And If Thou Wilt, Forget

Tim stared at himself in the mirror and wondered, again, why he was doing this.

Not going back to the Institute. He had no choice in that. Even if he’d wanted to quit, he’d signed his soul back over—unknowingly, granted, he’d really had no reason to believe Elias was telling the truth that day in his office, but the difference between devils and lawyers was that hell didn’t care if you’d understood what you were signing—and belonged to the Archivist. Which, for better or for worse, was Jon. Currently, anyway.

No, what Tim wondered was why he was bothering to put effort into his appearance.

It was stupid. He’d never really worried about it under Gertrude—as long as he didn’t show up nude, she didn’t care what he wore as long as he did his job—and while he’d tried to dress a bit more professionally around the others, he’d at least let himself slide to business casual. Yet here he was, in a button down shirt and freshly pressed tailored trousers, carefully knotting his serious black tie into a trinity knot, which was the most even and complex knot he could currently remember the steps to tying. He was going full-on dress to impress here.

He paused in the act and studied himself. The holes from the worms had closed up and settled down, and while he’d probably be scarred for the rest of his life, he at least didn’t look like Swiss cheese anymore; they were little more than flat, dark patches against his skin, like extremely large, deformed freckles. There had been a worry that they would affect his movement, but apparently he’d kept himself in good enough shape that any damage had been minimal, and he hadn’t even needed physical therapy. His hair had grown out a bit more, and while he’d brushed it, it still flipped up at the ends in what Gerry called a casual I just rolled out of bed and I look this good kind of way. He’d take the compliment.

But his eyes…Tim met his eyes in the mirror and recognized that look in them. It was the same look he’d had when he first came to the Institute, the look that had faded over time as he’d become more involved in the work, as he’d grown closer to Gerry. It was grief, mingled with anger, sprinkled with a little bit of aimlessness. It was the look that spoke of someone who had lost something they were sworn to protect.

Today marked his first day back since Jane Prentiss had attacked the Institute. Only Gerry’s iron will had kept him from going back sooner—or at least breaking in to check out those tunnels. They’d used the intervening six weeks, first to recover, then to mourn Gertrude, then to start sorting out what they had on the Unknowing. After all, now that the Corruption’s ritual was no longer a threat, that was still the next one, right?

He’d more or less hit the limits on what he could research on his own, though, and it was time to get back to the Institute. Anyway, while he’d been okay…mostly…on his own, he was pretty sure the grace afforded by signing out officially was going to end sooner rather than later and he’d need to get back before he started going downhill.

Besides, he had to get back to protect Martin and Sasha.

Gerry’s face appeared alongside his in the glass. “I made reservations at the Ritz for tonight, so I’ll pick you up by the Carabiniers Memorial after you get off. Sound good?”

“Sounds good,” Tim said absently, then blinked and turned to look properly at Gerry. “The Ritz?”

“Thought we’d have a proper celebration,” Gerry said with a shrug. “Got a feeling we won’t be having a lot of those for a bit.”

“Okay, but what are we celebrating?”

Gerry raised an eyebrow. “It’s your work anniversary, isn’t it?”

Oh. Yeah. That was why it was so important he start back at the Institute today, wasn’t it?

Tim looked down at his right hand. It was the only part of his body that hadn’t been attacked by the worms, the only part still unmarred, a phenomenon he attributed solely and firmly to the matte black band encircling his middle finger, absence of any actual evidence be damned. Since the attack, he’d stopped taking it off even when he went to bed, which Gerry seemed to understand. He’d figured out by now that it was probably something to do with the Eye, and that when the vendor had said you have already begun to pay he meant that he’d already sacrificed himself to the Ceaseless Watcher, so maybe it was just protecting its investment. Still, it had protected him, kept away the Corruption—or at least the Corruption had avoided it—and if it meant he could hold up that hand and, metaphorically, say Thus far—no further to an invader, maybe it was worth it.

“Can’t believe it’s been three years,” he murmured. “And here I am starting a new chapter.”

Gerry tapped his collarbone twice with a forefinger, and Tim, understanding, turned back to the mirror to finish tying his tie. “I could tell you that it’s not really starting a new chapter, since you’ve technically been working for Jonathan Sims longer than you thought, but I get what you mean. Are you going to start calling him Archivist now?”

“He hasn’t earned that,” Tim growled, tugging viciously on the ends of the tie to secure the knot. “It’s more than a title and you know that. I’ll concede to boss because he is, but he’s going to have to prove he knows what he’s doing, and explain why he thinks he’ll do a better job than Gertrude, before he gets to be the Archivist.”

“You could always kill him.”

“Not without proof.”

Gerry sighed. Tim at first thought it was exasperation, but then he wrapped his arms around him from behind and hugged him tightly, and when Tim met his eyes in the mirror, he saw the genuine relief in them. “Thank God. You’re still you.”

Tim swallowed hard against the not totally unwarranted surge of guilt. “I’m not that angry with him. And…I can’t put Martin and Sasha at risk like that. Right now he’s the binding agent to their employment contracts, which means he’s the thing giving them the Institute’s protection. I kill him, anything could happen to them in the time it takes to get a new Archivist.”

“I would also like it if you would maybe not kill people who are still at least nominally human,” Gerry said with a raised eyebrow. “Apart from the fact that it’s kind of illegal, which admittedly hasn’t stopped us from a lot of things in the past, let’s not invite things to rush in and fill the spaces where humanity used to be if we can help it, yeah?”

“Thank God I have you to keep me sensible.” Tim gave Gerry a quick kiss. “Love you. See you at six. Try not to work too hard.”

It was a grey and drizzly morning. Since it wasn’t going to last the whole morning, and since Gerry had said he’d pick him up, Tim grabbed his umbrella on the way out the door. He’d given brief thought to using a newspaper again, but since he was wearing his good tailored suit and planning to go out later, he didn’t want to risk getting too mussed up. The early morning Tube held its usual eclectic mix of people, so he didn’t exactly stand out among the crowd.

Only as the train pulled into Stockwell did it occur to him that Martin might be wondering if Tim was going to offer him a ride in. He glanced at his phone, but there was no text. He also didn’t see Martin on the platform, though, so he’d just have to hope he wasn’t at home waiting for Tim to show up.

It wasn’t likely. They’d had brief contact here and there during Tim’s convalescence, mostly just checking in with each other, but Martin was good about reaching out. Reticent about what was going on at the Institute, although he had said Jon was back already, but he answered any questions or prompts from Tim readily enough. Mostly they’d talked about Rowlf, floated the possibility of meeting up at a park or something—that had never come to fruition—and a bit of desultory chatter about poetry or the weather. Tim had told Martin he was coming back in that morning, though.

Now, the question was whether Jon knew or not. Logically he should—even if the return to work forms went through Elias, technically, he ought to have informed Jon—but that didn’t mean he did. Tim certainly hadn’t told him. He was fairly sure he had Jon’s number…somewhere…but more importantly, Jon ought to have his number. And he hadn’t reached out, not once, to see how Tim was doing or get his statement or spook ominously at him.

Sasha hadn’t reached out either, and that hurt a little because he thought they’d been close, but at least that didn’t feel vaguely threatening like the absence of communication from Jon did.

He went in the front door when he got to the Institute, rather than the side door directly into the Archives. However many people were supposed to know Tim had returned, he wanted to be seen, he wanted people to know he had returned to the Institute and the Archives, because if Jon was going to do something to him he wanted people to know about it. It wasn’t likely, but then again, until they’d found her body Tim wouldn’t have thought Jon capable of killing Gertrude Robinson, so who knew. Whatever the case, no sense in making it easy.

He waved to Rosie, who waved back but—shockingly—didn’t try and engage him in conversation, nodded to a few other people who seemed to recognize him, and made his way down the steps. Pausing at the door, he took a deep breath, counted as much of one to five as he could currently remember, and opened it.

It looked the same as always. Again, he was confronted with the smells of industrial strength cleaning solvents, much more faded than they had been when he’d returned from his global jaunt but still there, and there was again the niggling sense of off, but for the most part, everything looked much as it had before Jane Prentiss had attacked. The only real new addition he could see was a square marked off with caution tape that presumably indicated where the trapdoor leading to the tunnels was. Tim dropped his umbrella in the stand and made a mental note to see if he could get into it later. Those tunnels would probably be worth exploring at some point.

“Well, hello there, stranger.”

A grin tugged at Tim’s mouth as he turned towards the voice and spread out his arms. “Get over here and give me a hug, you arse.”

Sasha complied almost before he finished the sentence, throwing her arms around his waist and squeezing him tightly. He hugged her back. The smell of her perfume—Chanel Number Five, he remembered, she’d joked about trying to take over Marilyn Monroe’s life—curled into his nostrils, and he notched another mark in the everything is still the same column. She still felt the same, too, warm and soft and round, the sort of gentle pillowy curves that would have been called pleasantly plump not too long ago, and she was dressed in her usual tiered maxi skirt and loose peasant top that was about three scarves and a tambourine away from being a dance costume, and he didn’t doubt that beneath them she wore the gold-strapped sandals she always wore as soon as it was warm enough to wear open toes and that she would ditch as soon as she got to her desk because she hated wearing shoes indoors. The Stranger’s mark still clung to her, too, the same as it always had, a tiny bit of common ground only Tim actually knew was common to them both that had given him something to build off of in bonding with her; she’d trust him with that secret someday, but in the meantime it was enough to know they’d both been marked by it.

“The scars look good on you,” she said, pulling back to study him. “They go well with the suit.”

“Shut up. What’s this all about?” Tim tugged teasingly at a shiny black curl and let it snap back into place. “Did you just decide to get a cut and a perm?”

Sasha laughed and shook her head, setting the corkscrews bobbing and oscillating around her head. “Just decided it was too much effort to straighten it every day. This is what I look like naturally. It looks shorter because it’s so curly, that’s all.”

“It suits you. Love the ‘Shirley Temple’s evil twin’ vibe you’ve got going.” Tim squeezed her hands tightly. “It’s good to see you again, Sash.”

“Good to see you, too, Tim.” Sasha’s topaz eyes sparkled with delight as she smiled up at him. “You’ve been missed.” Looking at something behind him, she added, “Hey, look what the cat dragged In.”

Tim turned around to see Martin, looking a bit on the pale and haggard side, with a stack of files in hand (already? Was he that late? He could’ve sworn it was earlier than that), emerging from the shelves. His whole face brightened in a genuine smile as he laid eyes on Tim, though, and at least some of the exhaustion and stress melted away. “Tim, hi!”

“Hey, Marto.” Tim held out his arms, and Martin barely stopped long enough to put down the files before hugging him back. “How are you doing, buddy?”

“Oh, you know, same old, same old,” Martin said with a nervous little laugh. “Can’t complain, really.”

“I bet you could.” Tim pulled back to study Martin critically. He was…obviously not having a great time. There were no two ways around that. The hints of the Lonely that teased around him didn’t look much stronger than they had before, which was good, but they weren’t noticeably fainter either. The dark circles under his eyes that had been there more or less since he’d moved into the Archives were gone, but the eyes themselves were worried and slightly haunted. He’d let his caramel-colored mop of hair grow out some, the curls looser than Sasha’s tight corkscrews but still neatly combed, and he’d gained a few new freckles, probably from actually being able to spend more time outside and out of the Archives. His lips were badly chapped, telling Tim he’d been licking and biting them, a sure sign of stress, and his arms showed signs that he’d been compulsively plucking hairs and then picking at the spots left behind. Probably the most surprising thing about him was that he was wearing, not just short sleeves—it was warm for early September—but an actual t-shirt. It was plain, granted, a simple olive green tee with a slightly threadbare pocket, but still way closer to dressed down than Martin ever got. Either he was finally relaxing enough to let himself be more casual, or he’d just stopped caring.

“Happy belated, by the way,” he added. “I know I told you over text, but I wanted to tell you in person.”

“Thanks, Tim.” Martin’s smile softened a little. “You want some tea? I was just going to make a cup.”

“I’ll never say no to your tea.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Martin’s eyes flickered briefly over to the door of the Archivist’s office. Under his breath, he added, “At least someone—”

As if on cue, the Archivist’s door opened, and there stood Jon. “Tim. You’re back.”

“Morning, boss,” Tim said. He managed to keep the anger and disgust out of his voice, but he couldn’t quite force cheer, and it came out rather flat.

“Come into my office.” Jon turned and went back into the office without another word, much less a please. Tim swallowed down his annoyance. Gertrude hadn’t always said please or thank you either, but she’d earned that. Jon hadn’t.

He glanced at Martin and Sasha. “Good to know nothing’s changed around here.”

“I’ll go get that tea,” Martin mumbled. He rubbed a hand over his face and slouched off in the direction of the break room.

Sasha watched him go, then shrugged apologetically at Tim. “You know how Martin is. He takes everything so personally.”

Tim decided to ignore that for the moment. Instead, he took a moment to settle his jacket properly around himself before heading into the Archivist’s office.

In contrast to Martin, Sasha, and indeed the Archives as a whole, Jon was an uncontested mess. His silver-streaked hair was growing out, too, but more in an “I can’t be bothered to cut it” way than a deliberate choice, and there was an almost frantic energy to his eyes that Tim didn’t like. His injuries hadn’t healed as well as Tim’s had, either—if the raised, jagged rings dotting his face and hands weren’t enough to give that away, the shiny orthopedic cane hooked over the edge of the desk was a pretty good clue—and the amber vial of prescription strength painkillers spoke of a long, slow road to recovery that was throwing up as many obstacles and detours as possible. He probably shouldn’t have been back at work yet, and despite himself, Tim found himself almost feeling sympathy for him.

Almost.

“Have a seat, Tim.” Jon rummaged through his desk for a moment and came out with the tape recorder, which he placed firmly on the desktop.

Considering how much he’d hated the damn thing prior to Prentiss’s attack, this was either a worrying development or a natural consequence of almost becoming another goddamned mystery. Tim wasn’t prepared to bet which way that would go. He eyed the recorder as he took his seat, but chose not to say anything about it. Yet. “Good to see you, too, Jon. So glad you came through that mess all right.”

“Yes, well, it’s good to see you too,” Jon said. It sounded rather as though he was reading the words off a cue card. He fished out a tape and studied it critically, then nodded and popped it into the recorder before turning it on. “I need your statement about the attack on the Institute.”

“I was with you for most of it,” Tim pointed out.

“I need the parts I wasn’t there for.” Jon looked up at Tim, and for just a moment, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is that going to be a problem?”

It absolutely was not. Tim looked into Jon’s dark eyes and knew he was the stronger of the two of them. Jon was still coming into his abilities, still accepting them, really, and Tim had been trained in keeping things way worse than the feral rat child hissing at him from the other side of the desk. He wasn’t going to get a damned thing out of Tim that Tim wasn’t good and ready to give him.

“Why would it be?” he asked. “Sure, go ahead, boss. I’ll give it to you as best I can. It’s been six weeks, after all.”

Jon pursed his lips briefly. “Right. Just start with the part where you left Document Storage.” He folded his hands on top of the desk. “Statement of Timothy Stoker, regarding the attack on the Institute. Statement given fifth September, 2016. Go.”

There was a little taste of static in the air, not much. Enough to flavor his statement and make sure he recalled everything correctly, Tim supposed, but not enough to force him to spill extra information or say anything he didn’t want to. “There’s not a lot to tell, really. I ran out to get Sasha out of Jane Prentiss’s way, then tried to get her out. A bunch of worms were on one of the shelves and it looked like it was going to collapse, so I yelled for her to get out the door and ran for the office to distract them. A few jumped at me, and when I tried to dodge them, I fell into what I thought was a box of case files but turned out to be full of extinguishers, which are damn hard, by the way. Still, lucky for me. I grabbed a few and sprayed the hell out of them, full on Gas Rambo. But, you know, they just kept on coming, and I was getting pretty fuzzy at this point from breathing carbon dioxide instead of your more traditional oxygen. I managed to shut the door to the office, and then I realized that hole was bigger, I guess because Prentiss came out of it. Thought the air might be clearer down there, so I went in, and I found the tunnels.”

“Did you know they were there?” Jon interrupted.

“No. Never even had an inkling,” Tim said honestly.

“Describe them. For the record.”

“They were…confusing. I have a theory, actually. I think it’s what’s left of the old Millbank Prison. But over the years they’ve probably shifted, so none of it makes any sense anymore, and it’s hard to navigate. Anyway, I wandered around for maybe ten minutes. There weren’t a lot of worms down there—I think they were all in the Archives by then, which was terrifying me a little, so I was mostly trying to find you and Martin to make sure you were okay. I wasn’t worried about Sasha. She got out, you know?” Tim swallowed at the memory. “At one point, I thought I’d found an exit, but it turned out to be a room. Full of worms. Pretty much most of them that weren’t upstairs by then, I thought.”

Jon swallowed hard. “What did you do?”

“What do you think? I pumped about two full extinguishers into the room,” Tim snorted. “Nothing was getting out of there alive. I got the hell out of there, too, and went back to looking for you. The rest you know. I found the weak place in the wall, we went back into the tunnels, we lost track of Martin, you and I found the trapdoor into the Archives, Jane Prentiss tried to eat our faces, and suddenly we were drowning in CO2. That’s the last thing I remember before I woke up.”

Jon pressed his lips together for a moment. “You left without saying anything.”

“Well, yeah. The paramedics said I was good to go,” Tim said with a shrug. “My partner turned up, and they released me into his care.”

“Did you stop to find out how anyone else was?”

“I was high on painkillers and still starved for oxygen, so no. I wasn’t even sure how I was.” A bit of a lie. Tim had wanted to look for the others—Martin, Sasha, even Jon—but Gerry had been worried about him and wanted to get him home, and then there was the fact that the Institute was so heavily quarantined he wouldn’t have been allowed back that way if he’d tried. Maybe he should have tried, maybe it would have made a difference, but then again, maybe not.

Jon gave him a sharp look. “Did you know about Gertrude Robinson?”

Something twisted in Tim’s gut, and he had to swallow back on the sudden surge of anger. It wouldn’t do to tip his hand to Jon too early, not until he was sure he wasn’t the killer, which was by no means certain at this point. With some difficulty, he said, “No. Not until Martin came by to check on me.”

“You worked with her fairly closely,” Jon pressed, still studying him intensely. “Do you have any theories on how it happened? Or why?”

Saying Yes, you would have been an incredibly stupid idea, and Tim’s anger clicked up a notch as he realized Jon was trying to pressure him into giving everything away. Two can play at that game. “As to why? She probably had something somebody wanted, and they killed her to get it, or to protect it. As for the how, she was too tough to die except by extreme force and sheer dumb luck, so I assume whoever shot her was someone who knew they wouldn’t get the drop on her any other way. Too weak, probably.”

His eyes flicked back and forth over Jon’s face, but he showed no signs of cracking. Either he was innocent, or he was a better actor than Tim gave him credit for. “Right…right. Do you have anything else to add?”

“Nope.” Tim drew out the N for a bit and popped the P sharply, making Jon jump.

He recovered quickly, though. “Right. Thank you. End recording.” He snapped off the recorder and sat back with a sigh. “You can go, Tim. Get a stack of files from Martin, or take some off the shelf if you’d prefer. We’re never going to get this place organized at this rate.”

At least he’d said thank you, Tim thought as he got to his feet and headed to the office door without a word. He opened it to find Martin stood there awkwardly, a cup of tea in each hand. “Oh! Tim, I—sorry, I didn’t realize you were done. Here, I’ve got your tea.” He offered Tim the mug in his right hand.

“Thanks, Marto.” Tim gave him a smile and accepted the mug, then stood aside so he could come in and give the other one to Jon.

“Thank you, Martin,” Jon said, a bit curtly. Martin’s face flushed, and he backed out of the office with Tim.

Tim waited until the door shut behind him before he asked, “Has he been like that since he got back?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Martin admitted. “I think he should have stayed away longer, honestly, but he gets grumpy any time I try to bring it up, so I just kind of gave up. Maybe you can help me talk him into taking some extra time off. He needs it.”

“Maybe,” Tim agreed. Privately he doubted it. If Jon was innocent, he’d want to be back to keep boredom from setting in…and if he was guilty, he’d want to be back to keep the others from getting suspicious. It was a lose-lose situation for the rest of them. Or at least specifically for Tim.

And the worst of it was, he was even less certain what the truth was than he had been before.

He forced a smile and nudged Martin gently. “Here, show me what you’ve been up to while I’ve been gone so I don’t undo all the hard work you did. This place looks great. I bet that’s mostly due to you.”

Martin demurred, but he seemed pleased with the compliment. Tim would take that as a win.

It was probably the only win he was going to get for a good long while.