Chaptered Fics
“So...you’re from the future. In the past. Why?”
“You want the short answer or the long one?”
“Short,” Martin says after a moment’s deliberation. “Until I decide if I trust you.”
The other nods, as if he expected that answer—which, well, if he really is Martin from the future, he probably did. “To stop the world from ending.”
They have one last chance to fix this - one last chance to prevent the Eyepocalypse, to save the world - to save their world. It all hinges on which is the greater force: greed...or love.
He’s resigned to dying, has been since he found out about the tumor…or at least he thought he was…but at the core of it, he wants to live. Not that he has much choice. He’s already dead, anyway. Just a memory on a page. The book is going to burn itself out in a second, and he’ll burn out with it.
No more second chances. No heading back to England for him. Just…whatever comes next.
So be it. He doesn’t like it, but it’s not really up to him, after all, is it?
“Your bond was to the Archivist, Tim. Not the Institute as a whole, or even to the Archives specifically. Without her to keep you here, you can walk away with no harm done, if that is your decision.”
Tim stared into Elias’s calm grey eyes and, somehow, knew he was telling the truth. If Gertrude Robinson was dead, Tim could leave the Institute behind forever, or he could bind himself to the service of the Archivist who came next, likely someone much younger and more likely to last years, even decades. He would once again be bound to the Institute for the rest of his natural life.
When he put it that way, it was really no choice at all.
Or, the AU where Tim is Gertrude's assistant.