with every second.
"I can't," Tim finally said, sounding lost, and tried to give the detonator back. "Daisy is right, it's safer with you."
Jon stepped out of reach. "I’ll tell you when to press it."
Basira interrupted them before Tim could argue more. "The waxworks are starting to move. We need to leave."
Tim looked over his shoulder towards the auditorium with the Anglerfish and the skinned chorus of its victims. "This isn't right," he repeated quietly, his fingers white around the detonator.
"They're already dead," Jon replied just as quietly.
Tim squared his shoulders, and for a moment, Jon feared it hadn’t worked. That Tim would drop the detonator and throw himself into his self-appointed suicide mission anyway.
Tim nodded tensely and finally moved away from the auditorium. He didn't look at Jon. Jon didn’t mind.
They ran, dodging the not-so-wax statues that were quickly coming to life in an attempt to grab them. They were almost at the exit when Jon stumbled and one of the statues grabbed him by the shoulder, sharply turning him around. The human eyes of the waxwork were filled with horror and pain.
Behind him, Tim cried out in rage and Jon could barely see the fast shine of steel in the air as the axe went down on the wax arm. The arm fell with the nauseating squelch of meat and blood. "Let's go!" Tim snarled at Jon’s frozen figure, the detonator pressed tightly against the handle of the axe held in both his hands. Jon nodded shakily.
The weather outside was inappropriately sunny when they finally ran out of the building.
They waited just a few blocks away from the wax museum. Jon strained his ears to listen to the growing notes of the Unknowing's eerie music that no one else seemed to hear. The itch behind his eyes, which had appeared ever since he entered the stronghold of the Stranger, was getting stronger. It was harder with every second to stay focused.
"You're sure you'll be able to tell when we need to blow it up?" Daisy asked from behind his shoulder.
Jon nodded, unable to form words. Gertrude's instructions were clear. They had to interrupt the ritual at its highest point, or it wouldn’t be enough to completely destroy the Circus.
They trusted him to identify the right moment. Jon hoped they weren’t making a mistake.
The music grew louder, and from the way the others flinched, Jon knew they could finally hear it too. They were getting worried. The itch behind Jon's eyes was making him half-blind already, but it was still growing, climbing higher and higher, the high notes of the calliope hitting the roof of his skull as if trying to break through but getting stuck in the fragile bone, and it felt impossible that it could ever go beyond that invisible threshold, that it could not, should not, ever breach–
"Now," Jon croaked through his constricting throat, and everything was swallowed in the reverberating boom of the explosion.
Jon blinked, and he could finally see again. The itch was gone, and there was no music except for the deafening rumble of collapsing concrete walls and shattering glass. The cloud of brown dust was hovering slowly in the windless air above the rooftops.
"We did this," Tim said, his voice disbelieving, the hand with the detonator pressed tightly against his chest. "We did this."
A nervous laugh bubbled out of Jon. "Yes. Oh Lord, yes, we did this! It's done. It's over."
"Are you sure?" Daisy suddenly asked, strangely serious, and Jon turned to her in surprise. "That we didn’t do it too early? Too late? That all of them are dead?"
Tim snorted before Jon could answer. "If we were too late, I don't think we'd be talking now." As if the last strings had been cut with those words, he dropped to his knees, the axe he’d clung to until the last moment finally falling from his hand and hitting the ground. He was shaking.
Basira, collected as always, seemingly completely unaffected by the end of the world they had just averted, approached Tim and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, saying something quietly. Jon realised he was shaking too, and he wanted to come closer – but was abruptly stopped by a firm hand at his chest.
Daisy stood between him and the others. "So?" she asked again, her face impassive. "Are you sure?"
Jon took a cautious step back, suddenly feeling like he was in the forest again with Mike Crew's lifeless body at his feet – even if Daisy didn’t have a knife to his throat this time. "I– I waited for as long as I thought was possible. They should, should all be destroyed now."
"Should?" Daisy raised an eyebrow at him. "How certain are you? Is there a possibility that one of them survived the explosion and will try the ritual again?"
Jon didn’t understand where this was coming from. "Of course they will! But, uh, maybe only in a couple of centuries?"
That clearly wasn't the answer Daisy was looking for, as she snarled in annoyance. "Did anyone survive?" she growled. From behind her, Basira raised her head to look at them, but then turned back to Tim.
"No!" Jon shook his head vehemently, taking another step back, and he could feel his heartbeat rising. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he didn’t like it. "N-no, they should all be dead. The waxworks, the chorus, the ringleader. Without them, the Stranger would need decades to gather its strength again."
There was a strange disappointment in him as he said that – from the same deep part of him that knew the fate of the Circus without Jon even seeing the building for himself after the explosion. But Jon didn’t have time to dwell on that.
Daisy seemed to think for a moment, then nodded. "Good," she finally said. "Then we don't need you anymore."
With one smooth motion, she pulled a gun from her jacket.
Jon’s heart froze. "Wh–"
The gun was pointed right at his face. Without pause or hesitation, Daisy pulled the trigger.
Everything seemed to freeze.
As if in slow motion, Jon saw the bullet cutting through the air towards his left eye, and he could do nothing. He was too close, and even if he could step away, what would it help? Daisy would just shoot again.
And here he was, thinking he would die in the Unknowing. Jon wanted to laugh.
He should have expected it, really. Daisy had never hidden that she thought him a monster. And Jon knew what Daisy did with monsters.
The bullet flew through the air slowly, as if struggling, and Jon thought he could see a million tiny spider webs between him and the bullet, fruitlessly trying to stop its flight, only to leave behind their torn, lifeless threads in the empty air.
The hot metal pierced the surface of his eye and–
–and Jon woke with a start to the quiet chatter behind his closed office door.