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Jon sits at his desk, the paraphernalia that litters it scattered about idly. The tape recorders are still, his tea has gone cold, and even the papers that lie in questionably stable piles dared not move. His hands are still, but Jon knows that if he releases his hand and lets his hands fall to his desk, the trembling will start up again.
He casts an eye around his office, as if seeing it for the first time. Scattered papers, boxes overflowing with statements, tape recorders and old rolls of film and sweaters and half-empty packs of cigarettes and it is all pressing in on him, pressing into his mind and crowding around him and he can’t breathe in here, can’t breathe in this tiny room full of so many people’s suffering.
He stands up abruptly, shoving his chair backwards with perhaps too much harshness, and grabs a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the shelf before shoving the door open and walking out of the archives. He can feel Martin’s eyes on him, can feel his stare of concern through his shirt and jacket, and even though it is six seconds from his office door out into the hallway, those six seconds seem to drag on forever, until finally he swings the door open into the hallway and cuts off Martin’s line of sight to him.
The dull buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead sets his skin itching, and he averts his face from the few people he passes in the halls until finally he shoulders the door into the courtyard open and sits down on the steps, shaking fingers dragging a cigarette out of the slightly crumpled pack. He situates it between his lips, fingers stuttering over the wheel of his lighter. It sparks, and sparks, and he swears as his thumb slips off the wheel.
“Here,” says Elias’s voice from behind him, and Jon startles, pushing himself upright and turning around. Elias is standing behind him, one hand on the open door and the other holding a lit lighter out to Jon. Elias makes no reaction to Jon’s unprecedented response, simply lowers his eyes to Jon’s mouth, unlit cigarette dangling out of the corner of his lips. He hold the lighter forward, and Jon bends his head gratefully, taking a drag as the tip of his cigarette finally lights.
“Mind if I join you?” Elias asks, letting go of the door and stepping forward to sit down beside Jon on the steps. Jon nods silently, sitting back down and tipping his head back to exhale a thin line of smoke upwards. He watches Elias light his cigarette out of the corner of his eye - a Pall Mall, lit with the same lighter he had offered Jon. There’s a symbol engraved on it, Jon can tell, but what it is he cannot tell as the lighter disappears back into the pocket of Elias’s slacks.
Jon and Elias finish their cigarettes at more or less the same time, stubbing them out on the concrete whose chill has begun to soak into Jon’s legs. He stands, and Elias does too, smoothing his waistcoat down with his thin fingers. He opens the door and holds it for Jon, who walks back inside, hunching his head as he enters the building once again. He turns down the hallway, and Elias’s voice floats down behind him.
“Jon?” he says, and Jon turns around, shoving his hands into the pockets of his cardigan.
“Yes, Mr. Bouchard?” he says.
“Come see me before you leave for the night, please,” says Elias with a smug little smile.
Jon nods, saving the eye roll for once he has turned back around. He thinks he can feel Elias’s eyes on him, watching him leave, but when he hazards a glance backwards, Elias has already vanished back into the recesses of the Magnus Institute.
Jon can tell that it’s dark outside by the time he stands up from his desk, his back popping loudly as if to protest this movement. The archives are in the basement: ostensibly because sunlight is bad for archival materials, but in his more dour moods Jon likes to imagine that it’s because of something more sinister, whether the loss of time without the sun or the closeness to the earth, hidden under the floors and hallways and staircases that turn the actively aboveground parts of the Magnus Institute into a maze. He grabs his bag, sighing as his hair gives up on the loose bun he had shoved it into and falls into his face with abandon. He runs his hand through it, shoving the strands back as he turns the light off in his office and leaves the archives.
To get from the basement to the third floor where Elias’s office is takes no less than three separate flights of stairs, for no discernible reason. Jon takes a moment before knocking on the door to take a breath, straighten his cardigan, and sigh. He raises his hand to the door, and Elias calls through it clearly.
“Please come in, Jon,” he says, and Jon drops his hand to the brass handle. He pushes the surprisingly heavy wooden door open, stepping into Elias’s office with trepidation. The oak floor is silent under his boots, and he casts his eye around the room as he steps in. It is much the same as all the times he’s been here before - needlessly massive desk in the center of the room, small velvet sofa against the wall to his left, the scent of smoke and floor polish lingering and underneath it, something sharper, darker. Jon glances right and frowns as he takes the three steps towards Elias’s desk - there’s what appears to be a surgical table in the corner, draped in a black cloth. Elias coughs slightly and Jon turns his attention to his boss. Elias is sitting behind his desk, his suit jacket draped across the chair behind him and his crisp white shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. He is smoking once again, staring unabashedly at Jon and tapping the tip of his cigarette against an impeccably clean ashtray that sits on his desk.
“Jon, please, take a seat,” says Elias, nodding his head slightly at the pair of chairs that sit in front of his desk. Jon sits, placing his bag in the other chair and sitting upright, his eyes wandering over Elias.
They sit in silence for a moment, Jon hearing nothing but his own heartbeat and Elias’s exhalations of smoke.
Elias sighs, dropping his elbow to the arm of his chair and turning to stare at Jon.
“Jon,” he says. “I - “ and he hesitates. Jon’s brow furrows slightly in surprise. In all the time he has known Elias, in his entire career at the Magnus Institute, he has never known the man to be anything other than perfectly composed and communicative.
“Yes?” he says.
Elias smiles a little — a rabid, cruel smile that fails to reach his eyes. Jon subconsciously digs his fingernails into the palms of his hands.
“Well, this is really rather a delicate matter,” says Elias. “I’ve noticed that your work has been… scattershot, shall we say.”
Jon nods, feeling the first few heavy tendrils of dread begin to twine through his stomach.
“And Jon, you must understand that we have a reputation to maintain,” continues Elias. “The Magnus Institute prides ourselves on delivering high-quality and consistent research on the esoteric and paranormal, and we cannot do that if our Head Archivist is not doing his job appropriately.”
Elias stubs his cigarette out and steps up from behind his desk, walking behind Jon towards the door to his office. “An off day or two I can fully understand,” he says, and Jon hears the deadbolt slide in the door at these words.
“But this lapse simply cannot go ignored-“ and Elias grabs Jon’s jaw with his long fingers, turning his head so that Jon is staring up at Elias -“or unpunished.”
Jon blinks. There is something numbing at the very center of himself, where there should be confusion or anger. He should shout at Elias, should storm out of the room and out of the Institute and never come back. He pushes himself out of his chair but his feet are stuck to the floor.
Elias grins wolfishly at him, a far more animated face than Jon had seen yet, and says “You understand, of course, don’t you?”
Jon finds himself nodding. He cannot move: he just stands there, watching Elias move the surgical table away from the wall and pull a variety of things from a desk drawer, laying them out neatly on a pristine white cloth laying across his desk.
Elias turns back to face him.
“Take those off and come lie down,” he says, waving his fingers in the general direction of Jon’s body before turning back to the implements on the desk.
Jon feels utterly apart from himself as he unbuttons his cardigan and shirt, shrugging them off his shoulders and placing them in the chair he was sitting in. He pauses for a moment, and -
“Yes, Jon, them too,” says Elias without turning around. Jon strips out of his shoes and pants quickly, hesitates for a moment before removing his glasses, and then crosses the room and sits down on the side of the operating table. The wood floor is abnormally cold beneath his feet, and as he turns himself to lie down he catches sight of the security cameras in the corners of the room. Their black lenses shine back at him, catching the warm light from the lamps set around the room and hardening it, turning it sharp and reflective. He closes his eyes, the dread in his stomach beginning to seethe into something closer to panic, something sharper and no less weighty.
He hears Elias coming towards him, his shoes clicking against the floor, and then he feels smooth, icy metal around his ankle. He opens his eyes to see Elias locking his foot into a cuff before moving to the other.
“Now, Jon,” says Elias as he moves up to lock his wrists down, “If you can manage to behave yourself, this will be easier and less, oh, what’s the word?”
He passes around Jon’s head and, clicking his other wrist down into the cuff says, “Ah, yes. Less dehumanizing.”
He chuckles to himself, walking over to his desk and picking up a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
Jon watches him pour it onto a piece of cotton and wipe it across the right side of his stomach. Horror rises in his chest as the cold alcohol is wiped over him, cleaning him off for whatever comes next. Through the heavy fog that seems to cover his mind, the last vestige of his humanity screams at him to stop lying passively, to scream, God, just open your mouth. He does nothing save curl his fingernails into his palm.
Elias puts the cotton down and picks up something narrow and metal. Jon realizes that it’s a scalpel as Elias approaches, and the panic curling in his stomach finally rises into his throat. He opens his mouth and chokes out, voice high with fear, “Elias, wait-“
Elias brings his hand down, cutting a long curved line from the bottom of Jon’s ribs down towards his hip, and Jon throws his head back, arching his spine and biting down on his tongue as pain races through him, shooting up his synapses and setting fire to his whole body. Elias stops, and Jon only has a moment to breathe a short, sharp breath through his nose and past his gritted teeth before Elias continues, drawing another line that starts at the same point but curves in the other direction before meeting the first line. Jon can feel his blood dripping down his side, hot against his skin, and he breathes shakily, trying to maintain some semblance of control. He has weathered worse pain, but the shame and awful anticipation has lit his system up so much that he is dangerously close to losing control of himself.
Elias draws a finger across Jon’s side, brushing through his blood, and Jon opens his eyes just in time to watch Elias bring that finger to his mouth and lick Jon’s blood off of it.
Elias cocks his head, meeting Jon’s eyes.
“You took that rather well,” he says, the predatory gleam behind his eyes making Jon shiver involuntarily. “Let’s see if that shall continue.”
He brings the scalpel down again, carving into Jon’s flesh far more abruptly. Jon whimpers as the scalpel scrapes past his hipbone, Elias carving a circle into the center of the pointed oval that he already cut into Jon.
The ends of the circle connect with a dizzying burst of pain, and nausea shoves into Jon’s throat as he realizes the shape that Elias is carving into his side. As if it could have ever been anything else. As if Jon’s ceaseless working, his avoidance of sleep and coworkers and a life outside of his office was not enough, as if the sacrifices of his flesh already taken were not enough, he would now carry the symbol of the Eye in his skin everywhere he went.
Bile rises within him as he feels Elias’s eyes on his skin.
“Beautiful,” Elias breathes, seeming almost reverent, caught in the gaze of the bloody eye on Jon’s side. He chuckles to himself, drawing his finger over the top of the eye. Jon can feel his pulse in the wound, can feel his blood pounding at his veins. His breath comes harshly, and as Elias turns away he bites his cheek, willing his mind back into some semblance of control.
Elias walks back over, coming to stand by Jon’s shoulder and looking down at his face. Jon glares up at him, the numbness that overwhelmed him earlier melting in the heat of his blood that rushes through him.
“Now, Jon,” says Elias, “was that really so bad?”
Jon pauses for a moment before shaking his head. He is a fly skewered on a pin, Elias looking down at him with dispassionate interest.
Elias sighs. “You can speak,” he says, and Jon opens his mouth. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say, whether he should scream or spit in Elias’s face, but what comes out instead is hoarse and cracked.
“Why - why are you doing this?” he says. Elias grins.
“I thought you could use a reminder,” he says. “A reminder of who you serve.”
He lifts the scalpel again, leaning over Jon to carve another line that arches from his left collarbone down his chest. Jon can smell his stupid posh cologne and his cigarette smoke, and he breathes a juddering, hateful breath as Elias continues.
“You seem to have forgotten, Jon,” and how Jon hates the sound of his name in Elias’s mouth. “Your priorities have become… skewed. Your first duty must always be to us. To See and to be Seen - that must come before everything else.”
The carving finished, he straightens back up, staring at Jon with his cold grey eyes. “I haven’t seen you lately,” he says. Blood drips from the scalpel in his hand. Jon can hear it hit the floor. The air smells of iron. “I thought we should catch up.”
Jon is frozen as Elias’s words rush over him. He has failed: not only in his duty to the Beholding, but in his lack of duty. He has tried to keep himself distant, to protect himself, to shield himself from pain and humiliation and horror that he knows will come for him, and yet he has failed. And he has not even succeeded at failing. The Beholding will still have him, through the pain and the torment that Elias is inflicting upon him. This could have all been avoided: if he were brave enough to leave or enough of a coward to concede.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Elias wipes a tear from his cheek.
“Fascinating,” says Elias. “Shall we continue?”
Jon sniffs, willing himself back into composure.
“Jon,” says Elias, and how Jon hates the sound of his name in Elias’s mouth. “Shall we continue, or will you continue these dramatics?”
Jon nods, a miniature movement of concession. He feels - oh, he feels too much. There is pain, and shame, and humiliation, and exhaustion, and defeat, all rushing through his veins and nerves and winding around his bones and he cannot move, he is struck down in this moment.
He watches Elias — there is nothing else for him, all he can do is watch — cross back to his desk, placing the bloody scalpel down on a white sheet. He slips something into his pocket before walking back to Jon. He draws a freezing alcohol swab down the inside of Jon’s elbow before sliding a needle into his arm efficiently. Jon barely even registers the pain, but he feels the needle intruding into his body with sickening clarity.
Elias holds a vial to the end of the needle, and Jon cannot tear his eyes from his blood pooling into the vial. For all he feels, he would have expected something more, but it just looks like blood.
Elias fills the vial and pulls the needle from Jon. He holds the vial up to the light, assessing it for… something, Jon supposes. Seemingly satisfied, he sets it down on the table beside Jon’s hip. He can feel the warmth of it against him. The idea that something warm and bright was inside of him is unreachable.
Elias reaches into the pocket of his waistcoat and pulls out a key. “Now, this next part requires you to have slightly more… freedom of movement,” he says, unlocking the cuffs from around Jon’s feet. “I would hope that by now, any idiotic ideas about avoiding your duty have vanished, but just in case-“ he pauses unlocking the other foot, turning to stare straight at Jon “-a word of advice. Don’t.”
He unlocks Jon’s hands and sits him up. The movement pulls at the eyes carved into his sides, and he stifles a sound of pain as the weeping flesh protests his movements. He looks around the room again, but nothing has changed since he lay down. Still Elias’s massive desk, still the windows uncovered, still the security cameras in the corners all pointing their blank black eyes at him.