[Agnes flinches--but it's subtle, the tension gone just as fast as it comes, and she sits, coiling her gloved hands around the mug as its given, holding it close to her body.]
I would like to know, if it isn't too much trouble, if you could recommend a place for me to stay temporarily. It would be unwise of me to return to my assigned lodgings.
[It's strange, the way she talks. Not the stoic detachment, as is her usual way of things, the way she'd known to be for so long, but...if he didn't know better, it would almost seem like nothing is really wrong. Like nothing happened. But of course something happened. Something horrible.]
[He feels the flinch because he's watching out for it. Her mannerisms are also incredibly disturbing, in spite of how much more human they are. Maybe that's the problem.]
I can get you a place. Maybe- I can ask Alessandro if you could stay in his house just for a little bit while we look for something better. You should have a better place to live, anyway.
[Jon stands there, fretting.]
Can you talk about what happened to you?
[He applies a bit of his power, hoping to give her the opportunity to answer honestly if there's something blocking her.]
Agnes, I'm going to use my powers to ask you a question. I'm hoping I can... I hope they can break through whatever this is to get an honest answer. [His eyes crackle with static for a moment.] Do you want me to remove what they've done to you? Do you want me to try to strip all of this away so you're yourself again? It will hurt.
[Agnes looks ill, nauseated agony ripping through her stoicism, and she coils forward, a protective cocoon around the steaming mug of coffee in her lap.]
[Agnes whines softly. This isn't a question she wants to answer. It's a question she'd fight very, very hard to avoid. She'd slap him across the face with a burning hand to take it back. But she's too vulnerable to do these things, to think of these things. Never been drugged, before. Never expected it was possible.
They squash down her defiance like she's an ant.]
I'm afraid of myself. I'm afraid of losing control. I'm afraid of what I do to people and what I'll continue to do to people. I'm afraid that if I'm not who I've made myself become, a cultivation of decades of solitude and contemplation, I will destroy countless lives. I'll become who I was as a child. I will burn everyone, and everything, as penance for my discontent. I'm afraid of my anger. I've always been angry. I'm still angry, I just know how to hide it better. I'm afraid that one day, in one moment, I'll be overcome, and in an instant everything will be ash, and I'll be alone.
[Many of them are things Jon, himself fears. And like that, he snaps back. Fear of losing control. His eyes widen slightly, the human ones, anyway. More have opened up across his body, crowding within his scars, still others are simply floating in the air around him, watching her.
The Archivist can't call them back, as it were, but he can refocus on the task at hand.]
Do you want me to remove what they've done to you? Answer me, Agnes.
[No? Yes? She doesn't know. She doesn't know. Her body and her mind are fighting against two very separate, very distinct urges. But in the end, only one of those is really her. So though it comes out through gritted teeth, a pain in and of itself to answer, he gets exactly what he may have expected.]
[The Archivist nods, whether she sees it or not.] I'm sorry.
[The number of eyes in the room seems to multiply until they're filling Jon's office. Everything else fades away and he Watches her, stares into her and Sees the film of drugs and conditioning coating her mind like some hideous, sickly honey. The sensation of it tries to crawl along his limbs, spread into him, but the Archivist pushes it away, shoves his metaphorical hands into her head and begins to claw.
It's likely to feel like the worse headache Agnes has ever experienced coupled with whatever personal horror there is as bits and pieces of her mind are cleaned, exposed and revealed under the haze. And the Eye watches all around, pierces Agnes as she is both cleansed and ruined. There is nothing delicate in what the Archivist does. If he knew how to use his powers better, perhaps this could be done more cleanly. As it is, Jon hardly knows what he's doing. He clutches at the things obscuring Agnes, pulls and pulls and digs through the mire, searching for all the horrible things that the Realignment drugs covered over.
To anyone watching from the outside, the Archivist is a mass of eyes now, not even a mouth, just crackling static, eyes, and what passes for a vaguely human outline.]
[Over the device, Crowley hears Agnes' voice and something static and unearthly, a familiar sort of unpleasantness, when he's been on the receiving end of the Archivist's abilities. There's no guesswork in this, he goes straight to the Institute, straight to Jon's office, caring very little for any promises he made.
He doesn't give himself time to deal with being confronted by the image that the Archivist makes. The thing still has a throat, so Crowley can grab it with a clawed hand, slamming Jon back into the wall with a decent amount of force.]
[The pain is a level that Agnes has never experienced before. Her mind would go blank from it, if it weren’t for the memories. They accost her like the cultists, loud and demanding and forcing her to look at them. What does she do, when she’s given an order, an expectation?
Children full of spiders. She frees them. No more victims. A house, burning. A body, hanging.
These are things that she chose. Agnes, the lightless flame. Fire.
It hurts. Her back flayed, her nails ripped from her fingertips, her eyes pried wide, wide, wider.
As she relives these things, she looks up. But she doesn’t see them, because her eyes are burning, darkly flamed caverns. Pits of hell. Her hair is fire. Her skin is blackening at the edges. She opens her mouth and the sound is crackling. The floor around her erupts.]
[The Archivist has no mouth to cry out. Not at the moment, anyway. Eyes stare at Crowley, bulge and shift around his grip as Jon finishes his work, rips off the last of the film, and then sags. He's a person again, but one still covered in eyes. The room is filled with them. And there is a hand at his throat that Jon grips and struggles with, panicked. He doesn't know what Crowley's doing here, what's going on.]
Stop! She's-
[Agnes is exploding. Jon cries out as the light and the heat combine in a blinding shockwave. The scream doesn't last long because the pillar of flame sucks all the oxygen in the room toward it. Papers scatter, burn, vanish, and it is agony for the Archivist. The eyes in the room are burned away--not all of them, but more than a few--and Jon's fairly convinced he really is about to die, here in this little basement office with the physical embodiment of raw destruction and fire.
[For a second, Crowley freezes, panic overwriting instinct. Part of him is falling and burning, part of him is screaming for Aziraphale in a burning bookshop.
But he's too old to let fear win out; he releases Jon and pulls at all the power he can muster so far from Hell, dragging his hands through the air as he freezes everything in the Institute in time, from the flames surrounding Agnes to the tiny spider in Martin's office. It almost hurts, he's never done anything quite like this and the fire of the Desolation isn't hellfire, isn't normal fire either. It almost feels as if it's straining against him.
But it buys him a few seconds to think, as much as he can think in the midst of all this. He needs to get Jon and Agnes out of here, but he's not sure he can maintain the freeze on time and send them to two separate locations.
They both get sent to the same beach, their timelines restarting when he does it, and he just has to hope they don't kill each other in the few seconds he needs to deal with the fire inside the room. Without needing to worry about suffocating anyone, he can turn seal the room off and change all the oxygen to carbon monoxide in the hope that even the Desolation's fire can't burn without oxygen.]
[Agnes is a shooting star, a comet, falling through space to somewhere distant. She grips her head, screaming and crying and angry, furious, hateful destruction that has no sight or sound. The sand burns and glows as her body sinks into it, but the fire doesn’t spread. It’s contained, for now.
[Crowley has the good sense to drop Jon about 30 feet away from Agnes. His first act is to simply drop to the ground, gasping in air. He gets two breaths in before he's coughing, hacking, the smoke settled deep into his lungs. Even from here, Agnes is a raging inferno, and Jon, having some measure of sense, whatever people might think, starts crawling away from her and toward the water. He's not going to try to comfort her until he's relatively certain he can do so without immediately dying.]
[The second the fire is ha fled in the Institute, Crowley stumbles onto the beach, the relocation far less careful than it usually is. He takes in the scene quickly, dismissing Jon without much thought and turning his attention to Agnes.
He lost his sunglasses at some point, but that too isn't much of a concern in this moment.]
Agnes! [In an ideal world he'd approach her carefully, but he's not sure she'll even register him in this state, so he shouts her name instead. After a steadying breath, he starts to approach, his mind a constant stream of reassurances to himself. He drove one hour from London to Tadfield in a burning car. He survived that. He'll survive this. He won't burn.] You're safe now, Agnes. You've got to stop.
Agnes is her name. The name her mother gave her. Her mother would be so proud of her right now, a thoughtless force of pain. Jude would be in awe. Everyone would be. And they'd all die for her. They'd all burn.
She sees Jack, with his kind, bashful face. The flesh melting away, fat and muscle deteriorating. Disfigured and miserable forever because of her relentless fire.
She hears her name, hears a voice, and suddenly she remembers her eyelids. She blinks, and it's coming back. That she's not chained up surrounded by hateful faces, pushed and prodded and scarred.]
What?
[Her voice is hoarse, like she's been screaming, the fire dying away from her bit by bit. Has she been screaming? Screaming this whole time? Instinctively, she holds out her arms, like a child seeking refuge in the face of tremendous loss.]
[Jon stops crawling when the edge of the surf crashes over his hands. It's then as the salt shoots spears of pain through him that he realizes he's sporting first degree burns over a not insignificant portion of his exposes skin. Crowley's body must have shielded him from worse, but it's still unpleasant.
He just sits there, getting his bearings, listening trying not to look or Look. Just a little while longer. He's going to be here just a little while longer, then he'll go to her and apologize again. And try to figure out what the hell happened.]
[There's enough heat left in the air that it hurts even him, but Crowley closes the distance between himself and Agnes without a thought for it, pulling her into his arms, wrapping her up, tucking her against his chest.
He won't allow it, won't feel it. That's the trick to any pain.]
You're alright, you're safe, I've got you. [It's almost his Ashtoreth voice, lacking the accent, but that same soft lilt to it, the way he soothes her like he would Warlock when the boy was hurt.
He doesn't spare a thought for Jon, not to help him or hurt him, and for now that might be the best the archivist can hope for.]
[It takes what feels like a life time for her to fully come back to herself, folded against Crowley and hiding away from the world like a little bird beneath a protective wing. There's so much she's experience, so much that's new, or barely familiar, and it's so overwhelming. The anger, the hate, she's familiar with that. But the shaken fear, the feeling of violation and abhorrent confusion.]
Where am I? What did I do? What have I done?
[Because she must've done something terrible. Awful. She can't bear to look and see.]
[Jon's settled for now. He's had enough near-death experiences that he can recover relatively quickly. It still takes him a moment to rise and dust off. His clothes are charred at the edges, so that's... right. He finally turns to see Crowley and Agnes embracing.
Should he head over? It feels like an intrusion, but he needs to know if that worked, if Agnes is herself again. He still stops a good 15 feet away, but he hears her questions.]
We're on the beach. It was... something went wrong. Are you... you don't want to service anyone anymore, do you?
[It's a good thing that Jon doesn't come any closer. Even as it is, Crowley turns his head towards the man, baring his teeth in a warning snarl. It takes every ounce of self-control he has to ignore Jon rather than snapping at him.
He keeps his focus on Agnes, smoothing a hand down her back as he answers her questions.]
You've not done anything. Jon hurt you, and you reacted, that's not — that isn't your fault. You called me and I made sure no one got hurt. It was the right thing to do.
[Maybe it was a coincidence, that he texted her at the right time, but he'll offer the reassurance anyway. If Jon was hurting her and she couldn't fight it, getting Crowley involved as a smart play.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
I would like to know, if it isn't too much trouble, if you could recommend a place for me to stay temporarily. It would be unwise of me to return to my assigned lodgings.
[It's strange, the way she talks. Not the stoic detachment, as is her usual way of things, the way she'd known to be for so long, but...if he didn't know better, it would almost seem like nothing is really wrong. Like nothing happened. But of course something happened. Something horrible.]
no subject
I can get you a place. Maybe- I can ask Alessandro if you could stay in his house just for a little bit while we look for something better. You should have a better place to live, anyway.
[Jon stands there, fretting.]
Can you talk about what happened to you?
[He applies a bit of his power, hoping to give her the opportunity to answer honestly if there's something blocking her.]
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[Her grip tightens on the mug, just slightly.]
Yes, I can. What would you like to know? Would you prefer that I start at the beginning? How can I best be of service?
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[Jon half-recoils from that because no. It's like it had been with Dorian. That disturbing twisting of the mind, like the Web's got hold of her.]
I don't- you don't need to serve me. Ever. Did they give you some sort of drugs?
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[A rotten submissive, indeed.]
I've never experienced a feeling of illness before. It's peculiar.
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Agnes, I'm going to use my powers to ask you a question. I'm hoping I can... I hope they can break through whatever this is to get an honest answer. [His eyes crackle with static for a moment.] Do you want me to remove what they've done to you? Do you want me to try to strip all of this away so you're yourself again? It will hurt.
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It isn't pain that I'm afraid of.
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What are you afraid of, Agnes Montague?
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They squash down her defiance like she's an ant.]
I'm afraid of myself. I'm afraid of losing control. I'm afraid of what I do to people and what I'll continue to do to people. I'm afraid that if I'm not who I've made myself become, a cultivation of decades of solitude and contemplation, I will destroy countless lives. I'll become who I was as a child. I will burn everyone, and everything, as penance for my discontent. I'm afraid of my anger. I've always been angry. I'm still angry, I just know how to hide it better. I'm afraid that one day, in one moment, I'll be overcome, and in an instant everything will be ash, and I'll be alone.
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The Archivist can't call them back, as it were, but he can refocus on the task at hand.]
Do you want me to remove what they've done to you? Answer me, Agnes.
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Do whatever you have to.
cw: eye horror, body horror, tryptophobia
[The number of eyes in the room seems to multiply until they're filling Jon's office. Everything else fades away and he Watches her, stares into her and Sees the film of drugs and conditioning coating her mind like some hideous, sickly honey. The sensation of it tries to crawl along his limbs, spread into him, but the Archivist pushes it away, shoves his metaphorical hands into her head and begins to claw.
It's likely to feel like the worse headache Agnes has ever experienced coupled with whatever personal horror there is as bits and pieces of her mind are cleaned, exposed and revealed under the haze. And the Eye watches all around, pierces Agnes as she is both cleansed and ruined. There is nothing delicate in what the Archivist does. If he knew how to use his powers better, perhaps this could be done more cleanly. As it is, Jon hardly knows what he's doing. He clutches at the things obscuring Agnes, pulls and pulls and digs through the mire, searching for all the horrible things that the Realignment drugs covered over.
To anyone watching from the outside, the Archivist is a mass of eyes now, not even a mouth, just crackling static, eyes, and what passes for a vaguely human outline.]
((art credit))
no subject
He doesn't give himself time to deal with being confronted by the image that the Archivist makes. The thing still has a throat, so Crowley can grab it with a clawed hand, slamming Jon back into the wall with a decent amount of force.]
Let her go.
Cw varied horror
Children full of spiders. She frees them. No more victims.
A house, burning. A body, hanging.
These are things that she chose. Agnes, the lightless flame. Fire.
It hurts. Her back flayed, her nails ripped from her fingertips, her eyes pried wide, wide, wider.
As she relives these things, she looks up. But she doesn’t see them, because her eyes are burning, darkly flamed caverns. Pits of hell. Her hair is fire. Her skin is blackening at the edges. She opens her mouth and the sound is crackling. The floor around her erupts.]
just horror all the way down here
Stop! She's-
[Agnes is exploding. Jon cries out as the light and the heat combine in a blinding shockwave. The scream doesn't last long because the pillar of flame sucks all the oxygen in the room toward it. Papers scatter, burn, vanish, and it is agony for the Archivist. The eyes in the room are burned away--not all of them, but more than a few--and Jon's fairly convinced he really is about to die, here in this little basement office with the physical embodiment of raw destruction and fire.
Not even he could survive that. Probably.]
its the horror adventure hour
But he's too old to let fear win out; he releases Jon and pulls at all the power he can muster so far from Hell, dragging his hands through the air as he freezes everything in the Institute in time, from the flames surrounding Agnes to the tiny spider in Martin's office. It almost hurts, he's never done anything quite like this and the fire of the Desolation isn't hellfire, isn't normal fire either. It almost feels as if it's straining against him.
But it buys him a few seconds to think, as much as he can think in the midst of all this. He needs to get Jon and Agnes out of here, but he's not sure he can maintain the freeze on time and send them to two separate locations.
They both get sent to the same beach, their timelines restarting when he does it, and he just has to hope they don't kill each other in the few seconds he needs to deal with the fire inside the room. Without needing to worry about suffocating anyone, he can turn seal the room off and change all the oxygen to carbon monoxide in the hope that even the Desolation's fire can't burn without oxygen.]
no subject
And her mind is in the realignment center.]
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no subject
He lost his sunglasses at some point, but that too isn't much of a concern in this moment.]
Agnes! [In an ideal world he'd approach her carefully, but he's not sure she'll even register him in this state, so he shouts her name instead. After a steadying breath, he starts to approach, his mind a constant stream of reassurances to himself. He drove one hour from London to Tadfield in a burning car. He survived that. He'll survive this. He won't burn.] You're safe now, Agnes. You've got to stop.
no subject
Agnes?
Agnes is her name. The name her mother gave her. Her mother would be so proud of her right now, a thoughtless force of pain. Jude would be in awe. Everyone would be. And they'd all die for her. They'd all burn.
She sees Jack, with his kind, bashful face. The flesh melting away, fat and muscle deteriorating. Disfigured and miserable forever because of her relentless fire.
She hears her name, hears a voice, and suddenly she remembers her eyelids. She blinks, and it's coming back. That she's not chained up surrounded by hateful faces, pushed and prodded and scarred.]
What?
[Her voice is hoarse, like she's been screaming, the fire dying away from her bit by bit. Has she been screaming? Screaming this whole time? Instinctively, she holds out her arms, like a child seeking refuge in the face of tremendous loss.]
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He just sits there, getting his bearings, listening trying not to look or Look. Just a little while longer. He's going to be here just a little while longer, then he'll go to her and apologize again. And try to figure out what the hell happened.]
no subject
He won't allow it, won't feel it. That's the trick to any pain.]
You're alright, you're safe, I've got you. [It's almost his Ashtoreth voice, lacking the accent, but that same soft lilt to it, the way he soothes her like he would Warlock when the boy was hurt.
He doesn't spare a thought for Jon, not to help him or hurt him, and for now that might be the best the archivist can hope for.]
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Where am I? What did I do? What have I done?
[Because she must've done something terrible. Awful. She can't bear to look and see.]
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Should he head over? It feels like an intrusion, but he needs to know if that worked, if Agnes is herself again. He still stops a good 15 feet away, but he hears her questions.]
We're on the beach. It was... something went wrong. Are you... you don't want to service anyone anymore, do you?
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He keeps his focus on Agnes, smoothing a hand down her back as he answers her questions.]
You've not done anything. Jon hurt you, and you reacted, that's not — that isn't your fault. You called me and I made sure no one got hurt. It was the right thing to do.
[Maybe it was a coincidence, that he texted her at the right time, but he'll offer the reassurance anyway. If Jon was hurting her and she couldn't fight it, getting Crowley involved as a smart play.]
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