Chapter Text
While Jon had been fully prepared to break into Ink5oul’s tattoo parlour all over again, emboldened as he was by the return of two further Fears, Martin had other plans.
“They’re expecting us at 11:00,” Martin had told him while getting ready that morning and preparing to leave the bloody café.
“What?” Jon, mid-way through pulling his socks on, had almost toppled over.
“By appointment only, remember? So I made an appointment.”
So it was that the two men set off for Ink5oul’s parlour, perfectly expected and entirely respectable save for the corpse Martin hauled along with them.
The little bell above the door chimed as they entered, and Jon sat himself down on one of the two black chairs he’d spotted during their first visit. Martin claimed the other, leaving Alfred Grifter sitting up against the wall next to him.
Jon pulled a face.
“Did you have to sit him up?”
“Well where else am I meant to put him?”
“I don’t know, lie him down or something!”
“You know I’ll probably trip over him if I do that.”
“Martin, the majority of his skull has been blown off, I doubt he’s all too concerned about—”
Their bickering came to an abrupt halt as the commanding thud of boots sounded from the stairway.
“Are you my eleven-o-clock lot?”
The tattooist themselves strolled down the stairs, pulling latex gloves off their hands as they went and chucking them into the bin in the corner with an impressive overarm throw. Ink5oul, average in height and looks, had evidently taken it upon themselves to add as much as they could to themselves in order to have a chance at standing out at all in a crowd. Almost every inch of their exposed skin sported tattoos, the most dominant being the floral snake that Jon had seen before during his eavesdropping. Their hair was shaved on one side, the other side kept knotted and long, with countless pieces of metal crowding their ears and face. Though their hair covered their right eye, the left had a white contact lens that moved ever so slightly slower than their eyeball did.
They looked Jon up and down, then snorted.
“I’m gonna guess the ink’s not for you. For your—”
Their judgement came to a halt as they spotted the third visitor sitting on the floor next to Martin’s chair. “Fucking hell, why’d you bring that with you?”
Jon had been about to speak when Martin got to his feet and cleared his throat.
“We’re not here for a tattoo. We’re here for your other business,” Martin declared. He then lowered his voice and added, “You know. The one Lady Mowbray helps you with.”
Jon groaned and ran a hand over his face. Someone, Martin managed to act completely out of his depth despite having endured the literal end of the world. He seemed intent on acting like this was some great thriller movie, and were they in any more danger than was normal, Jon might have scolded him for it.
Ink5oul, however, looked alarmed. “How did you—oh. Oh.”
They turned back to Jon, the realisation of having dismissed him too quickly dawning on their face. “Shiiiiiit. It’s you! You scrub up different without the hair and beard,” they said, bending at the hip to get a closer look. “Oh man, are you sure you don’t want a piece? I could do a dope impressionist piece of that tower of yours all up your spine. It’d open your mind up like nothing, I promise you.”
“I’m quite sure,” Jon replied, sitting up a little straighter. Even if he had wanted a tattoo, he wasn’t all too keen on letting an Avatar or External near his skin again. “As Martin says, we’re not here for your art. We’re here to trade.”
Ink5oul straightened back up, a low whistle escaping their pursed lips. “Yeah, yeah. Problem is, I don’t need your shit. I got the best body-gatherer this side of the ocean, haven’t I? And she doesn’t ask me to trade for ‘em. I help her out by clearing them away for her.”
The tattooist jerked their head towards Grifter’s corpse. “You got no idea what that’s gonna be bringing to your doorstep if you keep lugging it around. But me? I’m special. I scare off the creepy crawlies that come looking for a bite of dead flesh.”
They grinned, pierced lips spreading back to frame yellow-stained teeth. “So unless you’ve got me a better deal than Lady M, you can piss merrily off.”
“As a matter of fact” – Jon stood up and straightened his jacket – “I do have a better offer than Lady Mowbray.”
It was a risk, but for the briefest second, Jon let the Hunt snarl through his blood, changing his own eyes as red as the one it had set upon his right cheekbone. Every muscle in his body tensed, the thrill of the chase pounding through his chest, but he wrestled the impulse down. “I’m alive and can do business with you. Lady Mowbray is not.”
Ink5oul stared Jon down, but the briefest flicker of concern that twitched over their face gave way to a strangely familiar smirk. “Well, well, well. You do your old boss proud, Archivist.”
They stepped back from Jon and nodded over at Martin, putting their hands on their hips and shifting their weight to one foot. “Right, fine. So. What have you got and what do you want?”
A little ruffled by Jon stealing his thunder, Martin shot him a glare before clearing his throat and stepping back to gesture at the mangled form of Alfred Grifter. “This is…or was…Alfred Grifter, of Grifter’s Bone fame. O-or infamy, I suppose. A-a-anyway, he was an Avatar of the Slaughter until Lady Mowbray showed up. Used to play music so beautiful that people tore each other’s ears off.”
“Tore their own ears off, Martin,” Jon corrected him. That earned him another scowl.
“Yeah, all right, details. Point is, this one’s a really old Avatar. Been around ages. And we’ll let you have him for all your spooky corpse-inspecting needs in exchange for one of yours.”
Ink5oul had strayed closer to Grifter’s body while Martin regaled them with the details of the former Avatar’s past. A sparkle that couldn’t be dulled by the contact lens ignited in their visible eye, and Jon knew they had caught the artist’s attention. “Jesus Christ, she took his head off again. Kept telling her not to fucking do that! Still, there’s probably plenty left I could work with…and, what, you want one of my old corpses for it?”
The smoothness of the transaction set Jon’s nerves on edge. Something would go wrong. Something always did. He caught Martin’s eye, and from the way the other man’s jaw set, he could tell that the same thought had crossed his mind too.
“Yes. A fair trade, no?” Jon said. He’d apologise to Martin for taking over the transaction later. Right now, he wanted to make sure that they used every bit of leverage they had over Ink5oul.
Ink5oul finished their inspection of Grifter’s corpse, straightened up, and arched their back, letting the vertebrae click. They clucked their tongue a few times, then turned and beckoned them up the stairs.
“Yeah, I’d say so. Come on, then. Come see what’s in stock!” They snickered after that, then disappeared from view up the stairs.
Jon watched after them for a while, until the sound of Martin hauling Grifter’s body over his shoulder snapped his attention away.
“Something’s gonna go wrong,” Martin grumbled as he passed by Jon and started his careful ascent of the stairs.
Jon followed after him, silently praying his partner was wrong in his pessimism. But he kept several additional eyes open all the same, in part to remind Ink5oul who and what he was.
Upstairs appeared to function as Ink5oul’s main studio, and just as much disarray featured there ad down in the waiting room. A few rickety trolleys held a number of medical-looking instruments, and while their uncleanliness could be put down to the struggles of a post-apocalyptic world, Jon got the sense that Ink5oul had always worked like this. Indeed, the External wandered around their den with ease. They shoved a rather mangled corpse off one battered old examination table, and it dropped to the floor with a heavy squelch.
“Chuck him on there,” they ordered, pointing for Martin to deposit Grifter’s corpse in the newly made space. Meanwhile, they ferreted in their pocket and drew out a large keyring fastened with a chain to their belt band. “Nice. Right, let’s see who you’re trading for, eh?”
“Actually, we already had a person in mind.” Jon stopped pretending to examine one of the rusty workbenches. He clasped both hands behind his back and looked down his nose at Ink5oul. “A former colleague of ours at the Institute. Elias Bouchard.”
He was vaguely aware of Martin’s jaw dropping, no doubt alarmed at the brazen move. But Martin didn’t know what Jon knew.
The Archive smirked and canted his head to the side. “But you already knew that, didn’t you, Jonah?”
Ink5oul stared at Jon for a long while, their one visible eye narrowing just enough to confirm Jon’s suspicions.
“...Nah. The old man’s not got a hold of me,” Ink5oul said around a growing smile. They lifted one hand to push the longer side of their hair away from their face and reveal their other eye.
Martin gagged and turned away, but Jon remained where he was. Ink5oul’s hidden eye, now shown, glowered out from a mess of crusty scabs, dribbling pus, and red-raw flesh. But the swollen, infected skin couldn’t hide the sharp, cold, jade-green stare of Jonah Magnus.
The External huffed and folded their arms again. “Not my finest work, I’ll give you that. Making art on flesh is easy, but making art from flesh is new territory for me. I take it you saw my prototype?”
“You mean Gwendolyn?”
“Now that was a thing of beauty. Took to her like a duck to water, didn’t it?” Ink5oul grinned.
But Jon scoffed and mirrored their stance by crossing his arms too, shifting his weight to his other foot. “Hardly. You butchered her, and frankly, you’ve made an even worse job on yourself. And for what?”
“Little Gwen told me everything, didn’t she? Uncle Elias had powers, powers that were rightfully hers. Ha! Nah. She’s not special. Not like me.” Ink5oul opened their arms out wide. “I mean, look at me. I can keep that stuffy old shit in check. He just grumbles away in my head, but the best part? I can still tap into his creepy tricks.”
A cold scoff of disbelief heralded a smirk of Jon’s own. “If you can still tap into his creepy tricks, Ink5oul, then I daresay you’ve made a terrible mistake. Jonah Magnus is many things, but another’s lapdog is not one of them. You’re not keeping him at bay – he just doesn’t think you’re deserving enough to be a vessel of his.”
Ink5oul’s face contorted, their self-assured smile shattering in an instant. Their arms dropped to their sides, and they balled their hands into fists. “How does that make sense? If he had a choice in any of it, he’d not let me use his abilities, fucknut.”
“Let me guess,” Jon retorted coolly. “You could See me. Track my movements. Maybe even a little more from around…two or three weeks ago? Right when his other eye got trapped by the Buried suffocating his host. But as of a few days ago, you’re back to only being able to See me. You were probably even aware that I was in the reception area the first time we visited your parlour. Did you leave me be because you were unconcerned? Or because the old man in your head told you to?”
Ink5oul’s jaw clenched, a sliver of yellowish teeth peeking from behind snarling lips. Jon took that as confirmation of his theory.
He began strolling across the room, taking in as much detail as he could. Jonah was on his last life, that much was certain. Stuck in a vessel that he didn’t choose. One that wasn’t truly suited to him or his abilities. Of course, the idea that he was keeping tabs on Jon was hardly a leap of logic – Jonah had used Jon to his own immense gain plenty of times in the past. Keeping Ink5oul from confronting Jon directly had, very likely, been a simple survival tactic. Jon had killed Jonah twice now after all.
Then why entertain the notion now? Jon thought.
Jon jerked his head in a sharp nodding motion towards Ink5oul. “What’s he saying to you now?”
Once again Ink5oul remained silent. But Jon had moved far beyond worrying over when and where to exercise his own powers.
He closed the gap between himself and the tattooist in three strides, drawing close enough that the two of them were almost nose to nose. “T̸e̵l̷l̷ ̴m̵e̸ ̷w̸h̷a̶t̵ ̸J̵o̷n̶a̶h̵ ̴M̵a̸g̴n̷u̶s̶ ̶i̷s̷ ̶s̴a̴y̸i̷n̶g̷ ̸t̶o̵ ̶y̷o̸u̴ ̵r̸i̴g̷h̶t̶ ̴n̸o̸w̸,” he commanded, his words ribboned with resonating Compulsion.
“He…told me not to greet you. T-to leave you downstairs and get on with my work. That we’d face you once I had succeeded, not before. I-I told him to go fuck himself, ‘cause this is the second time you’ve come sniffing at my door,” Ink5oul growled. “And I was gonna find out why.”
“Succeeded in what?” Jon asked. Just as he did so, Martin’s voice sounded from a side room.
“Ah, Jon? You…You might want to see this,” he called.
Jon, startled that Martin had managed to wander off without either himself or Ink5oul noticing, jumped. Ink5oul seemed equally shocked, but the surprise on their face shifted to irritation as they spotted the door left ajar across the other side of the room.
They stomped over, knocking a chair out of their way with a loud crash. “Oi! What the fuck are you doing? I didn’t say you could snoop around my stuff!”
As Ink5oul got to the door, however, Martin appeared in the doorframe. He stood up to his full height, bearing down on the tattoo artist with more confidence than Jon had ever seen in the other man. Or, perhaps it wasn’t confidence – Martin’s expression was rigid with disapproval.
“You need their eyes,” he said, his voice dangerously level as he advanced upon Ink5oul, who backed away in slow steps. “That’s why you got annoyed at Lady Mowbray for bringing you headless corpses! For blowing Grifter’s head off! You want their eyes!”
“‘Course I want their eyes. What’s it to you?” Ink5oul snarled back, though they kept cowering back as Martin continued pacing towards them. “Look. You brought me a corpse. I can use it for other work. You want your trade? Take it and go!”
“Martin?” Jon turned his attention from the open door behind his partner to Martin himself. “What is it?”
Martin pointed at Ink5oul, his whole body shaking with rage. “They’re tattooing the eyeballs of the corpses they get! All these strange symbols and…and the irises. They’re turning green, Jon! One of them even swivelled on the table on its own to look at me!”
Ink5oul, now outed before the Archive itself, began to back away from them both. “Look – just shut the fuck up a second! Not you, erm, listen…the eyeball thing? It’s…it’s not even really my gig, right? How about this? You wanted Elias’ corpse, yeah? Take it. Free of charge. And then we’re good, yeah?”
“We are most certainly not good, Ink5oul,” Jon snapped. “You’re a sharp person. You know why we wanted Elias’ corpse.” He raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at Ink5oul’s – no, Jonah’s – mangled eye. “Worse, you’re trying to, what, make replicas of Jonah’s eyes?”
“N-no! Not me! Well, yeah, okay, I’m making them, but he’s asking me to! Look, I’ll stop. He’s not even giving me that much in return – the fuck you are!” Ink5oul kept hissing off to the side, their conversation with Jonah spilling out of their head. “I didn’t even want to get this deep in on all this! I’m happy in my sandpit; I tattoo people. I make their flesh follow the art. I don’t…I’m not into all this sculpting flesh bollocks. Trying to make him new eyes. Not my thing. I couldn’t even do it when I implanted his eye to start with! I only got it later when—”
“When I released the Fears. The Flesh,” Jon muttered as two more pieces of the puzzle slid together in his head. Jonah had, once again, pulled the strings above him, orchestrating the release of the Fears from one vessel and catching the one he needed for his failsafe plan in another. “You’re its new host.”
“Erm…” Ink5oul’s bravado had crumbled to ashes now, and to their dismay, they’d run out of room to back away into. The wall hit their back, and they let out a nervous chuckle. “O-okay. Let’s…let’s trade, then. The corpse for this eye! Then you can destroy it!”
“The Flesh for your life,” Jon countered, though he had to steel himself to ignore Martin’s quiet plea behind him. “That’s my trade.”
“Wh—H-hang on. You…The Flesh? You…You’re gonna, what, yank it out of me?” Ink5oul had gone quite pale by now, their tattoos now so stark that Jon could have sworn the floral snake began to move, slithering around their neck ready to tighten. No. It had moved. Ink crawling over skin and taking form.
Their flesh followed the art. And the Flesh itself could sense the trap closing in on its new host.
“You’re going to give it to me,” Jon said softly. “Before the Flesh kills you to flee from me.”
Ink5oul frowned, but the question that moved their lips tripped on a strangled breath. The floral snake tattoo wrapped around their windpipe and constricted with a loud crunch.
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