Work Text:
Tell me, Archivist, what hurt the most?
Was it when your friendship between you and one Timothy Stoker started deteriorating as the Eye drove you to paranoia, or the feeling of Kane Prentis’s worms burrowing into your skin, eating your flesh from the inside out. Making your body their new home as their host gleefully descended upon you?
Both felt like the first time the Magnus Institute had truly corrupted your life.
With Sasha, you didn’t know to be scared. You didn’t understand how dead she was until it was thrust directly in front of your face. This time, you had the chance to see it decay right before your very eyes.
The looks of mistrust, the anger, all bottled up into someone you would call a friend, despite how he yelled about the tape recorders you couldn’t control, despite how you were never told his deep trauma with the circus until he couldn’t hold it in any longer, and even then it wasn’t to your face, despite the fact that you couldn’t have done anything to help Sasha and the rage he felt at you because of that.
Everyone knew that something had to break. Even you.
Did you want him to hit you? He didn’t, but you would have let him, if only to stop the constant nagging at the back of your skull proclaiming your imminent death, you would have let him, if only it would mend the rift between you.
Time, somehow, made it worse. The fraying threads of friendship only weakened as you learned to avoid each other, as you learned to hate everything about one another. While for some it would give them time to cool off, to see from a different perspective, to talk it out, it did nothing but build the tension between you.
The Eye did not stop, and therefore neither did you.
Even then, do you think those months of sharp words and short tempers could ever hope to compare against the seconds you felt the Corruption engulf you inside a writhing mass of tiny, filthy bodies that squirmed under your skin.
Perhaps not.
---
Tell me, Archivist, what hurt the most?
Was it waking up alone, with no one there to greet you? Anyone who was present didn’t care, you saw how much your death, and therefore life, meant to them. Just another day.
Couldn’t stop reading to help. Couldn’t stop scheming to update you on the situation. Couldn’t stop pushing you aside, because of the danger.
Not the danger that you were in, of course. Why would they care about that? You weren’t human. Not anymore.
The want for support was something only humans craved, so you did not need it.
The desire for answers was something only humans looked for, so you did not earn it.
The wish for kindness was something only humans recognised, so you did not deserve it.
Days trickled by and still, nothing changed. No one told you anything anymore, they didn’t trust you. They didn’t want what you had become.
You didn’t blame them.
Not after needing to feed, the disgust that choaked through your lungs, the horror shivering down your chest as their eyes had glazed over and their stories had come gushing out. The fullness that had flooded your senses, the dizziness of feeling fed, content.
If you had been anyone else, you would be happy.
Then you realised what you did, and you fled.
Or was it when the Stranger held you at their circus for a month, and no one came? The embodiment of an untrustworthy friend arrived to rescue you faster than your archival assistants, does that bother you?
Did you feel hurt when no one bothered to check in with you for a whole month?
Did it sting your heart to know that they wouldn’t have noticed at all if you hadn’t returned?
Did it wound your flesh thinking about how mad they were you didn’t show up, despite your situation?
How does the mighty Archivist feel knowing that no one came, and no one would have.
You were alone far before your death.
Already too close to the monsters they feared. Already part of our world.
But they were wrong.
You. Still. Cared.
Somehow.
They thought you were already in too far. Gone to deep. Flew too high, to the fears that would always haunt them.
They saw you, standing in the darkness, talking to monsters that you seemed to understand far better than you ever did them. They watched as your power grew, frightened. Knowing, as if they suspected this day would always come.
The coma confirmed what they already believed. That you weren’t human. That you were a monster. That you were one of us.
Are you going to tell them the truth?
Will you gather up the courage to explain to these frightened, paranoid, foolish friends of yours how wrong they truly have it.
Will you tell them how you were pushed into this dark and eternal cave, far deeper than they were, without a guiding light? Not like them, who had you to reveal the monsters for them.
Will you tell them of the claws that dig into your side, even as they transformed to be larger and sharper, tearing into your flesh as you hold back a scream. The monsters hope to drag all further into the crawling mass of darkness, but you act as a shield without thought.
That wasn’t even the worst thing about the circus, was it? Come on, you can tell me. It doesn’t matter if you tell me with your mouth or with your mind, I will know either way.
No, the worst part was the loneliness, the helplessness of being tied to a chair and having nothing else to do.
The mind can imagine endless possibilities of escape, but they never came to fruition. The mind tries to explain why no one comes, but in the end, it does not change the tears that threaten to flow when the darkness presses in a little too deep, and the loneliness feels a little too close.
Do you remember?
The suffocating silence of your own mind?
The time slowly moving forward even as you close your eyes in a hopes to bring about a faster dawn despite what waits for you.
When Nikola does your daily moisturising, you hate it with every fibre of your being. The callous touch of inhuman hands as they pamper your body everywhere you do not wish.
When the session finishes and the plastic things leave, somehow the relief is only temporary, and the yawning abyss of loneliness and fear takes its place.
So, which is it Archivist?
Is it the feeling of being a ghost in your own existence, despite recently waking up from the dead? Or is it the loneliness and distance felt as you sat, waiting for a rescue that would never come, by the people who would never notice.
Only one of these outcomes was your decision.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
---
Tell me, Archivist, what hurt the most?
Was it Tim’s final words and death, leaving you nothing to bury as he avenged his brother you never knew, or was it Jude Perry’s handshake that you tried so desperately to avoid at all coasts, because you understood with a certainty that it would stay with you forever.
Tim’s death felt inevitable, even at the end. You knew he needed to see the circus destroyed, but you didn’t think the cost was worth it.
It wouldn’t have even mattered in the end, the Unknowing.
Tim’s sacrifice meant nothing. Except to further Jonah’s Magnus’s plan.
He compared you to Gertrude, didn’t he, Archivist?
If only he had met her, he would understand, like you do. You are nothing like her.
She was a very dangerous women and would have eaten him alive.
Him and his flirtations would have been nothing more than a distraction. Perhaps slightly higher on the threat scale than Michael Shelley, but not by much.
Too much hate in him, not enough mechanisms to cope.
His emotions blinded him, and she could have played him like a fiddle without breaking a sweat. Manipulated his actions like a puppet on a string. Ironic, isn’t it.
You on the other hand, took a different approach. You didn’t tell him anything, kept him in the dark because you were worried about what he might do.
I guess you were right in the end, his need for revenge did end up killing people. The only important ones were you and him.
Do you think he cared? When he blew you up?
I mean, as far as he knew, you would die in the explosion like he did, but you didn’t…did you. Just kept on living, surviving. Some would call it a skill. Others would call it luck.
Then again, you were willing to die for the cause.
You would have stepped into Michael’s corridors and willingly been consumed if Helen hadn’t stepped in. So eager to die, weren’t you, Archivist? At least that was one thing you and Tim could agree on.
And then we come to Jude Perry. You remember her?
She burned your hand just because you were rude to her, it hurt a lot. Left a really nasty scar.
It took you ages to get better after that. Georgie had some pretty pointed questions about where the burn had come from.
You were never a good liar Archivist. I think everyone who has ever met you knows that.
But you still took it. Another part of you lost to the monsters that roamed the world, and yet. Technically, you were quite polite excluding your questions.
You were almost shaking with fear. The tremble.
She noticed when she took your hand, it delighted her.
It had been so long since someone had looked at her with such fear.
Sure, she caused enough fires in her time, but it wasn’t the same. When a fire burnt a building, all the people just stank of the same old misery. There would be the occasional bout of paranoia, where would they go? Was this person in the building? Did you pet survive?
In the end, it was all the same, all the time.
But this, an Archivist nonetheless, someone who Knew exactly who she was and what she did. They Knew exactly why they were afraid. They understood who they were facing and because of that she drank up your fear by the spoonful.
It was endless it seemed, and it didn’t wane or wax through their conversation either. It just a constant, pleasant background scent of pleasure that made her feel alive.
It made her job easy.
Sometimes when she did a personal burning, and collected on the last part of the fear, the victim got underwhelmed by her physical appearance. It meant that the delicious aroma of barely contained panic started to die down during their conversation which often meant she had to do some additional work to get it burning again.
With you, it was just there. Always. It was thickly coiled around you like a smoke.
It was that smoke that helped you stay alive.
So, which is it?
Was it the tragic death of a close friend who had decided to never forgive you in his final moments? Or was it the intense pain of being unable to avoid something you wish you could, even as it ate away at your skin and threatened to peel the flesh off your bones.
I think we both know which one hurt worse.
Sometimes the scars within us hurt more than the scars on us.
---
Tell me, Archivist, what hurt the most?
Was it being brought to a graveyard and shot by a dirty cop, one who had reduced you to prey and had previously struck down another Avatar right in front of you?
Of course you remember Mike Crew.
You read about him, his statements. He wasn’t so different from you.
At a young age he was marked by one of the Fears and as he grew older, he became more entangled in our world. People close to him died to its monsters, people he cared about, and eventually he found an escape by becoming an Avatar.
The only difference between you and him is that he embraced his abilities and was not afraid to feed himself.
You read about him pushing someone off a building in Paris, he did that a lot. I think that was his favourite method of feeding. It gave a quick death in the end. After the fall.
Did he see him as a human?
I think you did.
He offered you tea and was polite despite your rudeness. Sure, he gave you a little trip to the Vast, but even I can admit that your manners were sorely lacking. Even then, we both know that Mike could have done a lot worse to you. The mark you gained from the Vast is arguably your least painful one.
You showed the same respect towards Mike Crew as you did Jude Perry, the imitate fear of Knowing exactly who you were speaking to and what they could do to you.
Mike didn’t enjoy it as much as Perry, but he was still pleased. That’s why he didn’t let you fall through the Vast forever. Perhaps it was the last dredges of his sympathy manifesting. Perhaps you remembered him of a time he used to be human.
Were you sad when he died? Shot, right in front of you. It couldn’t have been fun to watch. While you are the Archive of Fear, you are not a soldier. Seeing people die still hurt.
In this case, you didn’t really have time to process the death. Too busy trying not to join him in the dirt. You know, in another universe, you could have been friends.
It is too late now. He’s long dead thanks to your assistant. I think, if you had enough time, you would have felt sorry for him. Despite the people he killed, really, he was just like you.
Moving on to your little Hunt friend. Back then, she was no better than an animal, desperate for another kill. A fate that you rescued her from, despite how she tried to kill you. Despite how she didn’t seem to hold any love for any of your assistants, except Basira of course.
Do you remember how terrified you were? The sharpened blade held at your neck, the way she seemed to bask in your terror as your heartbeat quivered, pumping pure adrenaline through your body? It would have been hopeless of course, an Avatar of the Hunt at their prime is physically stronger than you will ever be.
Their senses are heightened, and pain receptors dulled to the point of ignorance. In those moments when they sensed their prey, they are nothing but a machine made to seek, track and kill.
Did you feel like prey, Archivist? Helpless, powerless against another individual who looked human, but acted far too ruthless for you to ever truly believe it.
That level of helplessness was new for you, wasn’t it?
You had just started to realise your abilities but quickly learned that they would not always be able to save you.
And then she was starved beneath the earth, crushed under soil, and dirt with nothing but her mind and the pressure on her chest. When you both emerged from the coffin, that ruthless fire had faded, for now at least, and for once you had a companion who didn’t blame, or accuse, or order you around like a little solider.
For the hours buried in the coffin, for the pain of getting an anchor, you thought the sacrifice was worth it.
Or was it the helplessness at being cornered by your so-called friends as they threatened to gun you down like an animal when you next stepped a toe out of line.
They called it an intervention. You called it a preliminary execution.
You tried to justify it, remember? The first was just accidental, they just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. All you had to do was ask.
The second, well, you had just been stabbed by an Avatar of the Slaughter. Did they just except you to get better with nothing? Or perhaps they hoped you would just die and make life easier on everyone else.
You didn’t even realise you had been hunting at the time. You were horrified.
The third, after going into the Coffin, just cemented what you already knew. You were no longer just prey, and humans were no longer your equal.
They called you a danger, a monster. They didn’t see how terrified you were.
When you tried to point out the obvious, that the former Hunt Avatar had also hurt innocent people. No one cared.
Why would they?
They claimed it wasn’t the same. They claimed that Daisy didn’t know what she was doing. As if you did. As if you had any choice. The Eye and the Web were not planning on losing their puppet to anything. Including human morality.
You suspected Web involvement, you were partially right. It didn’t matter in the end. Like Basira said, you no longer got a vote.
Then she came back from her talk with Elias, who offered no answers. She told you to stop, or she would put you down.
She didn’t understand the difference between you and Daisy. I don’t think she cared. Daisy was not a full Avatar; she had not died. Perhaps she could have come close, but then the Change occurred and none of that mattered anymore.
You on the other hand, were a fully realised and powerful Avatar of the Eye. The hunger that gnawed at you was a constant, and far more dangerous.
Basira threatened to turn you into prey again.
You could have gotten rid of her. It wouldn’t have hurt you. You could have drawn out her statement, like you did with Hope, and pulled it up and out of her body. Mind and soul, until nothing remained.
But you never would.
Do you think your assistants would have killed you if they knew it would free them? I know you think they would have, especially at the beginning, just after you had woken up.
Melanie was so angry at you for saving her, she would have done it in a heartbeat. Georgie might have tried to dissuade her, but she could have very easily encouraged it. After all, it was just you.
She had already said you should have stayed dead, what’s the big difference between dying in a hospital and getting your girlfriend to murder you for their freedom. Especially since you weren’t even human anymore. It barely counted.
Basira wouldn’t have hesitated either. After you had gotten Daisy out, your use would have expired. Beyond that, you were nothing but a danger. A monster. A rabid dog that had to be put down.
Maybe Daisy would have had some lingering affection for you. She would have gotten over that eventually.
You hoped Martin wouldn’t do it. But at that point, he wouldn’t have been in time to help. He was too busy saving the world from the Extinction and manipulating Peter Lucas. He didn’t care what happened to you beyond that.
At least Jonah Magnus’s plan would have been thwarted. All that preparation, all that planning. Only for you to die.
It would have been a waste. And unfortunately, only solved problems for a few years at most.
So tell me, dear Archivist, which one hurt more? Was it being held at gunpoint by a ruthless Hunter, alone in the forest, and helpless? Or was it the same feeling, except this time, by your own assistant. For something you needed. For something you loved. For something that scared you far more than any Hunter could.
Only one of these threats was done by a friend.
And betrayal can never come from an enemy.
---
Tell me, Archivist, what hurt the most?
Was it being stabbed by Melaine King after saving her from a life full of death, anger and madness? After taking away her only advantage that was not only killing her but slowly morphing the person she used to be into one purely full of bloodlust and carnage.
You never really got along with her; you were both too similar. Georgie saw it.
And even after all your history, she still chose Melanie. You would have to. You know almost anyone should chose Melanie King over you.
Yet somehow, Martin doesn’t. You don’t understand why.
She blamed you for everything. You also blamed yourself. For what, I’m not quite sure.
Yes, it is true that you conducted an amateur surgery on her without her explicit consent, but you said it yourself, she wouldn’t have listened to you. She never did.
Melaine never stopped, always with the chip on her solider, always thinking she knew best. You tried to stop her from accessing resources at the Institute. Perhaps on the surface it was because you hated her, but perhaps, in your own twisted way, you didn’t want her to get any deeper. Not like you had.
But then Elias had stepped in.
Melanie thought that was a satisfying outcome, she even gloated about it. Then she came back from India with a ghost bullet in her leg, and her mind full of anger.
They blamed you for her joining, do you remember that? It feels like a lifetime ago.
Tim, Basira, hell, even Georgie, though I don’t believe she ever told you that. They blamed you for Melanie joining the Institute. Even when you were currently wanted for murder and hiding out at Georgie’s house.
Apparently, because you had taken her statement twice, it meant that it was your job to warn her about the Institute, warn her not to take a job or trust Elias. Even though she would never listen to you. And they knew that.
Melaine tried to kill Elias. Multiple times in fact.
The Slaughter bullet probably made her bolder, less caring about the potential consequences, but the intent was still hers.
Do you think they would have blamed you if it had worked? If Elias had died, along with the rest of the Institute, including her at that stage, do you think they would have somehow put the blame on you?
You didn’t tell her, Archivist, that it would end up killing us all.
You didn’t impress upon her, Archivist, that the world could be ending soon and we don’t need the distraction.
You didn’t let her know, Archivist, that Elias was evil, mostly omniscient and very willing to traumatise and kill people.
It was all your fault.
Then, you were evil for trying to prevent Elias from dying. Or in this case, keeping all those innocent employees alive, some of which they might even remember if they ever thought to think outside their own miserable bubble of life.
Or did that only occur in a different universe? Sometimes it’s hard to remember, hard to keep things straight in my head.
It didn’t matter. They all trusted her more than you. Even though she nearly killed them all.
Then, after the bullet was removed, did she say thank you? Did she sound appreciative about you saving her life? Especially after she stabbed you?
I mostly recall her being upset about losing her superpowers. The powers that made her angry, hard to reason with, and careless. She twisted it repeatedly in her head to make sure it was your fault that she lost what she had gained.
It must have hurt, when everyone immediately trusted her again, especially after she started going to therapy. She was trying to improve herself.
Melanie only had time to go to therapy because she wasn’t important enough. After she had stabbed and marked you with the Slaughter, neither the Web or Elias could care less what happened to her.
You didn’t have time for that. No one trusted you enough for that.
Georgie wouldn’t take you, despite claiming to be your friend still, Basira wasn’t willing to leave you alone with another human you could feed off, Martin was gone in any way that mattered, and Daisy was hurting and needed someone else with her.
Did you get any thanks? No. But that was nothing new.
Or was it when you willing let the Bone Turner rip two ribs out of your body within the passages of the Distortion to save someone who had, in the past, threatened to end you without a second thought?
You weren’t as afraid that time. I think you had started to understand just how durable Avatars were, especially once they had fully Become. The pain was nothing new.
You had already tried to cut off your own finger. Plus, you had lived through the remnants of previous marks, so pain had become an old friend.
Basira had disappeared. She had gone off on some wild goose chase that Elias had sent her on to get her out of the way.
She really had become an obstacle in those last few months; I’m surprised Elias hadn’t gotten rid of her himself.
You hoped that a rib would be a suitable anchor to the real world. That’s what the statement would have you believe. You let the Web pick it, that was a big mistake.
By now, you and I both know that the statement was just the manipulations of the Web, hoping you would be oblivious enough about anchors, to mark yourself using the Flesh. It knew you were impulsive, or well, to be more accurate, desperate enough.
The Mother of Puppets understood its creation, it knew that you were determined for anyone to talk to, to be in the presence of. Someone who wouldn’t judge, or yell, or accuse. Diasy was the perfect bait, everyone knew you don’t sacrifice your assistants, not like Gertrude did.
One thing led to another, perhaps the Web helped pull the strings, made Jared attack the Institute early, helped him get trapped within Helen’s corridors. Just so he was available to mark you when the time came.
The rib didn’t end up working in the end. You really started panicking at that point.
Diasy helped. The two of you at the bottom of the world, crushed by infinity, and yet somehow still together. That connection somehow lasted once you got out. I’m glad it did. Those months after you awakened were rough on you, even if you won’t admit it.
Your rib anchor didn’t work; I think that was obvious. You didn’t really understand what those were, did you? You just assumed anchors were physical because that’s what the statement suggested, a statement given to you by the Web.
You saw what Martin did to get you out. He turned on tape recorders, all those live statement givers that had come to you over the years. He found them all and placed them around the coffin to guide you home.
I’m not even sure if those statements helped in any way. Those were not the anchor.
I’m positive even you have figured out what anchors truly are, Archivist.
At their core, they are connection. Specifically human connection. They are the only ways an Avatar can try to retain their humanity while at the same time growing in power. You did that, partially.
You clung desperately at the limited bonds of humanity that were forged between you and your assistants. Though, even I will admit it was mostly one sided.
So one sided, in fact, that you could clearly feel the first sign of reciprocated help from the bottom of the Coffin, a place that no one had ever escaped from.
The strength of your anchors was put on full display once again when you rescued Martin from the Lonely.
By then, you were starved and terrified about losing Martin forever. You enter the Lonely and encounter Peter Lucas, its most powerful Avatar. With your determination, and your fear, you tried to force him to tell you Elias’s plan, and when he refused, it killed him.
You killed the Lonely’s most powerful Avatar within it’s own domain and then proceeded to save Martin Blackwood and guide you both home.
Your anchors have always been remarkably powerful, Archivist, they had to be. Otherwise, you would have lost your humanity a long time ago.
You cling to your friends, because they are the only thing keeping you from becoming a full monster, an Avatar who has forgotten what it’s like to be human. Even when they threaten to kill you, even when they hate you, even when they want nothing to do with you.
Somehow, you remain.
I wonder if that was an oversight of the Web, your self-destructive well of empathy that led to nothing but self-hatred. The way you clung to your friends even when they tried to beat everything out of you. Your hope, your snark, your confidence and your humanity.
The Web kept having to resort to more extreme measures, but even then, you would not budge.
So, what will it be, dear Archivist. Did the constant blaming of your friends hurt more than the truest fact that your anchors hated you? Did being the endless scapegoat of everything that ever went wrong truly destroy your soul more than your only ties to humanity loathing your very existence?
I know that only one of these scenarios benefited someone who wasn’t you, but they both hurt.
Maybe that was the point.
---
Tell me, Archivist, what hurt the most?
Was it the constant, bottomless pit of hunger that devoured your every waking moment? The feeling of being weak, terrified and emotionally ripped apart as you contemplated your own humanity. The knowledge that every one of your words, your actions, your feelings would be scrutinised by those around you.
Never mind that you were an actual person, with thoughts and feelings and hope. Never mind that you might be terrified, that you never wanted any of this.
It was you and Diasy, sitting alone, dealing with a sickness that was impossible to describe. Being at war with yourself even as your body became weaker and your mind was grinded down over time.
Neither of you would have lasted as long without the other, I can say that for certain. You both reminded each other of what you were fighting for.
Daisy saw you, as a person who had risked everything to help her, even after she had threatened to kill you.
She saw someone who had rescued her. Not the Hunter she had been.
She never asked for your forgiveness for what she did, I don’t think you would have given it to her. But it didn’t matter in the end.
Now that the Hunt was mostly out of her system, she was almost a different person. You could not forgive her for what she did, but you could move on.
As she watched you read, statement after statement, she wondered how strong you must be. The pieces of paper did nothing to sooth the gaunt look in your expression. The dullness of your eyes or the steadily growing black bags beneath them. Your frame had always been on the skinny side, but now you started to see the outline of ribs and bones. Your clothes started to hang off you, and once your statements had been complete, your voice became stuttering and quiet.
The sickness had affected her in a similar manner. She was weak, weaker than she had ever felt. Sometimes her thoughts would drift, until somehow hours were gone. Sometimes she would catch movement in the corner of her eye, it could be bugs or people. For a second, her attention would narrow, until the whole world faded away.
You were usually the one who brought her out of this. Sometimes Basira, but she hardly ever saw her anyone. Basira only saw her as weak, a liability. Daisy pretended it didn’t hurt.
She liked having someone watch her back, someone who could keep up with her. At the same time, she liked Basira, her investigative skills were far better than hers. She could trust Basira to help her seek the right person, not that she always listened.
But now that the call of the Hunt was dull, and with it, Daisy’s strength weakened. Basira no longer trusted her to watch her back. No longer trusted her to keep the thrill of the Hunt to a human level.
Perhaps she deserved this, she reasoned. After all, she had killed many people, and very little monsters. But then, if the withdrawal hurt so much, why did you deserve it?
She knew about you needing to feed. She understood that the Archivist relied heavily on live statements from people, not the dusty pieces of paper laying around the archives.
You had only fed on a few people, and she saw how it teared you up on the inside. You didn’t even kill them. Not like she had. So why did you suffer through the sickness, just like she did.
You didn’t tell her.
You didn’t think you needed to.
You suffered because otherwise your assistants would put you down.
You suffered because you didn’t want to become a monster. An Archive of Fear.
You suffered, because you thought you deserved it.
You had a theory, about how to help Daisy. You hadn’t approached her with it yet, but it was something to think about other than the strength being slowly sucked out of your bones. She was currently an assistant, which connected her to the Eye. Not only that, but if she fed the Hunt properly, carefully, she would regain her strength. After that, it would be simple for her to reconnect with Basira and strengthen her relationship, her anchor.
The Archivist had never heard of a dual Avatar.
Even when you asked the Eye, it didn’t give you a helpful response. However, you know all the Fears are connected, so it only makes sense that an Avatar could feed multiple.
If Daisy strengthened her connection with the Eye, you believe it would dull her bloodlust. At the same time, she could Hunt something, but with the knowledge of the Eye, that could be directed at other, more deserving targets.
You didn’t like to think about the Hunt duo Julia and Trevor, but it was the closets thing you could come up with. When this was all over, after Elias had been delt with, you think you could convince Basira and Daisy to go on the Hunt.
Vampires existed. They preyed on humans and were fair game.
You are sure that if you asked the Eye, it would gladly flood your brain with knowledge with other Fear-based creatures that fed on humans. Perhaps they could even try and track down the remaining Leitners while they were out in the world.
It was a good idea, I think it might have even worked if she hadn’t needed to defend the Institute. Daisy lost herself to the Hunt, she embraced it and Became a full Avatar to buy you some time.
You didn’t want to think about her too much when you and Martin were in her safe house. Content, happy even. But it was no use, your mind kept drifting back to what happened to her, and whether it was possible to ever get her back.
I think you Knew after the Change that it was impossible. Well, impossible for your world at least.
Daisy died when Basira put a bullet in her head.
You had lost another assistant.
Even with the power of the world at your fingertips, you could do nothing.
Or was it when you appeared in dreams, monstrous, inhuman, only able to Watch and nothing more. You were powerless to stop the suffering that occurred, every night.
You don’t recall exactly when it started. It must have been soon after your first live statement, but you can barely remember. You only first started noticing it when you had the same nightmares, night after night, the same people appeared. The same locations. The same outcomes.
You didn’t want to believe it. But there was no denying it.
They begged for help. For acknowledgement. For peace. But you couldn’t move. You couldn’t look away.
There was nothing you could do but stare, drinking in their hapless terror.
I think that’s why you always needed to do something, in the end.
In their dreams, you were a Watcher, an observer who could not help anyone. But in the real world, you had choices, you had the ability to make decisions and to take actions.
At some point, I think the amount of time you thought about your actions started to decrease. Maybe it was after you realised how involved the Web was. Maybe it was when you realised that Elias knew far more than he was letting on.
Either way, it became less about the right choice, and more about making a choice at all. When it came to yourself, it was like it barely mattered.
You did not think through your plan of breaking the table. If you had, even for a moment, considered what the consequences might have been, you would have realised how foolish your actions were.
It’s not always you who breaks the table, sometimes it’s Tim. Either way, the NotThem gets released and a chase occurs. By then it didn’t matter. You made a choice, you hoped for the best and once your assistants were safely out of the building, you were content.
The choices kept pilling up, maybe even at the same rate as the actions being taken against you.
Tim won’t talk to you with the tape recorders present, even though you can’t control when or where they appear. You don’t tell him about the Unknowing.
You are forced to talk to other Avatars because Elias. You are particularly rude to them.
You are accused of murder. You make the decision to stay with Georgie.
You are all but dead in an explosion that killed your friend. You Become an Avatar to protect what remains of your assistants.
You are banned from eating. You find a friend who can relate and rescue them from a fate worse than death.
Some of the only decisions you try to make with others is when the risk isn’t just to you. When Martin is taken, you panic and beg anyone who will listen for advice. Some don’t care enough to give their opinion.
So, in the end, it was down to you anyway.
Your final decision is perhaps the most important one. Your part of the multiverse is put into an impossible trolley problem full of uncertainties that no one could possibly know the answers to.
There are only a few people left who can give their answers on what to do. You, Basira, Melanie, Georgie and Martin. The fate of your world, and perhaps the nearby worlds, rest on your shoulders.
They vote to let the Fears out. To potentially spread them across the multiverse.
You can’t live with that.
You can’t let the Fears enter a thousand worlds just to save your own.
Perhaps it’s because you internalise the blame, after all, there is only so much guilt a person can accept before they start thinking of themselves as the only scapegoat.
Perhaps it’s because you realise that, out there, in other worlds, there is a chance for everyone, including you, to be happy. Without the Fears.
Perhaps it’s because you know the guilt will eat at you for the rest of your life. The others don’t think the decision will matter to them in the long term. You know better now.
They are not the ones who had to spend the past three years absorbing other people’s fear. They are not the ones who understand intimately the idea of being subjected to powers beyond your comprehension just because you were unlucky.
You can feel the fear of everything living on the entire planet.
The Eye left nothing to the Unknown.
You can’t subjugate other realities to that, even if it is only a chance. You can’t create more broken people.
It was the Archivist who brought the Fears into the world. It was you who created a reality of broken souls, and you would not do it again.
You didn’t have the words to explain this to anyone.
You didn’t think they would have listened. Not everything had Changed.
And so, you became the Pupil of the Eye. They burned the Archives to the ground, and at that moment, you died.
You wonder if they felt guilty for what they had done. You wonder what kind of world remained after the Fears were sucked into other realities. You wonder if there was anyone left to miss you.
You somehow doubted it.
In the end, what hurt the most, Archivist?
Was it the sickness of starvation as it hollowed you out from the inside. As it took away any hope you had.
Or was it the helplessness at seeing others suffer, repeatedly, while being unable to stop it. Was it the sensation of control slipping out of your fingers, was it the actions that were constantly being forced upon you. Over and over again.
In the end, your friends left you with no choices.
Not every universe of yours ended like this, there were some happy endings.
But in this one, Jon. I think we both Know by now which one hurt more. Which one always hurt more.
And for that, I am truly sorry.