Deep down he had known it wouldn't be enough, just being sorry, to repair the months of distrust he'd bred in his paranoia or the damage he'd caused, but he still feels his chest tighten when Tim's expression doesn't soften but just grows tired, worn.
He sits and listens to Tim's logic and it makes sense in a way that it shouldn't. He knows what it feels like to not be able to trust anyone around you, to think that everyone is out to kill you, to feel betrayed by the place you've dedicated your short life to. He knows all of it much too well. He also knows there's not satisfactory answer.
"Because I am!" Jon snaps, his frustration spilling over the compartment he's tried to push it down into. He reaches up to rub at his face, suddenly feeling exhausted. "I don't know how to prove it to you, Tim. Other than to say that Melanie saw it, somehow, when none of us could. She would tell you if I wasn't Jon." But he already knows the next logical conspiracy is that Melanie isn't really Melanie, either. None of them had even met her before all of this except for Jon and Sasha. "Listen to the tapes! My voice is the same. I am the same."
He presses his lips together, lowering his voice. "I don't know how to prove it to you. I don't know how to give you back that feeling of sanity, all I can say is that we all feel it too. Sasha..." He takes in a deep breath. "She didn't deserve to be forgotten and she won't be. But hating me isn't going to change anything. All it does is make everything that much harder."
There’s something there. It’s a movement, a flicker of an eyelid, something that is both microscopic and gargantuan, a vast staring across an abyss. It’s only present on Tim’s face for a moment, but it’s a long one as he really and truly studies Jon in a way that he hasn’t in a long time.
Maybe the time had been because they couldn’t be in the same room without coming to words and fights that violently outmatch any fist that either of them could possibly throw. Maybe because Tim hadn’t wanted to look anymore, hadn’t wanted to dissect each curl of Jon’s expression, to find the accusations in the sighs of both of the men.
More than that, at the base core of him, Timothy Stoker had stopped looking because he didn’t want to *Know* anymore. He didn’t want to care; and he doesn’t want this place to sink whatever grubby little eye claws it has further inside of him.
But he looks for Jon in that moment. He looks for the person who he believed that Sasha was, and not what the thing had made her that she wasn’t. Tim looks for Martin who’s trying so desperately to hold things together like he always had. He looks for Danny which is the reason that Timothy Stoker had first stepped through the Magnus Institute’s front doorway with a CV in hand and vengeance in his heart.
The last person he looks for is himself. But it’s the briefest glimpse before he lowers his eyes. Tim’s voice is soft and pained. “Did you listen to old recordings every morning to see if we’re still the same?” Because Tim does because Tim had to because otherwise he’s not going to be able to do this.
This might be the longest that Tim has held his gaze since all of this started and because of it he's able to see the way his face has changed in just a year's time. Tim looks like he's aged by years and hasn't slept in months. He wonders how much energy he must have expelled to stay this angry all the time. He hates that The Stranger not only took Sasha, but part of Tim too. And he hates knowing that as much as he wants to believe otherwise, Tim is right about him. Jon is the reason she's gone. He's the reason Tim can't trust any of them.
"No," Jon says, lowering his eyes to the table as well. He can tell Tim's doing more than just asking. It's probably a good idea, all things considered, but he'd never thought of it. He should've thought of it. John leans forward slightly. "I finally decided that I had to trust you all or I wouldn't be able to move forward. I'm sorry that I let my paranoia get the better of me. I just... with Gertrude's murder, I didn't know..." He pauses. "I think that's what they want."
If asked to define what he means by they he'd be hard pressed. Elias, the Institute, the avatars, the fears themselves? He doesn't know. "I know that doesn't change the things I did or said, but I do trust you, Tim." He just hopes that someday Tim can trust him in return.
Tim snorts, but it’s not with any sort of meaningful weight behind it, not really. More standard Tim than the bitterness it otherwise has been. “Oh, I know that’s what they want. Don’t you listen to the statements when ya read ‘em, when you did the research? They want us to be as scared and paranoid and untrusting as we can be. And Elias wants it most of all. Why do you think he waited until after Basira had signed to tell her? Why do you think he conveniently ignored any sort of mention that if we were gone too long it’d kill us? Didn’t kill me, didn’t kill you but we’re archives so of course it didn’t. But how many people do you think didn’t know, took a cheeky little hols or hen weekend or went to a concert and then just died because of it?”
Picking up his empty glass, he just stares at the bottom of it, before he asks softly. “Do you know why I joined the Institute? Like really joined it, Jon.”
Oh, Tim doesn’t mean he wants Jon to archivist look inside his head and history. He doesn’t want to make it a statement. Fuck the eye. Let the damned thing starve. But he still needs to know if Jon knows about Danny. Danny and what happened to him.
It's hard not to think about how quickly he would've dismissed their stories when he first started as crackpot conspiracy theories, but now he knows first-hand just how real the threat is. He tries not to think about the ways they're shackled to the institute if he can help it, just because he feels crippled with helplessness as it is most of the time, but Tim has clearly thought it through. It's another horrifying thing on a mountain of horrifying things and if he thinks too long about any of it the despair paralyzes him. It's all too easy to understand why Tim has leaned into the anger.
"No," Jon says, lifting his eyes to meet Tim's again. "I always wondered why you left publishing for the Institute." He's careful not to ask. He prays that a recorder doesn't pop up somewhere unbidden and turn itself on. This might be the longest conversation they've had in months and he doesn't want it to end abruptly.
Sometimes he thinks about how much better off Tim would've been if he'd never come to the Institute. He imagines him living his life to it's fullest, successful and still the life of the party, instead of the vague shadow of that person he's turned into.
With a bitter little laugh, Tim speaks loudly in a way that once would have been accompanied by a cheer, whistles or climbing on a table. Now the patrons of the pub barely even acknowledge it because it’s become something of a standard practice for him on nights when he can’t sleep. “This is not a fucking statement and if a single fucking recorder shows up, I’m going to take it over to Elias’s office and shove it down my own stupid throat.” A beat, a pause to see if whatever the fuck the recorders are gonna choose tonight to break their long absences here. When nothing happens, he just looks to Jon once more, his fingers picking at the graffiti on well-gouged table.
“I had a younger brother once. Danny. He was a great kid who everybody loved, but no one as much as me. I was proud of him. Supported all the crazy activities that he’d pick up and drop every six months. Sure, they could be a little bit dangerous but that was my brother; he liked the thrills. He liked learning about things and doing em.”
A pause, and some long suffering woman who knows this Tim well but knew old Tim better comes by with two sealed bottles of cider and drops em off without a word. Shredding the damp label is just as much of a reflex as twisting off the lid before he takes a sip.
“He was staying with me here in London when he learned about urban exploration and I watched it hooked him. He was fine for a few months, nothing that would have sent him to A&E or to us. Until there was Ghost buildings and the Covent Garden Theatre.” Which of course is where Smirke enters stage left, but Tim refuses to give that name any breath here and now.
“My brother Danny broke into an unused part of the Royal Opera House and found that theatre, Jon. He found what and who was inside it. He came to me at my flat and you know the rest. It’s what happens in all of them. My brother died and I was the idiot who tried to save him. Joseph Grimaldi’s ghost or avatar or whatever the fuck it was used my brother’s broken body and soul to put on a performance for me. To scare me. Then it let me go. It let me go and I ran straight into the arms of the welcoming Eye to try and find what happened but I just.”
He was Tim. He could leave it there like so many other people who experience the fears did, until the archives. Until Sasha. Until Jon.
Another longer, deeper pull of the cider. “I think he’s with the Russian Circus. It’s why I always cared about the Circus statements.”
Jon presses his lips together in an unhappy frown and waits for Tim's challenge to be accepted. Thankfully, no tape recorder appears and he lets out a low breath. He still doesn't know where they come from, just that they seem to appear within his vicinity for no rhyme or reason.
His attention is laser focused on Tim as he speaks, even when the bottles of cider are dropped off at their table. He may not be able to solve any of the problems hanging over their heads, but one thing he can do is listen. He knows that despite all of his flaws, that's one thing that he is good at. Tim's obsession with Smirke's architecture is flagged in his mind. He'd always just thought Tim appreciated the history, not that there was a direct correlation to his employment. Unlike Smirke's architecture, mention of a brother brings up a large blank in Jon's mind. He's never been the type to pry into the lives of his coworkers, but he can't remember a single time Tim has mentioned a brother in all the time they've known each other. Not even around the holidays.
He reaches up and places a hand over his mouth, feeling his throat go dry. He's heard too many statements not to know where this is headed and all he can do is let Tim finish. It doesn't make any of the next words any easier to swallow. Jon feels his heart drop and closes his eyes for a long moment before he opens them again and pulls his hand away from his face.
"Oh, God, Tim. I never..." He feels every interaction he's had with the man sitting in front of him, reframe and reshape itself in his head. His due diligence in investigations, his interest in Smirke and the Circus, his reason for staying in a job that was thankless and working under someone like the Jon before they knew none of them had a choice. Jon swallows, his voice rough. "I'm sorry."
It doesn't help. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't bring Danny or Sasha back. It doesn't give them back their sanity. It doesn't release them from the Eye. Jon feels his own anger bubbling up to the surface. It's foreign and uncomfortable after being numb with fear for so long. "You should've told me." He knows it's the wrong thing to say, it also doesn't matter, but at least he would've understood. He would've tried to be better.
Tim has had a dead brother for a long time now; the familiar sounds of people finding out do t bother him any longer. They never helped, and they’re going to help even less now. So he drinks again, the length of the swallow coordinating with the raiding of his brow. Anger wasn’t what he expected, and that shocks him out of his own for a moment.
So he leans back in the chair and watches Jon before he asks in way that’s as lacking in heat as much as it’s possible for Tim’s voice to be at this point. “Oh yeah? Which you, Jon? The skeptical trying to be archivist who insulted every case he could come across? Would ya have done it to my face or waited til after?”
But he’s not done, “the friend I fought worms for, who thought that I was trying to kill him? Poor Martin couldn’t even make ya a cup of fucking tea without you thinking he was about to go Arsenic and Old Lace on you. What would you have done if I’d tried to tell you then? And then you were gone and you didn’t even apologize. Why did I owe ya this?!”
Jon deflates in front of him, each word taking him down like a bullet. He's right. He had been so wrapped up in his own insecurities and trying to put on a show that he probably would've dismissed Tim's story out of hand, or worse thought it was some kind of joke.
He shakes his head, sucking in a deep breath. "No. No, you're right. You don't owe me anything."
He reaches for the bottle in front of him and finally opens it, taking a long drink. "I was a prick, I know. I probably still am. But I wish I..." He reaches up to rub at his temple. "I don't know. I wish I had known. I would've prioritized things for you. We could've tried to work on it together."
Tim doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know what to do with this version of Jon now. God, when was the last time they’d been almost normal? Had it been when he’d assumed that Jon and Basira were a couple when she was bringing in Gertrude’s tapes? It feels like a lifetime ago now. It feels like many.
He’s back to shredding that label off the bottle, busy work for his hands like Tim does when he clocks into the office, when he’s there but not. It doesn’t feel right to do it now, so he forces his hands flat against the table.
“It wasn’t entirely your fault,” he finds the words at last. “I know that. Those things were wanting you far away from people who might have been able to pull ya back. It’s one of the things we all had in common, isn’t it? You, me, Martin, Sasha. Melanie now. Hell, probably even Basira and Daisy though they’re more complicated. We’re all people who don’t got ties other than to one another. And even then it’s not really that we have ties there, do we? They keep them loose But it’s not just that! Nope, and at some point some bullshit supernatural thing looked at us and went ‘oh, they’re tasty!’ We’re dispensable. Why do you think Elias could risk us so easily? He doesn’t want us to be another Gertrude Robinson or whatever.”
A beat, a pause and Tim leans in. “If you want to help me. Really help me. Help me find the Circus and kill that fucking clown. I don’t need kindness, we don’t need kindness. We need to stop what is happening.”
Some kind of absolution is exactly what Jon has hoped for from the beginning, but it falls woefully short. It had felt extremely personal when Tim had placed all the blame on him, but hearing that it wasn't just his fault doesn't make him feel any less guilty.
Maybe Tim had seen all of this clearer than he had from the beginning. Jon had kept thinking of them all as hostages, forced to play the game, but Tim had been the first to call the place evil. The first to understand just how deep the Institute's claws were in all of them. He'd refused to participate, to perpetuate.
There was a reason Jon had asked for him to be transferred to the Archives and it wasn't because he was well liked or because he'd invited Jon out to drinks a few times. Tim could be remarkably resourceful and had completed every task set in front of him, regardless of how difficult. Jon knew it would be pointless to try to stand in his way now.
He sighs deeply, taking another drink of his cider. "Okay, I'll help you." His tone is measured, a somber promise. "But you're going to have to trust me. Trust us. Are you able to do that and work with us?"
Honestly, Tim hadn’t expected that he’d agree. That Jon would say yes. Truth be told he didn’t exactly expect a no either. Tabling the decision had seemed like the best outcome that could happen, and now there’s this and Tim genuinely does not know what to say for a long moment.
“I’ll trust you.” The words come softly, almost breathed before Tim nods and repeats them along with adding to it. “I’ll trust you and Martin and Melanie. Hell, I’ll even trust the cops if they actually want this to stop. But no one else. We keep anyone else from getting involved in the Archives, Jon. We can’t let someone else sign onto this unknowingly. I’ll pull a Melanie before I let it happen to someone else. We’re enough. Elias can sod off and so can the Bloody Eye.”
A pause, and Tim has always been good at spinning out plans on the fly during tricky investigations though that normally involved more bribery and flirting than actual threats of murder that Tim is reasonably sure he could do if he needs too. Well, on his end anyway. Melanie was determined as hell and they all had seen how that went.
“I won’t read any statement that’s not a Circus statement. I know you have to, but I won’t. I’ll be a good little researcher, I’ll break into things if I have to, but I won’t read any random statement. Deal?” Then something perhaps miraculous happens: Tim offers Jon his hand.
If this were a novel, Jon can’t help but think of how much better a hero Tim Stoker would be than himself. Tim has always looked the part and had the charisma to carry a cause. He even had a tragic backstory to push him towards action. Jon is not a hero. He’s self-aware enough to know that the others look to him for answers because he’s the lynchpin, not because of any innate leadership ability. He can make moves because of Elias’s protection, not in spite of it. Maybe that was why the Eye had chosen him as Archivist. He was unimportant, uninvolved, detached enough from the world that he could and would swallow down the statements without interfering.
Even under the teasing and later the insults, Tim has always been a good person. Jon knows this from years of observation. So, it’s easy to trust that this is the right thing to do. The only way to stop it is to close ranks and refuse to let anyone else in. Jon also knows that the Tim he’d known before is gone. Betrayed and having witnessed too many horrors, Tim can no longer be the charming, carefree person he once was. If that had ever truly been the person he was in the first place. Jon can see the determination in his eyes and hear the finality in his voice and he knows in his gut what it means.
It’s with a heavy heart that Jon reaches across the table to shake his hand. “Deal.” He’ll help Tim the best way that he can and he trusts him to accomplish his mission. His doubts lie elsewhere. Jon pulls back his hand and takes another drink. He thought winning Tim over would feel good, as if he’d reclaimed a part of himself that he’d lost, but all he feels is a sense of dread. “Tim,” he says, slowly. “I don’t want to lose anyone else.”
Tim doesn’t consider himself a hero. The last time he tried to be one had gone pretty shit for everyone involved, including himself and while he wears the failures of that day better physically than Jon does, he still carries the scars from the worms.
Maybe he could have been a hero, but his anger is too strong now, and his need for vengeance is far too great. At least this way, however, Tim Stoker can be pointed at the correct people rather than spreading devastation on the only people on earth who actually understand why he is the way he is.
It’s better, Tim and Jon may be better, but he still sighs. “Yeah, I know you don’t want to lose anyone else. But that’s the shitty thing about this. It’s a fear, and they’re gonna try and use it on ya cause they’ll feed on anything. You are going to need to accept that some of us are going to die to stop this. I am going to die to stop this, and if you do something to prevent it? I won’t forgive ya for it. Ever.”
[ Jon lets out a shaky breath and nods. He understands. Of course he does, but it doesn't make any of this any easier. If they're going to give their lives to stop this thing, it better be worth it. And if he's going to lose any more of the few people he considers his people, it has to be in a way he can live with. ] I understand and I'm willing to do what's necessary, but I'm not feeding into your deathwish. Just promise me, if there's a way for you to make it out of this alive that you'll take it.
[ He knows that their options may be limited but there's always a choice to be made and he feels like he already knows the one Tim would make if he had the chance. He can't believe that there's nothing left for him to live for, especially if he is able to get the revenge he wants. ]
For a very long time, Tim doesn’t speak. Instead he sits back in his chair and studies Jon in a way that he would never willingly study anyone else. It’s not because he has any powers or anything else; it’s a just in case because he would never be able to live within himself if he did. At the very least it’s probably a good sign that he doesn’t cross his arms over his chest and glare. Instead he just holds up two fingers to the bartender to signal for another round of drinks for the both of them.
Tim is thinking in an obvious sort of way, at least. This decision and whatever comes from it isn’t one that’s going to be brought forth in anger. Well, at least not just in anger. Timothy Stoker doesn’t know how not to be angry anymore. He doesn’t know how not to have that little red ball of rage lodged between his heart and his Adam’s apple. Even before there had been the smallest bit of it after Danny, but it had been a grain of sand then. Every day under the watchful embrace of the fucking Eye, that sand had been coated in more venom and anger and fear and hate until it had become a bomb that had eaten almost everything else that he had been. That he ever could have been.
This fucking place and these fucking creatures had warped and changed them so much and it was still mutating them. It would never stop mutating them as far as Tim was concerned, given what had happened to Gertrude Robinson, and now Jon. The waitress comes and drops off the bottles and informs Tim that she’s gonna add it to his tab which just earns her a nod.
After she’s scurried off, Tim finally says what’s on his mind. “Don’t ask that of me, Jon, and I won’t make you promise that if you ever start feeding on innocent people like Elias did to Melanie you won’t ask Daisy to kill you.”
Ordinarily, Jon wouldn't let himself be examined for so long without comment. Attention has always felt critical in nature, has always seemed to find him lacking—at least with Tim he knows he's already been judged. There's a strange kind of comfort in it. The least he can do is let himself be seen for what he is and what he wants.
He wants his friend back. The one that used to call him boss and cracked jokes and wasn't eaten up completely by paranoia and loss and a need for revenge. The one that had risked his life to save him and Martin when they'd been under attack and had the scars to prove it. But deep down, Jon knows that Tim is gone. There is no going back for either of them.
Jon’s mouth tightens into an unhappy frown, but after a long moment, he nods—slow, reluctant, like the movement itself costs something. "I won't."
He's not sure if he's saying he won't make Tim promise or he won't feed on innocent people. He wants to believe both are true, but he also knows he won't make a promise to Tim he can't keep. He wants to keep pushing, keep begging, but he knows it won’t change anything. It won’t bring Tim back. And he’s already lost too much to lose this, too.
Tim knows–has know really–Jon for far too long to view his answer as any sort of committal in one way or another. That being said, he’s all too willing to engage in a mutual pact of asking no questions about that and then they won’t have to tell one another lies. God, Tim is so fucking tired of lies. Most days and nights, he assumes that there’s a bit of the Lie involved in all of the Fears because that was the one other thing they all had in common. They fucking lied. What choice did honest people have when playing with Eldritch horrors?
“Alright then, boss.” It’s a reflex to add the word, but it doesn’t have the sharp and bitter bite to it that it once did. There’s not an underlying harshness, but there’s also not that underlying ease either; maybe it’s a happy medium or a new normal but it’s something at least. Picking up his fresh cider, he twists the lid off before he raises it in a sort of toast that Tim doesn’t really have words to accompany when it comes down to it. There’s both too many words and not enough.
“So,” he starts at last after he’s taken a long sip. “Tell me what’s going on at work now that I actually give a damn about something other than shifting around boxes and trying to annoy Elias by counting to a million in my head.”
He winces at the nickname as much as he wants to lean into it. It's not the same, but it's not hostile. It's enough. He picks up his own bottle of cider and lifts it, finishing the warm liquid off before reaching for the new one set in front of him.
"Oh, you know, the usual," he says, keeping his voice flat. "Horrors, terrors, paperwork, etc." There's a hollowness in his chest that still somehow aches. "Though, Rosie did ask after you the other day."
“Yeah,” he mutters, and there’s that bitterness once more, sharp as ever. “‘Course she would. Why wouldn’t she?” It’s much different than Tim has ever spoken about Rosie before. He’d been almost friends with her once, but it couldn’t last after everything that had happened. In the forever changed mind of Timothy Stoker, Rosie was one of two things. First, she either knew more than she let on and was working more firmly for Elias than she’d ever let on. Or, and just as bad, she was Elias’ favorite snack and Tim has absolutely no intention of ever going near Elias’ office again unless it was with a gas can and a lighter very firmly in hands. “It’s not as if I ever want to be found at work.” Which is a true and more universal statement. At least before tonight anyway.
“But that’s not what I meant, Jon. I mean what’s really going on. Why has Elias been sending you off everywhere and getting you kidnapped multiple times. I may be an idiot but I’m not blind. I know there’s something happening and if I’m trusting you, then I’m a part of it alright?”
Leaning in he adds softly, “recorders don’t come here. They never have. Don’t know why but they don’t. I always wondered if it had to do with some sort of horseshit to do with Smirke. He’s got things all over below the city that we know about. Imagine what we don’t.”
Jon stares down at the table. It's not shame, exactly, it's more like he's afraid of what Tim might see if he keeps looking him in the eye. "I don't know what his plan is, but I know that I'm a part of it. He wants me to find my own way to things. That's why he keeps sending me, testing me." He takes a shaky breath and looks up at Tim.
"You asked me, back at the beginning, how you were supposed to know I was really me." His mouth tightens into a thin line. "I am still me," he promises, but there's a long pause afterwards. "But I think I'm changing too..." He swallows thickly. "I think Elias is turning me into something, I don't know what. He won't tell me."
Tim isn’t even surprised in the slightest by Jon’s admission. How could he be when he’s had the most front row seat with the clearest vision for the longest? He’s been there as the Eye made Jon paranoid and crazy, as it drove him mental with the lack of trust, as it had been doing to all of them. There’s no accusation or criticism in the shrug that Tim makes; instead it’s just an acceptance of that fact. “Yeah. The bloody Archivist.”
But Tim doesn’t stop with the simple naming of that fact. Instead he adds to it. “But you don’t have to, you know. We know that you don’t have to. If you had to become whatever the fuck Elias wants, then he wouldn’t have needed to kill Gertrude in order to stop her. Somehow she managed it. You can manage it too.”
There’s a beat, and Tim leans forward, offering earnest eyes and something infinitely more precious: a glimmer of a memory that somehow had managed to stick around. “You know,” he starts and he swallows, fighting the urge to keep this one thing to himself because it’s all that Timothy Stoker feels like he has left of her. But he also knows that the Sasha he still believes in with all of his heart would want him to tell Jon, their friend. “Sasha.” Her name is so heavy in his throat that he needs a sip of cider to force it back to the ball of rage. “She suspected that the reasons the archives were a fucking mess were something Gertrude was doing on purpose. We didn’t know about the Eye and Elias and the whole damn building being evil then. But Sasha knew that there was more to Gertrude fucking Robinson than being a dotty old bat. And now we know, don’t we?”
Jon lets out a soft breath, not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. He's still holding it together, but just barely. "You think Gertrude stayed who she was in the beginning?"
He doesn't mean it as a challenge, but it comes out bitter anyway. He runs a hand through his hair, exhausted, grasping for anything that might feel like truth. "She killed people, Tim. She burned statements and artifacts. She made sure none of us could do our job properly. Maybe that was resistance, but it feels a long way off of winning." He pauses, his expression softening the slightest bit. "But Sasha..." Just saying her name out loud makes him want to break. "She saw it for what it was. " She'd seen through Gertrude; maybe she would've seen through Elias eventually. Maybe that's why she'd been allowed to be taken. The thought ignites that same anger that had driven him to take an axe to the table what felt like an age ago. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I don't have to become what he wants. But I can't fight him alone." He shifts, reaching for the unopened cider and twists the lid off of it. "We need a plan."
“No.” The word is single and decisive. “I don’t think she stayed the same as in the beginning. I don’t think that anyone who ever has walked through the door of The Magnus Institute has come out the same person they were when they went in.” Tim means it; it’s one of the more solid truths in his foundation at this point. That’s one door you will always be buggered if you go into it.
“But she stopped them. Gertrude Robinson stopped them. She hurt them. Doing our jobs properly,” the bitterness comes through with the implied finger quotes his tone places around Jon’s words, “is what that bastard wants. But you’re right. We do need a plan. You, me, Martin and Melanie for sure. Though Melanie is probably going to want to kill him along with everyone else.”
It’s clear that killing Elias will kill everyone else, because that’s the most nightmare situation that Tim can imagine. When in doubt, always expect the worst option and while he’ll be glad to wipe the Circus off the map, he doesn’t want to murder the people here who were innocent like they once had been. “How much do you trust Basira? Is it enough to trust her and Daisy on this?”
Melanie is a loose cannon, even more so than Tim. She doesn't believe Elias's threat about all of them dying if he does. Jon isn't so sure he's bluffing, no matter how much he wants him to be. At least Tim is content to limit his destruction to himself, Melanie wouldn't hesitate to take down anyone standing in her way. "I can try to speak with Melanie," he sighs. "But it might be better if Martin tries first. I don't think she likes me very much." Georgie had said she'd called him a dick. He supposes, that's fair.
"I trust Basira," he says without hesitation. He turns the bottle between his fingers, taking a moment longer to think over the second part of Tim's question. "I trust Daisy to do whatever it takes to free Basira of her contract, but after that, she's likely to kill anyone she thinks is a threat to the public." Unfortuantely, that includes Jon himself. Which, may not be the worst thing, but is definitely something he wants to avoid until he's sure there's no coming back from this.
“Yeah. Her thinking that we’re assholes is our fault too. Mine and Martin. She thinks that we didn’t do enough to warn her and Melanie is probably right. We didn’t. But then again we couldn’t really, not with Elias there and waiting to pounce on yet another fucked up person for the archives to eat off of.” While Tim’s words have no shortness of bitterness; it’s the sort that comes from one’s own regrets and not a malice that he’s placing at Jon’s feet. There’s enough blame to go around here, and Tim knows that he’s willing to take the lion’s share of that one.
“Good.” Tim says it to both things, but he’s not intending for it to be something that goes against Jon. Rather he’s thinking about Daisy versus Elias; even if she can’t kill the head of the Institute than at least she could hurt him. Of course the theatre and that fucking clown were always going to come first on the list of monsters he wants to take out, but at this point Elias Bouchard is a very very close third.
“There’s got to be somewhere that we can plan that he can’t hear us, yeah? I mean I can be a distraction but eventually he’s going to stop finding it amusing to come and poke my scabs about things.”
"It's not entirely your fault, Elias saw an easy mark." He'd needed more cannon fodder if Jon was going to go through assistants the way Gertrude had. Not that Jon would ever make the same calls that she had for his team. Even Melanie, who openly disliked him. If that was a reason for someone to deserve to die, he's pretty sure he'd be the cause of death for every person he'd ever met.
"I'm not sure how far his power extends," Jon said, taking a sip of his cider. "However, if the tape recorders do not show up here, it might indicate that this place is beyond his reach somehow. Is there anywhere else where they don't show up?" Sometimes, Jon wonders if he is the reason for their activation, although he has listened to enough tapes to understand that he is not their only target. He lowers the bottle slowly, fixing Tim with a somber look. "Does he know about your brother?"
Some of the air deflates from Tim as Jon’s question forces him to think of both his beloved brother and their bastard boss at the same time. He sounds exhausted. “I don’t know if Elias knows why I came to the Institute. I thought I had covered my tracks pretty well because I was worried that it might have disqualified me from working here. And that had made me laugh before, let me tell ya, mate. Sometimes I think I should have come right out and said it to his face just to see what he’d do. But that would have just been me giving a statement and not signing my soul away.”
Tim pauses and takes a drink. “After everything Elias did to Melanie and likely Daisy too,” he can still remember Martin’s voice as he insisted that the murder cop had looked like she’d seen a ghost when she’d torn out of trying to interview Elias. He also knows that no one would have told him if they’d found out after that just given his response to the everything of it all. Tim wouldn’t blame them for that and he doesn’t. “He probably does, or at least he could find it out easily enough. I guess I just haven’t made myself inconvenient enough yet.”
If the two of them weren’t coming up with this plan to stop Elias, Tim probably would have used that thought in order to provoke the bastard, but he files that thought away for later. For now they have other things to worry about. “Wait,” he says after a moment. “When Prentiss attacked, you needed to grab the recorder before we went into the tunnels, yeah? And I had to grab one to go in the tunnels after ya with Martin. The tape recorders work, but do they show up there?”
Jon knows that Elias has used his knowledge about the others to hurt them. Melanie's run-in with him had been particularly cruel, and the thought of it makes his teeth grind. He doesn't want him to be able to hurt Tim in the same way, even if he's positive it would only make Tim angrier. "Let's not give him a reason to use it against you," he says after a moment.
Jon thinks back to the Prentiss attack and the mindless need that had driven him to grab the recorder. He now recognises that his actions were driven by something outside of himself, although he didn't realise it at the time. "No," he says slowly. "I don't think they do."
"He hadn't known about Leitner down there, either," Jon says after a moment. "Otherwise, he would've removed him as a threat sooner." He looks back at Tim. "We should test it to be sure."
Despite the amount that Timothy Stoker had put away before Jon had gotten there, and the drinks they’ve had together, Tim feels very sober, and he latches onto the idea of going to check. Checking now seems imperative if only because he doesn’t want Elias to end up figuring out that the two of them were on the same side before they’ve actually some sort of workable plan; the bastard already knows far too many things that he’s not supposed to know.
Pulling a wad of notes out of his pocket, Tim doesn’t bother to count it out before he pulls out his phone. Despite it being late, he sends out another text message. The response isn’t instant, but it is quick and it does cause Tim to grin. “According to Rosie,” because clearly Tim checks in with her fairly often about this. “Elias is at a fundraising event in Glasgow. He’s not going to be back until Sunday.”
Does Tim know he doesn’t need to actually be at the Institute to use his bullshit bastard abilities? Of course he does. But it’s a lot harder to stop them from where he is if Elias knew what Tim and Jon were actually up too. Pulling on his coat, Tim asks. “Got a better time to try and see, boss?”
Jon watches as Tim pulls out his money and his phone. He has an inkling of where his mind is going, and so he hastily takes a long pull from his drink before following Tim's lead and getting to his feet. He hadn't even bothered taking off his coat when he'd sat down.
There's a small rush of hope at the fact that Tim wants to be within five feet of him without tearing his head off. He tries to tamp it down, knowing that even if they're on the same side, it doesn't mean he's forgiven for the part he's played in all of this. Still, he gives Tim a rare smile and shakes his head. "No. Let's go."
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He sits and listens to Tim's logic and it makes sense in a way that it shouldn't. He knows what it feels like to not be able to trust anyone around you, to think that everyone is out to kill you, to feel betrayed by the place you've dedicated your short life to. He knows all of it much too well. He also knows there's not satisfactory answer.
"Because I am!" Jon snaps, his frustration spilling over the compartment he's tried to push it down into. He reaches up to rub at his face, suddenly feeling exhausted. "I don't know how to prove it to you, Tim. Other than to say that Melanie saw it, somehow, when none of us could. She would tell you if I wasn't Jon." But he already knows the next logical conspiracy is that Melanie isn't really Melanie, either. None of them had even met her before all of this except for Jon and Sasha. "Listen to the tapes! My voice is the same. I am the same."
He presses his lips together, lowering his voice. "I don't know how to prove it to you. I don't know how to give you back that feeling of sanity, all I can say is that we all feel it too. Sasha..." He takes in a deep breath. "She didn't deserve to be forgotten and she won't be. But hating me isn't going to change anything. All it does is make everything that much harder."
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Maybe the time had been because they couldn’t be in the same room without coming to words and fights that violently outmatch any fist that either of them could possibly throw. Maybe because Tim hadn’t wanted to look anymore, hadn’t wanted to dissect each curl of Jon’s expression, to find the accusations in the sighs of both of the men.
More than that, at the base core of him, Timothy Stoker had stopped looking because he didn’t want to *Know* anymore. He didn’t want to care; and he doesn’t want this place to sink whatever grubby little eye claws it has further inside of him.
But he looks for Jon in that moment. He looks for the person who he believed that Sasha was, and not what the thing had made her that she wasn’t. Tim looks for Martin who’s trying so desperately to hold things together like he always had. He looks for Danny which is the reason that Timothy Stoker had first stepped through the Magnus Institute’s front doorway with a CV in hand and vengeance in his heart.
The last person he looks for is himself. But it’s the briefest glimpse before he lowers his eyes. Tim’s voice is soft and pained. “Did you listen to old recordings every morning to see if we’re still the same?” Because Tim does because Tim had to because otherwise he’s not going to be able to do this.
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"No," Jon says, lowering his eyes to the table as well. He can tell Tim's doing more than just asking. It's probably a good idea, all things considered, but he'd never thought of it. He should've thought of it. John leans forward slightly. "I finally decided that I had to trust you all or I wouldn't be able to move forward. I'm sorry that I let my paranoia get the better of me. I just... with Gertrude's murder, I didn't know..." He pauses. "I think that's what they want."
If asked to define what he means by they he'd be hard pressed. Elias, the Institute, the avatars, the fears themselves? He doesn't know. "I know that doesn't change the things I did or said, but I do trust you, Tim." He just hopes that someday Tim can trust him in return.
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Tim snorts, but it’s not with any sort of meaningful weight behind it, not really. More standard Tim than the bitterness it otherwise has been. “Oh, I know that’s what they want. Don’t you listen to the statements when ya read ‘em, when you did the research? They want us to be as scared and paranoid and untrusting as we can be. And Elias wants it most of all. Why do you think he waited until after Basira had signed to tell her? Why do you think he conveniently ignored any sort of mention that if we were gone too long it’d kill us? Didn’t kill me, didn’t kill you but we’re archives so of course it didn’t. But how many people do you think didn’t know, took a cheeky little hols or hen weekend or went to a concert and then just died because of it?”
Picking up his empty glass, he just stares at the bottom of it, before he asks softly. “Do you know why I joined the Institute? Like really joined it, Jon.”
Oh, Tim doesn’t mean he wants Jon to archivist look inside his head and history. He doesn’t want to make it a statement. Fuck the eye. Let the damned thing starve. But he still needs to know if Jon knows about Danny. Danny and what happened to him.
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"No," Jon says, lifting his eyes to meet Tim's again. "I always wondered why you left publishing for the Institute." He's careful not to ask. He prays that a recorder doesn't pop up somewhere unbidden and turn itself on. This might be the longest conversation they've had in months and he doesn't want it to end abruptly.
Sometimes he thinks about how much better off Tim would've been if he'd never come to the Institute. He imagines him living his life to it's fullest, successful and still the life of the party, instead of the vague shadow of that person he's turned into.
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With a bitter little laugh, Tim speaks loudly in a way that once would have been accompanied by a cheer, whistles or climbing on a table. Now the patrons of the pub barely even acknowledge it because it’s become something of a standard practice for him on nights when he can’t sleep. “This is not a fucking statement and if a single fucking recorder shows up, I’m going to take it over to Elias’s office and shove it down my own stupid throat.” A beat, a pause to see if whatever the fuck the recorders are gonna choose tonight to break their long absences here. When nothing happens, he just looks to Jon once more, his fingers picking at the graffiti on well-gouged table.
“I had a younger brother once. Danny. He was a great kid who everybody loved, but no one as much as me. I was proud of him. Supported all the crazy activities that he’d pick up and drop every six months. Sure, they could be a little bit dangerous but that was my brother; he liked the thrills. He liked learning about things and doing em.”
A pause, and some long suffering woman who knows this Tim well but knew old Tim better comes by with two sealed bottles of cider and drops em off without a word. Shredding the damp label is just as much of a reflex as twisting off the lid before he takes a sip.
“He was staying with me here in London when he learned about urban exploration and I watched it hooked him. He was fine for a few months, nothing that would have sent him to A&E or to us. Until there was Ghost buildings and the Covent Garden Theatre.” Which of course is where Smirke enters stage left, but Tim refuses to give that name any breath here and now.
“My brother Danny broke into an unused part of the Royal Opera House and found that theatre, Jon. He found what and who was inside it. He came to me at my flat and you know the rest. It’s what happens in all of them. My brother died and I was the idiot who tried to save him. Joseph Grimaldi’s ghost or avatar or whatever the fuck it was used my brother’s broken body and soul to put on a performance for me. To scare me. Then it let me go. It let me go and I ran straight into the arms of the welcoming Eye to try and find what happened but I just.”
He was Tim. He could leave it there like so many other people who experience the fears did, until the archives. Until Sasha. Until Jon.
Another longer, deeper pull of the cider. “I think he’s with the Russian Circus. It’s why I always cared about the Circus statements.”
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His attention is laser focused on Tim as he speaks, even when the bottles of cider are dropped off at their table. He may not be able to solve any of the problems hanging over their heads, but one thing he can do is listen. He knows that despite all of his flaws, that's one thing that he is good at. Tim's obsession with Smirke's architecture is flagged in his mind. He'd always just thought Tim appreciated the history, not that there was a direct correlation to his employment. Unlike Smirke's architecture, mention of a brother brings up a large blank in Jon's mind. He's never been the type to pry into the lives of his coworkers, but he can't remember a single time Tim has mentioned a brother in all the time they've known each other. Not even around the holidays.
He reaches up and places a hand over his mouth, feeling his throat go dry. He's heard too many statements not to know where this is headed and all he can do is let Tim finish. It doesn't make any of the next words any easier to swallow. Jon feels his heart drop and closes his eyes for a long moment before he opens them again and pulls his hand away from his face.
"Oh, God, Tim. I never..." He feels every interaction he's had with the man sitting in front of him, reframe and reshape itself in his head. His due diligence in investigations, his interest in Smirke and the Circus, his reason for staying in a job that was thankless and working under someone like the Jon before they knew none of them had a choice. Jon swallows, his voice rough. "I'm sorry."
It doesn't help. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't bring Danny or Sasha back. It doesn't give them back their sanity. It doesn't release them from the Eye. Jon feels his own anger bubbling up to the surface. It's foreign and uncomfortable after being numb with fear for so long. "You should've told me." He knows it's the wrong thing to say, it also doesn't matter, but at least he would've understood. He would've tried to be better.
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Tim has had a dead brother for a long time now; the familiar sounds of people finding out do t bother him any longer. They never helped, and they’re going to help even less now. So he drinks again, the length of the swallow coordinating with the raiding of his brow. Anger wasn’t what he expected, and that shocks him out of his own for a moment.
So he leans back in the chair and watches Jon before he asks in way that’s as lacking in heat as much as it’s possible for Tim’s voice to be at this point. “Oh yeah? Which you, Jon? The skeptical trying to be archivist who insulted every case he could come across? Would ya have done it to my face or waited til after?”
But he’s not done, “the friend I fought worms for, who thought that I was trying to kill him? Poor Martin couldn’t even make ya a cup of fucking tea without you thinking he was about to go Arsenic and Old Lace on you. What would you have done if I’d tried to tell you then? And then you were gone and you didn’t even apologize. Why did I owe ya this?!”
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He shakes his head, sucking in a deep breath. "No. No, you're right. You don't owe me anything."
He reaches for the bottle in front of him and finally opens it, taking a long drink. "I was a prick, I know. I probably still am. But I wish I..." He reaches up to rub at his temple. "I don't know. I wish I had known. I would've prioritized things for you. We could've tried to work on it together."
"I could've been kinder."
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Tim doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know what to do with this version of Jon now. God, when was the last time they’d been almost normal? Had it been when he’d assumed that Jon and Basira were a couple when she was bringing in Gertrude’s tapes? It feels like a lifetime ago now. It feels like many.
He’s back to shredding that label off the bottle, busy work for his hands like Tim does when he clocks into the office, when he’s there but not. It doesn’t feel right to do it now, so he forces his hands flat against the table.
“It wasn’t entirely your fault,” he finds the words at last. “I know that. Those things were wanting you far away from people who might have been able to pull ya back. It’s one of the things we all had in common, isn’t it? You, me, Martin, Sasha. Melanie now. Hell, probably even Basira and Daisy though they’re more complicated. We’re all people who don’t got ties other than to one another. And even then it’s not really that we have ties there, do we? They keep them loose But it’s not just that! Nope, and at some point some bullshit supernatural thing looked at us and went ‘oh, they’re tasty!’ We’re dispensable. Why do you think Elias could risk us so easily? He doesn’t want us to be another Gertrude Robinson or whatever.”
A beat, a pause and Tim leans in. “If you want to help me. Really help me. Help me find the Circus and kill that fucking clown. I don’t need kindness, we don’t need kindness. We need to stop what is happening.”
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Maybe Tim had seen all of this clearer than he had from the beginning. Jon had kept thinking of them all as hostages, forced to play the game, but Tim had been the first to call the place evil. The first to understand just how deep the Institute's claws were in all of them. He'd refused to participate, to perpetuate.
There was a reason Jon had asked for him to be transferred to the Archives and it wasn't because he was well liked or because he'd invited Jon out to drinks a few times. Tim could be remarkably resourceful and had completed every task set in front of him, regardless of how difficult. Jon knew it would be pointless to try to stand in his way now.
He sighs deeply, taking another drink of his cider. "Okay, I'll help you." His tone is measured, a somber promise. "But you're going to have to trust me. Trust us. Are you able to do that and work with us?"
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Honestly, Tim hadn’t expected that he’d agree. That Jon would say yes. Truth be told he didn’t exactly expect a no either. Tabling the decision had seemed like the best outcome that could happen, and now there’s this and Tim genuinely does not know what to say for a long moment.
“I’ll trust you.” The words come softly, almost breathed before Tim nods and repeats them along with adding to it. “I’ll trust you and Martin and Melanie. Hell, I’ll even trust the cops if they actually want this to stop. But no one else. We keep anyone else from getting involved in the Archives, Jon. We can’t let someone else sign onto this unknowingly. I’ll pull a Melanie before I let it happen to someone else. We’re enough. Elias can sod off and so can the Bloody Eye.”
A pause, and Tim has always been good at spinning out plans on the fly during tricky investigations though that normally involved more bribery and flirting than actual threats of murder that Tim is reasonably sure he could do if he needs too. Well, on his end anyway. Melanie was determined as hell and they all had seen how that went.
“I won’t read any statement that’s not a Circus statement. I know you have to, but I won’t. I’ll be a good little researcher, I’ll break into things if I have to, but I won’t read any random statement. Deal?” Then something perhaps miraculous happens: Tim offers Jon his hand.
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Even under the teasing and later the insults, Tim has always been a good person. Jon knows this from years of observation. So, it’s easy to trust that this is the right thing to do. The only way to stop it is to close ranks and refuse to let anyone else in. Jon also knows that the Tim he’d known before is gone. Betrayed and having witnessed too many horrors, Tim can no longer be the charming, carefree person he once was. If that had ever truly been the person he was in the first place. Jon can see the determination in his eyes and hear the finality in his voice and he knows in his gut what it means.
It’s with a heavy heart that Jon reaches across the table to shake his hand. “Deal.” He’ll help Tim the best way that he can and he trusts him to accomplish his mission. His doubts lie elsewhere. Jon pulls back his hand and takes another drink. He thought winning Tim over would feel good, as if he’d reclaimed a part of himself that he’d lost, but all he feels is a sense of dread. “Tim,” he says, slowly. “I don’t want to lose anyone else.”
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Tim doesn’t consider himself a hero. The last time he tried to be one had gone pretty shit for everyone involved, including himself and while he wears the failures of that day better physically than Jon does, he still carries the scars from the worms.
Maybe he could have been a hero, but his anger is too strong now, and his need for vengeance is far too great. At least this way, however, Tim Stoker can be pointed at the correct people rather than spreading devastation on the only people on earth who actually understand why he is the way he is.
It’s better, Tim and Jon may be better, but he still sighs. “Yeah, I know you don’t want to lose anyone else. But that’s the shitty thing about this. It’s a fear, and they’re gonna try and use it on ya cause they’ll feed on anything. You are going to need to accept that some of us are going to die to stop this. I am going to die to stop this, and if you do something to prevent it? I won’t forgive ya for it. Ever.”
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[ He knows that their options may be limited but there's always a choice to be made and he feels like he already knows the one Tim would make if he had the chance. He can't believe that there's nothing left for him to live for, especially if he is able to get the revenge he wants. ]
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For a very long time, Tim doesn’t speak. Instead he sits back in his chair and studies Jon in a way that he would never willingly study anyone else. It’s not because he has any powers or anything else; it’s a just in case because he would never be able to live within himself if he did. At the very least it’s probably a good sign that he doesn’t cross his arms over his chest and glare. Instead he just holds up two fingers to the bartender to signal for another round of drinks for the both of them.
Tim is thinking in an obvious sort of way, at least. This decision and whatever comes from it isn’t one that’s going to be brought forth in anger. Well, at least not just in anger. Timothy Stoker doesn’t know how not to be angry anymore. He doesn’t know how not to have that little red ball of rage lodged between his heart and his Adam’s apple. Even before there had been the smallest bit of it after Danny, but it had been a grain of sand then. Every day under the watchful embrace of the fucking Eye, that sand had been coated in more venom and anger and fear and hate until it had become a bomb that had eaten almost everything else that he had been. That he ever could have been.
This fucking place and these fucking creatures had warped and changed them so much and it was still mutating them. It would never stop mutating them as far as Tim was concerned, given what had happened to Gertrude Robinson, and now Jon. The waitress comes and drops off the bottles and informs Tim that she’s gonna add it to his tab which just earns her a nod.
After she’s scurried off, Tim finally says what’s on his mind. “Don’t ask that of me, Jon, and I won’t make you promise that if you ever start feeding on innocent people like Elias did to Melanie you won’t ask Daisy to kill you.”
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He wants his friend back. The one that used to call him boss and cracked jokes and wasn't eaten up completely by paranoia and loss and a need for revenge. The one that had risked his life to save him and Martin when they'd been under attack and had the scars to prove it. But deep down, Jon knows that Tim is gone. There is no going back for either of them.
Jon’s mouth tightens into an unhappy frown, but after a long moment, he nods—slow, reluctant, like the movement itself costs something. "I won't."
He's not sure if he's saying he won't make Tim promise or he won't feed on innocent people. He wants to believe both are true, but he also knows he won't make a promise to Tim he can't keep. He wants to keep pushing, keep begging, but he knows it won’t change anything. It won’t bring Tim back. And he’s already lost too much to lose this, too.
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Tim knows–has know really–Jon for far too long to view his answer as any sort of committal in one way or another. That being said, he’s all too willing to engage in a mutual pact of asking no questions about that and then they won’t have to tell one another lies. God, Tim is so fucking tired of lies. Most days and nights, he assumes that there’s a bit of the Lie involved in all of the Fears because that was the one other thing they all had in common. They fucking lied. What choice did honest people have when playing with Eldritch horrors?
“Alright then, boss.” It’s a reflex to add the word, but it doesn’t have the sharp and bitter bite to it that it once did. There’s not an underlying harshness, but there’s also not that underlying ease either; maybe it’s a happy medium or a new normal but it’s something at least. Picking up his fresh cider, he twists the lid off before he raises it in a sort of toast that Tim doesn’t really have words to accompany when it comes down to it. There’s both too many words and not enough.
“So,” he starts at last after he’s taken a long sip. “Tell me what’s going on at work now that I actually give a damn about something other than shifting around boxes and trying to annoy Elias by counting to a million in my head.”
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"Oh, you know, the usual," he says, keeping his voice flat. "Horrors, terrors, paperwork, etc." There's a hollowness in his chest that still somehow aches. "Though, Rosie did ask after you the other day."
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“Yeah,” he mutters, and there’s that bitterness once more, sharp as ever. “‘Course she would. Why wouldn’t she?” It’s much different than Tim has ever spoken about Rosie before. He’d been almost friends with her once, but it couldn’t last after everything that had happened. In the forever changed mind of Timothy Stoker, Rosie was one of two things. First, she either knew more than she let on and was working more firmly for Elias than she’d ever let on. Or, and just as bad, she was Elias’ favorite snack and Tim has absolutely no intention of ever going near Elias’ office again unless it was with a gas can and a lighter very firmly in hands. “It’s not as if I ever want to be found at work.” Which is a true and more universal statement. At least before tonight anyway.
“But that’s not what I meant, Jon. I mean what’s really going on. Why has Elias been sending you off everywhere and getting you kidnapped multiple times. I may be an idiot but I’m not blind. I know there’s something happening and if I’m trusting you, then I’m a part of it alright?”
Leaning in he adds softly, “recorders don’t come here. They never have. Don’t know why but they don’t. I always wondered if it had to do with some sort of horseshit to do with Smirke. He’s got things all over below the city that we know about. Imagine what we don’t.”
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"You asked me, back at the beginning, how you were supposed to know I was really me." His mouth tightens into a thin line. "I am still me," he promises, but there's a long pause afterwards. "But I think I'm changing too..." He swallows thickly. "I think Elias is turning me into something, I don't know what. He won't tell me."
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Tim isn’t even surprised in the slightest by Jon’s admission. How could he be when he’s had the most front row seat with the clearest vision for the longest? He’s been there as the Eye made Jon paranoid and crazy, as it drove him mental with the lack of trust, as it had been doing to all of them. There’s no accusation or criticism in the shrug that Tim makes; instead it’s just an acceptance of that fact. “Yeah. The bloody Archivist.”
But Tim doesn’t stop with the simple naming of that fact. Instead he adds to it. “But you don’t have to, you know. We know that you don’t have to. If you had to become whatever the fuck Elias wants, then he wouldn’t have needed to kill Gertrude in order to stop her. Somehow she managed it. You can manage it too.”
There’s a beat, and Tim leans forward, offering earnest eyes and something infinitely more precious: a glimmer of a memory that somehow had managed to stick around. “You know,” he starts and he swallows, fighting the urge to keep this one thing to himself because it’s all that Timothy Stoker feels like he has left of her. But he also knows that the Sasha he still believes in with all of his heart would want him to tell Jon, their friend. “Sasha.” Her name is so heavy in his throat that he needs a sip of cider to force it back to the ball of rage. “She suspected that the reasons the archives were a fucking mess were something Gertrude was doing on purpose. We didn’t know about the Eye and Elias and the whole damn building being evil then. But Sasha knew that there was more to Gertrude fucking Robinson than being a dotty old bat. And now we know, don’t we?”
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He doesn't mean it as a challenge, but it comes out bitter anyway. He runs a hand through his hair, exhausted, grasping for anything that might feel like truth. "She killed people, Tim. She burned statements and artifacts. She made sure none of us could do our job properly. Maybe that was resistance, but it feels a long way off of winning." He pauses, his expression softening the slightest bit. "But Sasha..." Just saying her name out loud makes him want to break. "She saw it for what it was. " She'd seen through Gertrude; maybe she would've seen through Elias eventually. Maybe that's why she'd been allowed to be taken. The thought ignites that same anger that had driven him to take an axe to the table what felt like an age ago. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I don't have to become what he wants. But I can't fight him alone." He shifts, reaching for the unopened cider and twists the lid off of it. "We need a plan."
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“No.” The word is single and decisive. “I don’t think she stayed the same as in the beginning. I don’t think that anyone who ever has walked through the door of The Magnus Institute has come out the same person they were when they went in.” Tim means it; it’s one of the more solid truths in his foundation at this point. That’s one door you will always be buggered if you go into it.
“But she stopped them. Gertrude Robinson stopped them. She hurt them. Doing our jobs properly,” the bitterness comes through with the implied finger quotes his tone places around Jon’s words, “is what that bastard wants. But you’re right. We do need a plan. You, me, Martin and Melanie for sure. Though Melanie is probably going to want to kill him along with everyone else.”
It’s clear that killing Elias will kill everyone else, because that’s the most nightmare situation that Tim can imagine. When in doubt, always expect the worst option and while he’ll be glad to wipe the Circus off the map, he doesn’t want to murder the people here who were innocent like they once had been. “How much do you trust Basira? Is it enough to trust her and Daisy on this?”
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"I trust Basira," he says without hesitation. He turns the bottle between his fingers, taking a moment longer to think over the second part of Tim's question. "I trust Daisy to do whatever it takes to free Basira of her contract, but after that, she's likely to kill anyone she thinks is a threat to the public." Unfortuantely, that includes Jon himself. Which, may not be the worst thing, but is definitely something he wants to avoid until he's sure there's no coming back from this.
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“Yeah. Her thinking that we’re assholes is our fault too. Mine and Martin. She thinks that we didn’t do enough to warn her and Melanie is probably right. We didn’t. But then again we couldn’t really, not with Elias there and waiting to pounce on yet another fucked up person for the archives to eat off of.” While Tim’s words have no shortness of bitterness; it’s the sort that comes from one’s own regrets and not a malice that he’s placing at Jon’s feet. There’s enough blame to go around here, and Tim knows that he’s willing to take the lion’s share of that one.
“Good.” Tim says it to both things, but he’s not intending for it to be something that goes against Jon. Rather he’s thinking about Daisy versus Elias; even if she can’t kill the head of the Institute than at least she could hurt him. Of course the theatre and that fucking clown were always going to come first on the list of monsters he wants to take out, but at this point Elias Bouchard is a very very close third.
“There’s got to be somewhere that we can plan that he can’t hear us, yeah? I mean I can be a distraction but eventually he’s going to stop finding it amusing to come and poke my scabs about things.”
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"I'm not sure how far his power extends," Jon said, taking a sip of his cider. "However, if the tape recorders do not show up here, it might indicate that this place is beyond his reach somehow. Is there anywhere else where they don't show up?" Sometimes, Jon wonders if he is the reason for their activation, although he has listened to enough tapes to understand that he is not their only target. He lowers the bottle slowly, fixing Tim with a somber look. "Does he know about your brother?"
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Some of the air deflates from Tim as Jon’s question forces him to think of both his beloved brother and their bastard boss at the same time. He sounds exhausted. “I don’t know if Elias knows why I came to the Institute. I thought I had covered my tracks pretty well because I was worried that it might have disqualified me from working here. And that had made me laugh before, let me tell ya, mate. Sometimes I think I should have come right out and said it to his face just to see what he’d do. But that would have just been me giving a statement and not signing my soul away.”
Tim pauses and takes a drink. “After everything Elias did to Melanie and likely Daisy too,” he can still remember Martin’s voice as he insisted that the murder cop had looked like she’d seen a ghost when she’d torn out of trying to interview Elias. He also knows that no one would have told him if they’d found out after that just given his response to the everything of it all. Tim wouldn’t blame them for that and he doesn’t. “He probably does, or at least he could find it out easily enough. I guess I just haven’t made myself inconvenient enough yet.”
If the two of them weren’t coming up with this plan to stop Elias, Tim probably would have used that thought in order to provoke the bastard, but he files that thought away for later. For now they have other things to worry about. “Wait,” he says after a moment. “When Prentiss attacked, you needed to grab the recorder before we went into the tunnels, yeah? And I had to grab one to go in the tunnels after ya with Martin. The tape recorders work, but do they show up there?”
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Jon thinks back to the Prentiss attack and the mindless need that had driven him to grab the recorder. He now recognises that his actions were driven by something outside of himself, although he didn't realise it at the time. "No," he says slowly. "I don't think they do."
"He hadn't known about Leitner down there, either," Jon says after a moment. "Otherwise, he would've removed him as a threat sooner." He looks back at Tim. "We should test it to be sure."
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Pulling a wad of notes out of his pocket, Tim doesn’t bother to count it out before he pulls out his phone. Despite it being late, he sends out another text message. The response isn’t instant, but it is quick and it does cause Tim to grin. “According to Rosie,” because clearly Tim checks in with her fairly often about this. “Elias is at a fundraising event in Glasgow. He’s not going to be back until Sunday.”
Does Tim know he doesn’t need to actually be at the Institute to use his bullshit bastard abilities? Of course he does. But it’s a lot harder to stop them from where he is if Elias knew what Tim and Jon were actually up too. Pulling on his coat, Tim asks. “Got a better time to try and see, boss?”
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There's a small rush of hope at the fact that Tim wants to be within five feet of him without tearing his head off. He tries to tamp it down, knowing that even if they're on the same side, it doesn't mean he's forgiven for the part he's played in all of this. Still, he gives Tim a rare smile and shakes his head. "No. Let's go."