Chapter Text
“It cannot survive, but still it clings to its existence, destroying everything around it.”
The Archive is approaching a door. Flickering lights from street lamps that should not and cannot function barely illuminate the crumbling road. The eyes above are staring.
“Now it serves as a suffering reminder of everything that has been lost – which is to say, nothing of value.”
There is a spider waiting patiently behind the door. It has a name, and it is hungry. As hungry as the thing walking towards it. Neither will ever stop being hungry.
“It cannot be seen in its entirety, for it keeps itself covered, but its long, unfurling tongue may be seen emerging, pink and bristling with long, hairlike taste buds, hunting for something old enough to eat.”
It reaches its hand towards the door, trembling. The door is red, maybe simply painted or stained with old blood. It knows the answer, of course.
“Even if Leah had known, if she had had time to warn them, who would have believed her?”
This world is now an unchanging picture of what has happened, a silent graveyard of all their memories. Time had left only their pale white bones until those were eaten too.
“If she had been quicker, more forceful in her warnings, might they still be alive?”
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
The door opens.
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At 4:28 AM on a Saturday, Jonathan Sim’s eyes open as an alarm beeps.
The door closes.
The ceiling is not falling down slowly to crush him, or covered in eyes, or made of flesh, or crawling with spiders—it is simply a ceiling. His flat’s ceiling, specifically.
…How is he here?
He can feel his heart beating, far rapidly more than normal but he’s breathing. Jon remembers it all. Of course he does. He (it?) knocked on the door. So… because of that, now he is here.
Fumbling for his phone resting next to him, it weighs heavier than he remembered. The phone case has a dark, textured surface, and had been lost last time when he had been taken by Breekon and Hope. Left on the concrete sidewalk, cracked.
He shakily turns off the alarm and drops the phone back on the table.
Jon inhales, and exhales slowly. His ribs don’t ache or hurt as he does this because he is no longer missing those two ribs that Jared Hopworth had ripped out of him. Right. He doesn’t feel that constant persistent itching that the second you paid attention to it would cause you to scratch, scratch, scratch. There are no scars.
Only him, and he is all that is left of everything that happened.
Jon does not get up. He can feel that familiar need to move, to do something constantly, but he can’t help but think that if he gets up that this careful hope that he is trying so hard to shove down will shatter, that this is all fake. Some Spiral or Stranger domain, even maybe Lonely.
He stares at the ceiling and there are no thoughts passing through his mind, his eyes studying each and every little piece of what he can see so that this moment can be remembered forever.
If it is all fake, then at least he can take solace in that he'll remember this.
…
…He can check if it's some dream, or some domain he wandered off into as he always did, endlessly searching for statements. It's a fairly simple and easy way to check if it's real.
Can he recognize Sasha?
If he can, then all this is a domain and despite how much he would hate to leave, he would find his way out. If he cannot, then… either he's horrifically unlucky in a domain that knows him, or this is real.
It's logical. Simple, easy steps. All he has to do… is do it.
Jon still lies there on his bed, staring at the ceiling. His eyes sting due to the lack of blinking.
He just needs to get up. To grab his computer and find the Magnus Institute's website. To find Sasha James’s name and look at her face.
Jon does not get up. Instead, he continues to stare at his ceiling and only blinks when his eyes begin to burn and tear up. He needs to get up, he knows this. But Jon doesn't move. His body feels so heavy, as if he were in the coffin all over again where it feels as though your ribcage is going to collapse inside you.
Saying he cannot move only brings memories of long black limbs, he's perfectly capable of getting up. He can move his legs, and he can imagine exactly how he'll stand up and move.
Jon continues to lie there for what might be an hour, or maybe only ten minutes. His head is blissfully empty of knowledge. Just his thoughts.
Jonathan Sims falls back to sleep.
It has been some very exhausting years, after all.
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When Jon wakes up again, he is still in his flat. Light is filtering through the window.
Inhale, exhale. Over and over, again and again. He can do this.
He carefully, so cautiously, sits up and pulls his legs off of the bed. He tests the floor. It does not collapse. It is as secure as it had always been.
It feels like his head is filled with fog where he's so strongly avoiding any thought that's going to cause it to come all crashing down.
Jon unsteadily stands up. Inhale, exhale. Everything is fine. It's going to be alright. Nobody is going to die, it's going to be fine.
He turns on his laptop. Finds the website, and stares at the screen.
He scrolls down.
The face staring at him above Sasha James’s name has round gold glasses, curly black hair and dark skin, and looks nothing like the Not Sasha he had known.
Jon thinks he cries, but he cannot quite remember as he stares at that face, trying to memorize it. It does not trigger any memories, but she is alive.
So is Tim, he realizes. And Daisy, and Martin, and all those that had died because he outlasted everything except for the thing he continued to fear.
It feels as though he's underwater and you can't tell if you're crying because everything is water.
…What is he even going to do when he has to go back to work? When he has to look Tim in the eye and not think of how even though Jon never hated him, he still felt afraid? How he can't recognize Sasha’s face no matter how hard he tries? When he sees Daisy and must remember that she will want to kill him?
…When he has to stare at Martin and not see the face that was stained in his mind full of dead eyes?
Inhale, exhale. Don't think about it. If he thinks about it, his mind will get stuck on it and he will never leave that quiet grave. It's fine.
…Back on track.
If he stays, they will most definitely notice the change in his personality.
Jon thinks briefly of them hating him. For replacing another Jon, just like Not Sasha. He's no better, is he? …But that's not important.
He can avoid them. He never knew Martin before the Archives, so that should be relatively easy. Tim and Sasha had always treated him as though if they just stayed around long enough he would've opened up.
…He can just ask them to leave him alone. Maybe.
Georgie never reached out to him. If he never becomes a monster, Daisy and Basira will have no reason to get close to him. Melanie… should stay away from the Institute as long as he doesn't spite her, right?
Jon can fix this. It's going to be okay.
He slowly, gradually gets his priorities in order. These being a shower, some kind of food, and then staving off a mental breakdown by watching some kind of show. He's always liked nature documentaries.
Jon does not look in the mirror. He avoids actually seeing his body. Just look away.
“Then walk away, Francis, just turn and leave. All that is required is a little bit of willpower.”
He flinches at the memory. Inhale, exhale. Don't. think. about. it.
The ramen cup reminds him of his uni days. It also reminds him of a domain of the Extinction where you could not afford any kind of healthy food due to the rising prices, slowly killing your body and everyone else in the process all for the gain of those above.
Most domains became the Extinction near the end.
The ramen tastes fine. Maybe a bit bland.
It's been so long since he's done something like this (quite literally an indeterminate time), that it feels as though he's an actor going through a play.
Accurate, considering the Web.
The Eye is gone. The door is shut tight, not even existing in his mind anymore. His head feels empty. There is no random knowledge to know to avoid thinking about all that happened.
However, Jon has always been good at avoiding his problems.
He watches multiple nature shows, goes down a research rabbithole about the now extinct Carolina Conure, and briefly considers what's going to happen, entity - wise.
…The Web theoretically should have achieved their goal. Right, yes, the Web had achieved their goal of spreading throughout all the universes. Theoretically, then, he shouldn't have the Web trying to pull him along the same path.
Too many theoreticals. If the Web was going to tug him along the same path, then no matter what he did he would end up there again. Nothing he could do would ever change it.
He must still be marked, because his Lonely mark was purely psychological. Because he appears to have the same mind as before, Jon likely has all fourteen marks.
…Jonah can only read minds when he focuses on it. Jon will simply have to hope that he will have enough time to stop his plans before he thinks to look.
It's far too much of a flimsy plan. It's not going to work. But at the moment it is all he has.
…The Extinction, now. At the end of the world, the Extinction flourished, taking over domains and even “killing” or more accurately absorbing other entities.
Jon also knew that it was a frankly horrible and stupid idea to try to stop an entity from emerging. It's not as though it was really emerging, it had always been there. It simply became more pronounced. So, that is no issue.
The other rituals… were a problem. They did end up killing quite a large number of people, even though they failed. Not to mention that eventually, someone other than Jonah was going to figure it out.
…For now, Jon would limit his ritual worries to his lifetime.
He was going to fix this. Those he cared about so deeply were not going to die.
“Pause for laughter.”
It wasn’t going to be the same. It would not repeat the same play, over and over again.
One very prominent part of Jon’s personality, one that he was very aware of and had stated once, is that he was, and is incredibly stubborn.
Jonah Magnus would not win.