MAG002 - Tim
Jon was right: the statement had almost nothing to do with architecture.Ā
Well, aside from the subjectā¦? Victimā¦? Tim still didnāt know what to call the people who gave their statements. Those words certainly worked, but they were uncomfortable. Sterile, distant, like the horrific accounts were somehow prioritized over the people in them. And while they werenāt necessarily in the business of solving the fear for anyone, a very human and empathetic part of Tim often felt like he ought to, though if it was in the Archives, it was probably far too late anyway.Ā
The curious thing about the situation with the Archivesāthe absolute disaster it had been left notwithstandingāwas that it was theoretically the place where research cases went to die and, you know, be archived. Yet Jon had managed to find statements that, how had he put it, felt unfinished. Heād passed it off as a failing of Gertrude Robinson and it seemed he would be tasking his assistants with a bit of research. Just in case. Just to be -sure-.Ā
Tim had read through this particular statement twice, and the only thing about architecture was the vicāJoshuaās studies and his appreciation for Amsterdam structures. Tim had never been to Amsterdam himself, but it had sounded lovely enough to make his prospective travel list. He just hoped no one accosted him to care for a spooky item.Ā
Heād certainly seen enough.Ā
All things considered, Tim had mad respect for this one. He and Danny had stopped playing video games in their early teenage years, when sports and girls and part time jobs replaced backyard tussling and hoping the TV didnāt wake their parents in the middle of the night. But he knew many of the tropes and pitfalls, and some of his uni buddies had continued to game, even to the detriment of their studies. Joshua Gillespie had turned a game of Silent Hill into a survival tactic which, if the statement was to be believed, had saved his life.Ā
On the first read through, Tim had quietly chuckled at the offending juice glass, and the ice bowl key, and even the ominous āDO NOT OPENā instructions, but by the time heād gone through it again, heād drifted more into creeped out and curious. Jon had given it to him, saying it only mentioned architecture, but welcomed him to do what heād become good at in the last four years: research.
Thank God, really. Not only was it a break in the monotony of file boxes and stupidly cataloged case numbers, but it had been a moment where things felt a bit more normal than they had since coming down here. Jon, who had been staying progressively later over these last couple months, had surfaced from his disgruntled stubbornness about conquering the mess and theyād had a wonderful discussion about the tattered leads that trailed off the statement, threads that Tim was sure to pull, even though lure of architecture was a paper thin veneer over everything else that was weird in the statement.Ā
In the end, Tim had been happy to do it, been even more glad not to come back empty-handed. Jon had smiled, looking rather pleased with what appeared to be the right amount of information to close the case properly. Looking at the folder now, with its supplemental notes written in Jonās quick-tidy hand, his thoughts flitted through an odd haze of old memories and new curiositiesāthe potential for hundreds more to be sitting in some file box underfoot. He dropped it onto the stack meant for Sasha enter in her database and moved on to the next task.Ā
[Series has been started on AO3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/series/6279196]
