i know.

@stokcd​: a study in self destruction via timothy stoker of the magnus archives, recorded by myles (he/they.) est. aug 2021. minors & personals dni.

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other blogs: @instituteled​ @twistingdeception​ @godworn​ @ofkirkwall​​

 @enchairr​

       "Bɪʀᴅɪᴇ, ᴍʜ? Not sneaking around some files that definitely aren't for you?" He's joking. There's a little pinned up calendar in the breakroom where Sasha had, much to everyone's dismay, put in the birthdays of everyone in the entire Institute she could find out, and circled the Archive staff in bright red. (There are several question marks next to Jon's. There are also three different dates. They can't quite figure out if any of them is right.) It's easy enough for him to read whenever he's down there, and besides, the little sparkle in Tim's eyes is real. It's — cute, really.

@stokcd has a birthday

There isn’t a bag this time, stuffed to overflowing with gifts wrapped in garishly bright paper. This time it’s two envelopes propped up against his coffee cup (okay, so maybe that’s new too) on the kitchen counter.

The first envelope is thin and just contains a birthday card, a moderately dirty joke printed on the front and instruction to dress fancy for dinner inside.

The second envelope is much thicker, packed almost to bursting. At the top of the pile of papers are a pair of plane tickets to Cyprus; under that is a print-off of hotel reservations, directions to all the nearby touristy attractions, and details of the local hiking trails.

     Aʜ. Tʜᴀᴛ wasn't. That wasn't planned.

     It unusual enough that she gets up and out before he's awake, and he has the growing suspicion that the fact his alarm didn't went off at the right time has something to do with her, and it makes it quite clear why, looking at all those neatly printed sheets, the glossy tickets, and if he's being honest, maybe that's for the better, too, because he's at an entire loss for words, instead... trying to process. That wasn't planned. Or rather, it had been, but not in any — it was something they both had planned, and the sheer numbers of what sits behind this hurt his head. It's too much. It's —

     (Which isn't to say he's against this, or upset about it, it just took him so entirely by surprise, knowing full well that this must have been something she had had on her mind at least since they first spoke about it months ago, had made that plan, had saved up, and it's settling in, the thought behind it, because that's not a casual thing, and it's — not that he doubted her, before, not at all, it's just. It's a lot, really hitting him now.)

     God. He's deep in with her, huh.

“ It was a long time ago, ” before he was even born. And vocalising that stretch of time is her way of telling him that it’s okay, that it didn’t affect her in the way he probably worried about. Agnes had had a lot of life to face the things that scared her and deal with it ( and the ones she refused to were neatly tucked away behind a façade of indifference, helplessness led to something uglier, bigger than anger that she couldn’t control ). 

And the thing about that first brush with real fear was that it had lasted only moments even at the tender age of twelve. Because he was right in that it wasn’t an equal playground and that she had started a few moves ahead. One look at Raymond Fielding and she had seen that foreboding she’d had looking at those kids on his face. He had been frightened of her. She’d had the power. 

And she had used it. 

He had the Institute protecting him to an extent and a… girlfriend avatar that would back him in anything, but it wasn’t the same as having your own power. 

She shifts on the lounge, ever careful not to brush against him as she adjust her body to sit facing him more head on, her arm perched up against the back of it. Her eyes run over him, cataloguing, drinking him in, committing everything to memory like she had hundreds of times already ( by this point she could map every mole and scar and she hadn’t even touched him ). 

“ They need you. Without fear to feed on they have nothing. Remember that, ” it’s not much, but it’s something. With the exception of avatars, the cruel entities that feasted on this world were an intangible beast that couldn’t break through and as long as they stopped any rituals from completing it would stay that way. 

“ You know I won’t let anything happen to you, don’t you? ” she’d burn, roast, melt anything that tried. 

     "Nᴏᴛ ᴛʜᴇ same." It's easy to say. It's easy to say 'I'll protect you', if it weren't for the fact that there's always the threat of something surprising, something sudden and unforeseen. And besides, it doesn't make him feel all that much better, having to constantly rely on someone else. He doesn't doubt her. He doesn't doubt in the slightest that she means it, but that isn't always enough. He had meant it, too, when he promised his little brother to keep him safe from anything, and —

     (And he didn't. End of story. It doesn't matter how well he meant, or how much he had wanted to stand by his word, all that mattered was that he had been unable to keep his promise, and it hadn't been his price to pay. If he had been more supportive, if he went with Danny, if he had been more brave, if he had been anyone else — )

     It sits in his throat and threatens to choke him whole. There's hardly a day where he doesn't blame himself for not being good enough, or strong enough, and it doesn't sooth him at all to be told that he's a feeding ground as well. That that's all he is to these things, no matter what.

     Some of them, anyway. Most, even. But she's proof it's not all there is, isn't she.

Gerry snorts at Tim’s repeated insistence that he is the expert on the topic.  Imagine—him, the expert on Jurgen fucking Leitner—God forbid.  He has absolutely no desire to be considered a scholar on the topic, to answer too many questions or give lectures or whatever else.  “I’d hardly call me an expert,” he says.  “All I do is set fire to his shit.  I’m as much an expert on Leitner as an arsonist is an interior designer.”  He tries to know as little as possible, to strike a match and be done with all of it.

Still, he knows more about them than some other people, whether he wants to or not, so he nods.  “Sure, sometimes there’s the Compulsion aspect of them, where they pick victims, but anyone can read them, even the person they’re not intended for.”  How many assistants had Leitner gone through, people who weren’t compelled by anything other than the man himself?  “So, as a general rule, it’s what’s inside them that counts the most.”

He takes his lighter to the edges of the book in his hand—a tome so deeply black that it appears two-dimensional, making it a little disorienting to look at—and then he drops it in the waste bin.  “Do you know how many I’ve gone through without feeling a pull to read them?  Do you know how many I would have gone through if I actually bothered to open them?”

     A ʟᴏᴡ hum, considering the words. He wonders about that a lot; not last because before all this, he used to handle unmarked manuscripts and weirdly bound books and sometimes handwritten pages stacked together on the daily, impossibly many, too many to potentially read, and wonders just how lucky he had been in that regard. Someone wanting to cause mayhem could have easily slipped a different type of book in between all these: none of them published yet (as this was the whole purpose), none of them researchable, and in the oddest shapes.

     It's not something one considers a job risk, really, but he really wonders if there had ever been an almost, if he'd nearly ended up rather a mention in all these statements himself, and then he thinks of Danny again, and swallows, shoving all of his thoughts aside.

Ikaros looks at Tim’s hand for a moment, then slowly takes it to shake it. His hand is freezing, like he just stuck it in a bucket of ice and let it sit there for five minutes, or like all the warmth has just been sucked from his body. Up close, it’s easier to see the finer details of the Lonely’s grip on him: the subtle gray streaks amidst blond locks, the way the blue of his eyes seems desaturated, the edges of his lips blue, as if he’s freezing to death. But he doesn’t seem bothered by how cold he is. He seems more bothered by how warm Tim is, but he doesn’t let go of his hand as quickly as he’d like. It’s a couple of seconds, a normal handshake, but feels like eternity.

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Tim,” is what he finally says as he grins, tucking his hands back into his pockets. He keeps handwarmers in his hoodie to try and make his hands, well…warmer, but it doesn’t really have much affect, it seems. “And you’re here everyday, I’m guessing? I mean, it is your job. I hope it doesn’t drive you too crazy.”

     Hᴇ ᴍᴀɴᴀɢᴇs to neither make a comment nor pull some face over the unexpected cold. Of course, it's not like he's never met people with a considerably lower body temperature than himself, especially considering he's — rather running on the warm side, but that doesn't mean he has to mention it, or cannot feel like by all means, Isaac should be in medical care for that. That cannot potentially be healthy.

     (What's healthy or normal in this place, though?)

     Still. He cannot entirely avoid shoving his hands into his pockets in a vague attempt to regain some warmth and feeling to them. It might have been a short moment, but it lingers like it wants to spread over his skin before finally dissolving. Uncomfortable.

the good place | @heyerald​

     "Tʜᴇʀᴇ's ᴀ lot of things you've never done." No judgement in his voice, although maybe a little bit of something undermined under that light tone. It might be sadness. It might be worry. It might be — well, in either way, it doesn't actually matter at all. "Taken care of yourself, for example. Good thing you have me." Alright, maybe teasing. It's easier to overplay all the other emotions with that, and he's... he's fine. More than fine. He always is.

     Not the point, right now.

     HALF A shrug, although the look on her face is all but dismissive. If anything, she keeps wondering how far she can push herself till he snaps. The Slaughter, one to be always wary of, but that spark of mischief within her can never truly die, and she (and the Hive; they were one and the same before, and even more now) is fine with sacrificing a few worms on the altar of his blood lust if it means getting some satisfaction out of this encounter. “No. But it makes me wonder. You looked all so close to each other.”

     Here’s what she swallows but keeps swimming inside her eyes: close but not close enough. Love but not the right kind of love. Perhaps the suffocating love of the Crawling Rot would’ve saved them all, helped them meet a better fate, but it didn’t happen. He should wear those scars with some pride, but Jane keeps that one remark to herself. However, it’s close enough to the surface for him to read it in her gaze, if so he desires.

     “Not hard to believe.” Tiny shiny bodies are crushed under his weapon, and with every death ten lives sprout out of her body. If she looked revolting before, now she looks magnificent in all of her decay. She isn’t the only one lost in the bliss of the Corruption in this hellish landscape, but she is the most perfect vessel of the Rot. “Just look at you.” And one smiles and smiles and smiles and - “How did it happen?”

     Hᴇ ᴡᴀɴᴛs to bite. Not in the literal sense: the flesh and the slaughter often come with each other, are easily mistaken for one another, but he's not of them, and the bite he wants is simply to rip and tear and pull apart until there's nothing left to mock him, and every word leaving her and her thousands of mouths makes it worse, makes it harder to resist. He hears a heartbeat of something rotten that should no longer be able to move and maybe, with how the rhythm is strong but off, it's not beating but pulsating with life, is moved by the things crawling through it and eating at it. And thousands and thousands echoing with it, far more than there are bodies moving around, even if the beat is so much more simple. It's a growing and growing crescendo, and the hunger is so loud, and the only thing stopping him is not wanting to give into it.

     (Why not. Why not why not why not. She deserves it more than some poor tortured soul. Take away their food source; they might turn on you but there's no way you are suitable to sustain their life, and it might just kill either of you, all of you. It might just — )

     But if he's dead, he cannot find Jon. He's not sure what for yet. If he wants to hurt or be hurt, if he wants to protect, or — but it's important that he does. That quiet voice is still breaking through the thrumming of blood in his hearing, but it won't be forever if he doesn't feed soon.

     "Had to keep them safe." Did you though? If you had done your job properly, nothing of this would have ever happened. If you had — "I'd figure you'd know a thing about protecting no matter the cost."

     "Fᴜᴄᴋ ᴏғғ. I don't want to see you."

     The anger in his words is real, but it lacks all of the bite. It's an exhausted type of anger, one that says I have nothing left to feed the fire, but that doesn't make him mean his words any less at all. He wants to — he doesn't know. Not be here. Not feel all these things. It's weird, being back to that, and it's exhausting. Funny, too, in a way that isn't at all: how he's so overwhelmed by emotions no longer being dulled down that they make him indifferent themselves, simply because if he feels it all at once, he might end up screaming, and he's just...

     He isn't supposed to be here. He hadn't been before, long went past what his purpose was, and he feels aimless now, and there's not enough left of him to really sustain being a person. For him to have anything left even vaguely resembling purpose, or an aim.

     Breathing hurts. Feeling hurts. Everything does. There's a heart beating in his chest again and it's so loud and disruptive. Everything happens too much and he cannot deal with Boris' stupid ominous self right now, not getting anything of value but more and more questions.