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“—your incompetency means that we’re going to have to do a whole new follow-up on this statement!”
“Like you even care! You pretend you’re all for evidence , but you just dismiss everything out of hand! This skeptic act is frankly kind of ridiculous, Jon!”
Sasha walks over to Tim’s desk, a couple loose statements tucked to her side. “How long do you think they’re gonna be at it?”
“A while yet, I think,” Tim replies. He was going to ask Martin a question about one of the statements when Tim got back from grabbing his sandwich, but when he’d walked back into the assistants’ office, Martin and the boss man were already going at it. Tim isn't even sure what Jon was mad about this time, just that in Jon's mind, it was Martin's fault. Tim had sat down on the front of his desk and been ignored for the past five minutes.
Sasha raises an eyebrow, watching as Martin spins his desk chair to face away from Jon. “Martin has gotten a lot more bold in his disagreements, huh?”
“Absolutely," Tim agrees with a nod. "A couple months ago Martin would have already fled to the break room.”
“Is it weird to say I’m proud of him for coming into his own? I mean, obviously the arguments aren’t great, but…”
“It’s about time he stood up for himself," Tim finishes for her. "Jon is enough of a prick that he’d push Martin around forever if he could. If one good thing is coming out of this whole... worm situation, it’s Martin deciding to not take Jon's shit."
“—Martin? Are you even listening? Martin! ”
From Tim’s angle on his desk, he can see Martin roll his eyes. The argument is clearly nowhere near over. Sasha, for her part, seems a couple seconds away from stepping in to do damage control.
Tim sighs. He really is glad Martin is standing up for himself, but this constant workplace tension is going to give Tim a headache. He shifts his legs, about to set down his sandwich and hop off his desk, when Jon’s tirade abruptly cuts off.
Shit. Did Jon go too far? Jon could get really fired up about things sometimes, and Tim can still recall a few incidents back in their researcher days when Jon said something he didn't mean to in the heat of the moment. It hadn't happened since Jon was promoted, but...
Both Martin and Jon stare into space for a long moment. Martin stands and turns to face Jon, so fast that his office chair spins away behind him. They lock eyes.
“…Martin?” Jon asks, his voice breaking. Shit, Jon must have said something genuinely bad. Tim has never heard Jon's voice sound like that.
In a surge of sudden movement, the two of them lunge across the desk towards each other, Jon throwing a leg up on the desk to better get at Martin.
“Holy shit!” Tim shouts, throwing himself off the desk and dropping his sandwich. He never thought he’d see the day when Jon and Martin started a physical fight in the Archives! He’s ready to run over and pull them off of each other when he realizes they aren’t actually fighting.
Jon and Martin are gripping each other tightly, Martin dragging Jon even farther up onto the desk with his broad arms. They’re whispering each other’s names over and over, and Tim can see that Jon has genuine tears flowing down his cheeks. And then they start kissing.
“Holy shit!" Tim can't help but exclaim again. He shoots out an arm, reaching out for Sasha, but misses and smacks her in the chest. She stumbles, dropping the papers she was holding.
“What?” Tim breathes. He can’t even comprehend what he’s seeing. Jon and Martin break apart, and start placing soft, fluttering kisses all over each other’s cheeks and foreheads.
Sasha grips Tim's arm, but he barely feels it. He can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away from whatever is happening in front of him. Did he fall asleep? Is this a dream? Did Jon and Martin get replaced by weird doppelgängers from an alternative universe where they don't hate each other? What is going on?
Jon pulls away first, just a fraction, still clutching Martin’s face in his hands. His brows furrow. “We can talk about everything later, but Jonah just left his office and is on his way down right now.”
Martin glares at Jon, but it’s nothing like the frustrated look Martin was giving him a minute ago. If Tim didn’t know better, he’d say the glare was almost fond. But maybe it is fond, and Tim doesn't know better, because he is thoroughly lost at this point. If this is a dream, Tim has a damn good imagination. There’s all sorts of things happening he never would have expected. He just wishes the plot was a little easier to follow.
“We will be talking, you complete idiot," Martin hisses. Jon winces, clearly apologetic. Martin sighs, stepping back a little bit and letting his hands drop. He finally registers the rest of the room. His eyes focus on Tim and Sasha, and Tim really doesn't understand the expression within them. Martin opens his mouth to speak but Jon catches his chin and turns Martin’s face back towards him.
“Sorry, but I'm serious, we really don’t have time. We’re in the past, or an alternate universe identical enough to our own I don’t See any relevant changes. I’ll have to Look closer when we have a moment.”
Tim isn’t sure how, but he can hear the capitalizations on those words. In a clearly emerging trend, Tim has no idea what that means, but he isn’t trying anymore. He leans back on his desk, content to let this dream play out without his interference. Because it must be a dream. Jon just said they were from an alternate universe, and Tim believes in a lot of things the average guy doesn't, but the multiverse isn't something he's interested in considering today. Therefore, a dream.
“So what’s the plan?” Martin asks. Jon furrows his brow, thinking, and Martin adds, “A plan that doesn’t involve being a self-sacrificing idiot.”
Jon winces again. “Yeah, okay, I get it. I—the Archives—I’m still the Archivist, with all the powers, and needs, that entails. This is a quick decision to make, but if we—well, if you kill Jonah, I can, um, promote you, I guess, well—remember Jordan Kennedy?”
Martin’s eyes widen. “Oh. So full, 'Ceaseless Watcher' type promotion. Yeah, um, o-okay. To the Head of the Institute?”
Jon nods. “Yeah. And then, well, we go from there? I'll stay in the Archives, I need to stay in the Archives, and we can try to—I don't know—fix things." His face grows tight. "I—there’s a lot—Martin, you don’t have to—”
“Where you go I go, Jon," Martin murmurs, and Tim can feel some sort of weight to those words. "Where do I need to hit him?”
Jon smiles, and it’s such an open expression, so full of love, that Tim is frankly shocked he dreamed it up. It looks incredibly weird on his boss’s face.
“The eyes and the heart should be enough. He won’t fully be dead until we can deal with his body in the Panopticon, but—it’ll be enough, for now.” Jon scrambles off the desk and pulls a pocket knife from his pants pocket. He passes it to Martin, who takes it in his right hand and pulls a corkscrew, of all things, out of his own pocket, gripping it in his left. There is a moment of silence, and finally, Jon also glances over towards Sasha and Tim.
“Um, sorry.” he says.
Sasha steps forward, eyes blazing. “What in the world is going on—”
That’s as far as she gets before the door to the Archives is thrown open, and Elias Bouchard steps inside.
Sasha might as well be watching a foreign movie with no subtitles for all she understands what is going on right now. The statements she was holding are scattered at her feet, but she makes no move to pick them up. By the time she had reoriented herself from Tim shoving her, Jon and Martin had been having a conversation that definitely included words she understood, but in an order that made no sense. When she'd tried to stop and figure out any of it, everything just got worse.
Tim is, of course, no help. At some point he had just settled back on the front of his desk to watch.
“Tim,” she hisses when Jon and Martin step forward in unison towards Elias, but he barely glances at her.
“Shh, I’m trying to watch and remember all of this.”
She grits her teeth. Absolutely no help at all. When this is over, she's going to kill him.
“Jon, Martin, hello,” Elias says, voice incredibly casual despite the fact that he seems slightly out of breath. She’s pretty sure he ran all the way down from his office.
“Hello, Elias,” Jon replies, and there’s so much hatred in his voice Sasha can practically taste it. The tension in the room increases into a heavy blanket that settles over Sasha's shoulders.
“Sasha, Tim,” Elias addresses, but his eyes remain locked in a stare with Jon, “would you leave the room? I think I need to have a little chat with Jon… and Martin, it would seem.” His eyes flick to Martin, who only tightens his grip on his corkscrew.
Tim shakes his head. “Sorry, but no way am I missing whatever the hell this is,” he laughs, relaxing even more against his desk.
“Tim!”
He glances over at her. “What? You’re going to walk away from this? I thought better of you, Sasha. We’ll be having words when I wake up.”
“What—?”
“Elias,” Martin interrupts, and Sasha is getting real sick of people interrupting her. “We know everything. It’s over.”
Elias smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “And what is ‘it’, exactly?” His voice is cold. Did Elias always sound like that?
Jon leans forward, and despite being clearly shorter than Elias, his presence looms over the man. “What, you can’t just know , Jonah?" He asks in a mocking tone. "How sad.”
Elias’s face turns stormy. “Jon, I don’t know what you think—”
“I am the Archivist,” Jon declares, and the weight of it sends shivers racking up Sasha’s spine. He grins, almost wolfish. “And the Eye likes me better than you.”
“What—”
“Stop.”
If the tension was heavy before, now the air feels completely solid. The sound of static seems to fill the air, despite no clear source. There is a new presence in the office, or perhaps an old one just greatly increased. It's heavy and powerful and she is sure that if it was focused on her she would collapse under its gaze.
Luckily, it is focused on Elias, who stands still, shoulders shaking and face slowly sliding from anger into terror. She almost pities him. Still, he forces a smile onto his face.
“Really, Jon?" he sneers. "What do you think—this isn’t going to do anything. You—ah—maybe Beholding does favor you, but I am not without my own power. You cannot hurt me like this.”
“Maybe not,” Jon scoffs, his voice ringing with power. “But he can.”
Martin lunges forward, corkscrew raised, and drives it deep into Elias’s eye.
“Holy shit, Martin, you go!” Tim cheers over the sound of Elias’s scream of agony. Sasha stares at Tim.
“What is your problem, Tim? Martin just—just—”
“I know!” Tim crows, clapping his hands together. “This is the best dream ever! Get his other eye, Martin!” he calls, and Martin obliges. There is a squelching sound Sasha makes out over the static and Elias’s pained whimpers. She might be sick.
“This isn’t a fucking dream, Tim!” Her friend only laughs.
“Of course it is, Sasha. Because if this isn’t a dream, then Jon and Martin really stopped mid argument to make out with each other and hug like reunited lovers, and now our boss really is holding our other boss in place with magic word powers while sweet, loveable, clumsy, tea-making Martin brutally tears out his eyes with a fucking corkscrew.” He pauses. “Oh, and then began repeatedly stabbing him in the heart with a pocket knife.”
Sasha looks back over, and sure enough, Martin has discarded the gory corkscrew and tackled Elias to the ground, now plunging the knife into Elias’s chest.
“Oh, my god,” she breathes, and maybe Tim is right, because this really can’t be happening right now.
Martin eventually stands, breathing heavily, his soft cream jumper stained in blood. He sighs and drops the knife. “Damn. Sorta wish that was a pipe.”
Jon snorts. “I love you, Martin.” He looks deadly serious as eyes begin to appear, more eyes than Sasha can really understand. "Are you ready for this?"
Martin grins. “As I’ll ever be. Hit me, Jon.”
Dream-Jon has more eyes than he did before.
“Wow, look at those peepers!” Tim whistles. Sasha collapses onto the desk beside him.
Tim really hadn’t been expecting his dream to escalate to brutal knife murder, but then again, he wasn’t expecting the kissing and declarations of love either. He’s truly excited to see what happens next. Just imagining Jon’s face when Tim tells him about this at work tomorrow—it’s going to be golden. If Tim times it right, he can probably get Martin to do that adorable bright red blush anytime his unfortunate crush is brought up.
“Ceaseless Watcher, Your faithful servant calls upon you, ” Dream-Jon begins to chant. Holy shit, what is this? “Turn Your gaze upon these two who have seen fear even You have not. Look through the eyes of this man. Know the fear he has Seen, and claim it for Your own. Taste the terrors he has witnessed. Grant him Your power, and raise him into Your service. Make him Yours.”
Tim takes a shuddering gasp as the overwhelming pressure that has filled the room since Elias entered fades. Tim hadn’t even realized he wasn’t breathing. Did he need to breathe in a dream? Tim is going to give his dream brain a BAFTA for this performance. This is next level.
Both Dream-Martin and Dream-Jon sway, and they look exhausted. They collapse onto each other, supporting each other to keep from falling onto the blood-soaked floor.
“Shit,” Dream-Martin breathes. “That feels—well—”
“Yeah,” Dream-Jon chuckles. “I know.”
Dream-Martin starts giggling. Slowly at first, but then Jon joins in, and suddenly the two of them are losing it, hysterical laughter filling the room as they clutch each other over the corpse of Dream-Elias Bouchard.
“Alright, that’s enough!” Dream-Sasha shouts. Tim jumps. He’d honestly forgot she was there. Dream-Jon and Dream-Martin also stop, heads snapping over to her in a kind of creepy unison.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on here," Dream-Sasha fumes, "but you better have a damn good explanation for it, and you better explain quickly, because I am only four buttons away from calling the police.” She waggles the phone in her hand, open to the dial screen, for good measure.
Tim sighs. “Relax, Dream-Sasha. You’re seriously ruining this for me. I don’t know why my brain put you here if you’re only going to be serious and upset about the best thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
Dream-Jon and Dream0Martin just stare at them. Dream-Sasha punches him hard on the arm. It really, really hurts.
“Ow! What the hell was that—oh… fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck.”
Martin giggles, still slightly hysterical, and looks up from the body on the ground. "Uh, we can explain?"
Sasha growls. "You better, because I did not sign up for this today."
Tim winces. He truly had no idea Martin was capable of that sort of violence, but even after seeing it with his own eyes, he's still very, very glad it's not him Sasha is mad at.
"Martin, I'm really sorry," Jon says, eyes (and it's just the two of them again, thank god) drooping, "but I'm about to pass out."
"Jon?" Martin grabs Jon's shoulders and shakes him. "Jon don't you dare leave me to explain this on my own." Jon passes out.
"Jon!"