And If Thou Wilt, Forget

Tim didn’t sleep that night, which was less than comforting. Ordinarily he’d have welcomed a night without dreams, even if it meant he’d be utterly exhausted when he got to work the next morning, but something told him that the fact that, no matter how long he lay in the darkness listening to Gerry’s breathing and willing sleep to come, he remained wide awake and watchful was likely to mean something with unfortunate implications.

He stared at the ceiling, tracing the whorls in the plaster and imagining them to be his own thoughts. The rituals would fail on their own, which meant they didn’t actually need to worry about the Unknowing…which meant they’d been wasting their time for the last three years. On the other hand, Gertrude’s note had explicitly given him the blessing to blow the Unknowing to hell anyway. While it could have been a revenge thing—letting Tim take down the thing that had destroyed his brother, the way she’d taken down the thing that had destroyed her sister—he somehow thought there might have been more to it than that.

It occurred to him, as his eyes lit on a particularly deep shadow that he couldn’t quite see all the way into, that the Dark hadn’t just given up when their ritual failed. Sure, he hadn’t seen much in the way of activity, but he’d managed to find Jon’s backup tapes and listened to one that had turned out to be Basira Hussein’s statement about the kidnapping case that had led to her quitting the police force, so he knew what had happened, or almost happened, to Callum Brodie—which had gone a long way towards explaining why Gerry had had so much trouble with the lighting in his painting, anyway. But the incident at Outer Bay Shipping had ended in five deaths, including a police officer, and left a boy scarred and deeply marked. If Gertrude had disrupted it properly—maybe if she'd come to Ny-Ålesund and blown it up, or done something violent like that—it would have saved a few lives. Maybe that was the reason for letting him continue to disrupt it. The Stranger couldn’t come through, but that didn’t mean people couldn’t get hurt, even killed, in the attempt.

So maybe they hadn’t wasted their time. Even if the world wouldn’t end. Still…it was a hard pill to swallow. Realizing how many people Gertrude had sacrificed, apparently without mercy, was a hard one to swallow as well. She’d spoken as though she wasn’t willing to sacrifice him or Gerry, but he had to acknowledge that he didn’t know that for sure, and now he never would. He vowed to himself, once again, that he wouldn’t let anyone else be fodder for the grist of the mills of the Fourteen. If anyone was going to die to them—which he didn’t plan on—it was going to be him.

And a fine job you’re doing protecting them, a voice whispered in the back of his mind, slimy and insidious and oh so persuasive. You let the Corruption into the Archives and nearly take the Archivist’s life. You let the Stranger into the Archives and called it friend. You let the Spiral slide through your defenses and attack the Archivist and tried to pretend you were fixing it. You’ve left the Archives unguarded so many times to follow your own desires. And can you truly say what’s been around him since he left? Have you even tried to find him, let alone defend him?

“Get thee behind me, Satan,” Tim muttered, crossing himself with his free hand.

Gerry stirred beside him. “Mmm…Tim? You ‘wake?”

“Yeah, babe, I’m awake.” Tim ran a hand through Gerry’s hair. It was down past his shoulders now, and he’d taken to dyeing it again, with Tim’s help so it came out evenly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“You didn’t. I don’t think.” Gerry slid himself up a bit to rest his head on Tim’s chest. “Heard you talking to Satan and assumed you were addressing me.”

“Ha. Ha ha. Very funny.” Tim sighed. “No, just…my brain being an asshole. Or one of the Fourteen trying to get me to give into despair. You know, enumerating all the ways I’ve failed at keeping Jon and the others safe.”

“Safe doesn’t mean totally free from harm,” Gerry pointed out. “You’ve kept them alive. And as we discovered yesterday, that’s probably more than Gertrude would have bothered with.”

“I wish I could say you were wrong.”

“Believe me, so do I. But I’m glad I’m not wrong about you. You did everything you possibly could.”

“Did I?” Tim said bitterly. “Three different agents of other Fears got into the Archives, on my watch, and attacked Jon. And I didn’t do anything to stop them.”

“Bullshit.” Gerry half sat up and leaned his elbows pointedly on Tim’s chest, pinning him down. “The Corruption worked its way in through a method you couldn’t detect, and you still did what you could to keep it out—you had no way of knowing just how bad it was. The Stranger literally rewrote your memories, there was no possible way you could have stopped it, and you still were suspicious enough of it to look into it. The Spiral stole its way in after someone it had already marked while you were out of the Archives—you couldn’t stay in there indefinitely, and even if you’d been there, how much could you have really done?”

“If it had been Gertrude…well, it wouldn’t have got that far, I don’t think, but if she’d been the Archivist then instead of Jon, I’d have still been in the Archives.” Tim grabbed Gerry’s elbows and lifted them up to give himself enough room to scoot up to a sitting position. “I guess that’s what’s really getting me right now. I…I really and truly thought Jon had killed Gertrude, and I let that color my movements. I left him unguarded because, in the end, did I really care if he lived or died?”

“Yes,” Gerry said simply. “You did. Maybe it was because you said that if anyone was going to kill the little bastard it was going to be you, but you honestly didn’t even really believe he was the murderer by that point, did you? What were you going to do, get him one of those backpacks with a lead on it they sell to put on toddlers?”

Tim sighed. “Okay, maybe I couldn’t have really stopped anything from getting to him. Then. Short of being there to defend him, or…scaring off potential predators, there’s only so much I can do, after all. But I didn’t exactly give him reason to trust me, did I? I practically drove him towards the threats.”

“You absolutely did not. Any more than you drove Martin towards them. Jon was paranoid, from what you said, he wasn’t going to trust anyone or anything if he could help it, no matter what you did. Hell, if he didn’t trust Martin, he sure wasn’t going to trust you.”

“Christ, Martin.” Tim blew out a long, slow breath. “I haven’t done him any favors, either. He’s having a shitty time of it as it is, and I definitely made it worse running off to Russia without warning like I did. Never mind Jon, he’s never going to trust me again.”

Gerry shrugged. “Well, you’ve got a chance there.”

Tim blinked. “What makes you say that?”

“You work with him, Tim. You see him five days a week. As a matter of fact, you’re going to see him in just a couple of hours. You’re both alive and in good health. Until you’re both dead, seems to me you’ve got every chance at repairing your relationship.” Gerry kissed the tip of Tim’s nose and pushed himself up from the bed. “Why not start on that today?”

It was…a startlingly simple statement, and a shockingly simple solution. And it probably wouldn’t work. But Gerry was right, Tim thought as he tossed the covers back and swung his legs out of bed. The only thing he could do was try. And he’d already acknowledged he was going to have to be the one to reach out first. Might as well make a start on it sooner rather than later.

He took Rowlf for a run, showered, and dressed without particularly paying attention to what he was wearing, snagging a hoodie on his way out the door. He assumed it was a plain one until he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the train’s window and noticed the gigantic red bear silhouette on the front. Oh, well, he thought to himself, Melanie showed up in promotional shirts for her ghost hunting show all the damned time, they could deal with Tim rocking a sports hoodie, depending on what he had on underneath it.

He glanced down the front and bit back a groan when he spotted the top of the decal. Well. Either that would help or it wouldn’t.

On an impulse, he got off at Victoria Station and walked to the café he remembered Sasha visiting. He was pretty sure that was a real memory—she’d said as much on the tapes, and he remembered stopping there with her once. If he forced himself, really forced himself, he could remember her teasing him about not remembering his umbrella and buying him a cup of coffee as a thank you. As he placed his orders, the knowledge suddenly slammed into his mind that the thanks had been not only for supporting her after her encounter with Michael, but for getting between her and the professional dog-walker on the corner. Sasha, the real Sasha, was deathly afraid of dogs.

Tim swallowed back the sudden surge of grief and guilt, accepted his purchases, and set off down the street again. It fortunately wasn’t so cold that the drinks were likely to go bad before he got to the Institute, but he did have to struggle a bit to juggle things around so he could maneuver the keys into the lock. Finally, though, he made it into the Archives, made his way to the cluster of desks, and set down the box of assorted pastries before placing a coffee on each desk. Hopefully Melanie liked it…and didn’t assume he was trying to poison her.

Actually, he was less concerned about her than he was about Martin.

He was just coming out of the storage closet with a stack of napkins when the man in question came in, looking about how he usually did first thing on a Monday—tired and stressed. Tim hung back for a moment to give him a chance to compose himself without knowing he was observed, but the moment he laid eyes on the coffee and his brows furrowed in confusion, he stepped forward. “Morning, Marto. I know you don’t usually do coffee, but I got you a half-caf. Cream, sugar, and a sprinkle of cinnamon.”

Martin checked and blinked at him. “Uh…how did you know that’s how I like my coffee?”

Shit. Tim considered the merits of lying, or covering up with a simple story, but…honestly, Martin deserved better. Especially from him. “I just did. Hazard of working down here for an extended period of time. It’s safe, though, I promise. So are the pastries.”

That did not appear to appease Martin in the slightest. He eyed the coffee on Melanie’s desk. “So what did you get Mel?”

“Black, two sugars, with extra shot of espresso. And she hates being called Mel,” Tim told him. Martin grunted. “Mine’s a flat white. And since you’re going to ask, Jon’s not much of a coffee drinker either, and on the rare occasions he does he just drinks it black because he hates wasting time.”

At least that got a tiny smile, albeit a brief one, out of Martin. “And the pastries?”

“Two apple fritters, a cinnamon bun with a frankly insulting amount of glaze, two plain cake donuts, and a chocolate croissant. That and one of the fritters are yours.” Tim held up a hand. “Nothing clever about that. I just paid attention to what you picked that time Sasha brought in an assortment when you were living in the Archives.”

Martin’s shoulders slumped. “Was that even real?”

Tim sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Enough of the broad strokes of our memories would be the same. Even if the real Sasha never brought them in, I’m not wrong about your preferences, am I?”

“No.” Martin sighed heavily and opened the box. “Thanks, by the way. I do mean that. I, uh, kind of forgot to eat anything this morning.”

Tim watched Martin devour the croissant in three bites. “What about last night?”

Martin mumbled something around the mouth of the coffee cup that sounded enough like I forgot that Tim was prepared to start nagging. Before he could, though, Melanie stomped into the Archives. She, too, stopped at the sight of the desk, then frowned at Martin. “How’d you know I didn’t have time to stop and get coffee?”

Martin pointed at Tim, who shrugged and repeated, “Occupational hazard. There’s a donut and a cinnamon bun in there for you, too…this place is a lot stingier on the glaze than the one I brought the box from the other day, but that bakery didn’t really sell much in the way of coffee.”

“I’ll live.” Melanie grabbed one of the donuts. “Assuming you haven’t poisoned the pastries, that is.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, that would be far too obvious,” Tim deadpanned. “The poison’s on your pen. I know you chew on the end. So, what are we planning to do this morning that doesn’t involve us going out of the Archives?”

“Why do we need to not leave the Archives?” Martin sounded suspicious.

Tim prodded his brain, then poked the Ceaseless Watcher—as stupid as that was—but both remained stubbornly (and, in the case of the Beholding, smugly) silent on the matter. “Genuinely, I do not know. I just get these annoying instincts sometimes, and this one is telling me that we all need to stay indoors today.”

“Maybe it’s going to rain,” Melanie said sarcastically. “Well, in that case, I’ve got a few files I need to look into. I had other ones that were more pr—um, interesting, and I let a bunch sit.”

Martin sighed. “I’ve got a couple that are giving me trouble. I think I’ll poke into them. What about you, Tim?”

“Melanie kind of made a good point last week,” Tim said. He flashed his middle finger at her in response to her dramatic, exaggerated gasp of shock. “We do need some kind of research database. At the very least, we need some sort of contact directory, yeah? I’m going to take some time to see if I can code up something on Mister Megabytes so we can get an idea of what we need to put in it.”

Melanie frowned at the computer. “Why do you have such an ancient piece of tech, anyway? I mean, it fits with the damned tape recorders, but did it ever occur to Gertrude Robinson to, you know, update it at some point in the last twenty years?”

“That is the update. Elias had it installed three years ago,” Tim told her. “I think it was his idea of a joke. Backfired on him, though, because we made it work. We never had a computer before that.”

“Jesus,” Melanie muttered under her breath, flopping down into her chair and reaching for her stack of files.

The morning passed more or less as normal. Actually, it almost felt like the normal of before—before the murder, before the paranoia, before Prentiss’s attack. Maybe it was the tense normal from when Martin had been living in the Archives, but at least it wasn’t the open hostility and suspicion that had become all too commonplace. Tim even dared let himself relax a little. Clearly he’d hit the right note, with the honesty and the coffee both. At the very least it was a start.

“I need to verify something up in the library,” Melanie announced, thumping her boots off her desk and onto the floor. “Permission to step outside the confines of the Archives, Commander Stoker?”

“Permission granted, Cadet King,” Tim replied crisply. “Just don’t leave the boundaries of the Institute.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Melanie gave him a sarcastic salute and marched with the precision of either a soldier or a drum major out of the room.

“If this were actually the military, she’d be dropping and giving me fifty for insubordination,” Tim said dryly. He turned around. “You doing okay there, Freckles?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Martin muttered. The response was more than half mechanical.

Tim hesitated, then saved his file, ejected the disk, and set it on the table before crossing over to sit on the edge of Martin’s desk. “Are you sure? Look, I know I get on you about not taking care of yourself, but I’m genuinely worried. You look like you haven’t slept in six weeks, you’re not eating properly, and, you know, I was trying to let you have some semblance of privacy by pretending I didn’t see it, but I know you put on a mask when you come in on Mondays. Today seemed worse than usual.” He reached out tentatively, but didn’t touch. “Let me help you, Martin. Please. At least tell me what’s up.”

Martin hesitated for a moment, then looked up, met Tim’s eyes, and sagged. “I, er—I went looking for Jon this weekend. I, I know what you said about, about not, b-but that was weeks ago and I’m sure she’s not…anyway, I just, I know he’s alive, I don’t know how, but I needed to know he was okay, and I thought, I thought maybe if I found him I could tell him he wasn’t a suspect and it was safe for him to come back, or, or at least help him, you know? But I couldn’t find him, and…it maybe took more time than I thought.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “And then there’s…all this. Melanie, and the statements, and the murder, and you l—” He snapped his jaw closed with an almost audible click.

“And I left you to deal with it on your own,” Tim completed. “Without so much as a by your leave. I made you feel like you weren’t important enough to know what I was planning or what I was doing, and that wasn’t fair to you. No wonder you didn’t believe me when I told you that I wouldn’t have left m—the Archives unguarded.”

“I—yeah. Yeah, that hurt a lot,” Martin admitted. “I know everybody thinks, ‘oh, it’s Martin, he’ll be fine, he’ll just go make the tea and keep things ticking along while we go off and do the real work,’ but—”

“I absolutely do not think that way.” Tim slid off the desk and knelt down beside Martin to look up at him seriously. “Martin, believe me when I tell you that if there had been any other way to handle that, I would have. I trusted you to keep things together while I was gone—the same way Gertrude always trusted me—and I definitely knew you’d do the real work. Did I underestimate how…docile and willing to go along without question you’d be? Absolutely, and I sincerely apologize for that. I assumed you would trust me without realizing that I hadn’t given you any reason to. I am genuinely sorry. I had…a very good reason that I couldn’t tell you ahead of time what I was planning. If you want, I’m happy to tell you tonight, but…”

“Let’s…table that until Friday, maybe? If it’s going to keep me up all night, I’d rather do it when I don’t have to pretend to be functional the next day.”

“Entirely fair. But you will sleep tonight.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Martin said in a fair imitation of Melanie’s bark.

Tim grinned and pushed himself to a standing position. “That’s the spirit. By the way, when Melanie gets back, if you want to go up to the canteen for lunch, go for it. Or go sit…somewhere that’s not here to eat, if you brought from home.”

“You’re really serious about us not going outside, then?” Martin suddenly got serious again, looking up at Tim with something that was almost like trust. “Is there something dangerous out there, then?”

Tim pursed his lips. “I—I don’t know how to explain it, Martin. It’s not exactly danger I’m sensing. More…something oppressive, like thunder.”

Martin’s eyebrows lifted, just a little. “If you say so, Fiver.”

“I’m definitely more Bigwig than Fiver, but the sentiment stands, I guess.” Tim grinned. “Should’ve known you were a fan of that book.”

“I—I’ve actually only read the first part,” Martin confessed. “I had a copy on my phone, my old one, but I’d only got as far as them joining the new warren before…you know, the whole thing with Jane Prentiss. And it was a download from somewhere, so…I just never got back to it.”

“The new warren…you mean they’d made it to Watership Down? Or was it—did you get as far as the King’s Lettuce?”

“The what? The only lettuce mentioned was what was stolen for the, um…the Chief Rabbit.”

Tim shook his head in only half playful despair. “Oh, jeez, you haven’t even got to the really good bits yet. I’ll dig out my copy tonight and loan it to you. You’ll love it.”

Martin smiled wanly. “Sure, Tim. Thanks.”

Melanie returned a few minutes later, clutching a small stack of books, and Martin spent a bit longer typing before closing his laptop. “I’m going to run up to the canteen and get a sandwich to bring back here…Tim, Melanie, you want anything?”

“BLT on rye. Thanks, Martin.” Tim pulled a twenty pound note out of his wallet and handed it to Martin. “Keep the change.”

“Turkey’s fine.” Melanie cracked open the book she had selected and began to read.

Tim waited for a thank you, then sighed when Martin walked away without bothering to get one. Either he knew not to expect one or didn’t think he deserved one. Once it was just the two of them, though, he asked Melanie, “Is this for work, or a personal project?”

The way that she glared at him over the top of the book told him he wasn’t that far off. “Does it matter, as long as I get my work done?”

“Well, it might matter, because if I know what you’re trying to find out I can tell you if those books are going to help or not, but if it’s for a personal project I’m pretty sure you’ll lie to me.”

“If I want your help, I’ll ask for it.”

“Nobody gets what they want in the Archives, Miss King. I—” Tim stopped and snapped his head up as abrupt awareness flooded over him, and he suddenly understood exactly what Fiver must have felt when he beheld the notice board across from the warren. The danger he had been anticipating all day was here, and the field was full of blood.

“What?” Melanie asked, sounding annoyed and concerned in equal measures.

Tim ignored her. He shoved to his feet, knocking the chair over with a clatter and the peculiar soft rumble of a flapping caster wheel, and strode towards the door of the Archives, his heart hammering ninety to the dozen. Something got in, something’s here, something got in something got in something got in something got in…

He flung open the door and nearly slammed into Martin, who looked as though he had been hurrying himself. He gave a startled oomph and backed off a step.

“Are you hurt? What happened?” Tim barked.

“Jon’s here,” Martin blurted out, looking from Tim to Melanie and back. “Jon’s here and he’s angry, and he’s not alone.”

Tim didn’t wait for anything further. He shouldered past Martin, ignoring his flustered cries, and stormed for the steps. He didn’t need to ask where Jon was—he could sense it like the draw of a magnet—and damned if he wasn’t going up there. He could hear Martin and Melanie following behind him, running to catch up, which was good. He couldn’t leave them unguarded, but like the shepherd searching for his hundredth lamb, he had to get to Jon. Before it was too late.

He had to protect his flock.