Chapter Text
This could very well be the last day of Jon’s life.
If he were to picture his last moments (which he did with alarming frequency) they were always in the maws of spiders. Spiders wrapped their victims up in thin web before injecting them with enzymes to liquify the living, twitching bundle. Their meat and bones and whatever else broke down, leaving nothing but a glorified puddle for the spider to suck up. That is what happened to that bully years ago, no doubt. That is what could happen to Jon, if caught. If his fate at spider’s whims wasn’t even worse.
His last moments weren’t meant for a refined old parlor, sitting on an antique chair worth more than he ever was. The air smells of dust though there is no dust, no shadows, just long, lonely minutes crawling by. Each tick of the second hand in the old grandfather clock makes Jon feel the world is falling away and there’s him, only him, only ever him.
He’d expect nothing less from the Lukas family home. This where they led him when knocked on Moorland’s door, sat him down and told him to wait. And wait.
There is a creak in the hall that makes him jump, then the figure of the grim servant who answered the door is standing too close behind his chair. There’s no feeling of invasion, that discomfort Jon always felt when someone got too close. It’s the same as standing next to furniture, wooden and soulless, set dressing with human skin. He swallows and stands when the living furniture in the guise of a servant gestures to follow.
The halls echo with absence, bring to mind silent nights in his childhood home, his grandmother there but never really present with him, often too lost in her losses. Moorland House is far grander than anything he’s lived in or even seen before though, oozing old money from its pores, quiet and absolute and living in a horrifying way. The paintings on the wall sit in ostentatious frames and every single work is a long, lone figure, whether they be on an isolated pier or in the center of a faceless crowd.
The hall gives way to study eventually, dark and wooden, smelling of dusty smoke. The pressure here is nearly unbearable, makes Jon close his eyes tight and breath a moment before he adjusts enough to fix his gaze on the man sitting at the grand dark oak desk. The man gesturing for him to sit.
Jon does, quick and rabbit jitters to his nerves, studying the silent man before him. He’s broad shouldered, seems thick around the middle and is so pale Jon thinks he must glow in a dim room. His suit is stark black against that skin and his eyes are moats around an empty castle, a gate that leads to nothing. Hollow is the truest word to describe this man, that is the first thing Jon decides about Nathaniel Lukas.
“Hello I- I’m Jonathan Sims,” Jon tries when the silence gets too boisterous, ringing painfully in his ears. “I tried sending ah- well, messages, emails, calls.”
“And then you showed up at my doorstep,” Nathaniel concludes, voice one that echoes quietly.
Jon swallows and nods, feeling the end of his life creepingly close again. “I did my research. Honestly I was surprised I was even let through the gate.” When the silence stretches again Jon fidgets and adds, “I’ll be more surprised if I’m let back out.”
He has only a moment to curse his nerves and tongue before Nathaniel’s reaction strikes, a mere quirk of the brows one could miss if they blinked. If he’s amused or annoyed Jon can’t say, if he finds Jon an interesting prospect or a waste of time is even harder to tell. If anything Nathaniel Lukas gives the impression of a man who looked to his feelings one day and found them a troublesome growth he promptly choked until they shrivelled into nothing but dust hung under his skin.
“It’s rare someone seeks us out understanding our proclivities. It’s rarer still they press until they find their way here despite knowing the fate that could await them. Those are the actions of a desperate man, Mr. Sims. A hunted one.”
For a terrifying moment Jon thinks he’ll have to explain, have to lay out the whole sorry story line of his life. Yes Mr. Lukas, the power I’ve seen most typically called the Web marked me young, snared me then lost me then followed me ever since. Yes, I know what they are, I know what you are, as much as one can with the resources I had, with the ‘luck’ I had in finding those who knew it all first hand. Yes, they’re closing in, the spiders, they’re breathing down my neck. I just barely managed to graduate Uni with my sanity and skin. I just barely made it here.
Yes, I know I’m jumping from the frying pan to the fire. I know I’m on the doorstep of monsters, offering my neck and hoping whatever bits of me remain after you’re all through will be more and better than what the spiders would make of me.
The moment passes with a tap of Nathaniel’s pen. “I’ve read your messages and made basic inquiries. You’re a refugee, of sorts. Would you say that’s correct?”
“As correct as anything else,” Jon answers, sucks in a breath and tries to be frank despite every time being frank hurt him. “I didn’t have many other choices. I considered the People’s Church, or- I heard of a man named Fairchild who may be… helpful. I have absolutely no interest in the Lightless Flame and rather hope they’re all tall tales,” he explains, and there’s the faintest shift in Nathaniel’s expression that tells him no, they are not tall tales.
He continues, steadfast. “I’ve been told the Institute is too passive to help me, and I- I need help. I know how to be alone.”
It takes a great deal of resolve to look up at Nathaniel Lukas’ face when that little spiel is done, to his eyes that reveal nothing. “I can work for you,” Jon pushes, stubborn and straight backed, “At this house or elsewhere. You know my credentials. I only ask two things.”
Nathaniel head tilts in a way Jon thinks might be curiosity. “Two things,” he repeats, and Jon tries not to squirm.
“Protection from the Web, of course. At least as much as any in your… domain are offered.” The easy clause, the one that’s nonnegotiable because why else would he be here? The second is what has Jon’s fingers clench in his lap. “And I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
This time Nathaniel’s brow lifts, an elegant curve of his brow as Jon rushes to clarify. “I know sacrifices are made, though I won’t pretend to know any details of how your family works. If there’s a price I’ll pay it, I just- I’ll pay it, not another.”
It makes Jon feel small, childish and naive even as he stubbornly keeps his head up and gaze as steady as he could manage- which is to say not very steady against Nathaniel Lukas’ aching emptiness. In his head it sounded so much more resolute and reasonable, yet the minute the words ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone’ passed his lips he swore he was a child again, sitting before the teacher after class to explain his ‘attitude.’ Here there’s no sympathy for the young or the naive, here he’s merely an uppity little man in so far over his head he swears he hasn’t seen the sun in years.
“How do you imagine you’ll live, if I were to agree with your terms?” Nathaniel asks him, and Jon only has it in him to answer in complete sincerity.
“Lonely,” he says, eyes shifting to the great window behind Nathaniel and the fog beyond it, dotting out everything he can see. “Lonely and tired.”
The silence that stretches plants itself in his skin. He looks at Nathaniel’s ear rather than his eyes and waits, feels like he’s rotting in the corner of some place too far away to be heard from, no matter how he screamed.
Eventually Nathaniel Lukas shifts, offering his hand. “I believe I have a place for you, Mr. Sims.”
His skin is so cold Jon shudders, his short lived relief crushed under the knowledge his soul’s been sold away.
---
The entire drive over to Moorland House Jon turned it over in his head, everything that brought him this far. There wasn’t much else to be done in the backseat of a cab he could barely afford, watching the scenery get more and more fog choked. He could have taken a series of buses, maybe even begged Georgie for a ride after avoiding her for weeks, but in the end the cab seemed the best finalizer. By the time he made it to Moorland he wouldn’t have enough fare to get back, and all he could do is find his way in by whatever means necessary. There would be no return trips, no place for his nerves to run to.
Of course that was exactly the kind of drama that seemed stupid in retrospect, especially over halfway there and struck by the thought of what if they weren’t home, or turned him away at the gate or -- well, it didn’t matter. The ticking clock at his back told him he didn’t have much time left anyway.
In the back of the cab it was easiest to go back down that old, familiar route of trying to think of what he could have done differently. After Mr. Spider he couldn’t help but dig long and hard, accounts of strange books and spiders and impossible creatures that should not be. It was so hard to sift through the nonsense but there was a through line, a presence and influence that creeped through what accounts he could dig up online.
It gave him information and nightmares in turn, a new dread every time he saw a spider crawling up the wall of his room. It wasn’t until high school that one spider became two, and two became many that always scurried away when others turned to look. Not for him, they never ran from him, just watched with what Jon thought must be malice but felt more like patience. That frightened him more.
It also wasn’t until high school that he started taking research to more than just scrounging forums and strange accounts on long dead sites. Willful ignorance and skepticism were failing him, and he dared to reach out and look for someone he could actually ask all his burning questions. Unsurprisingly his personality didn’t make that easy, but his persistence did eventually lead to something, and that something was a very hard man named Dekker.
Dekker was- still is- no easier a man than Jon, quick to dismiss and quicker suspect. Their first conversation amounted to Jon attempting to interrogate him and Dekker slamming him against a wall with a fore-arm expertly against his trachea until he sputtered the explanation to how he found Dekker at all.
(Rumors, that was how he found Dekker, digging deeper and deeper until he found enough accounts of a strange, older black man laced in unhappy tales. A bit of an urban legend in some communities, it turned out. Dekkers hated to be told that but accepted it after a while.)
Their second and third meetings were less violent but no less dismissive. Their fourth was when Jon heard a slow knocking on his door all night, in the last throes of highschool and still living under his grandmother’s roof. Something in Jon’s eyes that visit, some hunted and awful look convinced Dekker better than his bumbling demands. Then Jon prickled and churned in irritation at being pitied. Now he knows Dekker is simply a kind man, just far smarter and more tired than kind.
They drank stale tea and Dekker listened to his halting story, the vague basics of his childhood trauma and the crawling little things that followed since. In turn Dekker told him the basics his digging only touched upon- domains, the Web, that idiot Leitner. Some Jon guessed before, some was startlingly new and horrifying. None was comforting, and Dekker made no attempts to ease his mind.
(“You’re marked, the Web caught you then lost you and now it’s likely compounding that trauma to ripen you for the slaughter- whether that be to feed to further their agenda.”
“What can I do? How can I- how do you unmark yourself? How do you escape?”
And Dekker looked at him so tired around the eyes Jon felt the answer deep in his guts, churning there with his fear. You don’t unmark yourself, you don’t find a safe, happy ending. You run, you struggle, you fight, and one day none of it will be enough.)
Not to say Dekker wasn’t useful, probably more so than he wanted to be. He gave Jon information, tricks to protect himself and names to find more information. It was Dekker who first introduced him to Mike Crew, or at least told him enough of Crew that Jon could do the rest. Crew was the one who changed everything for Jon that windy day they had tea at a corner cafe, when he smiled and told Jon his story.
Crew escaped, he found a Leitner, threw himself into the sky and came out stormy-eyed and smiling. Perhaps Jon didn’t take it as seriously as he could have, couldn’t quite stomach the idea of any of the other equally dreadful domains to search for a way to convert in earnest. Even so he remembered, the seed planted and tended, a niggling bit of hope against crushing despair, a possibility. He looked into ways to find other domains, just in case, and in that time gathered the information he needed about the Lukases.
Information he sat on stubbornly, until he couldn’t any longer.
The entire trip to Moorland the cab driver was silent, only the faintest nod of greeting to begin a grey, bleak journey. Jon was grateful, and not just for the silence atypical of the drivers he usually found himself with. This journey was strangely and impossibly lonely, like a taste, like being lead through the barrier of society to Isolation’s grip.
He stopped thinking of what brought him there and started dwelling on the feeling, utter and empty, suffocating. As in all things he threw himself in, hoping he would swim. At least, he thought bitterly, all the dreadful little monsters out there would enjoy his thrashing if he drowned.
-
After the meeting with Nathaniel Lukas a hollow eyed servant leads Jon to a guest room. It’s hard to tell if it’s the same servant of before, they all seem more shadows on walls than people with pulses and lives and stories. That might be him soon, another servant in the halls, as much as he hopes his education will convince them to something a little less mundane. Beggars can’t be choosers Jonathan, his grandmother’s voice provides. He takes a moment to be glad she died- horrible, maybe, but he can’t help but wonder if they would have demanded the death of his only living relative as payment to cross the barrier.
At the very least he can be glad they’re giving him a room, not expecting him to leave and return for some bizarre, soul crushing followup interview. Again he’s aware that maybe his dramatic flourish of spending most of his money on the cabtrip here was ill-advised, though he decides to take it as a small victory that it worked out. His small victories are few and far between, and he’s dangerously tired of himself at the moment anyway.
The dour shadow of a servant leaves him in a room larger than any bedroom he’s ever seen. He doesn’t bother trying to work out how many of his old apartment could fit in it, like that decrepit monstrosity he shared with Georgie for a couple of years and felt more like a home than anything else he ever lived in. This room feels an antique, deliberate in every way. Each no doubt priceless decoration and nick nack somehow accentuates how empty it is, how very singular and alone he is in its center.
There’s a series of delicate birdcages stood and hung in one corner, empty save for sharp petaled flowers. “Lovely, and who do domains hire for ominously symbolic interior design, I wonder?” Jon mutters to himself as he goes to the large window.
It’s easily the grandest feature of the room, with a long inlaid bench and old glass warped lovingly with age. It could be beautiful if the view wasn’t fog so thick he can only see the most basic shifting shadows in the soup of it. Trees, maybe, or the graveyard he heard is a staple of the grounds. All things considered he decides the fog isn’t so bad.
He spends a good chunk of time looking around, an act he refuses to consider nosy given he’s under no orders not to look. Clothes in the wardrobe close enough to his size it makes him wildly uncomfortable for reasons he doesn’t care to dwell on, books on the bookshelf so dry and clinical even he finds them unbearably dull, a connected bathroom with a lovely tub and soap that smells like funeral flowers - nothing comforting or interesting. He can’t bring himself to be surprised.
It doesn’t take long for the boredom of the situation to overtake his nerves, sending his mind down the dangerous avenues that got him in trouble time and time again as a child. For example, it isn’t as though he’s been told to stay put. Nathaniel Lukas dismissed him, said a room would be offered and to make himself comfortable. Maybe the ‘don’t wander around my haunted mansion’ was implied but Jon’s fairly certain he has a leg to stand on if he claimed to be stretching his legs or looking for a glass of water. He can practically feel his grandmother’s exasperated eyes on his back.
The halls aren’t much different than the room, just as every room he peeks into is the same grim, empty affair that has his hair standing on end. Every footstep sounds loud for just a moment before vanishing into the thick carpet and old walls, erasing his presence with such startling resolve he feels thin and faint at his edges. It is too easy to imagine fading into another shadow painted on the wall, less even than scenery.
At least there are no spiders here, he tells himself. He hasn’t seen one yet, not even in the darkest little corners they always lurk, and it is a small victory that feels more pyrrhic than anything.
It takes some thinking to retrace his steps given the way the house echoes and erases, not quite the curls and turns he’s come to understand are signs of the Spiral but not unlike a maze. He wonders if the Spiral and Isolation are allies, how easily long months of solitude lead to madness and madness to solitude. Maybe they have meetings and build absurd, lonely mazes like this house, toast a job well done when some poor bastard ends up rambling to the Institute about it and feels utterly alone with an uncaring eye of whoever’s unlucky enough to listen to those statements. It’s a morbidly amusing picture that fades to being merely morbid too quickly, dismissed when he finds the long hall that originally brought him to Nathaniel Lukas’ office.
That door at least is obvious, grand and mahogany, he thinks, as though he knows the first damn thing about wood. Standing there Jon realizes just how pointless this little romp was- ah hello, me again, I was bored (not lonely, thank you, bored) and took a walk and would you know where there’s anything worth doing in your absurd, gloomy mansion? A library, maybe? He sighs, defeated in the most pointless of ways, when he hears something from the crack of the door.
Jon wishes he could pretend to be the sort smart enough to seriously consider not eavesdropping on the man who now held Jon’s life in his hands. He very much wishes he could say the list of cons would ever be daunting enough to outweigh curiosity, but instead he leans forward, not a damn thought in his head about retreating. Perhaps he can pretend later that he was looking for a reason to try and run, assuming Nathaniel Lukas would even be so brazenly discussing his fate.
As it turns out Nathaniel is so brazen, seeing as the first thing Jon hears is, “- named Jonathan Sims.”
What he hears next is a soft snort, most decidedly not dire Nathaniel Lukas. He considers trying to peek inside and apparently has enough sense not to do something quite that stupid, instead frowning and trying to keep his breathing quiet. He’s rewarded with the other man, presumably the one who snorted so rudely, saying, “And? You want me to take him out on the Tundra?”
This voice is nearly exactly like Nathaniel’s in pitch and timbre, the kind that would be impossible to tell apart if it wasn’t for the fact it sounded nearly alive in comparison. There’s a lackadaisical undercurrent, a simplicity of tone that brings to mind a man who doesn’t bother with lies or sugar coating. Worse still there’s good humor, and that makes Jon more suspicious than any of the dramatic declarations Nathaniel Lukas spewed.
“No, nothing of the sort. I’m arranging to have you marry him.”
The silence that follows would feel companionable, Jon thinks numbly, if Peter knew Jon’s sharing his shock. Jon assumes it’s shock at least, how could it not be? There are so many levels of bafflement here Jon covers his mouth to keep himself hidden rather than blurting out something daft and completely reasonable, such as ‘what the hell?’ or ‘are you completely mad?’
It doesn’t settle in Jon’s gut properly, this news, because surely this mystery man turned potential fiance will disagree. At most he’ll demand to meet Jon then vehemently disagree, because Jon’s cultivated a thorniness that rivals the briars guarding sleeping princesses in cursed castles. He never thought he’d need those particular thorns for suitors of his own.
Instead of any disapproval the man chuckles, a reaction that manages to both annoy and absurdly insult Jon in turn. “Well, not what I was expecting. Few questions there Nate, first being how exactly am I supposed to pop out little Lukas babies with your prospect here? Or does he have the equipment for that?”
“If and when you need heirs we can find a proper surrogate,” Nathaniel dismisses. “This isn’t about breeding, Peter, it’s about duty.”
“Duty,” the man- Peter, it turns out - says with the same light amusement of a mildly funny joke. “That’s the word you always use when what you really mean is ‘stop asking questions and do what I say, Peter.’”
“And yet you persist in asking questions regardless,” is Nathaniel’s reply, and though his tone is as empty as ever Jon swears there’s that barest hint of an answering dry edge. “You’ve dodged this commitment for long enough and Sims has potential. Use him as you will, bring him on your voyages to clean the decks if you feel it prudent or leave him here, I will leave it to your discretion.”
“The ‘but it’s nonnegotiable’ is implied, yeah?” Peter offers, and Jon swallows when there’s only silence in response. Any faint hope he has of this ludicrous situation resolving as it should is crushed when Peter continues with a put-out sigh. “You’re the boss.”
Jon shifts carefully, close to the wall and quiet as he escapes down the hall. It isn’t until he reaches his ominously decorated, obnoxiously large room that he dares to make a noise, the thump of his back against the door as he leans there.
-
Most of that evening is spent pacing the room, trying to make sense of the series of events.
“Maybe they knew I was there and it was a joke,” he tells the room in all its impossible, horrifying pressure. His words echo, which he’s fairly certain shouldn’t be possible even if the room is abnormally large. “I mean, I suppose in the grand scheme of things being married off isn’t that dreadful. What was I imagining anyway? Well, being left to wallow alone, not marriage. Marriage, lord.”
He sighs and sits heavily on the bed. A servant brought food earlier, soup and bread and tea that he picked at and left on the desk. When he tried to ask the woman about anyone in the house named Peter she simply bowed her way out, leaving him alone. He doesn’t take it personally, given he assumes that’s the main marketable skill in this cursed house. ‘Can you sweep in and out of a room, making the occupant feel somehow more lonely than before? Perfect, you’re hired.’
Rubbing his eyes until phospones burst behind his lids doesn’t make Jon feel any better and he lies down instead to consider what he knows of Peter.
1. A Lukas, probably. All that talk of duty seems to imply as much. Given his familiarity and similar voice to Nathaniel maybe a brother or son, a cousin at a stretch. That could mean high in the family, which Jon doesn’t know how to feel about. In truth he thinks it would be better to be married off to some distant, disliked cousin in this case.
2. They mentioned ‘cleaning the decks’ and ‘voyages,’ so Peter probably is a captain of a ship. He ignores the intense irritation at the idea of being dragged to sea to mop floors, as though that’s his best use and tries to imagine the sort of person who captained a ship. All he can think of is an older version of Nathaniel with a beard and a windswept face. He certainly sounded like the sort to swagger, just another unfortunate fact.
3. Peter doesn’t sound particularly thrilled by this idea either, even if he was passive enough over the whole affair. Apparently it’s been a long time in coming, which means Peter’s managed to avoid it for this long or had other fiancees or partners that didn’t last.
As it turns out none of this information is comforting.
Eventually Jon gives up on trying to think it through. In truth the marriage nonsense is a fine distraction from the crushing atmosphere of the house seeping into his skin, from the finely ground panic in every nerve. He’s in a house of monsters, in halls where people may have died screaming more than they left whole, if anyone ever really did leave. He’ll either be part of a legacy of unfathomable destruction of the human spirit or another tally on their body count. He chose this, and whatever comes next is his own doing.
His eyes sting, bringing with it a deep irritation and stubbornness that forces his eyes shut tight then open again. When he falls asleep it’s to the feeling of being completely and sincerely alone with his choices.