As I am writing this, I am listening, for the first time, to the last episode of The Magnus Archives. And I am… numb. Something about Jon wailing into Elias… Magnus… Whatever. Wailing into him in some form of revenge for Sasha, for Gertrude, and… and for me. It feels numb.
I know that I was there. I know that in my canon, I joined Jon and Martin in the panopticon. A decoy guard dog for Jon, an actual guard dog for Martin. An Avatar of the Hunt who didn’t care how this ended, so long as it did end. So long as the man who had caused all of the pain and suffering died… it didn’t matter. Danny was gone. Sasha was gone. Michael and Helen were gone. I was still something of a shell of myself but I could only go downhill from there. Everything was going to happen how it happened. So there I was, baring my teeth and waiting for whatever happened to happen. Watching Jon and Martin and knowing that I could do nothing, that my words would not matter because why would they? They’d go and we’d be left behind, to suffer whatever became of the fucking world.
We got lucky in my canon. The Fears dissipated. The world returned to normal. But I drew away from everyone. There was nothing for me in the world and I couldn’t deal with the others anyways. The ones who survived. I returned to my area of study in anthropology and just tried to pretend that nothing had happened.
I ran into Basira once. She asked if I was okay but I think that was just because she could see it in my eyes. The haunted look. Dead. I was just existing in the minimal way I could. Everyone from the Archives was gone. Everyone I’d cared about, at least.
Life went on. And I had no option but to continue along with it, but that didn’t mean I had to enjoy it. And I didn’t. Don’t think I ever returned to even a shade of my former self.
