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After the change, Jon doesn't sleep, but he still dreams. Horror washes into him, recedes just long enough for Martin to offer some paltry comfort, then drowns him again. It should be awful. He wants it to be awful. But all that fear fits into him perfectly, like he was made for it — or like it was made for him. He’s not sure which option would be worse.
Once, he finds himself caught in a strange feedback loop — he watches his old dreams from a distance, as if he’s sitting in a theatre and watching performers act out a story he was there to witness in the first place. It’s off, and he can’t place why until Elias is looking at him over an empty hospital bed, smiling with something very close to fondness.
"You see, Jon?" Elias sighs in satisfaction, his eyes half-lidded. "It isn't so bad, is it?"
Jon comes back to himself with his face pressed into Martin’s jumper. The darkness is soothing, and that in itself makes him lean back. He can’t get complacent about these things.
His gaze is already being drawn back to Elias. It would be so easy to find him, if only Jon tried.
Martin sighs, stroking a hand through his hair. There’s a gentle sadness to the air around him, tinged with the faintest edge of fear — fear of loss; fear that one of these days, there will be nothing left of Jon, and that the Archivist will look at Martin and deem him uninteresting.
Jon doesn’t look for Elias.
(Not yet, at least.)
Eventually, they run out of food.
(More specifically, Martin runs out of food. Jon doesn’t think he’ll ever feel hungry again.)
The village is gone, but Jon knows there are other settlements still out there, full of humans cowering in fear of the things that they can’t understand. Under Martin’s watchful eye, Jon reaches out with a sense he never had before, searching for that terror.
It’s easy. It whets his appetite for more. He stumbles into Martin’s arms and can’t help but notice the feeling of Elias’ eyes on his back, gleaming with poisonous jealousy.
London, Jon knows, is where the real feast is. (London, Jon knows, is where Elias is.)
Jon could walk through the apocalypse without anything touching him, but Martin will never make it to London. He’s too vulnerable, too human, and most importantly, too afraid.
All the same, on the day Martin runs out of old canned food, Jon gets up and begins to walk.
Martin calls out to him, Martin’s hands rest heavy on his shoulders. But his fear is really no different to anyone else’s; in the tides that wash into Jon’s being, Martin is just another wave.
“Follow me,” Jon says, lacing his fingers with Martin’s. “I’ll keep you safe for as long as I can.”
Humanity is important. Martin, despite his fear, is important; he’s the only anchor that Jon has left.
When they reach Edinburgh, Jon has another dream of Elias.
(In the ocean metaphor, he thinks Elias might be a lighthouse. Insulated from the storm but immersed in it, all the same. Watching from a tower that illuminates everything around him.)
It’s less of a dream, really, and more of a… construction. It’s hard to remember — his last waking memory is of another wave of fear crashing into him, all the more potent for being at the heart of a city. He remembers pleading with the empty air, desperate for respite from the truth of his nature.
Now he stands in that same hospital room — the one he doesn’t remember, yet knows as well as he knows himself. It’s a perfect recreation of a time long-past. There’s the bed with its motionless patient; a vase with the wilting flowers of a Lukas funeral; machines tracking the absence of life, with jagged lines of brain activity skittering across dusty monitors.
Elias sits at the foot of the bed, watching the Jon-who-isn’t-Jon. He holds a tape recorder and murmurs familiar words into it. He seems entirely caught up in the dream.
When Jon opens his mouth, he is honestly surprised to hear his voice come out.
“Did I make this happen?”
Elias doesn’t startle, but he goes very still. He turns his head just enough to look at Jon. His eyes are wide; all the better for seeing the cool glass-grey hue of his irises. When he puts the tape recorder down on the bed, it’s as though nothing is amiss at all.
“Define ‘this’,” he says, smooth and sharp and just the slightest bit scared.
Jon waves a hand, and is surprised to realise he can do that as well. He tries to encompass this whole fake world — the sterile blandness of the hospital walls, and him and Elias (and him) nestled within them. Outside the window, there is only fog and loneliness.
“Perhaps,” Elias replies. The stiff fabric of his suit wrinkles as he shrugs one shoulder. “You’re powerful enough that you could do all kinds of things if you put your mind to it.”
“I’m sure.”
Between blinks, another chair appears beside Elias.
“Tired, are we?”
“No,” Jon says. They both know that he hasn’t felt tired since the change happened. He sits down.
“Hungry, then? All that ordinary fear does get rather dull after a while.”
“… Yes.” Jon looks at Elias, properly looks, and Elias’ fear is heady and intoxicating. “But it looks like you’re the only one here, Elias — and I know what you’re afraid of.”
Around them, the world shifts.
Jon reaches into himself and finds all the stories of the End. It is child’s play to pull them into their component pieces, to cast Elias in the starring role. Cheating death and getting more than he bargained for; trapped in an endless cycle of death and rebirth, where no sacrifice keeps you alive for long; the pain of lasting beyond when you should have ended.
“The moment you die will feel exactly the same as this one,” Jon murmurs, borrowing Georgie’s voice — borrowing her strength, her determination, her utter fearlessness.
There is nothing but naked fear on Elias’ face. Dark tendrils wrap their way around his arms, block his eyes and caress his cheeks. It’s awful and gratifying all at once; Jon feels more alive than he has since Elias’ voice tore itself from his mouth and summoned the apocalypse.
“This is what you made me, Elias. You gave me this hunger, this power.”
“I know,” Elias gasps. Jon doesn’t entirely know what he’s experiencing anymore, but his cheeks are wet with tears. “I— I am proud of you, Jon. You— you’ve always been perfect.”
“Fuck off,” Jon says, without half of the anger that he should.
When Jon wakes up, there is a tape clutched in his hand. He slips it into his pocket before Martin can notice it. It wouldn’t do to scare him anymore than he already is.
They make it to Newcastle, and that’s where Jon loses Martin.
“I’m sorry, Jon,” Martin says, as they stand together in the middle of a fog-covered moor.
“What happened to not giving into complete despair?” Jon reaches out, but no matter how far he reaches, their hands don’t touch. Martin smiles softly, gently, sadly.
“It wasn’t exactly realistic, was it? I was just going to get myself killed. And I didn’t want to do that, not with you.” He shakes his head, exasperated with his old self. “You’re important, Jon. I hope you know that.”
Martin isn’t scared anymore. Jon can feel the absence of it, more jarring than he could have imagined. He’s just… calm. Resigned. The Lonely could keep Martin safe in this new world, everything at a distance. Martin would be powerful enough to survive.
“What do you see?” Jon asks, a tinge of guilt to his tone.
Martin sighs, still with that quiet smile on his face.
“I see you, Jon. And you’re looking for something I can’t give you. Not anymore.”
“Right.”
Jon turns his gaze through the fog to the golden beacon shining in the south. London. Elias. The Eye, watching over everything from the temple of its most devoted servants.
When he looks back, Martin is gone. The fog is retreating. The grass is very green below his feet.
Jon doesn’t rest as he walks the rest of the way to London. He follows the train lines south, feeling the echoes of engines that no longer run along the wood-and-metal of the rails. He never boards the trains that pass along these rails, even when they stop, their doors open in invitation.
Every CCTV camera still works. They all watch him with hungry lenses. He passes through Durham, through York, through Peterborough, and then he finally reaches London.
There is something towering over the center of the city. From one angle, it looks like the Institute. From another, it looks like the Panopticon. Not that there’s any difference anymore.
Jon strides through the city towards the palace of the Eye. Everyone — humans and monsters alike — gives him a wide berth. When he gets there, the door is already ajar, waiting for him like an open mouth. He gives an idle thought to the Distortion, and then he pushes on.
Elias sits behind his desk, the same as always, and there’s no grand revelation in seeing him in person. He’s just a man in a slightly rumpled suit, a quiet smile, and a set of piercing eyes.
“You made it, then,” he says, all teeth.
Jon steps forward, head held high. He remembers what Elias looks like when he’s terrified, when he’s crying and begging for Jon to let him be. Jon isn’t scared of him anymore.
“Yes. I did.”
“So sorry to hear about Martin,” Elias continues, and even if Jon can hear the edge of goading in that insufferable voice, it doesn’t stop him from stepping forward, his gaze full of purpose. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s doing quite well for himself.”
“It doesn’t.” Jon steps forward again. Elias’ fear spikes in the air, but his smile is wide and eager.
Jon catches a glimpse of his reflection in one of the odds and ends on Elias’ desk, and he looks nothing less than hungry. His eyes have gone the colour of obsidian, shining and all-consuming. His throat itches with power, syrupy compulsion rising to his tongue easily.
“What do you want me to do, Elias?”
Elias shivers. His terror is the sweetest thing Jon has ever tasted. His zealous pride is the most terrible thing he’s ever seen. He looks at Jon with all the fear and awe you might reserve for a god — and a merciless god at that, capricious and wrathful.
“Whatever you want,” Elias says, words pulled from his mouth like teeth. He’s still making Jon work for it, even after all they’ve been through. “I’ve been— rather bored, in— in recent months.”
Jon advances on him until the concept of personal space is nothing but a memory. He hasn’t tapped into this part of himself since he killed Peter Lukas. Just like it did then, it feels right.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Jon hisses.
Elias’ worshipful gaze stays locked on Jon even as he begins to scream.