#cuttoothed

Sometimes, Jon doesn’t feel good about what he’s become. A monster twice over. He remembers when he feared the Web more than any other power, horrified by its stripping away of autonomy.

And now? Well, things change. The Web is control, yes, but not only of other people. After years of fear and uncertainty, it’s good to feel in command of himself. To feel sure, to feel purpose in the knowledge he restlessly seeks.

Everything the Eye knows, the Web can use.

...

Jon feels that little tug against his consciousness once more, this time playful and reassuring. It’s all right, we’re together, it’s fine. He gives a tug back, I love you, and Martin looks at him with such affection that Jon’s heart stutters.

“I love you too,” Martin says, and knowing it to his core, feeling it quiver between them, Jon has no doubts.

@cuttoothed wrote this amazing fic about web!lonely!martin and web!beholding!jon being together and safe and happy, monstrous and content and so, so in love, and it just filled me with joy. 

WHY DID I ONLY SEE THIS NOW

CT you’re really gonna murder me huh. making me think about them again like this. the LONG silence after he said “and that only leaves martin.” just says it all, doesn’t it? what kind of thoughts were going through his head at that moment? the intensity of his worry, his care, his concern was so strong that he wishes he didn’t have feelings altogether??? 

Well this became mostly Martin angst, with some implied JonMartin. I actually really liked writing this, thank you for the prompt! I also wrote this before MAG 142 came out and... I did not realise I was hitting closer to home than previously thought. Thank you to @outlikethat for betaing!

Cadmean Victory

What is the recipe to destroy oneself?

It’s a pint of dizzying loneliness, carefully prepared over years of abandonment, with emotions left unsaid for too long. They give it a slight bitterness, but not enough to sour it. To let it sour is to turn dark and empty. Don’t let yourself die in the process.

(He’s alone in his room clutching the duvet closer when it’s the only thing that will keep him safe, keep him warm. He feels empty.)

Stir well, pouring into the mix a cup of sharp-toothed anger – the various other emotions aren’t enough, but repressed anger will fix that immediately. It gives it a taste, an edge one might never expect in such a gentle person. A bite that shows itself only in the most dire situations, because letting yourself be underestimated helps.

(If he had the option to do the same, would he take it? Instead of having to watch his friends get hurt, die, other things he doesn’t even want to imagine or think about. He hates it. But he can’t do anything about it.)

Add a serving, depending on your own tastes, of an all-encompassing silence. A quiet that penetrates into the walls of the house and soaks the very wallpaper with how it drips from the air. Be careful- don’t put too much of it, or it may drive you to the edge and back, leaving only a shell behind itself.

(Nowadays, it’s easy for him to isolate himself. Especially when Peter’s around, it’s so damn simple to just never see any of the other archival assistants, let alone Jon.)

Let it sit for some time in a place too hostile and cold for it. Let it wait, let it simmer and grow by itself. Don’t stop too soon, or you leave it weak. If you leave it too long, it will bear only hatred – vital to avoid for the next step to succeed.

(He doesn’t know who’s an ally and who’s an enemy anymore. The Archives are terrifying, in the eerie way only a place like that can be. He hates it as much as he can’t leave it. It feels hollow, and he doesn’t know how he can win at anything when he feels he’s lost all of it already.)

The final step is perhaps the most important. For utter destruction, you leave a sliver of silver hope to reach for, a longing that carries through every hardship, a love that can survive in the harshest of conditions. A pinch of that is enough, and adds the beauty of it all. It makes for a masterpiece.

(He doesn’t know whether he loves Jon, or the man he remembers. Perhaps it’s just the image of Jon he’s built in his mind, but he vows to himself that someday- someday, he will be the one to protect Jon, his guardian – perhaps even become a guardian for the institute, if that's what it takes – and not the other way around.)

-

Well I made myself sad with this. Season 4 trailer who?

Martin was tired. Martin was sitting in a hospital room, on possibly the most uncomfortable chair imaginable, drinking cold machine coffee and he was so, so tired. But he got the feel that, whatever Jon was seeing, he wasn’t having much better a time of it.

He was reluctant, when he reached out and took the other man's hand. He knew he was alone, Georgie having left ten minutes earlier, and he didn’t think anyone else was supposed to visit today, but still. It felt creepy. He had no way of knowing if this was wanted, even tolerated, but he figured it was justifiable. It’s not as if he was going to kiss him or anything, as a wake up attempt or otherwise. He was just… Holding his hand. Letting him know, he hoped, that he was there.

Jon’s hand was cold, icily so. That made sense. No blood flowed if a heart didn’t beat. Martin couldn’t help it, tracing his thumb along the long fingers, over the joints, rubbing circles into the skin to try and get some feeling in it. His nails were wrong, too, just slightly off. He usually kept them very short, at first well filed but as time went on Martin had a suspicion he’d taken to nervously picking at them. Now they were just long enough that Martin would notice. The nurse who usually took care of them hadn’t been round in a while, then.

‘I know I say this a lot,’ Martin mumbled, eyes cast down, not daring to look at Jon’s face. Maybe, if he averted his own gaze long enough, Jon’s eyes would slide open, then probably berate him for unprofessional conduct. But that didn’t happen, so Martin kept tracing the lines on his palm.

‘... But I miss you. A lot. We all do, I think. Georgie does, but you’d know that. If you could hear me now, you could have heard us before. So don’t know why I’m saying this all again. Helps, I guess. Comfort myself with the illusion.’

‘.. You’re gona come back to us, aren’t you? I hope so, at least. Don’t want to think about the alternative, make myself seem like more of a wreck than I am already. Sitting alone in a hospital room… crying over my boss,’ he finished, realising his cheeks were wet.

I think Martin is pretty firmly focused on keeping Jon alive /and/ not a monster. Remember his reaction to what Jon’s being doing in 142: “I can’t believe he’d /choose/ to do something like that. No, I can’t think like that, though, I can’t let myself, because if he’s already gone, then all of this is just - ” Clearly his end goal at that point was for Jon to be alive, and still enough /himself/ that he wouldn’t deliberately prey on people, and I genuinely don’t think that’s changed.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims, Jane Prentiss (minor) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Web!Jon, Lonely!Martin, Doing a murder, canon typical spiders, canon typical worms, Implied Cannibalism, Timeline What Timeline, jon was raised by spiders Summary:

Power Swap AU.

a serious question merits some serious thought

do these assholes even technically need to eat? i figure all their grocery shopping is done entirely theoretically, and the name fortnum and mason’s comes up often because oh my god are they snobs like that (F&M is a fairly high-end grocery/department store in the UK, for those of you who don’t know, and i think at one point it was actually the royal family’s official grocer but i wouldn’t know about that)

but when they DO buy food i like to imagine that they have such differing tastes that dinnertime is always an argument. elias is a gourmet prick who insists on having the correct wine pairings with every meal and would never DREAM of drinking anything newer than a vintage, and peter’s tastes are actually just as discerning (he comes from old money, after all) but he brings home trashy fast food just to annoy his husband and eats it while making direct eye contact with him. the kicker is that peter actually knows way more about foreign delicacies than elias does because of all the traveling he’s done, and it pisses elias off whenever he reminds him bc elias doesn’t like feeling like he knows Less about anything than anyone, and definitely not peter