#tma fluff

Hello Jon, apologies for the deception,  but I wanted to make sure you clicked on read more, so I thought it best not to announce myself when throwing bullshit art at you.

The context got blown up, I couldn´t tell you something good even if I tried, though it was rather specific and happened in a conversation with a friend while working on the vest for my Martin cosplay.

Later in the break room, Jon and Tim are sitting at a table. Jon sits stiff as a board while Tim does his nails.

Martin walks by and does a double take. He doesn’t mean to stare, but is frozen in bafflement by the image of Jon sitting there, scowling, letting his nails get done.

“Oh hey Martin” Tim looks up and waves, startling Jon, who was focused so hard on not fidgeting or recoiling that he didn’t notice Martin standing there. “Come join us if you’d like”

“Oh! Uh- sorry, I didn’t mean.. well.. are you sure?”

“I really don’t think-“ Jon starts, but Tim hushes him. “Oh come on, if I’m holding you hostage here I think it’s only fair that others can join”

It had been a long time since his dreary heart was nestled in the weak cage of his ribs, beating feebly to sustain a body that, in truth, lives for very little. Jon does not know when or how, but somewhere along the lines since you'd slipped into his narrative through the margins of his hasty notes, he'd found that you had come into possession of his heart. The wicked thing was cradled in your hands like the most precious of treasures even as you slept by his side, squeezed into the little twin bed.

You inhabit the side closest to the wall, a fact which contents Jon── for all the horrors you have subjected yourself to by staying at his side, he will be there as the first line of defence. In a more mundane sense, you've crafted your home in a home within this little nook, curled up beside Jon's thin frame. He sees you now, illuminated by the painful white of his screen, and Jon feels sorry for potentially ruining your quality of sleep, but there is so much work── always work and no play for the Archivist son, damned as he is by whatever is going on in his institute. At the very least, he comforts himself, you will sleep better than he ever will.

Jon takes a deep breath, steeling himself; as if with a mere lift of his shoulders, he can resemble a man who, at the very least, seemed to have some idea of how he could get himself out of this hole he has found himself in, but if you had been awake, you could have easily seen the truth behind the facade, that of his discomfort and, and most damningly, the unsureness he held within himself, of himself. Despite this, he brushes his fingers over the curve of your cheekbone and leans close to press his dry lips against your temple, before going back to work── reminding himself every now and then of who he is doing this all for.

In spite of it all, his unsureness and his fondness for you, Jon does leave you in the end ── not for the lack of love, no; that love remains even when he changed, twisted into more than a simple avatar of the Eye instead of the man who had left you cold in your bed with his goodbyes written in ink on a parchment nearby. He understands, even in the end of all things, that he was selfish to have left you before things truly took a turn for the worst (though one could argue that it had already been set in motion the moment he picked up A Guest For Mister Spider)── there is selfishness even in the thought that he left while still human, that your final memory of him before he took an exit from your life was not the him that saved the world this version of you lived in, alone and betrayed and confused.

And when Jon begins to Know, he Knows that you never get rid of the belongings he'd left deserted about in your home, as though he has just recently left and is to certainly return any day now. He Knows that you never do stop waiting for him ── whether it is in the Fearscape you were trapped in or in the world thereafter, the world without your Jonathan Sims.

Life hereafter moves along, but for you, it feels as though it has paused in that singular moment that always passes, in another space and time, as though the clock in your living room will tick once again, and Jon will walk through your door as he always has. He Knows this, and he wishes he could tell you, but the last thing left of him in that world is the heart you don't realise you still possess, that you've never lost── Jon sits there and waits with you in that moment that will never come to pass, and you will never truly come to terms with the fact that the rest of him will never be able to come home to you again.