Work Text:
Near the end, Jon himself didn’t even identify as human. A person, sure, but not a human being. When thinking about himself in terms of taxonomy; genus Beholding, species Archivist. No longer Homo sapiens sapiens. Surprisingly, the shift in how he identified wasn’t the most upsetting thing about the whole ordeal.
The slow, sneaking development of abilities like compulsion and Seeing, the loss of autonomy and change in nutritional necessities, invasive and disturbing, but not the worst part. The worst part, once Jon began looking back, was the mental changes.
He didn’t notice while it was happening, how could he? He accepted a new job and began to grow into the role. Contrary to popular belief, he did used to have a healthy work-life balance. Sure, there was some overtime but he normally clocked out at the appropriate time, even early sometimes. That isn’t to say he had any sort of a social life, no he would grab a bite to eat and head home and read until he fell asleep, or go on deep Wikipedia dives until he had to come up for air.
All of this changed when Jon signed that fucking contract. The night of his promotion he couldn’t sleep, too full of nerves for his first day as head archivist. But that was normal, a huge promotion he was barely qualified for deserved nerves. He spent the night researching good archival practices, and the best ways to digitize and make the files accessible. It was the next week he bought the cot for Document Storage.
It got to the point where he wondered why he still paid rent, he hadn’t seen his home in weeks. He brushed it off as having too much work to do in the archive, Gertrude really left a mess, he found what may have once been a sandwich under a pile of statements from even years only, whose author’s last name started with Q. So there was some organization, it was just completely incomprehensible, inconsistent, and fucking weird.
After a few months on the job, parts of the archive were becoming well and truly organized; the files digitized and accessible through the library computers complete with audio files and images from research, completed follow up research, and sorted into discredited and inconclusive sections. Putting each file away in its proper place felt, good. Like a piece of his soul had unclenched into something smooth and relaxed. Jon thought maybe this was just the result of hard work finally beginning to pay off.
Jon was always curious. Always wanted to know more, learn more, take in all of the available information and do research into more. There were full notebooks in his apartment filled with information about different hyperfixations. But that was the thing, he had to actually care in order to seek information. He wasn’t particularly interested in people’s secrets or drama, his interests lay in the historical; metalsmithing practices of the 1500s, different cults and the sociopolitical and economic forces that drove their formation, and so on. It wasn’t until he was promoted that he truly wanted to know more about Everything. People’s secrets, their motivations, the Drama of it all. He just wanted to know. Again, he chalked it up to the job, he needed to know why people did the things they did in statements, what led them to make the statement in the first place in order to do his job properly.
The paranoia was also new. He wasn’t particularly trusting to begin with, he’d been burned in too many social interactions, by too many people he’d trusted to give it away so easily. With the new curiosity about people’s secrets, came a nagging question of “what if?” Facial expressions were hard to read on a good day, and adding in the fear that came from constant what-ifs and fatalistic thinking, and the knowledge that the tunnels had been under his feet the whole time, with the former head archivist rotting away, allowing Jane Prentiss to come knocking through the wall, Jon felt like he probably had good reason to be paranoid. He thought himself in circles, he would rule out a theory and find a reason to rule out ruling it out and so on, the questions he would ask himself, what if what if what if what if what if what if what if. The fucking questions. A never-ending cycle of questions and theories and hypotheses that never led anywhere safe. He did think he should probably see a psychiatrist but that would require leaving the archives unattended during work hours for at least two hours.
There was another one, territoriality. It was a good thing the archives were closed to the public. Jon started to think he couldn’t handle just anyone walking into his archives. He needed to prepare himself for it, for allowing someone unknown into his domain. God knows what they could get up to, what they could get into, what they might do to his statements. Looking back on the Prentiss incident, some part of Jon still raged how dare she? Learning about Martin’s burning of statements felt like a deep, deep betrayal that still sent a spike through his heart.
The most insidious change, however, was his ethics. The stalking seemed justifiable in order to get new information, to gather knowledge, the only reason at the time that Jon felt badly was that everyone had found out and reacted poorly. He didn’t regret getting the information, it was useful and it kept him and the archive safe. Feeding on live statements felt like a thrill, like a piece of himself was given back. It hurt if he didn’t feed, and the written statements were stale, to the point of being expired and making him sick if he did read them. He got sick and weak if he read the wrong statements, and it was only made worse by not taking any statements at all. He needed to be strong to protect the archives his people. He felt badly about the trauma and the nightmares the victims givers had to endure afterward, and they didn’t exactly help with his sleep schedule either, but seeing the statements again and again led to more information being discovered, more knowledge to be gathered. In retrospect, Jon was appalled with himself. He could barely stand to live with himself before his morals started slipping, but looking back with a clear head, recently fed and as relaxed as he could get, the most human he could get, he barely recognized what he was seeing.
None of these were obvious to the people around him, he never let them that close before to see that there was a difference, and Georgie definitely reacted poorly to it, but thought it was just natural change that happened to a person, slow but inevitable, and Jon had always been a bit of a prick.
Martin though, Martin had been crushing on Jon since Jon’s third year working at the Institute. They met in the cafeteria and Martin fell in love instantly. Jon, on the other hand wondered why this giant was staring at him, did he have something on his face? Martin wasn’t exactly a friend or peer, Jon rarely spoke to him beyond a polite hello when passing in hallways, but Martin saw Jon. There were absolutely rose-colored glasses, but Martin saw Jon’s habits. Enough that he recognized a difference in Jon after his promotion. He also decided it was the new job. New responsibilities, new expectations, new environment. It wasn’t until after Leitner and meeting Daisy and Basira in a more personal way that he began to put the pieces together.
Martin saw the changes, beyond just the physical ones, and he fell in love. Then, Jon died and Peter Lukas was honest and the world was ending, and somewhere along the way, Martin went numb. Jon woke up and Martin couldn’t bring himself to jeopardize the lives of everyone on the planet just for the sake of his pathetic, unrequited crush on his boss, of all people.
Martin gets his feelings back slowly once Jon rescues him from the Lonely. In the safehouse, they all hit, all at once. He spends a few hours sobbing in the tub under hot water before he gets up and Jon offers him a mug full of tea, a hug, and a towel, in that order. There’s three bedrooms in the safehouse, but Jon can’t bring himself to let Martin out of his sight, his assistant was taken from him and Martin can’t stand to be apart from him unless he has to, so they share the biggest bed with the most blankets.
“I’m not human anymore, but I’m still a person, I don’t think that’s a bad thing, necessarily. I mean, obviously the moral stuff isn’t great and, and the specific diet and weird- instincts? I guess are inconvenient at best and horrifying at worst, but I-”
Martin covers Jon’s mouth with his hand, smiling. “You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Jon. Not about this, not right now. You’re Jon, and you’re mine.”