Work Text:
“Tim.”
Except it’s not. Jon knows that it’s not, from the moment he catches glimpse of the shock of blond hair and wide smile. It’s Tim, but it’s not their Tim.
“Archivist!”
The death and destruction falls away. The fire burns hot in the air around them, but it’s nothing compared to the shock at the touch of leather around his wrist, the whip coiling sharp against his skin. Then he’s yanked, pulled forward when Tim jerks the plait to draw him in, and Jon goes. He’s helpless. He is helpless, and he’s in shock, and Tim is not Tim.
“I’m so glad you came back!”
He staggers as he tries to keep his feet under him. Tim catches his free hand, the one that isn’t wrapped up with the whip. But it’s wrong. So wrong. Tim’s hand is cool, too cool, too unyielding and inhuman. His fingers don’t flex right. The angle of his wrist is wrong. He’s cold, hard angles, like plastic beneath Jon’s sweating palm.
Tim squeezes his hand in a death grip, and grins, wider still and maniacal. “Dance with me, Jon,” he says. His voice pitches, but it’s still far, far too high. His eyes are twinkling, but they’re wild this time, certifiably insane in a way that Jon’s never seen on Tim. Not even when he’d blown himself up. Not even as he’d prepared to die.
“No.” It’s not a response to the offer. Not really. It’s just reflex. It’s just Tim, standing in front of him. It’s just Tim, who’d died, standing in front of him. It’s Tim, touching him with hands that aren’t his own. It’s Tim, taken over by The Stranger. “No…”
Tim winks, and whisks him into the dance, and Jon cannot breathe.
Up close, he can see details. The world is burning around him, and all he can see is Tim’s eyes, eyes that he knows and a face that he recognizes, attached to a body that isn’t real. The scars are still there, the ones from Prentiss’s attack. But they don’t matter. They’re small. Insignificant. Below is a line of staples, spanning the long, winding gash along his throat. The blood is old, and dried; when the staples catch in the firelight, they’re twisted and covered in rust.
Tim catches him staring, then throws his head back and laughs at what must be the look of horror on Jon’s face. “Awww! Don’t mind the staples, boss!”
The whip uncoils from his fingers. Before he can think to move, Tim grabs that hand, too, and is placing it against the blood and gash and age-old gore at his neck. His skin is cold. The staples are colder.
Finally, a noise of terror pushes past Jon’s lips.
Tim won’t let him pull either hand away, and maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. Jon’s in shock. He’s frozen with his hands on the man that he’d worked with– worked to save– had LOST to The Unknowing– but Tim’s still there. He’s not Tim anymore, but he’s holding him, and dancing with him so easily, even though he’s hard plastic and ball joints, and a yellow, broken grin as the frenetic music coalesces, and the world continues to burn.
“Don’t look so scared, boss,” Tim says, and his hand falls to rest at Jon’s waist. Jon still can’t move the hand that’s pressed to Tim’s neck. He is truly and utterly frozen. “It’s just me! Your old pal: Tim! Surely you didn’t forget me already. Jon?”
“No.” It’s still not an answer. It’s still reflex. The terror is bubbling up around his lips, and he doesn’t know if he’s going to start spilling apologies or start screaming; Jon’s afraid for the torrent to begin either way, but the panic is on the tip of his tongue, and he can’t quite hold it back any longer. “No. No, no. You’re not Tim. You’re not–”
“What?!” Tim looks flabbergasted, all while still maintaining perfect form and dragging Jon along with him. He cannot breathe, and Tim just looks comically shocked. “I am Tim! You can’t tell?? I’m disappointed, Jon!”
“No, you’re not– you’re not–”
“But I am me!” Tim protests, and then dips his head a little closer, and asks, sotto voce: “you wanna see?”
No! Jon doesn’t get the syllable out, and then Tim is crowding in and kissing him.
Details. More details. There are stitches at Tim’s lips, ones Jon had failed to notice. But now his lips are pressed against them, catching uncomfortably against chapped skin. Paralyzing, sickening fear jerks through Jon. He still can’t breathe. He still wouldn’t be able to move, even if Tim wasn’t shepherding him back into the wall, into peeling wallpaper and a dusty old curtain.
Jon is going to choke. He feels the bile rise in his throat because it looks just enough like Tim that he almost wants to kiss him back.
But then Tim pulls back, and laughs, high and breathy and drawn-out, and it’s so wrong that it puts every hair up on the back of Jon’s neck, and he splutters, and gasps, and shakes as Tim takes his waist, and his hand, again.
“Dance with me, Jon,” he says again, and, this time, Jon hears himself shriek when he’s pulled back into the Danse Macabre again.