[Fic] The Magnus Archives - Echo Chamber
Apr. 10th, 2019 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zaliachimeraTitle: Echo Chamber
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No explicit spoilers but you should probably have listened to the end of Season 2. General canon-usual creepiness
Notes: So I finished Season 2 the other day (after binging 80 episodes in a week), and this came to mind and I needed to write it down before moving on to Season 3!
Fic on AO3
Summary: Statement of Martin Blackwood regarding the changes in Jonathan Sims. Regarding fears. Regarding change.
They aren't Ghostbusters, and none of them arrived expecting to save the world. But they didn't sign up for the slow chains of purpose either.
Statement of Martin Blackwood regarding… regarding… regarding Jonathan Sims. No- the Archivist? Or-
Statement regarding Jon.
There is a man in the archives wearing Jon’s face. He looks like him, and talks like him. The gestures are right, the mannerisms. Even the way he reaches for a pack of cigarettes that isn’t there when he thinks no-one is looking. But it isn’t Jon.
…at least, that’s what I want to say. That it’s some monster who’s taken his place. Something other.
But it’s not. It’s just… Jon.
When I first met Jon, i thought he was cold. Prickly. To be honest, if you’d given me a lineup and asked me to point out who was most likely to be an archivist of a place like the Magnus Institute, he would have been number one choice. He just has that look, you know?
Obviously you don’t know because I’m talking into a tape recorder not to a person. Maybe someone will listen to this in future. When I’m- when I’m gone, one way or another. Maybe Jon will listen to this.
Maybe he already knows what I’m saying.
I think he might. He has a knack for that now. Always seems to just know when something is happening. Knows the moment that someone steps across the threshold. There’s a relish to it that I don’t think was there before, an excitement. Maybe not enjoyment but-
-but maybe it is. I see it sometimes, with the weirder statements, the ones you know are real because they’re too strange to be fiction. A look in his eyes, a curl to his lips that was never there before. Hell, it’s even in the way he closes the door to his office. I swear the way it snaps shut is ominous, like teeth clicking together.
I’m not saying that Jon was here out of altruism originally. None of us were. Are. It’s a paycheque. I needed the job, needed the money and what else was I going to do except end up working in Tesco for the rest of my life when I knew there was something else I could do.
Something more.
Oh. I always wondered why my CV got picked up out of all of them. I don’t think I like that thought. Random chance feels kind of comforting at the moment.
Yes, well. I never thought that any of us were here to try to be heroes. It’s not Ghostbusters. We don’t burst in and zap ghosts and save the day. We record it. Jon is the same. Was the same? We’re not here to save the world. But he’s detached in a way that I don’t think he was before. Like he’s- like he’s amused by it, these scared, broken people spilling out their hearts to him.
No. Not amused. Although I think it’s that too. Hungry. He’s hungry.
Maybe he’ll eat this statement too. I don’t know what I think about that. Part of it’s horrifying in a way that I can’t quite explain. It’s just words on a tape.
Part of it feels right. It feels like something that slots into place inside me and that scares me more than anything else. Because as much as Jon has changed, I’m scared that if I spoke to someone who I knew before, who knew me before, they wouldn’t recognise me. I don’t- I don’t actually know when I last spoke to someone outside the Archive. Really spoke to them, not just saying hello in the shop.
That should be worrying right? I should feel worried that my life has narrowed down to this place and these people. And I’m not even sad about that.
No. No that’s not really it. Not really what scares me. I don’t know if scared is the word. I don’t know if I remember how to feel scared for myself. I feel safe here.
I feel like I belong here. Not in the same way as I think Jon does. I’m not the same as him. But in some way.
Jon said once, before things got weird and he got that look in his eyes, he told me that Gertrude had three assistants and they died. Three assistants. Three crops up a lot in any kind of magic you care to look at. And sure, it sounds like a conspiracy theory but I’m pretty sure I’m living in one so it doesn’t feel so far fetched. No-one here gets to make jokes about tinfoil hats when we nearly got eaten by a worm person.
Three assistants. I think that’s important and that gets me wondering- What am I here for? Why won’t it let me go? I can’t leave. I’ve thought about it, but it sticks in my throat and the thought itself feels slimy. It makes my brain recoil from it. Other times I’ll be thinking and then my brain slides away from it like water off oil.
I belong here. And I think I have a purpose. I don’t think I will like that purpose. But the thing is- the thing that really scares me, is that when it happens, when the time comes for them to use me for whatever purpose I’m here to serve, I don’t think I’ll be able to fight it.
I think- I think I will welcome it.
There is a man in the Archive wearing Martin’s face. And I think the thing wearing it is me.
Statement ends.
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No explicit spoilers but you should probably have listened to the end of Season 2. General canon-usual creepiness
Notes: So I finished Season 2 the other day (after binging 80 episodes in a week), and this came to mind and I needed to write it down before moving on to Season 3!
Fic on AO3
Summary: Statement of Martin Blackwood regarding the changes in Jonathan Sims. Regarding fears. Regarding change.
They aren't Ghostbusters, and none of them arrived expecting to save the world. But they didn't sign up for the slow chains of purpose either.
Statement of Martin Blackwood regarding… regarding… regarding Jonathan Sims. No- the Archivist? Or-
Statement regarding Jon.
There is a man in the archives wearing Jon’s face. He looks like him, and talks like him. The gestures are right, the mannerisms. Even the way he reaches for a pack of cigarettes that isn’t there when he thinks no-one is looking. But it isn’t Jon.
…at least, that’s what I want to say. That it’s some monster who’s taken his place. Something other.
But it’s not. It’s just… Jon.
When I first met Jon, i thought he was cold. Prickly. To be honest, if you’d given me a lineup and asked me to point out who was most likely to be an archivist of a place like the Magnus Institute, he would have been number one choice. He just has that look, you know?
Obviously you don’t know because I’m talking into a tape recorder not to a person. Maybe someone will listen to this in future. When I’m- when I’m gone, one way or another. Maybe Jon will listen to this.
Maybe he already knows what I’m saying.
I think he might. He has a knack for that now. Always seems to just know when something is happening. Knows the moment that someone steps across the threshold. There’s a relish to it that I don’t think was there before, an excitement. Maybe not enjoyment but-
-but maybe it is. I see it sometimes, with the weirder statements, the ones you know are real because they’re too strange to be fiction. A look in his eyes, a curl to his lips that was never there before. Hell, it’s even in the way he closes the door to his office. I swear the way it snaps shut is ominous, like teeth clicking together.
I’m not saying that Jon was here out of altruism originally. None of us were. Are. It’s a paycheque. I needed the job, needed the money and what else was I going to do except end up working in Tesco for the rest of my life when I knew there was something else I could do.
Something more.
Oh. I always wondered why my CV got picked up out of all of them. I don’t think I like that thought. Random chance feels kind of comforting at the moment.
Yes, well. I never thought that any of us were here to try to be heroes. It’s not Ghostbusters. We don’t burst in and zap ghosts and save the day. We record it. Jon is the same. Was the same? We’re not here to save the world. But he’s detached in a way that I don’t think he was before. Like he’s- like he’s amused by it, these scared, broken people spilling out their hearts to him.
No. Not amused. Although I think it’s that too. Hungry. He’s hungry.
Maybe he’ll eat this statement too. I don’t know what I think about that. Part of it’s horrifying in a way that I can’t quite explain. It’s just words on a tape.
Part of it feels right. It feels like something that slots into place inside me and that scares me more than anything else. Because as much as Jon has changed, I’m scared that if I spoke to someone who I knew before, who knew me before, they wouldn’t recognise me. I don’t- I don’t actually know when I last spoke to someone outside the Archive. Really spoke to them, not just saying hello in the shop.
That should be worrying right? I should feel worried that my life has narrowed down to this place and these people. And I’m not even sad about that.
No. No that’s not really it. Not really what scares me. I don’t know if scared is the word. I don’t know if I remember how to feel scared for myself. I feel safe here.
I feel like I belong here. Not in the same way as I think Jon does. I’m not the same as him. But in some way.
Jon said once, before things got weird and he got that look in his eyes, he told me that Gertrude had three assistants and they died. Three assistants. Three crops up a lot in any kind of magic you care to look at. And sure, it sounds like a conspiracy theory but I’m pretty sure I’m living in one so it doesn’t feel so far fetched. No-one here gets to make jokes about tinfoil hats when we nearly got eaten by a worm person.
Three assistants. I think that’s important and that gets me wondering- What am I here for? Why won’t it let me go? I can’t leave. I’ve thought about it, but it sticks in my throat and the thought itself feels slimy. It makes my brain recoil from it. Other times I’ll be thinking and then my brain slides away from it like water off oil.
I belong here. And I think I have a purpose. I don’t think I will like that purpose. But the thing is- the thing that really scares me, is that when it happens, when the time comes for them to use me for whatever purpose I’m here to serve, I don’t think I’ll be able to fight it.
I think- I think I will welcome it.
There is a man in the Archive wearing Martin’s face. And I think the thing wearing it is me.
Statement ends.
