Archive of Our Own ^beta

The world did not end.

That should have been a victory. It should have tasted like sunlight and relief, like breath returning to lungs too long held in suspense.

But it tastes like ash. It tastes like the space left behind in a shared bed that no longer warms at night.

The world did not end. But yours did.

You move through your days in a fog, heavy with silence that feels deliberate. London is quieter now, as if it’s mourning with you, holding its breath and waiting to see what fills the vacuum that’s left. You feel it, the emptiness in the world, in the weave of things. A stitch undone in the fabric of time. The fear is gone. The Entities no longer feed, no longer shape reality. And still, your own fear lingers. Less cosmic or existential. Personal.

You lost them. And the world expects that to be enough. They saved everything. And now you’re expected to live in the ruins, grateful.

One time, shortly after the world had returned to what it had been, you had tilted your head to the sky and whispered, “Was it worth it?”

Your voice had been swallowed by the open air, not even the wind offering a response.

But of course it was. Of course it was. They had ended it. Together. You were the one left behind, not because they didn’t love you, but because you couldn’t go where they were going. Because they had entrusted you with lighting the fuse meant to rid the Entities of this world.

You try not to resent them for it. Most days, you fail.

Time passes. It drags. It skips. It collapses in on itself.

Georgie helped where she could, bringing food and sitting in silence when words weren’t right. Occasionally Basira would stop by, still guarded and tired, carrying the world on her shoulders. She was the one who found the tape recorder.

You remember how tightly your hands had clenched when she told you. A tape recorder. Just...sitting there. Working. But when she played it, there had been nothing, no voice. No Web. No Eye. Just static, and then it cut off. As if the last thread had been severed.

“Dead,” she’d said. “Like the rest of it.”

You’d swallowed the grief. Like ash.

You went back once.

It was a compulsion more than a choice, your feet drawing you toward that old building like iron to lodestone. When you arrived, the world had already moved on. You stood alone in the ruins of what used to be the Magnus Institute. Just a jagged shell remained, gnarled steel supports jutting from the earth, seemingly the ribs of something ancient, scorched and skeletal.

People passed by it without looking, instinctively averting their eyes, leaving you to walk through the rubble alone, your boots crunching over broken glass and warped tiles and something finer, paper turned to dust. You knew where everything used to be: the Archives, the stacks, the break room, the stairs you hated. Jon’s office. Or where it used to be.

It had been reduced to nothing, just dust and debris and a crooked hole in the earth where truths were once devoured.

The wind picked up slightly, brushing over your skin. It felt like fingertips, someone unseen tucking hair behind your ear. You closed your eyes.

They weren’t there. You knew that. But the ache in your chest sometimes feels like a presence. Like love has a shape that refuses to leave, even after the bodies are gone.

Your gaze returned to the rubble. You remembered laughter here, warmth. Even amidst the horrors. Now there was only silence.

Somehow you had expected more. Some kind of…echo. A whisper, a voice, some Eye-shaped imprint of Jon lingering in the air. But there was nothing. The Institute was quiet. Obliterated.

You only stayed for ten minutes.

By the end, your breath was too tight in your lungs, and your palms had begun to sweat like they did in nightmares. Somewhere behind your sternum, something cracked, something far less tangible than the ash and debris beneath your feet, something far more vital.

So you left, tears blurring the path out, and swore never to go back.

Some days you remember Martin’s hands, paint-stained, ink-smudged, always warm, and you feel like you’re suffocating under the weight of not hearing his laugh again. It was a soft sound, comforting. Sometimes you sleep on his side of the bed. It smells like him. You don’t know if you’re imagining it. It feels like you are.

Other days it’s Jon’s voice that haunts you, not the Archivist’s crisp cadence, Jon’s. When he said your name like it was a question and a promise all at once. When he read aloud to Martin and you late at night, words rolling over the three of you, covering you, a blanket stitched from forgotten dreams. When he smiled that rare, surprised smile, like he didn’t quite believe he was allowed to be happy.

You weren’t supposed to be part of their story, at first. Just a friend. A researcher. A steady presence in a place where sanity had a short shelf life. But the three of you found each other like stars collapsing toward gravity. Slowly. Inevitably. With awe and disbelief and a kind of tenderness that the Fears couldn’t touch.

You don’t know what to do with yourself without them. You’ve existed in a holding pattern. Sleep. Get up. Stare at the walls. Try not to look at the notebook where you once scrawled dreams and timelines, and the little hearts you used to draw when Martin made you laugh.

You visit their old flats sometimes. Martin’s plants have died. You tried to keep them alive, but they seemed to know their caretaker is gone. The rooms are full of ghosts. They're not the kind the Institute dealt with. These ghosts are your own. Just memories clinging to objects. Memories wearing the faces of the two men you loved. The faded indentation on the sofa where Jon curled up with his legs tucked beneath him, reading statements until he’d fall asleep. The teacups chipped at the rims that Martin insisted were “aesthetic.” The stack of vinyl records, half of them scratched, half of them terrible, all of them loved.

You sit on the floor sometimes and talk aloud. You pretend it’s not strange. Grief does strange things.

“I cleaned today,” you tell them one evening, flicking lint off your leggings. “Wasn’t even that dirty, but I thought you would approve.”

You laugh, hollow.

“I still use the lavender detergent. Sorry, Jon.” You imagine him rolling his eyes but secretly pleased that you remember. That you care. You remember everything.

Your voice cracks. “And I made shepherd’s pie the way we used to. You’d laugh if you saw it. The crust was wrong. God, it was all wrong. I’m sorry.”

Nothing answers, of course. And yet you wait. Every time.

Sometimes, you think you do hear them.

A sigh that doesn’t come from your mouth. The creak of a floorboard beneath unseen feet. A warmth at your back just as you’re about to fall asleep. You used to think it was your mind unraveling. Now, you wonder if it’s grief’s way of keeping you from breaking apart.

You still dream of them.

Sometimes it’s snippets of memories: Jon complaining about the photocopier. Martin rambling about poetry and jam. That one time they both tried to surprise you with breakfast after you had all been working way too late and set the toaster on fire.

Sometimes it’s warmth: Martin’s arms encircling you with a promise, Jon’s hand slipping silently into yours as if it had never left, the way they both looked at you like you were a safe place in a world that had none left.

Tonight it’s the Archives. They’re whole, just as they used to be, but brighter. As if the lights finally worked properly, and the damp didn’t reach into your bones. You’re not alone. You feel it before you see them. Jon sits at his desk, his pen stilling as he looks up. His eyes are tired, but they soften when they meet yours. Martin stands beside him, arms folded, eyes wide with that same stunned happiness he wore the day you first kissed him. They don’t speak. They just look at you like you’re real, like you matter, like you’re home.

You try to run to them, but your legs won’t move.

When you wake up, your cheeks are wet.

It’s been weeks now. Maybe a month or two. You’ve stopped counting. Time doesn’t move the same when grief still lives in your bones, a tenant who’s overstayed their lease.

The city is healing, piece by piece. Scars are covered over with fresh paint and the hollow places are filled with new construction. Life pretends like it was always here.

It’s a quiet Sunday, the kind that hums faintly with passing cars and afternoon light bleeding through the curtains. Your flat still feels too big.

You curl your hands tighter around the chipped cup in your palms. The tea’s gone cold. You hadn’t realised you weren’t drinking it.

It had been a habit. One of those small, domestic rituals that felt like anchors back when everything around you twisted and cracked under the weight of gods. Martin used to make it for you – milky and sweet and you didn’t have the heart to tell him it was too sweet – and for Jon when he was still learning how to take it without flinching at human kindness.

You had resisted the urge to make two extra cups.

You’re in an old hoodie Martin used to wear, a comforting weight, even if it’s fraying at the sleeves. You almost don’t answer the door when the knock comes.

But something in your chest tells you to get up and open it.

Georgie stands there in her long coat, scarf wrapped twice around her neck, hair a bit tousled from the wind. Her eyes are tired. Worn, but not broken. She gives you a sad smile.

“Hi.”

Your voice croaks on the word: “Georgie?”

“Can I come in?”

You step aside wordlessly. She moves into the living room with the same gentle presence she’s always had, someone who knows what it's like to live with ghosts.

She hangs her coat, glancing once at your living room.

Still a few framed photos turned face-down. Still books everywhere. You don’t read anymore, not like you used to. It hurts too much. Too many echoes. Too many shelves and whispers.

She doesn’t comment. Instead, she sits gently on the edge of the armchair as if she's afraid it might disappear underneath her.

“They’re clearing the site,” she says softly, staring at your bookshelf like it’s easier than looking at you. “All of it. The city’s going to build something new. A community centre or something like that. Something for the public.”

You swallow. The idea of something so ordinary growing from the ashes of what you all endured feels strange. Almost impossible.

Georgie continues. “Some of the crew were combing through the debris, and one of them found something under the floor of where Jon’s office used to be.”

Your heart stutters.

She turns then, finally meeting your eyes. There’s something carefully guarded in her face. Not pity, not quite sorrow either. Something heavier.

“He probably didn’t mean for anyone to find it...but I think he would have wanted you to have it.”

She holds out a couple of pieces of paper.

You stare at them. They look innocuous enough. Cream-coloured, folded, a little stained with dust and ash. Your fingers hesitate as you take them, afraid they might crumble in your hand. They don’t.

Georgie doesn’t speak. She gives you space, folding her hands in her lap and waits.

You unfold them slowly.

The handwriting is unmistakable. Slanted. Meticulous. Familiar in a way that rips something open inside you. A hand you know, you loved, you held.

Statement of Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London, regarding Love, and the noticing thereof.

Statement begins.

There’s no entity to blame for this one. No manifestation of a greater horror lurking in the corners. No suspicious figures, no monsters with too many mouths, no terrible truths lying in wait. I’m not even sure this is a “statement” in the conventional sense.

But I find I need to speak, and…this is the only way I know how.

I have never been particularly good at feelings.

Which is, I suppose, ironic, given how much of my life has been spent documenting them: in fear, in trauma, in pain. It is not…uncommon, I suppose, for someone in my position to develop a tendency to overanalyse. To parse emotions as if they are entries in a catalogue, each one examined and boxed up in its proper place. To treat feelings like they are facts. Quantifiable. Safe. You’d think, with enough practice, I’d be better equipped to identify the more mundane ones. Or, at the very least, the kind that aren’t trying to kill you.

But, like I said, I’m not good with feelings. Even now, even after everything, the words catch in my throat, or get tangled in my mind. When I try to name them – to categorize them, as I would any other anomaly – they defy structure. Defy logic.

But I know when something is real, even though I didn’t notice until it was standing right in front of me.

I came to know it slowly with Martin. It crept in almost like fog, soft and persistent, blurring the hard edges of my attention. At first, he was…background noise. Polite. A bit awkward. Irritatingly prone to humming under his breath while sorting the worst-organized files I’ve ever seen. I dismissed him, I think, because I was too consumed with being right and being efficient and being everything my position demanded. I saw his softness as inefficiency. His kindness as indulgence.

And then, slowly, he became a constant. Asking if I needed anything. Checking in when I’d skipped lunch again. Staying late when he thought I needed help, even when I hadn’t asked. Especially when I hadn’t asked.

But I began to notice how my thoughts would drift when he left the room. How my day was better if he smiled. How I felt steadier in his presence, as if something vital inside me had been recalibrated.

There was no sudden revelation. No blinding moment of clarity. Just…a steady accumulation of warmth. Almost like the slow build of sunlight through a window on a cold day, until suddenly you realise you're no longer freezing.

I remember once, he left me a note on my desk. No fanfare. Just a sticky note with “Take care of yourself today, yeah? :)” scribbled in his handwriting. I stared at it for a while. Not just because of what it said, because he knew I needed it.

And there was another evening, late in the Archives. He was reading a statement aloud, not recording it, just reading. And he laughed. Something in the text had made him laugh, just a small, genuine thing. The laughter wasn’t at me, it wasn’t cruel or derisive. It was warm. Human. Entirely his. And I remember looking at him, really looking, and thinking: God, I want to keep hearing that. I want him to laugh again.

Then, somehow, somewhere in all that, there was [Y/N].

I noticed them differently. Not slowly, like with Martin, but instead suddenly, jarringly. It had been as if I was being shaken awake.

They arrived like a storm I didn’t see coming. Gentle, maybe, but no less capable of upheaval. I had thought my heart was full, already occupied, and yet, there they were. Making space.

They were clever, sharp. Braver than they gave themselves credit for. Asked questions that stuck under my skin, and when they looked at me, I felt seen in a way that was terrifying, and comforting. With them, I didn’t feel like the Archivist. I wasn’t a vessel for some awful knowledge. I was just Jon.

They weren’t afraid of my silences. They didn’t try to fill them. Just existed beside me with this quiet presence that felt more like a partnership than any explanation I could give.

I didn’t realise what it meant at first. How could I? My feelings don’t usually declare themselves loudly. They whisper. They shift.

And then there was one afternoon – I remember it vividly, though nothing technically happened. I went up to the reading room to get a book. They were sitting there, headphones in, sunlight catching their hair like a halo, and they looked up and smiled at me when I passed by.

And I thought, oh. That was it. I was in love.

I didn't know what to do with that knowledge. I’m still not sure I do. But it stayed with me. Settled. Became something steady. And I began to understand that love doesn’t always have to be loud. It can be quiet and constant.

Martin and I…we have something that was grown into. Built with care. But they, they are gravity, drawing me in.

And neither love diminishes the other.

I think that’s what startled me the most. That I could feel both, differently, but equally. That I didn’t have to choose one over the other for it to be real.

And I love them both.

Martin…Martin would know how to say this properly. He always knows what to say. He would have written this better. Longer. Warmer. He always says things in a way that makes them real. But he would have meant it. Every word.

He told me once that [Y/N] was his lighthouse. I didn’t respond then. I didn’t know how. But I’ve realised that they are mine, too.

Not to keep, of course, or to possess. To guide me home.

Even now, when I am adrift, when the storm feels endless, I close my eyes and I think of them and I remember what it was like to feel safe.

I’m bad at this. At people. At connection. Feelings are messy, irrational. They spill over boundaries I’ve carefully constructed, disrupt processes I’ve spent years perfecting. I am not built for warmth. I am not built for ease.

But I know what I feel, even if I can’t say it right. Even if the words come out wrong, or late. Even if I never find the courage to speak them aloud.

I don’t know what happens next.

But I love you.

And that is the truest statement I have.

Statement ends.

You don’t notice your tears until one hits the paper and you gasp, a choked sound, terrified you’ve ruined it, his last words, this impossible final gift. But the ink holds.

You leaf through the pages, fingers trembling. A small Polaroid falls out. The three of you, laughing. You don’t remember this moment, but it feels true. Jon’s hair is wind-tossed, he’s standing stiffly in the middle, awkward but smiling in a way that’s only obvious if you know how rare it was. Martin’s glasses are crooked, his face bright and soft, mid-laugh. Your arms are around both of them. You look…happy. The kind of happy that says: We made it. Even if just for a moment.

You press it to your chest and close your eyes. The ache is still there. The absence of him. Of Martin. Of that quiet, gentle thing you had built together amidst fear and chaos.

Georgie doesn’t ask what the pages say. She doesn’t need to. She only stands, walks over, and sits beside you. Her hand finds yours. You grip it like a lifeline.

Outside, the sun dips lower. The world turns gold. Somewhere not far from here, the city lays new foundations atop old ruins.

You carry them with you. In memory. In laughter. In lavender detergent and over-sweet tea. In scribbled words and whispered goodnights.

For what is grief, if not love persevering?