Chapter Text
“Where you go, I go.”
”That’s the deal”
A blade, a deal, an exit. Threads of tape stretch out, winding and unwinding carrying voices and memories and disperses into the infinite multiverse. On its threads two souls are carried along until they reach a snag. Two webs meet each other and the orderly weave turns knotted and chaotic, so much so that two other souls who also made the same deal on the other side collide. Four souls are dropped somewhere else, and 28 fears fight.
Jon opens his eyes to the night sky above. He can’t feel anything, but he can see. And it’s beautiful. Colors like the Aurora borealis swirl and collide above. There are so many colors, and the Fear it brings is so mixed together in his chest that the mind can only observe. For any classification of either would be gone and changed before even being able to name it. It goes on for only a few minutes, real tangible minutes unlike the not time he had experienced for so long, before two something’s coalesce in the center, and the colors dissolve as that something spreads outwards. Something that feels so very much like the End. And then the sky is clear again.
Stars fade into existence as his eyes adjust from the color show. Slowly the numbness begins to fade as well. As breath whispers into his lungs he hears a quiet whimper to his left, he quietly asks,
“Martin?” His voice barely coming out. A breeze rustles leaves nearby as he hears a croaked reply, “Jon?”
Turning his head heavily to the left he sees Martin looking back at him.
”Jon, what happened?” Martin rasps
Jon takes a deep breath which rattles in his lungs, and sends him into a coughing fit.
“Jon!” Martin begins to struggle to move, but every bone weighs him down.
Jon finishes his fit quickly and spits something dark into the grass. “I’m ok Martin.” He pants out to still Martins panic, “I’m ok, not, injured, anymore. Just, remnants.” Jon grimaces
He had healed, Jon Knew, while the power leaked from the sky above. He also Knew Martin had also, both having been fed. Martin was a true Avatar now, as they had both died at the Panopticon. The strange thing was, neither of them had a Patron anymore.
Jon breathes deep again ”The lights,” Jon says stronger now, “those were the fears. They fought and mixed, and the End won. The End always wins, but it had been mixed up with something else too. The End destroyed the Fears, removing the boundaries people gave them.”
”So…We’re free?” Martin asks, “The Fears are gone?”
“Free, yes. But the Fear isn’t gone. It just doesn’t have any kind of identity left. No desire to feed or be fed, it just, exists.”
“Oh.” Martin says trailing off. "What does that mean for us?"
Jon smiles, "I don't know."
And they lay like that, staring at the now moonlit sky as they felt the numbness leave them. Sometimes they talked, but mostly they just felt. They felt the dew soak into their clothing. They felt the exhaustion of their souls slowly leave them. They felt the peace that lay over them like a cool blanket. It wasn’t hope, not yet, but it could be. And as the sun begins to lighten their new sky, they both stiffly get up, hand in hand, and go to learn about this new world they are in.
***
Elsewhere, two other people, a man and a woman, discuss something very similar. They, too, are battle weary and heavy of heart, but free and whole. And so two Archivists go to learn how to be human, and two Avatars learn to live for themselves.