Owner	Pose
Jonathan Sims	Jon texted Martin just as he was leaving the Laughing Magician, asking for a pick up... but then a statement hit, hard, right at the edge of the crater. He's barely aware of where his feet are carrying him before he's wandered for twenty minutes, down the street, into Rockefeller Center.     When Martin finds him, he's just staring up at the tree, hands in his pockets. He put a heavy jacket on to ward off the cold, so the blood on his suit isn't obvious, but he looks worn and drawn, and his expression is difficult to read. Troubled, certainly.
Martin Blackwood	Martin is wearing a heavy wool coat, jeans and heavy snow boots. "Thought I'd find you here" he says softly as he moves up behind Jon. "I'm glad to see you're in one piece. I saw the front of the bar... it feels... not good. I don't have words that put it any better than that."     He steps a bit closer, his boots crunching on the slush still coating the ground and puts a hand out to touch Jon's arm. He didn't know which one had been stabbed. He didn't even know that one *had* been stabbed. "You want to talk about it?" he asks softly.
Jonathan Sims	Jon winces visibly at the touch, and Martin can /feel/ the pain that pours out of him, but he doesn't look away from the tree. "I ended the universe tonight, Martin. I didn't even know we were touching that kind of power." He swallows, closes his eyes.     "This is the way the world ends," he whispers, even the whisper somehow strangled. "Not with a bang, but with a whimper."     He shudders, opens his eyes to gaze upon the tree again. "We found the angel." There's so, so much more to the story than that, clearly, but just as clearly Jon's grappling with something he can't quite understand. Something that terrifies him down to his core.
Martin Blackwood	Martin jerks his hand back at the wince. "You're hurt..." he says. It's not a question. "Show me." Again, not a question.     Unless Jon complies, he moves to try and pull the coat away to see the wound that he knows must be there. Sure, there are likely those in the Mystic Justice Leage, or Justice League Dark, or whatever they call themselves, but he trusts his own abilities more than theirs.     "What do you mean..." he asks as he examines Jon for more injury. "And why are you quoting Eliot? I thought you hated poetry" he adds.
Jonathan Sims	Jon laughs, and there's an edge to it that Martin hasn't heard in /years/. "The, ahh, the statement... came in between lines of poetry. 'The Hollow Men.'" He shakes his head. "I don't hate poetry, Martin, not anymore. I've come to an appreciation of the form. I just don't like most of the overwrought drivel /you/ prefer. Eliot's perfectly sensible."     He doesn't show Martin the wound, but neither does he protest or fight the shorter man pulling the coat away. There's a ragged gap in the jacket and shirt beneath, and a /lot/ of dried blood. And a scar, on his shoulder, as if the wound had long since healed over, despite the blood.     "We found the angel," he goes on, still staring up at the tree, "and it was in Chas. I should've seen it. I would have, if I wasn't so bloody distracted by a dozen other things. Chas has an angel in him, and Phoebe has a hole in her aura." He sighs.
Martin Blackwood	Martin frowns and tugs off his fleece lined glove and place a hand on Jon's shoulder. A turquoise glow surrounds his hand and he places it on the shoulder before letting the glow wink out and he tugs his glove back on. "Passable... I guess" he says with a heap of judgement on the job.     "Chas?" he asks. "How? I mean... he's not able to... at least, I don't think he's able to do any summoning..." he says. "New power? A little late for it to manifest but..." He's glancing at Jon. "What do you mean you should've seen it. It wasn't like he was sprouting wings and proclaiming to the heavens... was he?"
Jonathan Sims	"He fit the profile. Faith, access to the right books... you don't need power to summon something like that. Not magical power. You just need to /believe/." Jon sighs, and then... finally looks down at Martin.     "Passable? Is that all?" He reaches up his right hand to press at the scar. "I... I did it myself. The healing, I mean. I've been working on a theory, and... it seemed better to test it on myself than anyone else."     His tone doesn't quite indicate it, but Martin can tell that Jon's /barely/ holding himself together. He wants to break down, scream and cry, vomit and curl into a ball, run away from everything. Instead he's standing there blinking down at Martin, holding everything in. The question, one supposes, is... why?
Martin Blackwood	Martin frowns at the hole. "What did the damage? How bad was it?" he asks. "I mean... you left a scar and the muscle fibers are still tender. You obviously need physical therapy to get back up to strength. I mean... it did the work, but... hmm..." He shakes his head. "I would've done it differently."     He frowns like he wants to ask about the internal wounds the man is feeling. He can feel them too, and there isn't anyone else around the tree this late at night. What is causing the man to keep it all bottled in.
Jonathan Sims	Jon looks back up at the tree. "Cael Becker rammed a railroad spike through my shoulder," he says, his tone devoid of emotion, but that's because if he lets it out he'll crack and fall apart. Which might mean he won't be able to /walk/ or /stand/. "The angel was mind-controlling her." He reaches up to prod at the scar again, and Martin knows all too well that he's probably re-living the moment, in his mind. "She pinned me to a wall. She..."     He shudders, and curls in on himself, shoulders hunching. "This is the way the world ends," he whispers again. "This is the way the world ends." He can't cry. If he starts crying he might never stop.     "It came after her because of me, Martin. Because of /me/. Because I /threatened/ it and then protected her, and..." He balls his hands into fists and wraps his arms around his waist. "What does it want with me? W-why... why /me/?"
Martin Blackwood	Martin frowns and shakes his head before leaning in to give Jon a hug. "I... that's terrible, Jon" he says giving the man a tight squeeze. "I... a railroad spike?" he asks and then blinks. "Oh... oh God. Those... the nails." He shudders against his husband as a cold shiver that has nothing to do with the temperature runs through him.     "I... Could it be afraid of you?" he asks, pulling away only enough to look up at the man. "I mean, The Archivist is a powerful force... right? Maybe it sees you as a threat to its plans. I... I don't begin to understand these things but..." He shrugs.
Jonathan Sims	"Afraid... of... me?" Jon stares down at Martin, eyes widening, like the whole world's shifting under his feet. "Martin, this thing, it... it's one of the /big/ ones. Whatever the ranks are, it's /up/ there."     He whispers, "Martin, folding it through Nullspace /stopped everything./"     A beat. "And... you think... it's afraid of /me/?" He's considering the idea. Is that... possible? He /is/ supposed to keep them in line, right?
Martin Blackwood	Martin gives Jon a smile. "I mean... you're linked to the Egyptian gods... if they aren't meant for judgement of Abrahamic messengers... not sure who is." He leans in to Jon again. "I have to admit that their subjugation of the Jewish people was pretty hardcore until Moses came around."     He sighs. "Jon. Not long ago you were telling me that you were going to be doing the whole superhero cape thing... now when something comes around and you're put in a place to do just that... you balk?" he asks. "Seems a bit finicky to me."
Jonathan Sims	"There's 'being a superhero' and then there's 'saving the universe.'" Jon doesn't even seem to realize he's being hugged; he's staring up at the tree. "It just... it hadn't even occurred to me. That... that /it/ might be afraid of /me/. I'm /terrified/, Martin. I... I'm so scared, I can hardly think."     He swallows, and finally wraps his arms around the shorter man. "Whatever this is, you're not coming into it with me, and that... that's... it's so /big/. I mean..." He laughs. "I of all people should know, superheroes are afraid /all/ the time. I'm not... I'm not going to run away. But I'm allowed to be scared."     He's shaking a little. "It hurt," he whispers. His left arm twitches. "It really, /really/ hurt."
Martin Blackwood	Martin nods. "You are. And I will be here to do this very thing every time you feel the fear rise up in you" he sighs against the man he calls his husband. "But... I believe in you. I can't fight this with you, but know that in your heart, I'm with you. And I don't think anything can stand against us together."     He nods his head against the man's chest. "I know love. I can feel it. Or what you remember of it. You were brave today... I know that much. Because..." he smiles, "because you survived. That's the mark of bravery. If you survive it's courage. If you die, it's foolishness. Right?"
Jonathan Sims	"I survived because the spell went off." Jon isn't smiling. "Plenty of people are brave and wind up dead. Are foolish and live. Was it bravery, or foolishness, trying to bind an angel? Suggesting what I did, with my admittedly limited knowledge? Would it have worked just as well, binding it in just one place? The /point/ was to keep the void from eating the world, and instead..."     He shudders. "Martin... all this time, I've been struggling with what I don't know, with feeling like I wasn't strong enough to face the challenges the world's throwing at me... that the Archivist was just this tiny speck, flotsam in the river... but now... if it's /that/ big and it's afraid of /me/?" He closes his eyes and buries his face in Martin's hair.     "Martin, /what/ am I becoming?"
Martin Blackwood	Martin is quiet for a while. "A Judge. Judgement for things that don't have judges" he says softly. "I set of scales for things that don't get weighed." He looks at Jon. "The Archivist is the collected knowledge of humanity, right?"     "I don't agree with everything Sir Francis Bacon ever said, but one thing I do is 'Knowledge is power'" he smiles at Jon. "If you have the collected knowledge of possibly over *six thousand years.* I'd say that makes you pretty bloody powerful in my estimation. Would you agree?"
Jonathan Sims	"Possibly longer, Martin. The homo magi go back... /far/, far longer. The Archive..." Jon sighs. "It's big. However many thousands of years... it's big. And it's /mine/ now. And... and, what, I'm supposed to judge things that are pillars of the very foundation of reality?"     He's started shaking like a leaf, and Martin's hair starts to get wet. He's crying. "It's so much. It's so /much/." He's terrified, and the moment where Cael pinned him to the wall keeps playing over and over in his head, the stunning flash of pain, so strong it broke the Archivist transformation, and rage at the angel keeps tearing through him in spasms, and there's waves of fear at himself, at what they did today...     And beneath it all, down in the depths beneath roiling waves overhead, a steady drumbeat, a memory of void and silence and nothing. Of Nullspace. Of how /right/ it felt.     Every time it beats, it sends spasms of terror up through him and roils the surface. If he weren't cracking open it wouldn't even be evident, but it's there underneath, a whisper in his mind. He could go back. He knows how. He could go back.
Martin Blackwood	Martin tries to push past the rush in Jon's thoughts. To get to the man underneath the desires of the emptiness of the Dark. "Maybe so?" he says. "I mean, something has to put them in their place when they act against the natural order. God..." he says, fidgeting slightly, "is a very hands off sort of person since the birth of the Narzarene. He has His prophets and gives us signs but... He doesn't get involved."     He pauses and frowns a bit more. "It seems to me, that Him being all knowing as He is. He might give us humans a safety valve. Something out there that could right things if one or another side got too powerful. Like say, a malach deciding that it needed to be arbiter of what is good and right with the world without input from the people that actually *live* in the world."
Jonathan Sims	Jon shudders and shakes his head. "It's not... I don't..." He clutches his hands into Martin's coat. "I d-don't... care... what..." He can't find the words. There /aren't/ words. He's terrified. Not of the angel, but of /himself/. Of what he serves. Of the darkness at the end of the universe, and the Archivist's strange longing for it.     Of all the things he unleashed, folding reality in on itself.     "Here we go 'round the prickly pear / Prickly pear prickly pear / Here we go 'round the prickly pear / At five o'clock in the morning..."     His voice is a strangled whisper, and his breath comes in gasps. He's not rational or coherent. He's breaking down, and clutching to Martin as the only reason not to go run back to the Laughing Magician and pick up those notebooks of Lydia's and cast the circle again...     Why would he /want/ that? He doesn't want that. He's spiraling.
Martin Blackwood	Something seems to dawn on Martin and he blinks a few times. "Oh... oh Jon" he says softly. "Here..." He takes the mans hands in his own and pushes up on his toes to give the man a kiss on the cheek. "We need to get you home. You can record the statement. I feel it bubbling in you. Get it out. Put it *elsewhere* for a time." "And then you and I have to get packing" he says, stroking the man's cheek with his gloved hand. "Tim is expecting us at 10 in the morning. Apparently, we're taking a private jet to Ecuador." He smiles at Jon, hoping the words break through the spiral. "Ecuador, Jon. A vacation for all of..." he gestures behind him. "From all of this."
Jonathan Sims	Jon stares down at Martin. "I can't... I can't... /leave/... not now... we have to keep an eye on Chas, and... and..."     And he's tired, and worn, and he needs to /rest/. They won't be ready to exorcise Chas for a few days anyway. He can afford a couple of days, to rest and recuperate.     Still, his eyes dart about the plaza, like he's trying to find an escape.     Something Martin said finally makes it through his head. "...I need to just start carrying a recorder everywhere I go," he says. "Like cigarettes, or my phone." Because for some reason it doesn't feel right, recording them to his phone. Maybe because there isn't a physical object to file somewhere?     He squeezes Martin's hands with his own, still shaking. "T-take me home, then. Please. I feel like I'm about to split open."
Martin Blackwood	Martin nods. "We'll see what we can do" he says as he leads Jon away from the tree with slow steady steps. "I've got you." He starts for the car, luckily it's not far away the plaza before the tree having been mostly vacated by this time of evening. "You can take a vacation for a little while at least. Recharge. Together." He moves to stand closer, offering his own frame as support if the man needs it.