Chapter Text
It’s a rat. It must be.
Not that Martin knows how a rat got in here: they’re two floors down and he’d think nothing could survive in the stacks, unless it lived on dust and paper. But he’d heard the clatter as he’d put his hand on the door, and now he can hear something scratching around on the other side.
Cautiously, he opens the door. Before he switches on the light, he could swear that he sees a slight yellow tinge darkening over the rows of stacks and papers and boxes – and christ, if the rat’s in the electrics, he thinks, they’re all fucked. It’s a forest of paper down here, and fuck if Martin knows what the fire procedures are. Plus he’s pretty sure the wiring’s not been updated since the place was built. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.
“Come on,” he says, ambling down the rows of turn-handle stacks, peering into the occasional darkened aisles. “Where are you? Not that I’d know what to do with you if I found you, mind, but I’m not gonna go back to Jon with reports of a weird noise and no confirmed sighting, you know what a stickler he is for evide –“
The quiet, muffled noise from the next aisle cuts him off-mid flow. It doesn’t sound much like a rat anymore: bigger, he thinks. Almost human.
And then, in a creeping, crawling kind of terror he finally thinks of her: Jane Prentiss. He’s almost appalled that it took so long to occur to him - but she’s dead, he tells herself, she’s dead, he’d gotten those ashes from the ECDC himself, put them on Jon’s desk. And he’s not trapped anymore: the stairs are clear behind him, and he hasn’t seen a single worm. Whatever it is, it’s not going to be her.
He still turns into the next aisle in a crawling, numb kind fear.
It is a human that he spots halfway down the slim corridor, clinging to the side of a bay on legs that are clearly struggling to stay upright. But it’s not Jane, he sees that immediately: it’s taller than her, with dark hair to her pale blonde. And more than that, it moves differently. Which maybe would have sounded stupid a year ago, but he has found Prentiss’ movements difficult to forget: sinuous, undulating and jerky. Much like a worm, he thinks, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.
But it’s not her. It isn’t anyone Martin recognises, he thinks. Not until he sees those small, round scars, shiny and familiar on the thin arm outstretched to him.
When Jon stumbles off the side of the bay and into him, Martin - still processing Jon, down here, not Prentiss, Jon, and he’s staggering, is he hurt? - opens his arms automatically to catch and steady him. Jon hits him with a surprisingly solid force; he doesn’t slow at all, almost like he was expecting Martin to catch him.
To his astonishment, Jon’s arms go around his neck and tighten in an embrace. He pulls himself into Martin’s chest.
“Martin,” he says, gently - in relief, in reassurance. Then he passes out.
Before Martin bursts through the stacks doors like a hurricane, Tim is having a fairly normal day.
He doesn’t take that kind of thing for granted anymore, especially not so soon after Prentiss. It’ll wear off soon enough, he figures, but in the meantime it’s nice to get a little temporary boost from worm-free steps at the Institute doors, and boring, uneventful shifts. So he’s humming as he shoots an email off to the Met, glad Jon’s not here to raise a disapproving eye at the noise.
He hears Martin coming before he sees him; fast, off-balanced footsteps, panicked breathing as he thunders up the basement steps. It gives him enough time to feel a kind of incongruous, despondent resignation, of all things - he knew it was too good to last, he thinks, it must be the fucking worms again, or whatever Sasha saw that she won’t talk to him about anymore, or -
Then Martin’s shouldering open the door to the stacks with alarming force, panic written over the lines of his face. In his arms he’s cradling a human person, and all of Tim’s fatalistic passivity falls away on seeing it: for a brief, heartstopping moment, he’s sure that he’s about to be accomplice to a murder.
“Is that a body,” he blurts before he can stop himself, rising to his feet. Martin looks, if possible, even more scared.
“He’s alive!” he hisses, almost defensively. “It’s not - it’s not Gertrude again, I didn’t kill him, he just – I don’t know what happened to him, I just found him in the stacks like this.”
“And you dragged him up here?” Tim says, and then registers several things at once – the build, the hair texture – the little round scars peppering a pair of thin hands and an awfully familiar face. “Wait, is that Jon?”
“He said my name,” Martin tells him, an odd note to his voice. Almost pleading. “What was I supposed to do, just leave him?”
Tim doesn’t really know how to argue with that, so he just does the only thing he can think of, and motions for Martin to follow him to the bed that Martin used to use in Doc Storage.
“Come on,” he says, in a tone that he hopes brooks no argument, because Martin looks like he’s on the verge of tears or a panic attack, or both.
And it works, or at least mostly: Martin does seem ready enough to follow him over to document storage, but when they’re standing at the side of the cot, he seems reluctant to let go.
As he dithers, Tim almost snaps at him – this isn’t the time for your puppy crush, Martin – but Martin’s clearly panicked and Tim isn’t that much of an ass, and in the end Martin does set him down without too much of a fuss.
When they finally get a good look at him, Martin draws in a breath: he doesn’t say anything. Tim doesn’t say anything either, not for a long while.
And then he finally voices what he’s sure Martin’s already thinking.
“That’s not Jon,” he says, gesturing unnecessarily. “Look at him. It can’t be.”
“But it’s got to be,” Martin says, in a very hushed voice. “I mean, he’s always had that little scar through his eyebrow – you can see it, Tim, it’s just –“
It’s just the hair – inches longer than it had been when Tim had seen him this morning, and fully greying, not slightly peppered anymore. And the clothing – post-apocalyptic, Tim would almost say, which would be hilarious if Tim could stop to think about it, because he’s pretty sure Jon would die in five hours without his steady diet of paperclips, plastic recorder tapes, and complaining about statement givers.
And the scars. Tim doesn’t know how to start thinking about those.
But Martin’s right about one thing. The thin, faded line through his eyebrow, unobtrusive at first glance – Tim knows that scar already, at least, as long for as he’s known Jon. He’s teased Jon about that scar, on more than one occasion.
“Okay,” Tim says, pacing a few steps away and then back again. This is fine, he tells himself. This is fine. This is nothing compared to haunted books, and secret tunnels, and evil worms. “So, it isn’t, but maybe it is. Maybe there’s a whole host of weird, alternate-universe us’s just – fucking around in the stacks. Didn’t manage to catch a weird, shaggy-haired me having a kip in the 1940s section, did you?”
“It’s not funny,” Martin says shortly, balling his hands into fists. “Just look at him. What’s happened to him? God. Oh my god, what if this Jon replaced our Jon?”
It’s a stupid idea, but also they are standing over the unconscious body of their not-quite boss, so Tim’s not ready to dismiss any ideas at the moment.
“Call him?” he suggests to Martin, but Martin’s already on his phone and pulling up his contacts.
“Jon?” he says hesitantly, putting it to his ear. Tim relaxes as soon as he hears the sharp, familiar tone at the other end of the line. “Yeah, no, everything’s fine, it’s just – no, I know – no, it’s fine – yes, it can wait until you get back –“
He doesn’t get another word in from then until the end of the phone call, as far as Tim can tell.
“Still alive,” Martin says mulishly, staring down at the phone in his hands. “Still definitely Jon.”
“But you didn’t tell him?” Tim says, but he knows that’s a stupid question as soon as he opens his mouth. Martin seems to think so too, from the way he rounds on Tim.
“What was I supposed to say?” he hisses. “Come back, Jon, we’ve found your – your – weird doppelganger in the basement, and he passed out in my –“
Tim stares at him until a faint flush rises in Martin’s cheeks.
“In my arms,” he says very quietly, looking at his hands. “God, Tim. You should have heard him. He said – I don’t know, it was so weird.”
“What did he say to you?” Tim asks him curiously, but Martin’s clearly had enough: he shuts up in the kind of way where Tim knows he won’t get anything else out of him.
“Nothing,” he says shortly. “Just my name.”
“Not that weird,” Tim points out. “He says it all the time. Good Lord, Martin. Don’t be ridiculous, Martin. File this for me, Martin.”
“Yeah,” Martin says ominously, but Tim doesn’t get a chance to try and drag anything else out of him, because that’s when the other Jon stirs and blinks.
It takes less than a second after he wakes for him to seem to realise where he is; then Tim watches as the pain, or something like it, hits him like a hammer blow. He curls over curled into himself with a sharp movement that’s almost violent, taking deep, short breaths, his hands at his temples.
“Jesus,” Tim says, but Martin’s already got a steady hand on one shoulder and is checking the other Jon over for something. Wounds, Tim supposes, breaks or something, but it’s strange. Something in the way he does it looks - rehearsed. Clinical and capable, in the kind of detachment Tim wasn’t aware Martin was capable of, especially not where Jon is concerned. But when Martin glances up at him and sees Tim watching him, he frowns.
“Don’t ask,” he tells Tim shortly, as the other Jon’s fingers gradually ease from where they’re clenched at his temples. “I, um. I can’t see any obvious issues - Jon, can you hear me? Can you tell me where it hurts? If it’s his head, Tim, we might need an ambulance, better safe than sorry -“
“No,” the other Jon says, eyes snapping open. “No, no ambulance, Martin, I - oh my god. Tim.”
“Jon?” Tim asks uneasily. He doesn’t like the tone in Jon’s voice, or the way the other Jon’s looking at him - a haze of pain that looks like it’s slowly receding, but underneath it something uncomfortably raw. “Uh? Boss?”
“Sorry -“ the other Jon says, but he’s still staring at Tim. “Sorry, just give me a moment to get used to it, I - God, Martin, is that you?”
“Uh, yeah?” Martin says nervously. “Jon? You - feeling okay? Is it passing?”
“Yes,” the other Jon tells him, in a much more gentle tone than Tim’s used to hearing from him. “Thank you, Martin. I’m - just getting used to - um, here, again. It - well, it’s fine, it’s - it’s complicated, but I should be all right in a minute.”
“What happened?” Tim asks him curiously, and the other Jon swings that unnervingly intense gaze back at him. It feels a little like being memorised - this other Jon not just keeping eye contact, but tracing over the features of his face with an expression a little like wonder.
At least, until he processes Tim’s question: then he winces, uncomfortably.
“Um, it’s complicated?” he says. “I wouldn’t really know where to begin. And it’s - it’s loud, here. Difficult to concentrate.”
It is, in fact, utterly silent. Tim tactfully decides to let this one slide.
“So, um. Well, where are the rest of us, then?” he asks instead. “Got any more of us creeping around in Doc Storage, or just you on your lonesome? Gotta admit I wanna know if I get on that silver fox treatment too.”
This seems to devastate this other Jon, in a way that makes the bottom of Tim’s stomach begin to stir unpleasantly.
“Oh. Oh, God, um -“ he starts painfully. And then, unexpectedly, every trace of emotion washes off his face in an instant. “Hang on, wait. What?”
“Well, you came through,” Tim points out reasonably. “What about the rest of us? Me, or Martin or whatever? Or wait – shit – shouldn’t we ask about that kind of stuff? If you’re from the future or something, will knowing about us mess with the timeline, or something?”
“I - God, I hope so, I just - you, you’ve only found me?” the other Jon says, looking at Tim very directly. “There’s not been - anyone else? At all?”
“Ask Martin,” Tim offers. “First I knew about it he was bursting through the doors with you cradled in his arms, like some kind of bodice-ripper hero.”
It’s strange, the moment that the other Jon takes before he looks at Martin again: drawing a breath, straightening his shoulders, like the motion of just looking at him is something he needs to prepare for. Tim can’t account for it.
Martin’s already shaking his head, chewing at his lip.
“I mean, I didn’t see anyone?” he says. “But I don’t know, it all happened so fast – as soon as you passed out, I brought you upstairs, I – uh – panicked. I can go back downstairs and check.”
“I -“ the other Jon says to himself, eyes wide and blank, looking away again. “I don’t understand, he - yes. Of course. Back downstairs.”
When he pushes himself off the bed, he sways, and Tim would swear he would have hit the floor without Martin automatically putting out an arm to steady him.
In the end, Martin has to half carry him down the stairs: he won’t let Tim or Martin go without him, but after Martin catches him again halfway through another fall, he seems to resign himself to it. But the whole way down he’s turned as far away from Martin as he can get, his eyes screwed tight as if he’s in real pain.
When they get downstairs and switch on the light, the room that greets them is silent and empty. Tim thinks he knows the answer already, but he dutifully checks each open aisle, flipping on the extra lights as he goes. The other Jon and Martin follow a few paces behind. Nobody makes a sound.
At the end of the room, the other Jon carefully disentangles himself from Martin.
“There’s nobody here,” he says, quietly, putting a hand against the wall to steady himself. His voice is still so empty. Tim’s never heard it like that before. Irritated, or fond-but-irritated, or dripping with sarcasm, or tired – but never that complete lack of intonation before.
“Might be they got lost elsewhere in the Institute. It’s a big place,” Martin says reassuringly, but when he moves towards the other Jon again, he flinches and draws into himself. He hasn’t looked at Martin once since hearing Martin’s explanation upstairs.
“Martin,” the other Jon says quietly, still not looking at him. “I’m sorry to have to ask this of you, and please believe I mean no offence. But I - you - just for a short time, would you please remain quiet.”
It’s nicer than Jon usually words it, but for some reason that just makes it sound even worse. At least when Jon’s offhandedly being a dick, Tim can tell himself he doesn’t know better.
He’s opening his mouth to say something about it when Martin elbows him and frowns. He gives a shrug that pretty clearly says it’s okay, even if Tim recognises the upset in the tightness of his jaw.
“Michael,” the other Jon says, and hits his head tiredly against a stretch of wall. “Open up. I know you’re listening, and I know you can reach in here. I can see you. This isn’t a threat, I just want to talk.”
“Fascinating,” a voice says from behind them. “The Archivist, but not. However did a thing like you end up here?"
The man who steps out from the new yellow door is - well, he isn’t anything like a man at all, really. Or he is and then he isn’t, and then he is again - bits and pieces of him switching and changing even as Tim looks over him. Like a kaleidoscope of a human, Tim thinks. Constantly changing before he can fix on any one image.
Some parts of him seem to stay the same, however - his looming height, his long, blonde hair and his pointed and elongated fingers. And it’s only when Tim hauls these particular thoughts through the mire of panic his mind has become that he puts the pieces together: blonde hair. Long fingers. Tall and slim. This, he realizes, must be Sasha’s Michael.
“Jesus,” Martin breathes, from beside him. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”
“Through your doors, as you well might know,” the other Jon is already answering, with every appearance of familiarity. “Michael, I need you to tell me exactly what happened. Please believe that if you don’t, I can and will rip it out of you.”
“No threats, is what you said,” Michael says, leaning casually up against the doorpost. “That didn’t last long, I see. How impolite of you.”
“Who passed through the door?” the other Jon presses, and for a moment Tim could swear he hears the rise of tape static, of all things: that low crackle and fuzz he hears from Jon’s office every now and then. “Me, and -?”
“No need for that,” Michael tells the other Jon, eyeing him with increased interest. “I’m happy to tell you without that unpleasantness. Although I sense you won’t much like the answer - no-one. Apart from yourself, of course. Although I suspect, deep down, you knew that already?”
The other Jon doesn’t say anything at all. His eyes are so blank. He sways again on his feet, minutely.
“Were you expecting someone else? A parade of Archivists, perhaps? That is what you are, aren’t you?”
“You’re sure,” the other Jon says quietly, almost to himself, ignoring Michael’s question entirely. “Only - only myself - who passed through, at least. But your corridors - Michael, I can’t see, I - but you could look? F-for anyone lost inside?”
The laugh that the man gives at that.
“I can, although you’ve not much endeared me to try -“
“I have other methods of persuasion at my disposal,” the other Jon says immediately, and a feeling like a shiver seems to run through the very stones of the building. “Especially here.”
“Threaten or plead as you like, but it still won’t do much good,” Michael says, unflappably, and then his smile begins to morph and stretch just slightly in a way that makes Tim want to run, want to hide, want to cover his eyes and scream. “I think you know that already, too. I think you know as well as I do who and what I am, how far and twisted I stretch - further, deeper than you or even I know - and what that means for whoever you’ve lost within my dear, hallowed halls -“
The other Jon slams the door in the man’s face, and turns away. His eyes are fixed on nothing Tim can see, and he looks like he might be sick.
“Uh, Jon?” Tim says carefully. When he rests a hand hesitantly on this Jon’s thin shoulder, the other man takes a deep, harsh breath, as if he’s fighting not to shake it off. “Who were you looking for?”
“Nobody,” the other Jon informs him shortly, after he takes one more moment of quiet. Tim - from a sense of genuine sympathy - decides it’s best not to call this out for the obvious lie it is, and stays silent on it. “I - I’ve wasted enough time. Tim, you’ve seen the worms? Jane Prentiss?”
“Up close and personal,” Tim says. “Um. Which I thought you’d know, seeming as you have the same scars as - as our Jon. Christ, this is weird. Why?”
The other Jon grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. Martin is still quiet, looking between the two of them with eyes wide behind his glasses.
“I need you to tell me where Sasha is,” the other Jon says. “And then I need to go and visit Elias.”