Chapter Text
Jon clutches his stomach as another hunger pang roars through him. He groans and pushes his laptop away from him, officially giving up on any work he had been attempting before. "Please go away." Jon pleaded. To whom, he didn't know. The Eye, his own stomach? Regardless of who it was meant for, it fell on deaf ears. He shouldn't be hungry right now. He just had a statement, bland and tasteless as it was, less than an hour ago.
But the excuse felt hollow even to his ears, a thin pretense he'd erected to avoid admiting what he knew was true.
He was always hungry, these days.
The hunger, his constant companion, is a consistent reminder, a never-ending gnawing in his gut that never allows his mind to dwell on anything other than what he is now. Because he knows that hunger will not be sated by food. He knows what it is he must do if he ever hopes to be free of the ever present clawing at his insides and he burns with shame.
"It would be better if you embraced it."
God it would be. It would be so much easier to just...give in. Feed. Drink up all the fear he could pull from some poor fool and finally ease the nagging emptiness in his belly. He felt the urge to do so pulling on him every moment and the more he pulled back against it the worse the pain became. It felt so natural to just give in. It felt...good.
He hated it. The perverse joy he found in the suffering of another. How the worst day of someone's life had become like a four course meal to him. He hated what he had become, what he was still becoming, and that the only people still left in his life thought him better off dead.
"They'd sooner see you starve than lift a finger to help you." An insidious little voice whispered inside his head. "They despise you. They want you to suffer. Why do you protect them so?" Everyday it became harder to quiet those little voices. Harder to convince himself they were wrong. The other's disdain for him permeated their every word, bled into the coldness of their stares. Even the things they didn't say aloud were vicious. The Eye was all too keen to drip feed their thoughts to him, along with the horrific nightmares his hunger had wrought upon his unfortunate victims.
No. He wouldn't give in. He couldn't. Never again. He couldn't be that horrifying version of himself he heard Jess Tyrell describe over tape. It was just...so damn hard.
As if in protest to these thoughts, his stomach roared all the louder.
"Yeah. John, We’ve been over this. The key is to not force people to feed you their trauma. You know – just don’t do it?"
"Sorry we couldn't stop for a snack."
Jon has to fight back a sudden wave of anger as he recalls how casually dehumanizing his coworkers had taken to being. It was so easy for them to condemn him, judge him when they weren't the ones experiencing this constant pain. Nothing was easy for him. Not anymore. But apparently that didn't matter. His pain didn't matter because it was happening to him. Monsters deserved to suffer, of course.
Jon takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. His lungs filling with air only draws further attention to the emptiness of his stomach but it does help calm him down.
He supposes he can't really begrudge them for it. What had he done except make everything worse for them? Melanie was a traumatized, angry wreck, Basira was nearly as paranoid as he had been before the Unknowing and Daisy...Daisy had been the most patient with him by far and she had nearly slit his throat a year ago. What a joke.
As for Martin, he had made it quite clear he wanted nothing to do with Jon. As was his right, as far as Jon was concerned. Frankly he was surprised the man hadn't wised up earlier. There was nothing to admire about him.
Another wave of feverish scratching at his stomach wall breaks Jon from his thoughts. He bites back a pathetic little whimper, slamming a fist down on the table as he fights to keep himself upright under the strain, his aching muscles spasming in protest. He feels something hot prickle at the corner of his eyes and desperately blinks it back. Lord only knows what Melanie or Basira would think if they came in and found him crying. It had been made quite clear to him that he wasn't allowed to be weak. Showing any sign of his misery would only result in further mockery.
This can't go on. Paper statements used to be enough to at least get him through the day but even those fill him less and less with every one he reads. He can't live like this. If he keeps this up he's going to starve, he knows it. He doesn't want to die! Jon gives a hollow chuckle as he considers that he's probably the last person in his life that still holds that sentiment.
"You're a danger, Jon. A monster."
A monster, she'd said. And Basira killed monsters, didn't she? Sometimes Jon wished Basira would just kill him. As much as the thought terrified him it would be so much easier if she just took it all into her own hands and did him in. At least it'd be over. At least he wouldn't be hungry any longer. At least he wouldn't have to stew in this endless indecision and guilt.
And at that moment it is suddenly thrown into stark relief that he truly only has two options left. Live like this for as long as he can, or die.
"You don’t want to blind yourself; you don’t want to die; what you want is a reason to not do those things, so – you come to me."
Jon flinches at the memory of his last conversation with Martin. It had hurt. Out of every cruel word that had been thrown at him in the last few months that had hurt the worst.
But he'd had a point, hadn't he?
Jon doesn't want to die. But it's not about what he wants anymore, is it? No. The realization slowly sinks in that this has firmly landed in the territory of damage control. And he's the damage.
His first choice is poison. He fantasies about taking some pill or chugging down some sort of chemical concoction that would simply allow him to drift into a sleep he would never wake from. But deep down he knows it would never work like that. Any internal damage such a thing would cause could be easily, if painfully repaired by the Eye. And even then, one mistake of dosage could have him vomiting and writhing in pain for hours, all for naught as his patron refused to release him.
He thinks about hanging. A simple rope tied to a ceiling beam, a kicked chair and a broken neck. But it's still too risky. If his neck didn't snap he'd just be left hanging there, choking and suffocating, unable to die. What if no one found him? Or worse...what if someone did find him and decided to leave him hanging?
Simply slashing his wrists is out of the question. He couldn't even cut off a finger when it counted, did he really expect the Eye to let him bleed out?
Briefly, he considers shooting himself. But he doesn't need to Know anything about the process to understand that obtaining a firearm in London when he has no need of it for work, sport, or otherwise would next to impossible. And anyway, deep down he knows he'd never have the guts to actually pull the trigger.
So it would have to be falling. Death by gravity. Something that could do enough damage quick enough that the Eye wouldn't be able to repair it in time. And something that, once he committed to it, couldn't be taken back. All he'd need to do is find a sufficiently tall place and just...jump. Easier said than done, obviously. But Jon had done much more foolish things in the name of protecting the people he loved. Things that, had one not known him better, might even be called brave. All he needed was just a little bit of that bravery for just a few crucial seconds and then it'd be done. The world would have one less monster.
Jon picks a date and gets his affairs in order. He doesn't leave a note. Why would he? No one would want to hear his pathetic excuses and apologies from beyond the grave. He will simply have to hope that his final action speaks for itself. He has no family, no one to leave his few possessions and the meager wealth he'd managed to acquire to. He figures he might as well try to do at least a little good for the world before he leaves it. So his remaining funds he splits up between a few charities, his book collection he donates in its entirety to a local library. All except for one. The one volume of poetry he'd ever owned. A small paperback copy of "Poems of Jane Austen". It was maybe 74 pages long, so slim amongst the girthy nonfiction works it had been haphazardly shoved between. He couldn't recall when exactly he would've picked the thing up. Perhaps it was a long forgotten remnant of those library book sales his grandmother had scoured so long ago. This, he decided, he would leave to Martin.
In the early morning hours of Monday September 30th, Jon finds himself on the roof of the Magnus institute. The irony is sickening but really, it was the only real choice. The building is large enough that he would be unlikely to survive the fall to the ground but, in the late hours at least, the streets were barren enough that he wouldn't risk traumatizing some poor bystander as his flailing body hit the pavement. That'd be just like him, wouldn't it? Make somebody's life worse even on his way out. He steps out onto the ledge. It's a flat topped building. No railing. Nothing in between him and open air except a single step.
Jon's eyes scan the ground, ensuring that there are no passers-by walking down below. London is beautiful from above. If this was how he went out, at least it was with a view like this as one of the last things he'd see. Seeing no one, he takes in a shaky breath and lets it out slowly, letting it fully sink in that this is the day he will die.
No one will cry. No one will mourn. With the possible exception of Daisy but...she'd get over it. He wasn't hard to forget. He wants to cry, he thinks. But he has no tears left in him. Jon sucks in one more indulgent breath and makes to step off the roof.
But he can't. He's trying. He wants to but his body won't follow his commands.
"Do it." He urges himself. "Just do it! Get it over with!" But his feet feel as though they've been encased in concrete, the last fading threads of his self preservation tethering him to the solid platform. At the moment where it counts the most, the mindless, primal fear that had driven him to prey upon the innocent has frozen him to the spot.
Frustration and anger bubbles up in his chest as he wills his stubborn legs to move. "Do it! Do it you pathetic, sniveling coward! Do it!" He hisses at himself within his mind. "Or have you forgotten what hell you put them all through, merely by you still being here? What a danger you are to everyone around you? Do the world a favor and step off the ledge already! Why are you stalling? Gonna back out? Martin was right about you. You won't do it, you miserable little cretin of a man. You won't-!"
Jon takes a lurching step forward, hurling his body off of the ledge before he can hesitate further. There is an intense dizzying sensation as his foot lands upon nothing but open air, his limbs thrashing to regain a balance that was lost as soon as he'd stepped forward. As he begins to fall there's a flash of panic and in one last burst of survival instinct his hand flails out, grasping to find the ledge. He misses. His stomach drops sickeningly, as if his very soul is screaming no no wait I take it back! I don't want to-! . And then...relief. The strangest sense of relief floods through him as he watches the ledge get further and further away. He's done it. It's out of his hands now. All he has to do is let gravity do the rest. He closes his eyes and enjoys the feeling of the cool night air rushing past his face as he plummets to the ground.
Jon feels the impact. He feels all the air get knocked out of his lungs as he slams hard into the unforgiving concrete but he doesn't feel any pain. As he stares blankly up at the inky black sky, at the stars framing the ledge he just left behind, he idly wonders if he's destroyed the part of him that allows him to be in pain. He finds some brief satisfaction in that before he loses the ability to wonder at all. The last thing Jonathan Sims experiences is the fleeting sensation of warm blood draining out of the massive hole he's just punched through the back of his head. And then...nothing.