And If Thou Wilt, Forget

“Did you know there’s a gym down the harbor?”

Tim paused in the act of stacking glasses in the cupboard and turned to frown at Gerry, who was busily engaged in scrubbing the remnants of breakfast out of their omelet pan. “What?”

“One of those bare bones things in an old warehouse,” Gerry clarified. “Caters to the dockworkers, I guess, so it doesn’t have a lot of fancy equipment. Lots of weightlifting stuff, chin-up bars, that sort of thing. Some kind of climbing structure, I think, not sure if it’s a rope or a wall or what, but that’s what I heard. There’s a bare knuckle boxing ring, too.”

This in no way, shape, or form had anything to do with what Tim was asking. “I—didn’t know that. What about it?”

Gerry shrugged. “It’s legitimate, I checked it out, so I thought it might be safer for you than, like, an underground fight club or one of those places you have to know someone who knows someone to get into. Less likely to wind up being a front for the Flesh or the Slaughter or whatever.”

“Why do you think I’m likely to get involved in an underground fight club?” Tim was getting more and more lost as the conversation progressed. “And why bring it up now?”

“Well, you need some way to vent that anger off, and there aren’t any academic conferences coming up for you to get into screaming matches about the orangutan in that Edgar Allen Poe story or the efficacy of EMP meters in paranormal detection,” Gerry said in a very matter of fact tone. “And the way you’re slamming those dishes around tells me you’re really, really close to taking a swing at the next person who pisses you off. While I’m perfectly happy to push your buttons until you pin me against the wall, I know you’ll feel guilty about that the second you come back to your senses and we’ll end up arguing for the rest of our lives about whether that counts as ‘consent’ or not, especially since both of us will be arguing that no, it doesn’t, but on behalf of the other person. And from the way you’ve described him, if you go into work giving off clear signals of ‘I will rip out the aorta of anyone who crosses me and keep it on my desk as a warning to others’, Martin will gladly take the brunt of what he perceives as his due punishment if it means you leave everyone else alone, and you’ll never forgive yourself for that, either.” He shut off the water and held out the omelet pan for Tim to dry. “So, you wanna bash me with this, or you wanna try the gym later?”

Tim stared at him for several seconds, mentally replaying the rest of the morning. He didn’t think he’d been particularly angry…but, okay, maybe he had been a bit forceful at putting the dishes away. Then his brain caught up to I checked it out and began reevaluating the last week or so.

“How long have you been putting up with me being like this?” he asked, taking the pan and then taking a step back, putting Gerry out of his reach, before he began to dry.

“Stop. I was joking about you hitting me. I know you’d never actually do that. You’re nothing like my mum.” Gerry crossed into Tim’s space, slipped under his arm, and kissed the tip of his nose before ducking back out of the way in the span of time it took Tim to process the casual way he flung that out there. “But you’ve been…let’s say annoyed since the night Sasha was attacked. At first I thought it was just that you weren’t getting enough sleep, but since you seemed okay in the mornings, I figured it was probably work related. This is the first day you haven’t slept it off, so I reckon whatever it is is starting to really get to you.” He took the pan from Tim’s suddenly nerveless fingers, hung it on the rack, then hitched himself onto the counter and pulled Tim closer by the lapels. “Talk to me, Stoker. What’s eating you? That’s my job.”

Tim couldn’t help but smile, even as he shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t even realize I was angry until you called me out on it. Although right now maybe I’m a little mad at Gertrude for destroying your mum before I had a chance to do it myself, but that’s definitely a ‘cherry on the shit sundae’ kind of situation.”

Gerry smiled back. “Well then. Do we have enough time before you need to leave for work to figure it out?”

“What’s Jon going to do? Fire me?”

“Aha, Watson. A clue.” Gerry cocked his head to one side and put on his best Basil Rathbone impersonation. “The shift in your tone of voice clearly indicates that at least some of your irritation is directed at one Mr. Jonathan Sims, as that was definitely not entirely jovial.” He dropped the persona. “What’s he done?”

“I—fuck.” Tim chewed his lip for a moment and thought, really thought, about it.

Ostensibly, nothing had really changed in the Archives. Sasha had returned to the Institute ten days after her encounter with the Distortion and resumed her research with, if anything, more fervor than before. Martin was still sleeping in Document Storage, and Jon had begun leaving less and less. Tim wanted to tell him to stop, to urge him to get out of there and just go home already, but Martin didn’t have that option right now; both he and Jon were convinced that Jane Prentiss was after him specifically, and although Tim was fairly certain it was the Archives she wanted, he kept his mouth shut about that. Elias was, unsurprisingly, still dragging his feet over upgrading the fire suppressant system but had at least provided them a few extra CO2 extinguishers, which at least made Martin feel a little better. Tim knew for a fact, because he’d sneaked into the Archives in the middle of the night to check on him at least once, that he slept clutching one like a teddy bear, or a security blanket. He’d found Jon passed out at his—the Archivist’s desk and tucked a spare blanket around him, but hadn’t said anything to either of them about it the next day.

They were…they were children. Tim couldn’t think of them any other way. Sasha had confided in him that she’d broken into Jon’s employment records and found out that Jon was actually ten weeks Martin’s junior, which meant both of them were twenty-seven. Tim would be thirty-four in three days, which was enough to make him feel a world older than them anyway, but more importantly, they were younger than Danny had been when he’d died. Sasha was probably about halfway between Danny and Tim in terms of age, but still young enough to count as a younger sibling sometimes and a playmate at others. And it was a bit disconcerting, because they were all adults and they didn’t need to be protected, but at the same time, they did. Maybe he was a little pissed by that because he hadn’t meant to get close to them, had been trying to think of them as temporary, but they were pretty much a part of the Archives now. Even Jon, even if he wasn’t going to be—

Oh, wait, hold on. Yep, there it was.

“He’s doing the Voice,” he said.

Gerry raised an eyebrow. “Okay, you’re going to have to explain that one. What voice?”

“Did you ever listen to Gertrude reading out a statement? She drops into this almost…trance state and gets this eerily calm, ominous tone to her voice. And you can feel the static, kind of.” Tim rolled his head back briefly. “I hadn’t been relistening to the tapes, Martin’s been mostly doing the transcriptions on the computer of Jon’s research, but I’ve been stalling him to keep him from relistening to the tapes. A few students doing dissertations came to me the other day about some issues with them, though, so I gave them a listen. And then I started listening to all of them.”

“And that explains why you came home tense and upset, because you drowned yourself in, what, twenty-odd real statements?” Gerry shook his head. “I should make you stay home today. That’s too much and you know it. Even if you aren’t the Archivist, you can’t do a ten-hour binge and expect to come out the other side unharmed.”

“I split it over a couple of days,” Tim said. “And I’m aware that’s not the point, but neither is what you said the point of what I said. My point is that Jon’s doing that exact same voice Gertrude does when he records the statements, and I can’t tell if it’s the Ceaseless Watcher influencing him and sinking him into the statements or if he’s just being dramatic.”

“Could be both,” Gerry pointed out. “They affect you, too, don’t they? You just…don’t get any energy from them, they drain you instead.”

“Debatable, but we’re not talking about that right now.”

“The fuck we aren’t—”

“But what if Jon’s starting to get energy from the statements?” Tim continued over top of Gerry’s (admittedly probably not unjustified) protests. “He’s not the Archivist, Gertrude is, and if he gets too locked into it…I still don’t know if the contracts they signed with Elias actually bound them to her or not, but if they didn’t, he can still walk away. Unless he’s at the point where it’s got its greedy little talons in him, in which case it’s too late either way.”

Gerry pursed his lips. Tim could see how hard he was struggling with the urge to circle back to the possibility of him getting energy from the statements. Finally, he said, “I could point out that it’s pretty likely he wouldn’t quit if he got the option, but I don’t think that’s your point either. So instead I’m going to do that thing you hate where I ask the question you’re avoiding admitting is the one you’re actually asking, which is, are you more concerned about the possibility of Jon getting bound to the Ceaseless Watcher, or are you more concerned about him becoming an Archivist and possibly usurping Gertrude’s position?”

“Jesus, Gerry,” Tim muttered, dropping his chin to his chest.

“No, you don’t get to avoid that question.” Gerry put two fingers under Tim’s chin and raised his head with a firmness that implied if Tim didn’t bend his neck voluntarily, it was likely to snap. “If that’s your fear, you have to at least address it. Are you worried he’s becoming an Archivist?”

Tim thought, really thought about it, as best as he could with Rowlf loudly drinking water in the corner. Finally, he said slowly, “Yes. But not because I think he’s going to supplant Gertrude. It’s not a Highlander ‘there can be only one’ kind of situation. Maybe we won’t all go as far as she has, but I think eventually everyone who works down there gets some of the Ceaseless Watcher’s power. I’m just…worried about him. I don’t think it’s been long enough that he should be doing that.”

Gerry gave him a faint smile and shook his head. “It’s been almost a year, Stoker.”

“Yeah, I know. And that’s how long it usually takes in fairy stories to earn your reward or your freedom or whatever. It’s either seven years or a year and a day.”

“This year was a leap year, so does that make it the eighteenth or the nineteenth that marks the end of the period of service?”

“The nineteenth. Most of the stories predate the Gregorian calendar, and a lot of them predate standard calendars, so it would have gone from, like, the first day of summer to the second day of the next summer.” Tim sighed. “If he’s getting that bad that fast, though—I mean, I didn’t.”

“You weren’t reading statements, either,” Gerry pointed out. “Not out loud. Sasha and Martin aren’t like that, are they? Jon’s doing the work, he’s going to get the brunt of the punishment.”

Tim chewed his lip for a moment. “Fuck. I need to figure out how bad it is, and stop him if he’s doing too much.”

“Any ideas on how to do that?”

“I’ll…get back to you on that,” Tim admitted. “I’m heading to work. Call me if you get any good ideas. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” Gerry caught Tim by the shirt again and pulled him in for one last kiss before he let him go.

It had started raining, not hard, but Tim needed to walk. He bought a newspaper from a stand on the corner and unfolded it over his head as he made his way to the Tube stop, then shook it out and at least skimmed the headlines . On a whim, he got off at Stockwell, changed to the Victoria line, and got off at Victoria, just to see what the walk was like for Sasha every day. To his surprise, she was standing just outside the entrance to the station when he exited, hovering in the slight protection afforded from the rain by the roof’s overhang and clutching her umbrella like a sword. The explanation was just on the corner, a tangled rainbow that erupted from the hand of a woman talking to a muscular person with red platform stiletto heels and a buzz cut and fractured out to terminate in eight or nine dogs of varying sizes and degrees of wetness. Sasha was eyeballing them as if one of them was likely to attack her at any moment, and to be fair, the chihuahua in its little white jumper did in fact look like it was considering it.

Still clutching his newspaper, he stepped up to her shoulder and put on his best schoolboy voice. “Carry your books, miss?”

Sasha started and turned. “Oh! Tim—I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I come up the Northern line usually, same as Martin.” Tim interposed himself between Sasha and the dogs. “Decided today I’d see what the fuss was all about with this walk of yours.”

“I mean, I would have thought you’d drive on a day like this.”

Tim shrugged. “This rain isn’t going to last all morning, let alone all day. Come on, though, I don’t want to have to rush the last bit and risk slipping. Imagine the paperwork.”

Sasha unfurled her umbrella, then nudged Tim when he held up his newspaper. “I’ll share. Why didn’t you bring an umbrella if you were so set on walking?”

“Don’t have one,” Tim admitted sheepishly. “I usually just turn up the collar of my coat and wear a good hat.”

“You’re nuts, Stoker.”

“So I’ve been told. Mind the puddle.”

She insisted on stopping at her favorite café for her usual coffee, so Tim waited outside with the umbrella, idly scanning the faces of the people passing by and keeping an eye—no pun intended—out for anyone with distorted proportions. He hadn’t found any Michaels in her past so far in his digging, so maybe that was really what the Distortion was calling itself these days, but that didn’t mean he trusted it any further than he could throw it. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, everyone walking past seemed normal. Key word was seemed.

Sasha emerged from the café with two cups of coffee, one of which she handed to Tim; he took it in surprise. “Uh, thanks. For me?”

“For you. I still owe you from…you know, that night. And you saved me from that vicious pack of ravenous hounds.” Sasha grinned, but the flash of fear in her eyes belied her joking expression—she was well and truly scared.

Tim bowed theatrically. “I live to serve, milady.”

“My knight in shining armor.” Sasha laughed as they set off.

Martin was just coming back into the Archives with two mugs of tea when Sasha and Tim arrived. He gave them a wan smile, looking like he hadn’t slept in a month. “Morning. How’s the weather out there?”

“Wet, but it’s tapering off.” Tim tossed his newspaper in the bin and crossed over to give Martin a one-armed hug. “Jon’s here already, I take it?”

Martin’s cheeks turned faintly pink, but he nodded. “He, um, he got in about an hour ago. I-I think he was going to do some recording.”

“Great, I wanted to talk to him about that,” Tim said, setting his coffee on his desk and unslinging the laptop bag from his shoulder. “What have you got going on for research?”

“I haven’t looked yet. I just finished all the ones Jon gave me last week, I think that’s what he’s got in there now, and he gave me a new stack.”

Tim tried—and failed—to remember if Martin had had anything he was taking point on that was real. He’d have to catch Jon before he hit that point. “Here—let me take that into him. Maybe he’ll be more receptive with some tea in him.”

“Receptive to what?” Martin asked, handing over Jon’s mug with—if Tim was any judge—considerable reluctance.

“Re-recording a few of those statements.” The sentence popped out of Tim’s mouth without conscious thought. He tried not to let his surprise show on his face, though. “You know, to get them up to the standards expected of so august an institution as the Magnus Institute.”

Sasha giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. “Tim, shh, he’ll hear you.”

Tim winked at Martin, who looked torn between amusement and mortification, and headed for the Archivist’s office. As he pulled the door open, he heard a very clear, exasperated, “Oh, goddammit.”

“Sorry, I’ve already been absolved for this week, you’ll have to ask again later,” Tim said, deadpan.

Jon looked up in the act of reaching over his laptop for something, a flash of panic running through his eyes. For just a second, Tim felt bad as he realized Jon—who tried so hard to be professional, and was probably just as terrified as Martin of getting fired—hadn’t even heard the door open and had had a moment of thinking Elias was the one who’d come in, or had come in behind Tim. It was written on his face plain as day. He recovered quickly, though. “Tim. What…?”

Tim decided to let him believe he hadn’t noticed the panic as he stepped fully into the office and shut the door. “Morning. Martin made your tea, and since I wanted to come in here and talk to you anyway, I said I’d bring it to you.” He came over and set it on the desk. “Hard at work already, I see.”

“I’ll never finish if I don’t get a head start,” Jon grumbled. He adjusted his glasses and took a sip of his tea, then set it to one side. “What did you need?”

Tim hesitated for a split second. He could see what Jon was reaching for now—the tape recorder, which meant he’d found a real one, tried recording it, come up on the issues, and had to start over, which was probably what he’d been swearing at. That was a plus, it meant he wasn’t so deep into it that he could just tell…like you can, a voice whispered in the back of his mind…but it also meant he’d started one of the real ones.

Well. He’d wanted to do a test of some kind, hadn’t he?

“It’s about some of the recordings,” he said, smoothly enough he was pretty sure Jon hadn’t noticed the hesitation. “There are some that need to be redone.”

Jon scowled. “Did the digital files get corrupted?”

“No, they’re not digital. But some of the ones that are on tape—”

That was as far as he got. Jon’s scowl deepened. “If the tapes aren’t working now either, I don’t know what else you want me to do. Engrave them on wax cylinders?”

“Easy there, Dr. Seward. The recordings themselves are fine. There are just some issues, little errors. If they’re going to be on a permanent record, or a semipermanent record anyway, they ought to be the best quality they can, shouldn’t they?”

The conversation did not noticeably improve from there. Jon was visibly irritated at the idea of redoing the taped statements, which Tim was secretly relieved by. It meant he wasn’t too terribly far gone; there was still hope for him. And he understood Jon not wanting to rerecord them.

He also knew, which Jon and the others did not, that these weren’t simple errors—well, maybe the switching names around in Von Closen’s statement, although that was debatable, Tim hadn’t tried reading the letter himself. The others, though…Tim knew Gertrude’s filing system inside out and backwards, and despite Jon’s snide remark she was always consistent with them; the numbers around Hill Top Road were a mess all right, but it wasn’t because of anything Jon had done, and that was something he needed to investigate, or ask her about when she got back, which had damn well better be sooner rather than later. And she’d doctored the dates in the dustman’s statement herself, he’d seen the signs on the original and kept his mouth shut. There were plenty of other things he’d noticed that he didn’t bring up, but it was wrong for a reason.

He kept pushing, though, for one very simple reason. He had to see if Jon would do it. Had to see if he could. That was probably the first test, the first…milestone, maybe? He wasn’t sure. Martin had interrupted him, so had Sasha, in the middle of recordings, but he’d gone straight back to them. Tim didn’t think Jon had stopped for more than the length of time it took to put a tape in the recorder since then, though.

And from the way he got progressively angrier, until Tim’s soft whoa recalled him to his professionalism, he wasn’t going to stop now, either.

Finally, Tim tried a desperate Hail Mary and brought up Martin’s concern from the other day about if his tongue looked infested. And for a minute, it seemed like it had broken Jon’s concentration, like he might set the statement aside and come back to it later, or—if Tim was lucky—not at all. But then he recovered, looking extremely tired, and more or less dismissed Tim.

He decided to bow out gracefully, if sadly.

“What did he say?” Martin asked as soon as Tim had come out and closed the door behind him again.

“Eh. He says they’re fine.” Tim shrugged one shoulder. “Actually, he said to put a sticky note on them or something and that he doesn’t actually care, so I guess that’s that. Maybe I’ll take a crack at fixing them myself.”

“I’ve got a spare recorder,” Martin offered. “If you want to borrow it.”

“I’ve got my own, but thanks, Martin.” Tim gave Martin a genuine grin and rumpled his hair, causing Martin to duck and swat halfheartedly at his hand. “Let’s get the regular work done first, then I can start thinking about taking on extra. Stick around after hours or something.”

Sasha swiveled around from Mister Megabytes. “Speaking of after hours. According to our files, someone has a birthday on Friday. We should all go out for a pint or something after work. Get you out of the Archives for a bit, Martin, and celebrate. Maybe your partner would like to come along.”

Tim knew a fishing expedition when he heard it and shook his head with a smile. “He’s not exactly a people person, but I’ll pass on the invitation. Actually, how about sushi? You like sushi?”

“I’ve…never had it, actually.”

Martin’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait, really?”

Tim grinned broadly. “Well then, that sounds like exactly what I want to do for my birthday. Which is actually Saturday, by the way, Miss James, but I’ll celebrate it Friday with you and keep Saturday for me.”

Hopefully they’d be able to get Jon out, he thought as he started setting up his laptop for the day’s work. He didn’t need to spend all his time in the Archives. Fear of leaving Martin alone or otherwise, the more time he spent here the worse he was going to get. The statements might not have been fueling him yet, but they were starting to irritate him if he tried to leave them unfinished, and that was how it started.

Gertrude needed to get back. Before it got any worse for him.