Chapter Text
“I’m sorry it turned out this way, Tim.”
“What are you talking about, Dan? I got to choose my death. And this was… this was pretty good, all things considered. You don’t want to know the kinds of shit that went on at the Institute.”
“I mean, I saw the circus, so I think I got enough of it without your workplace.”
“… true. God, if anyone has a right to be sorry–”
“Don’t start in again. You’ve been going since you got here.”
“I’ve had years of this building up, what do you expect?”
“And I said, you shouldn’t have carried all this guilt. You knew I’d poke my nose in where it didn’t belong, one day. And I did.”
“You were just a dumb kid.”
“And you're just a dumbass.”
“Oi. Don't talk to your elders that way–”
“Implying that you are truly old as balls– Timothy– stop, oh my god–”
“Say uncle, little bro, and I might.”
“Fuck off! Ahh, ah– fine, fine! Uncle, uncle, get off me!”
“Heh… good to know I can still kick your arse.”
“Cock.”
“Ha.”
…
“You know… that’s not what I meant, though.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m just glad you got this time here.”
“....... what are you talking about, Danny?”
“It’s time to go back.”
“… dammit, what? No.”
“Yes, Tim.”
“No, I’m not– I’m done, Dan, I am done–”
“For a moment, I thought things had changed… but he came through.”
“Who?”
“I am sorry, Tim.”
“No. No, I’m not going back. I–”
“Yes.”
“No, Danny, shut up, just shut up–”
“I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere. I love you, Tim.”
“Danny, no, Danny– DANNY!”
The room was dull metal. Silver and gray and white, with fluorescence bathing the room so brightly it should have made his eyes burn. It didn’t, and Tim wasn’t bothered anyway, because he knew he was dead, he had been dead, he’d been with Danny, and now he was… he was… fuck. This was a hospital room. And not an empty one.
“Christ.” It was Jon, in that hospital bed, looking small and pale and… not alive like a human ought to have been. He wasn’t breathing. Tim could tell from this distance. So still, and devoid of life. But… in the hospital, hooked up to machines without a pulse, and Georgie and Martin sitting vigil. Watching a corpse. “No, no, no…”
Except Jon wasn’t a corpse, couldn’t be. Because he couldn’t be dead, and they wouldn’t be keeping his body here if there wasn’t something tethering him to life. But Tim didn’t know. And he didn’t care.
“No, no, no no no. No. I can’t be back. I don’t want to be back,” he muttered. “I can’t be back.”
Jon wasn’t moving. Georgie and Martin were, minutely, gaunt and aching. But they weren’t looking at him. They were only looking at Jon, and Tim just… stormed forward, in a rush of anger because he had his way out. He’d been free. Out of this goddamn mess, he’d blown the circus to bits, himself included, so he couldn’t. be. back.
“What the hell happened?” he demanded. “I was– what happened?!”
No one looked up. No one even reacted. Tim looked between Georgie, and Martin, and settled on him, because of the two, he knew Martin and knew he could get answers from him. “Martin, what the hell is happening? Tell me what happened at the museum. Now.”
Apropos of nothing, Georgie spoke. “You can go home, you know.”
For a wild moment, Tim thought she was talking to him.
But then Martin responded instead, finally looking away from Jon. His eyes were red, but he smiled, a small and battered thing, across the room at her. “I know, but I’ll stay awhile longer.”
“Martin…”
“Please, Georgie. I–I don't know when I'll be able to come back–”
She looked at him for a long moment, where Tim just looked between them and… waited. For something. He didn’t even know. And then Georgie nodded, once, and said “okay.”
This was infuriating, and he was out of goddamn patience. “Marti–”
“But at least come over here and try to get some sleep,” Georgie continued.
“I… I guess,” Martin murmured, and Tim watched as he finally straightened up, finally pulled his hand from the bed where his fingertips were touching Jon’s pale hand. “Until you wanna go home.”
“Sure.”
Tim scowled. At Martin’s incessant pining and being ignored and whatever hell else was going on here. He wanted to go back. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on, but–”
Martin dragged himself up, looking for all the world like… well, looking like Tim thought he’d look if Jon was ever dead, or dying, or whatever–
– he moved to intercept him, and Martin just… passed right through him.
It was then that things really clicked into perspective. Someone being able to walk through you kind of did that.
The swoop in his stomach startled out a gasp. Or maybe it was just that Martin had walked through him. What did you even do in that situation?!
Directly behind him now, Martin jerked to a stop.
“Martin?”
Tim turned his head minutely, watching from the corner of his eye as Martin wrapped his arms around himself, fingers digging into the old, familiar jumper he was wearing like he was physically holding himself together. Or cold. Maybe just cold, he thought dully, as Martin bodily shivered.
“Martin,” Georgie repeated, getting up.
Martin looked up. “No, no, I’m… s–sorry. I just… I really hate hospitals,” he said, dropped his arms, and slouched over to the couch.
Georgie rest her hand on his shoulder, just for a second, and then Tim instinctively stepped out of the way when she walked past the bed. Not that it would have mattered. It… didn’t matter.
They couldn’t see him. He wasn’t really there. Because he was dead. He had been dead, and now… now he was there but he wasn’t, and Martin was cold moving through Tim’s… what… metaphysical form?
He had come back in the simplest way possible. He had been dead. He was still dead. He… God. If he hadn’t lived through the past two years, Tim wouldn’t have thought it was possible that he could actually be a ghost.
But here he was. Here he was.
He breathed in, and out, and again, even though the swell of his lungs barely registered and Tim suspected he didn’t need to breathe now, anyway. Then, he disregarded Martin tugging a blanket around his own shoulders, settled uneasily on the sofa, and Georgie, perched on the edge of the chair Martin had just vacated, holding Jon’s hand now, and just… looked at Jon. Looked at their Archivist.
The fucking Archivist.
Half dead, or whatever had happened to him after Tim had pressed the detonator at the circus. Still here, still the reason that Tim was still here, and he scowled at the man laying lifeless in the hospital bed.
His fault. Jon’s fault. Still Jon’s fault, even after Tim had sacrificed himself to protect the whole world. Still Jon’s fault that Tim was still. here.
“Goddammit,” Tim murmured. “Goddammit, Jon.”
Even in death, they just wouldn’t let him escape.
He slumped into one of the free chairs, cursing Jon and Elias and The Eye, if it was watching. If it could still see him. But of course it could. Who was he kidding? Dead or not, he was still part of this scheme.
He had to find a way out. He had to find his way back.
His eyes settled on Jon again. And, even if The Eye was watching… it wasn’t like anyone else could see him glare.
So he did. Oh, he did.