[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.]
[She's not fully sure that she can call what happened a reaction. At least not a voluntary one. It was like a security system being triggered and going into overdrive. Agnes shakes her head. She doesn't look at Jon, can't seem to bring herself to uncurl from where she's hiding. But she hears him, she hears them both, now.]
No. No, I do not.
[She wants revenge. She wants to memorize every face of every single one who touched her, so she can turn it to ash. She wants to destroy. Agnes takes a shaken breath. Several thoughts compound in her at once, and she voices them weakly, barely comprehensible.]
It was Elias, but I don't understand. I did nothing, nothing. Everything hurts.
[He hurt her, yes, but he'd told her it would happen. He'd asked. He'd asked twice. Jon doesn't tell Crowley any of that, doubts it will matter.
It doesn't really matter.
The Archivist keeps his distance, takes a few steps back, even, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. His face, neck and hands sting all over and he wants to go and read a Statement to fix it. Crowley probably won't be healing him this time.]
It might have been something I did. I don't- He came to see me last week, and I was sharp with him. I'm sorry.
[Elias is usually more patient with Jon's attitude, more-so than he ever was with Jon's assistants, but perhaps this is an indication that that indulgence has lapsed?]
[This is where there's a problem. Crowley has a suspicion that he knows exactly what landed Agnes in Realignment, but he doesn't know for sure, and pointing fingers isn't going to help anyone. He's loyal to Lilith, too, more than he is to Agnes. Even if she is the cause, he'll give her a chance to explain for herself rather than shoving her mistake out into the world.
He's sort of tired of this. Getting dragged into these messes, and he's well aware of what else he said to Lilith yesterday.
Is any of this really worth it?]
It'll hurt less with time. I promise. [He might not have experienced Realignment yet, but he's a Hell-thing, he knows how this works.
He won't focus on the why, right now, the priority is getting Agnes settled, and then dealing with the fallout at the Institute. Martin's probably out of his mind with worry.
Crowley eases back slightly from Agnes, just enough to take her face gently in his hands, guiding her to look at him.] Whatever caused this, we'll figure it out, but not now. You need to rest, alright? I'll take you anywhere you want to go.
[She doesn't think it was Jon, but then, she doesn't know what she thinks. She's not mad at him, at least, not really. Later, when things are more clear, she'll be upset about the question he asked her: about what she fears. But there's too much to process at the moment; it all has to sort it out. All she knows right now is that she can't trust herself.
What waits for her in the loneliness of her apartment is too much.]
May I stay with you, if it isn't too much trouble?
[There's a split second temptation to say no, to wash his hands off this mess, but even he can't be that cruel.]
It's no trouble.
[He finally looks at Jon for more than a second, not bothering to hide the cold disdain that he's feeling towards the man right now. Crowley casts a glance over him, as if weighing him up, deciding what to do with him. It'd be easy as anything to leave him here, force him to walk home alone, but in the end, his care for Martin's feelings win out. It's kinder to him to send Jon back to the Institute, which is the only reason that Crowley snaps his fingers to do just that.
And then he snaps again, taking himself and Agnes to his apartment.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.]
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And her mind is in the realignment center.]
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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.
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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.]
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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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No. No, I do not.
[She wants revenge. She wants to memorize every face of every single one who touched her, so she can turn it to ash. She wants to destroy. Agnes takes a shaken breath. Several thoughts compound in her at once, and she voices them weakly, barely comprehensible.]
It was Elias, but I don't understand. I did nothing, nothing. Everything hurts.
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It doesn't really matter.
The Archivist keeps his distance, takes a few steps back, even, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. His face, neck and hands sting all over and he wants to go and read a Statement to fix it. Crowley probably won't be healing him this time.]
It might have been something I did. I don't- He came to see me last week, and I was sharp with him. I'm sorry.
[Elias is usually more patient with Jon's attitude, more-so than he ever was with Jon's assistants, but perhaps this is an indication that that indulgence has lapsed?]
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He's sort of tired of this. Getting dragged into these messes, and he's well aware of what else he said to Lilith yesterday.
Is any of this really worth it?]
It'll hurt less with time. I promise. [He might not have experienced Realignment yet, but he's a Hell-thing, he knows how this works.
He won't focus on the why, right now, the priority is getting Agnes settled, and then dealing with the fallout at the Institute. Martin's probably out of his mind with worry.
Crowley eases back slightly from Agnes, just enough to take her face gently in his hands, guiding her to look at him.] Whatever caused this, we'll figure it out, but not now. You need to rest, alright? I'll take you anywhere you want to go.
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What waits for her in the loneliness of her apartment is too much.]
May I stay with you, if it isn't too much trouble?
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It's no trouble.
[He finally looks at Jon for more than a second, not bothering to hide the cold disdain that he's feeling towards the man right now. Crowley casts a glance over him, as if weighing him up, deciding what to do with him. It'd be easy as anything to leave him here, force him to walk home alone, but in the end, his care for Martin's feelings win out. It's kinder to him to send Jon back to the Institute, which is the only reason that Crowley snaps his fingers to do just that.
And then he snaps again, taking himself and Agnes to his apartment.]