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He woke up to the morning light and strong smell of old print and coffee.
The impression was intense, sharp in its alienness - Jon immediately became suspicious and, a bright, painful tang of a moment after, devastated by the knowledge it is not real.
Windows in the archives. Another distressing joke his tired mind conjured - and he was so confident there will be no dreams after the change. He should have been wary of confidence by now, used to making mistakes, and unbothered by both, but the sharpness of uncaring, dull anger at himself dug into his insides nevertheless.
He tended to burns on Martin’s shoulders, keeping his mind from going in circles around it makes me sick I hate it - doesn’t look like much has changed - a sniff of power - it makes me sick I hate it with such an effort that everything else has faded around him. Martin had to snap him out of it, asking what is happening. The explanations felt detached and wrong on his tongue; his articulation refused to cooperate under the pressure.
But Martin saw it for what it is, and gently caught his burned hand, and said something - something encouraging, maybe loving. Something that he couldn't remember here, in the dream archives with windows - only look on Martin's face: a flicker of hurt, a touch of tenderness.
Maybe it was this place, pulling him back to the first days in the archives. They have never been this full of light, never smelled so clean and pleasant: the basement had a special scent of old paper and abandoned work to it, and Jon had found it, in those first days, incredibly irritating. Maybe it was just him, unable to stick his mind to good things, when-
Doesn’t look like much has changed.
Another choice he shouldn’t have made. Another clue he’s missed. Another attempt to bare his nerves in search of understanding and try not to flinch too much.
They might have dozed off after they spoke. Perhaps, he has, and now Martin looked at him sleeping for the first time since the change.
A penny into Jon’s humanity jar.
He let out a dry laugh.
“Trouble in paradise?” asked the voice from the door.
Jon felt the distance between his shoulder blades stretching, his bones collapsing onto the desk. He buried his head in his hands.
“Get out from my head,” he managed to mumble and was instantly pulled out of the careful, comfortable darkness he’s hidden within - by Elias’ delighted joy on hearing his voice. Just a bare taste of it - because Elias constructed a barrier around his head in seconds - thrown him into a pit of red.
It raged and ached inside him, the unfairness of it, the acute contrast - when was the last time I felt like this.
Accusations and fury crushed into ash in his mouth and he choked on it, his vocal cords stuck, unmovable, useless, but then the Eye shifted closer, slid into his mind, and the Archivist opened his eyes-
Elias was in the chair around his table. He made a careful sip from his mug. There was a print on it: SHITTIEST BOSS IN THE WORLD.
Jon felt like crying.
“Jon,” Elias called softly, watching him, calmly drinking coffee. Jon couldn’t meet his eyes. He was so normal in this mundane scenery. So normal and familiar in a grey shirt with non-descript cufflinks. Like Jon’s dream was another stop in his supernatural routing. There were windows in the archives, and he looked younger in the light, saying: “I have seen their pain for some time. And I understood it all too well even before I started seeing it. You have to be more creative.”
Elias put the cup on the table.
Jon stood, stepped over the anger spilling from every cell in his body - and around his table - and punched him in the face. Vomit your fears.
Elias let out a pathetic, quiet yelp, and the sound scared Jon. A faint red imprint of his knuckles bloomed on Elias’ cheek, close to where an amused, gentle curve to his mouth appeared.
He looked like they were having a pleasant conversation over coffee and then Jon stood up and hit him. He didn’t lose a chord of his contented, serene expression. Like he suffered through Jon’s violent outbursts every morning in the dreamlike sunlit office drinking from a mocking mug.
He hated it. He wanted to break it. He wanted to wake up. He threw another punch - but this time, Elias caught it near his face in a warm hold.
“You’re exhausting yourself,” Elias said. He felt Elias pulling him closer - the sensation warm, fleeting, barely there, - but it called out to something inside him, something he’s followed for a long time.
“You are calling me,” Jon realised gravelly. “You wanted for me to emerge.”
“I did,” Elias replied, taking his other hand - it makes me sick I hate it hand - and Jon rashly tried to break free from the hold. Elias let him do so and then caught it again, his fingers gentle on the scarred flash. “I do.”
Jon felt raw and tired. How was he supposed to tell Martin they are on the quest to killing Elias because the Eye - Elias - wants him there? He swallowed the thought. It tasted like an argument, like another discussion.
Jon used to love discussions. Jon has never hit anyone. He felt sick.
Maybe he deserved it. He deserved the man weighing his tenderness like a whip. Deserved to be tortured by normalcy: he annihilated all possibilities where he might have had it. Deserved monsters, offering him comfort, deserved to long for it and hate himself for the longing.
“Why are you here,” he asked, feeling tired, angry, sad - so, so sad - with both hands in Elias’ hold. Elias held his hand once, after Prentiss; supportively. Is that what it is, Jon wondered, not especially invested in the thought - a path too dangerous, that is; missing the ignorance.
“I’m always here. That’s how - how did you put it - we grossly feel each other,” Elias smiled - and it was almost bland and normal, too. “You see me, though, because I thought you might need to.”
Another pull, much lighter. Might need to - why, a ghost of a fatal curiosity vibrated in Jon's head. He should refuse, he thought; but then: Elias might have information.
He was so utterly tired of choices.
He went forward, moved between Elias’ legs and sunk into his lap - or tried to, placing his legs around Elias' thighs. It was awkward because Elias didn’t let go of his hands, just placed them around chair arms, slid his fingers between Jon’s. He leaned his cheek on Elias' neck and felt the beating of his heart, steady and unbothered, like a pendulum. He smelled like books and coffee, too. He mouthed at Jon's temple and caught his shiver, placing the palm on his back, and left it there, radiating warmness.
“Rest,” a hot exhale touched Jon’s ear, small circles were drawn on Jude's burn.
Then everything stopped.
They sat, motionless.
Jon woke up there again, and almost groaned in irritation.
“You are going to die,” he said in Elias’ ear, briefly wondering why his legs didn’t feel uncomfortable. “You have failed. Miscalculated.”
“I know,” Elias laughed, quietly and so simply, as if it was another truth he has come in term with. Another unshakable force. His tone was almost humbled, and Jon waited for an answering stab. A tremble of hysteria overwhelmed him in the absence of it. He was really a mess.
Elias’ hand on his back started moving: to the centre of his spine and around it, to one blade and another, to the shoulders, with light, delicate pressure, and down to the small of his back. Jon wouldn’t call it pleasant, but it was - probably - calming. As silence, and smell, and daylight, and every little detail about this place.
With the other hand Elias’ worked through the muscle of his burned palm. As if before writing.
He remembered the last time he saw Elias’ writing. The rage appeared again, brisk and dangerous.
“Jonah,” he murmured, wishing to sound vicious, wishing for it to become a curse. Elias stopped moving, Jon, trained to recognize every fear and consume them, felt the rich taste of centuries of Elias' fear and loneliness, and immediately, hungrily wanted more.
Elias started stroking his back again, soothing his rage or attempting to gauge Jon into it again, Jon didn’t know. The wave of hunger went back. Went quiet.
He remembered Jude’s screams and apologies. How annoyed and disappointed with himself he's been after. What seemed to be rightful retribution hollowed out into a pit of guilt in his stomach: pit, where he chose to guide Martin through the burning house for nothing.
Listen to the quiet. Elias brushed his hair with his fingers, massaged his scalp. Jon felt something close to floating, to flying, to the Vast, their interlocked hands barely anchoring him in a place where it makes me sick i hate-
“Look at me,” Elias said - ordered - and Jon scoffed and lifted his head. He knew Elias’ eyes. Jonah’s eyes. His gaze here was familiar, more familiar than a tower or relentless vigilance of the sky. The old ghostly sensation on the back of his neck almost made him sob.
Elias tilted his head with a small smile - as if to watch him better. Leaned back - as to see sunlight engulfing Jon’s form. Maybe he felt what Jon's felt looking back to the Desolation domain.
A useless journey through the house on fire. A perfect choice and the perfect chosen one and a perfect path to a goal where the same thing you were running from met you with open arms. Or not perfect, of course. Suitable. Explainable. Fitting.
“Yes,” Elias agreed and took Jon’s scared palm in both hands. “You can’t continue like that.”
“I am not like you,” Jon snapped, the irritation rendered irrelevant in Elias’ warm hold.
“I know,” Elias nodded solemnly. “We do not share many similarities. It should be easy for you to understand, then: it was all me.”
What. Jon blinked at him, startled and scared of honesty, of seriousness in his voice. Elias grinned at his confusion, waiting for him to process it. When Jon finally grasped the meaning, the air left his lungs.
“Are you trying to say it’s not my fault? You sick-”
He felt Elias brush off the wisps of his hair from his forehead and cup his face and saw himself through his eyes, all surprise and pain and tiredness. Hot anger, hidden and covered behind trembling eyelashes. A faint flush rising up to touch.
He felt Elias’ old, almost otherworldly focus settling down on his skin, on his eyes; and, finally - fully: Elias' fear, his solitude, and his failure - the main, sweetest element to watcher’s crown ornate. I shall never die, crumbled and crushed and thrown to Jon's legs like an offering. Jon groaned, tasting it.
“I hate you,” he told Jonah, feeling dizzy and satisfied and good. That what revenge should taste like. “You can’t switch bodies anymore.”
“Yes,” Jonah agreed, and gave him seven memories of gauging his eyes out and gouging their eyes out, shivering in terror of fallacy, of human error, of interruption; in fear of blindness and stopping and turning back.
Maybe it was a curse.
He almost felt coppery liquid in his mouth - and couldn’t hide a smile. Jonah countered it with a soft, small sigh of pain, pressed the tip of his nose to Jon’s. The evening blue of his eyes reminded Jon of the sea, and he snatched the memory of a youth with a carefully blank face and detached jokes and insufferable attitude towards knowledge - of Peter Lukas - from James Wright.
“I killed him,” Jon hissed near Jonah’s mouth and put pain and stubbornness of Peter's last moments back to Jonah, watching as he twitched, curled into Jon, dug his nails into Jon's back. “He died, protecting your grand plan.”
“Yes.”
“And for what? You have failed, and you are alone,” Jon felt the power of the Eye brim inside: huge, overwhelming, drunk from seeing prey in front of him. “You're left with nothing-”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jonah chuckled, hoarse, and leaned away. Jon snorted. The electric strength hummed everywhere they’ve touched.
Elias relaxed under him, drinking in the power he radiated with like a beacon or a star, drinking him in, without taking his pound of fear, just watching, as if proposing a counterargument. Jon saw himself wrapped in the sun, alive, his chest rising and falling under the heaviness of his anger, his eyes black with fury. He looked like a small person containing a big hell, and Elias looked it like he was the most precious view of his life.
Like a home, lost, never found, but constantly chased. Like a memory.
“You don’t have me,” Jon said, feeling the energy calming down in him, Elias’ hand moving across his back again.
“This isn’t about me or who I have, Jon,” Elias returned, looking at him with a crisp, bland expression so startlingly different from what Jon was still feeling from him. “This is about you and your determination to let the guilt strangle whatever life you have left out of you. That attitude has never been sustainable and it certainly is not in your current circumstances.”
“Well, whose fault is that?” Jon snapped. Froze.
Elias grinned at him again, the bastard, and petted Daisy’s scar on his neck.
“Precisely,” he answered. “Now, I might be mistaken about a lot of things, but I’m fairly sure that there’s nothing you could have done against me. Minor, little things wouldn’t have mattered eventually. I made sure of that. The only chance - you at the peak of your ability now, and you are yet to see the future, am I wrong?”
Jon refused to respond. Elias took his hand, again.
“I thought so,” Elias said, “There is no use in imagining the history without a wheel or Helen’s face, especially when you are so keen on changing it again.”
Jon let out a quiet, dry laugh. Elias watched him in amusement and sighed, satisfied, as if he did something good. He reached to find out why - why - why are you giving me pep talk - and Elias gave him a bland smile from the defences he built as soon as Jon decided to know something useful.
“You need to let go,” he looked at his grip on Elias’ hand in horror, and then at his face. Elias took the burned palm and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, adding: “Do say hello to Annabel.”
And then the world - familiarly - went wrong.