11981/15 Fears: Eight Perspectives

15 Fears: Eight Perspectives
Date of Scene:	12 July 2022
Location:	A Hotel in Oxford, England
Synopsis:	Jon is visited by a nightmare and has a conversation with a pair of entities that want nothing more than his soul. Revelations of his connection to their existence are given and Jon makes a terrible sacrifice to break free. (CW: SELF-HARM.)
Cast of Characters:	Jonathan Sims, Chas Chandler

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Jonathan Sims has posed:
    The Archivist dream starts like any other. Jon sees what Rien saw, experiences the events at the house on Hill Top Road, drops down into the crack in reality and sees through to the other side.

    But then it becomes something else entirely.

    He's hanging suspended in the air, held up by strands of casette tape, in the middle of the top room of an impossibly high tower. Elias Bouchard's body lies on the floor below him, next to a bloody knife, but he's been discarded. Ignored. He's no longer important.

    What is important is that the Archivist can see... /everything/. Everyone. Everyone in the world is afraid, terribly afraid, living horrible, never-ending nightmares.

    But there's a way to fix that. Now that the Archivist is in control, he can end it all. He can divert people to the places where they're actually dying, and not just endlessly tormented. He cannot save them from this hell that he created, but at least he can end it all.

    But first... there's a statement to be given.

    "Once upon a time there was fear. Old fear. Primal fear. A fear of blood and pounding feet, a fear of that sudden burst of pain and then nothing. And that fear was nothing. Went nowhere. Knew not what it was..."

Chas Chandler has posed:
    The dream continues like any other Archivist's dream, only this is a world Jon never experienced. This dream is of another Jon. In a world that quantified it's horrors. Compartmentalized in the theories and ideas of dead architects and erudite scholars. A Jon that conquered horor completely. And this Jon is offering his take on the world that is. Offering a statement on the very nature of fear. Where it came from, where it lingered, where it was expelled.

    Along the line of cassette tape small creatures scuttle. They look like spiders, or at least their bodies are shaped that way. All bulbous thoraxes and spindly legs, but the material used in their makeup is something entirely different. It's wires and metal and machinery. With strange lens like patterns over the larger parts of the body. Like drones. Mico-drones to look and see and observe.

    They focus their lenses on the Archivist in his suspended state. Small whirring sounds echoing all around him, watching eyes focused on his torment while he hangs in a web of his own making.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    The statement goes on, explaining how the eldritch entities of this world work, how they came to be, how one such entity--the Spider--came up with a plan to escape its world and spread to others.

    "And so it drew its plan to escape not only this ephemeral cage of non-existence, but even the very reality into which they might break, and it chose its fool: The Great Eye, the most unwise of all the fragments, forever seeking and consuming knowledge that it could not comprehend. It played and twisted and through The Eye brought about a new world, a wide and unending vista of terror and agony, and the place from which it might spread, and spin another web far grander than anything conceived of in the minds that birthed it.

    Finally, it would find its escape and with it... apotheosis."

    The Archivist takes in a deep breath and then lets it out. "No. It won't. It has only found its end."

    They are prepared. They are ready. They will carry out the plan...

    And then the door to the room opens and Martin appears. Travel-worn, tired, frightened. So terribly, terrible frightened of what Jon has become. They can feel it, feeding something terrible inside them, a hunger that will never be sated.

    Martin's terror only rises as he realizes what Jon's done, that he's tied himself into this place, this Panopticon. At first, the Archivist thinks it's because Martin is afraid of what Jon has become, but shortly it becomes clear that, no, it's because the others have decided to carry out a plan to destroy the Panopticon entirely.

    Jon is going to die. And more importantly, /Martin/ is going to die, when the Panopticon falls.

    The tapes twist, and pain suddenly wracks them. There are explosions far below. "Martin, please! I can't lose you. Not like this...

    "Tough!" Martin won't leave. Of course he won't leave. "Okay? Where you go, I go!"

    "That's the deal..." The tower is collapsing. There's no more time.

    Jon gives up. Gives in. He'd wanted to trap the Fears here, starve them out, not spread them out elsewhere. Not /inflict/ them on other realities. But he can't let Martin die. He just... /can't/. Not after everything they've been through.

    So he tells Martin to kill him, to free the Fears. He dooms countless other realities, potentially trillions of people, all to save his love.

    It's almost laughably easy, the way the knife slips between his ribs and finds his heart. The Archivist gasps, and the tapes screech, and slither, and start to unspool, and the static rises... and Jon is pulled out of the tower, and toward Oxford, toward a gaping hole in reality beneath a certain house there. A crack through which he, and Martin, and the Fears, will escape this reality and pass to countless others.

    It's only as they enter the crack that they suddenly understand. They can see, through the crack in reality that they're being drawn toward, that these things, these horrible monsters they've served, didn't originate in their own world. They have always existed, and will always exist. They are from outside of time. There's no stopping them, no escaping them. No fighting them. No hope. No hope at all.

Chas Chandler has posed:
    A soft feminine voice cuts through the dark between the worlds. "Yes. No hope in fighting us at all... in fact, you would do better to join us." Something jerks on the cord dragging Jon through the dark and pulls him into an upside down hanging position. "You could do so much worse after all..."

    Another voice bigger and more direct cuts in and a green light casts illumnation over the immediate emptiness. "They could do better as well. But they are marked by us through time and space. We will have them either way." The light is coming from a massively oversized green eye, open and peering at Jon from a short distance. It fills the horizon and all of Jon's vision, a luminous, impassable spectator to see all aspects of a situation and miss nothing.

    The feminine voice speaks again and Jon is able to see the speaker. "But they are not without choice," says the large spider-like creature with a woman's torso and face on the upper part of it's body. The face is vaguely familiar to Jon. Indeed, in his deepest memories he sees the face of his mother in the face of this creature. "After all, it was they that spoke with I Do Not Know You and The One Alone. They are obviously not for them, so it is time they speak with those are more in line with their purpose, is it not?"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon yelps as he's pulled upside down, blinking in the darkness. This isn't how things go. Is it? How would he even know?

    "I... I don't..." What does 'I' mean? Who even /is/ he? Jonathan Sims, yes, but /which/ Jonathan Sims? Dr. Sims, the Archivist, leader of the Justice League Dark, agent of SHIELD? Or Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, formerly of the Magnus Institute, whose evil boss forced him to kickstart the apocalypse?

    For a moment, it doesn't matter. Because in this moment, both versions would have the same response to the beings talking to them.

    "Oh, /fuck off/."

Chas Chandler has posed:
    "Predictable" the massive eye responds, its pupil shrinking to a small pinpoint. Heat starts to spread over Jon's body but the massive eye is waved off by the spider creature.

    "You haven't even heard our proposition, Jon... we only want to help you after all. Aren't you tired of being afraid? Of feeling fear. Fear of your loved ones being hurt. Fear of what might happen if you lose control? We can help you." She moves them and starts to spin them in the web of cassette tape with effortless motions of her many legs, as if wrapping Jon in a blanket like a child.

    "You're already so close to our power as it is... the change wouldn't even need to be that drastic." She leans forward to peer at them. Their mother's face on that monstrous form is both inticing and repulsive at the same time. "We could free you from the strings that the goddess holds on you... allow you turn the tide. Be yourself and still have the power you hold. You would like that... wouldn't you? Freedom and safety and power to protect those around you. To watch your little girl grow into the woman she is destined to be. Your hand guiding her to greater and greater achievements."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon flinches at 'predictable.' A spike of terror. If these things know him so well, can predict his every action, how can he possibly escape them? What can he /possibly/ do to get away?

    He swallows, and shakes his head. Laughs, shakily. "Trading one set of marionette strings for another? No thanks." At least the words have helped him know who he is. Whoever that other Jonathan Sims was, whatever he would have done, /this/ one has fought the creator of the universe and won. He destroyed Mr. Spider, even if only in a vision. He doesn't need to be afraid of these things.

    "I'll find a solution. There's... there's always a solution. You just have to look at the situation the right way 'round."

Chas Chandler has posed:
    The Eye blinks and suddenly there are -thousands- of those large eyes, looking at Jon from -every- perspective. Jon can feel the probing gaze reaching -into- him, threatening to expose all his secrets at once. "You will serve. Already you have served countless times. One more will be no more difficult."

    The spider creature, coos at Jon. "It's quite right you know. You have already moved so closely in line with our own desires and... you served us many times before." She smiles and blinks. "What if such is your fate? You serve The Ceaseless Watcher and The Mother of Puppets in perpetuity, no matter what universe? Of course, you struggle and fight, but in the end... even there you served our ends when the time came."

    The cassette wrapping reaches his chin and jumps over his mouth and nose to begin to wrap around his head. "We simply want to help you reach your ultimate goal, Jon. With our help you can do what you wish... with much more flexibility in your actions."

    A sharp, claw-tipped appendage runs across his exposed cheek. "We want what you want. A measure of control over a world that hurts so many. Not control over all people... just control over our own little corner of the world. What you saw was a glimpse into one who squandered the power... and then you were shown what could be done to -help- others with the power. End suffering. End pain. End terror. Is that truly a bad thing?"

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    "Countless...?" Jon struggles, shakes his head, trying to get rid of the tape wrapping around him. "You're lying. You... you're lying. That's not... that /can't/ be..."

    But wasn't that the goal? The Fears go through the crack, to countless universes? Who knows but that the one he's seen wasn't just the latest in a long line, reaching back to the beginning of all existence? That the stain of the touch of the Old Ones on his soul can never, ever be washed out?

    "He didn't /squander/ the power," Jon spits, suddenly angry. "The suffering and pain and terror only existed because of you and your... your bloody /hunger/! If not for your ravening, the world would have been safe! It's you... your hunger for... for souls, and fear, and whatever else. Your... perpetual..."

    A pause. Rotate the problem. There's always a solution.

    "...Why /are/ you so hungry, anyhow? That... must be a terrible way to exist." Is he actually feeling compassion for the eldritch horrors that have him trapped?

Chas Chandler has posed:
    The massive eyes, The Ceaseless Watcher, peer and pull at secrets and buried knowledge inside Jon. It want's to consume them, Jon can feel that much this close to it. To take in all that they are and hold on to it. Feed on that knowledge for a time and spit out the useless husk of what would be left when all was used up. It is the spider creature, The Mother of Puppets, who speaks. "You misunderstand. Your place in that world was a stepping stone. It was not you who squandered the power of The Ceaseless Watcher, it was the one who came before. He, in his ignorance, lost control the moment he tried to wrest it."

    The Ceaseless Watcher's booming voice cuts though. "Unworthy! Weak! Useless!"

    The Mother winces at the words and a shadow of irritation washes over her expression. "But if you must know... we do what we do because it is what we are..." she says, just as the cassette tape covers Jon's vision. "We feed and hunger for souls in order to understand that which resides in your world. Our maws are the fingers that trace along the walls of our prison." She laughs a tinny laugh. "You will see soon enough. And you will feel soon enough the same. The meals mortal kind provides allow us visions and glimpses to see into the world that we will unmake the moment we find our way out." The voice turns dark. Deadly. "And rest assured, it is only a matter of time. We -will- find our way. And then, all will be unravelled and spooled into Oblivion."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon flexes his hands, tries desperately to summon power, but cannot. And even that's a clue that this is a dream, it doesn't seem like a dream he can shape and bend to his will. Not all that easily.

    "You can understand without... without /this/," he gasps, panic starting to set in as his eyes are covered. It means he can't see the massive eyes staring at him any longer, but that's no comfort. It means he can't know what they're seeing, what they know. He shudders, flexes his hands again.

    "This is a dream," he mutters. "This is a dream. You're not--you're not really touching me. You're lying. This is all just... you're messing with me, trying to hurt me, get at me, like you got at Rien. But you can't. You won't. We /beat/ you. That's why you're doing this, isn't it? Because we took away your flow of souls. Y-you... you don't have to... there /has/ to be another way."

    He knows it's ridiculous, trying to reason with these creatures, but it's his first instinct. Well, second, after 'fuck off.'

    "...Why'd you come after Rien? Robbie? They weren't even... /I'm/ the one that shoved the leaf down Ammit's gullet. Hope and Caitlin held her down. Why are you hurting my friends?!"

    Yep, the anger's back again.

Chas Chandler has posed:
    "We're not hurting them, Jon" the Mother's soft voice come from -inside- the cocoon web she's wrapped Jon in. "We are showing them a path of change that will be advantageous to them and us. But all changes of import require some... discomfort." As if spurred by her words heat and pain lashes across Jon's form. It swells over their forearms, their thighs, their abdomen, and across their forehead. Like thousands of needles being shoved into them all at once.

    The piercing agony forces its way into them and back out with searing heat as the cassette tapes unravell to leave Jon hanging from their four arms and four legs. Several of the large eyes have changed, reflecting what the others see. Jon is able to see what's been done. Arachnids are creatures of eight. Eight appendages, and Jon has that very well. Two sets of arms, an additional set splitting from at the forearm and four legs, their pelvic cavity swelling to accomodate the second set that is identical to the first only spread wider for balance. But that is not all that spiders have eight of and the mother has been very thorough in her modifications. Six addition eyes, all quite human in appearance, have sprung about on Jon's forehead. They are not his eyes. No instead they're more like the eyes of his friends. As if he's collected them. He can see Cael's, Martin's, Rien's, and Chas's blue eyes, Caitlin's green, and Lydia's hazel eye along with his own that glow green now with the same luminous power of the massive one called The Ceaseless Watcher.

    "Don't you look just -lovely-, Jon" the Mother coos. "A perfect child to execute our desires. But..." she puts a claw-tipped appendage to her lips and taps. "You forgot one of the people who were involved in your little quest to starve us. Should we go after Cael, too?" she smiles to reveal sharp serated teeth. "She is your friend, more than that even. If you all join us in our own mission, you won't be alone... or well... not all of you will be at the very least. The One Alone can be so difficult to pin down after all."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon screams in agony, writhing at the feeling of heat and needles. For a moment, he just hangs in the tapes, gasping, shuddering, the two eyes that are his streaming tears. He tries to catch his breath, before struggling to try to get away again. But then he sees what he's become, reflected in the eyes of the Ceaseless Watcher.

    The second scream is loud enough to rip his throat raw.

    He's too panicked, at first, struggling, terrified, to really register what the Mother's saying. "No," he whimpers. "No, I won't... you can't... oh, gods, oh--"

    Then it comes through, and his eyes widen. All eight of them. "No. No, don't touch her, damn it! She's not... that's not..." For a moment, instead of struggling to get away, he's struggling to get /at/ the Mother. "Don't you fucking try to come at me through her! You want me, come after /me/!"

Chas Chandler has posed:
    A number of the eyes of The Ceaseless Watcher change, reflecting images of Cael and Jon in moments together, laughing, cuddling, talking, working. "What makes you think we'd come for you through her?" the Mother asks. "What makes you think we don't -want- her just as much?" she asks, offering a toothy smile without emotion; a shark's predatory smile.

    "<span style="color:#af00d7"None of you are safe, Jon" she says. "Your entire organization is fated to fall to our hand and through you all we will find our way out. Struggling is useless..." she reaches and runs that same clawed appendage, one of her secondary forelimbs, across his face. "It is so much easier for you all to just give in and become ours."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon shakes his head. "No. No, I..." He swallows, and struggles some more, sobbing in desperation. He knows that in the other world, struggling had been useless. He'd given in, eventually. But--in that world there were no other powers. He knows angels. He has his own magic. He doesn't have to give in. He /doesn't/.

    "I'm not--I promised. I won't give in. I don't care what happened in some other bloody universe. That isn't /me/. I didn't--I didn't /do/ that. That man, he may have had my face and my voice, but he's not /me/. He didn't live the life I did." Really? Even if they share a soul? No, that doesn't help.

    He flinches away from the Mother's touch, but he steels his voice. "So fuck off, and find someone else to mess with. I'm not giving in."

Chas Chandler has posed:
    The Mother laughs again at his defiance. "Such strength. That is what we like about you, Jon. That utter defiance mixed with absolute obliviousness" she says. "Why do you keep saying 'giving in' when you've already 'given in'." She gestures behind her to The Ceaseless Watcher and more of the massive eyes change.

    The scene the show shifts to one of Jon and Lydia pouring over tomes of research. Looking for a way to stop an angel from killing more people. Back in the earliest days, before the war started in earnest. The Mother speaks. "You remember right? Looking for a way to stop one of the Hosts from succeeding in his prolonged genocide of your kind. It was such a wonderful plan wasn't it? Linking the pathways of the energy of Nullspace and drawing him through one to the other to weaken him. Were he anything else it might not have the desired effect, but we are eternal, we see all that has been and all that will be. And we were there..."

    The vision shifts and Jon and Lydia darken but there behind Jon dangling from a small string is a spider just behind Jon as he gives a theory to Lydia. Words in a dark a twisted tongue pour from the spider and flow into Jon. Jon can see the words and their implication. The theory he's proposing. Two sites. Draw the angel through. And he can hear his voice saying those very thing to Lydia, codifying their plan. The plan of the Old Ones to weaken their own prison with the force of an archangel as the drillbit.

    The Mother smiles her toothy smile at Jon. "<span style="color:#af00d7"You see, Jon. You are already ours, you have been all this time... it's time to stop resisting your fate and accept what you truly are."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon's eyes widen and his breathing speeds up. "No. No. No, you--you're lying. You--"

    Lydia hadn't understood what he was getting at, at first. At all. But it had been so easy to envision. Negative numbers canceling each other out. Tones harmonizing and resolving.

    (We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men)

    He ended the universe for a few seconds.

    (Shape without form, shade without color / Paralysed force, gesture without motion)

    It was his fault. He knew that. When he offered himself to Michael in supplication, he knew. It was /him/. More than any of the others. Even if he didn't channel power into the circles. Even if he didn't draw them. It was /his/ idea.

    (Eyes I dare not meet in dreams / In death's dream kingdom / These do not appear)

    "No," he gasps. "No, I didn't mean--" But shouldn't he have had the thought? Negatives cancelling each other out. Tones harmonizing and resolving. Meeting an end. Using Nullspace energy. And he pretended not to know about magic, but he /knew/. Didn't he? On some level. He knew it was his fault. He listened to the whispers.

    They always listen to the whispers. All of them. Every version. They can't help it.

    (Sightless, unless / The eyes reappear / As the perpetual star)

    "No," he repeats. "No. Not this time. I don't... I don't have to do this your way. I don't have to... serve you. I can... I can escape. There's... there's a way to..."

    The information rises to him from the other world, feeling almost like an apology: gouge out the eyes. It's the only way to escape the Watcher.

    With a yell of effort, Jon wrenches his arm out of the web of tapes and slashes it across his forehead. Six cuts, precise, gouging out each of the extra eyes. And then, for good measure--his own. He screams in pain, but there is no hesitation. If this will protect the world? So be it. He can be blind, if it means the world is safe.

    He hates the other version of himself, that didn't take that way out. Bloody coward.

Chas Chandler has posed:
    The darkness is absolute, and there is the significant release of pressure as the weight of The Ceaseless Watcher's gaze vanishes. The echoing roar of defeat is a quiet thing compared to the massive size of the being that was before Jon only moments ago. That however, did not deter the Mother's involvement. She chuckles again, pinning Jon's free arm between a pair of her own pincer like appendages.

    "Poor child. You think that will help you here? I am sorry to say that the you of this world is more determined than that. Your eyes will grow back" she whispers, the heat of her breath strong on Jon's face, strands of her dark hair brushing over Jon's shoulders. "Will you remove them each time; suffering agony after agony? Or will you simply give up and give in to what you are? I'm interested to find out how many times it takes before it becomes too much..."

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    There's a moment of relief, as the pressure of the Watcher's gaze lifts, but then the Mother's words send a spike of terror through Jon. He can't get away from /her/. Yes, maybe he /would/ have to blind himself again and again--or find a way to do it permanently--to escape the Watcher. But the Spider? What counters her? What can possibly...?

    Fire suddenly spreads through the dream, flashing along the tapes, roaring through and threatening to burn everything in its path. It flashes across Jon, too, burning away the extra limbs as swiftly as the tapes burned, dropping him out of the web and into the darkness, trailing fire like a falling star or a burning comet.

Chas Chandler has posed:
    The Mother's retreat is immediate. "No!" she screams as she flees the cleansing flames. "No! You will not escape my web so easily child. I will find you once more and you -will- be mine! You will always be mine! Always and everywhere!"

    Jon falls forever, through darkness and silence. Blissful silence. He is in pain, but pain will eventually be conquered and passed as well and then he will have rest. Unless something manages to wake him up...

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    It doesn't really take that long, comparatively, for Jon to wake up. A second or two can seem like an eternity in a dream, to be sure--and the pain of the fire makes it seem even longer. But suddenly he jerks awake, someone shaking him, hard.

    It's Agnes. She's crying, one hand gripping his wrist hard enough to hurt, the other pressing at his shoulder. Some of the pain is coming from the fact that her hands are so hot that they're causing blisters on the flesh beneath.

    "Dad!" she's screaming. "Dad, /wake up/!!"

    Jon tries to blink himself awake, tries to see her--but he can't. All is dark, and black. "Agnes? Agnes, I can't--"

    "Oh, thank God," Agnes says. Abruptly the sensation of her holding him down is gone. "You were thrashing and screaming and then... and then..." A pause. "I'm calling Cael. Or, no, it's the full moon, /shit/. I'm... I'll text, and--and when she's back to herself--"

    Jon struggles to sit up. "Agnes... turn on the bloody lights, would you? Why is it so dark in here?"

    There's another pause, punctuated only by the soft sounds of Agnes typing on her phone's keyboard.

    Then, "Dad... you... your eyes are gone."