A/N: ffn doesn't have a tag for tma? wild. still, figured i'd crosspost this one here. unsure if i'll do more for this fandom (pardon any inaccuracies, i'm only partway through season 2 - where this is set), but i'm very fond of john/sasha and even moreso with the spooky factor of not!sasha. enjoy!
Sasha understands. She always has. John would deny anything a step past professional respect in regards to their relationship — but it's no secret that… well, if he had to pick a favorite assistant. No bumbling, frills, or inappropriate jokes — she gets her job done, and she does it well. She's steadier, more dependable, than the others, and that's the most John can ask for, really.
She's always been a soft spot. It's a thought John buries deep in the recesses of his head, next to the statements he can't toss, and overgrown childhood fears. But the tugging exhaustion that followed him that day, the day he gathered statements after Prentiss' supposed passing, feeling the painkillers begin to wane partway through, clutching his recorder in efforts to dull the throbbing of fresh burrows in its smooth plastic…
…he couldn't snap at her. Not like he could Martin, or Elias, or Tim.
It only comes to the forefront, now, when folders of candids begin to sit on his desk. Old snapshots of office parties, driver's license photos, online registries. Flats, for those within driving distance. Phone numbers of relatives who wouldn't mind a few even lies under the honeyed voice of a work friend. That sap Martin probably thought he was deterring suspicion with his ham-fisted, overdrawn friendliness — in John's case, it only gave him more evidence to wade through. Not that he was complaining — the feeling of digging, like the statements, was electric. Granted a kind of stomach-churning adrenaline. Touching a hot stove over and over again.
His heart doesn't stop pumping. He doesn't sleep at night. He hears recorder clicks in his dreams. Martin brings him lunch and he picks it apart to check for hazards, then tosses it all the same — Tim chastises him, maybe lightheartedly but probably not. He reminds himself, over and over, to lock his doors: in case someone caught ear of a Supplemental or two and decided to have him dispatched.
Three gunshot wounds to the chest had killed Gertrude Robinson.
But had they? How much could he trust Martin's word? The ideas that godforsaken quivery voice put into his head… he continued to rap on John's door, day after day, as if to let him know he hadn't stopped listening.
His hands and mouth run like it's their last days on Earth. He reads, speaks, hears fear in all he does. He feels gazes, listens in on his coworkers' whispers when they think he's not around — or perhaps when they know he is. Just to keep him on his toes — keep him afraid. The ceaselessly pumping heart squeezes the freshest blood, after all.
Sasha is silent. Silent in a way John cherishes, when he closes his eyes and hears whispers, recorder-clicks, and wriggling worms. She is a placid listener — she does not try and prove the space she takes up like Martin, she does not make shows of things like Tim. She does not stammer, does not laugh, and does not snap.
"I'm tired," John finally admits. His hands quiver for his recorder — his palms are empty without it.
"Tired how?" Sasha asks. Her voice is a soft, smooth, tilted thing.
Her fingers crane for his. The way they unfurl — were it anyone else, he'd shrink back at the thought of Michael. But Sasha is nothing if not honest, and deserves better than to baby his fears.
Her eyes, half-lidded, pupils dark and beady, peer down to his scars. Fingernails trace pinkened pockmarks running down his veins, through the meat of his palms.
"I remember that day." She says, simply.
John nods. The spot of vulnerability, smooth skin on his, sends something jittering up his spine.
"I was scared I had lost you. For a long time."
The meshy webs between her fingers meet his. John exhales — for all he's replayed the timeline of events, memorized every breath taken in his coworkers' statements, any amount of fear beyond his own didn't quite register. Too annoyed, exhausted at the time, to offer any hands of his own. They'd be right to be fed up with him.
But Sasha, somehow, wasn't. Isn't.
"I'm sorry." John finally murmurs, voice soft. "I'm…" …he thinks, wondering if he's truly glad to sit in the aftermath, living to resent those around him, digging until his arms go numb… "…I'm glad you didn't."
"I'm happy everyone is safe." Her thumb traces the ridge of a worm's entryway. In certain lights, it resembles stigmata — why it hadn't gone hunting for anywhere more meaty, John didn't know… but in this moment, he's thankful they're close enough for her to touch. "We deserve it."
Her expression is unchanging. She simply observes the state of John's hands, with a level smile as if his injury is the most fascinating thing in the world.
Before John can lean in, she's tilted her head upwards. Her mouth is parted — her tongue rests, unmoving, against his. Her eyes are murky, and she looks only at him.
It's here the realization, sitting dusty in the back of his head, pushes firmly to the surface like the blare of a siren through thick, white fog: she isn't Sasha. Not as he, or anyone else, knows her. She is limp and yielding. Where once a headstrong, dependable feistiness sat, Sasha James' devotion to her Head Archivist is nothing but a loose inaction.
She isn't Sasha, but she's something else — something ashen, ghoulish, with puppeted hands that first thread laxly through his hair, then cradle his cheeks in a simulacrum of desire. An open-mouthed kiss welcomes a dribble down a motionless lower lip.
"Sasha." He murmurs into her mouth.
"Yes." She confirms.
It's me — I know — Me too — You're welcome
— like a cold reader. The kind of con he would have laughed out of the Institute. But his head's worn down, his heart even moreso. He's tired of thinking.
Her fingertips rest upon the gentle concaves of John's old wounds. Her touch is silent and obedient. Martin will stammer and Tim will laugh and Elias will snap but Sasha will listen. It's in the final lapse in John's heart, as he pulls away to breathe only to kiss her again, that the Not-Sasha digs her nails in.
The scarred skin gives with ease. He moans when it breaks. Warmth wells around her fingers, then there's a fullness in John's cheeks that he'd never thought possible. A red hotness splatters his collar. Coats her fingers to the last knuckle. Her nails scrape at his gums, his squirming tongue. Her own mouth remains unmoving.
She'd done this before — digging with her fingers and a corkscrew, pulling a worm out of him. Martin was too squeamish to try. It had occurred to John then, dimly, that he wouldn't have done that for any of them.
Except — maybe her.
It's when her fingers curl that John leans in further. When the flesh of his cheeks, his jaws, tugs out of place. The thing in her skin goes searching for another.
Monster, he could spit. Give her back.
But he doesn't — why, is something he will never want to answer. Blood gathers in the rivets of his molars. Something he feels he will not have to worry about much longer.
Her eyes are dark, transfixing, hollow. They haven't blinked in a minute or two.
Terrifying, he thinks, faraway. I'm going to die, aren't I.
Her lips are centimeters from his. They lapse in and out of their kiss — his blood smears her face. She does not catch her breath.
"I - love - you - John." The thing says. It's flimsy and Sasha would never say it — not like this — in a million years. Perhaps the Sasha he knew would have saved it for a bursted declaration over another tense disaster, or perhaps something quieter when the dust had settled — or perhaps far away from the Institute at all. Perhaps she'd never even say it, letting it hang in the air through measured fondness, through coffee or tea or reminders to not miss sleep reading up on statements yet again, John. But how pathetic is he that it shoots him right through the heart, all the same?
Gummy, loose, and pliable. Her mouth moving in tandem with his is an afterthought. Her tongue lolls and her touch isn't quite cold — but room-temperature. Flesh rips cleanly from its hinges: distantly, he remembers a rumor about a boyfriend, as the meat of his lower jaw begins to depart, bunched into her palms. Funny. The pain doesn't stop.
She is not Sasha James. She is something else: open, beautiful, and nightmarish.
Jonathan Sims cannot tear himself away from the nightmarish.
