Jon had, prior to this, considered himself somewhat of a refined connoisseur of suffering, as April puts it. He knows what it feels like to have worms burrowing into his skin, to press his hand into burning-hot wax, to have his ribs removed through unbroken skin. In a more removed way, he’s read really quite a lot of statements from people who have experienced a truly wide variety of types of pain. 

This, he decides, is worse than anything he’s experienced thus far. He can’t scream, can’t move his hands to block his ears. It’s impossible to tell if it’s supernatural or just the freeze response, his useless body panicking in the most counterproductive way possible. He does dry-heave a few times. It hurts. It is hard to put words to how much it hurts. It is a sort of pain that should not exist. He curses himself internally a thousand times over for asking for it when she warned him. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It also, in some impossible paradox, feels good. Feels better. 

When he stops dry-heaving and April looks mostly recovered, but before he stops feeling the vibrations in his bones, he manages to rasp out, “You can go on.” His voice shakes badly. He's not sure if he actually wants her to go on or not, but it doesn't matter at this point, not once the statement has already started.

She nods, shakily.

"There's—a translation but I don't think I can put it into words. 'Cave Things' is... very halfassed but not completely wrong. The thing is, the way their language works, it's... they're not limited to saying a single word at once, so they layer things. So you put together their word for 'people' and their word for the place where they live and you get—that, but then the word for people and the word for the place where they live both have layers of their own—'person' is about having experiences and making decisions and a bunch of other stuff I haven't dug deep enough to really get into—the place they live is... echoes and reflections and absence and darkness and obscurity and—safety, I think, as hilarious as that is—and I definitely haven't dug through all the layers on that one either..."

She takes a deep breath. "So, they gave me like a week with no singing to recover after that one. Still plenty of tentacle rape but you take what you can get. And then they taught me my second word. It's... call it 'law', that's the closest I can get."

This one, when she says it, is... simpler. Purer. Now that she's mentioned the layers, it's possible to tell that it has fewer of them, in a less complicated arrangement. A particularly sharp observer might notice that it shares some notes with the first one, although they're not quite arranged the same way. Being simpler does not, alas, make it noticeably easier to endure.

April clamps both hands over her mouth and takes another minute to breathe.

"...it shares some bits with 'person' but I haven't picked either of them apart enough to tell where the overlap is," she says, eventually, when she feels like she has successfully evaded the urge to throw up. "You can kind of—or I can, anyway, because I know what-all they mean—think about the word and focus on the different layers and figure out where it's hiding all its meanings, bit by bit, but I have to think about them to do that and I mostly try not to. I—but I'm getting ahead of myself. They taught me a few more words. I don't think I need to list them all. Some of them I don't even think I can translate. Some of them I'm not sure I understand; they have senses we don't, and the brain tentacles aren't perfect at bridging the gap. Anyway. After a little while of that, one of them... introduced themselves? They told me their name, their specific personal name, and it's got so many layers I don't even know if I can pronounce it which is a good thing because it sounded even worse than the rest of their language. I think I blacked out for a bit after they said it. And then..."

She smiles crookedly.

"I'd been poking at their language a little because even though I hate thinking about it, it gets boring in those caves with nothing to do but sleep and be tentacle-raped. So I decided to say something back. I layered some of 'law' with some of a few more words, and I got something that was sort of 'fuck off' and sort of 'rape is illegal where I come from'—they don't have a word for rape, or for sex, or at least if they do they haven't taught me those ones yet, but their word for 'touch/interact' is complicated enough that I could pick out some relevant bits—and they actually answered me, in multiple words even. Something like 'you're in our jurisdiction now', but I know there's complicated shades of meaning I'm missing, because I blacked out again in the middle of them saying it and I think I can guess why every time before that point they let me have multiple uninterrupted sleep cycles in between shoving individual words into my head with their brain tentacles. I had such a hangover when I woke up. Nobody tried to talk to me for a while, they just fucked me a lot and otherwise left me alone, and then I woke up and there was nobody around so I went exploring, and I found a section of the caves that was even darker than I was used to and didn't feel like it was the right shape, and something grabbed me, and then I woke up in a gross basement under a dust sheet and you know the rest."

(Jon does, in fact, throw up this time. Not much, just a bit of stomach acid.)

"Statement--statement ends." He sounds distant. His voice is still shaking and raw; as soon as he finishes speaking he lets out a punched-out wordless whimpery noise of pain.

Jon is not only a particularly sharp observer, he's a particularly sharp observer with powers that let him understand other languages and have a particular knack for painful knowledge. So of course he gets all of it.

It hurts just to think about. He can't quite stop, trying to pull apart the words and find new words, find meaning in the words, and it's not as bad as hearing them out loud, and it hurts so much. His nails dig into his palm until they draw blood. He doesn't want to know. He needs to know. 

(place (absence (cold / dark (obscure (safe))) / echoing (reflecting) / time (old / long-ago) / shape ( stone / water / light (dark (obscure (safe)))) / person (has-experiences / exerts-agency / comprehends-personhood) ...)

The twisting fractal of meaning seems to just keep getting deeper, on and on without end. He can hear in his imagination how each separate note would sound by itself, and, true, it's not as bad as hearing them out loud, but it's still not good. Even in places where it seems like he might have picked apart all the layers on a certain level, he can go back and find new connections to other parts of the word, new paths through the multidimensional maze.

"Jon? Jon, are you okay?"

Jon snaps back to himself before passing out (again). "--Sorry. Thank you, I-- thank you. I should--probably lay back down? There's a lot of layers, and I can--see them. Kind of. You weren't lying when you said that it hurts. But it's--hard to think of other things, when it's--right there."

She winces. "Ah, fuck. Yeah. That... in retrospect makes a ton of sense and I did not think of it at all, sorry. Uh, if it's any consolation, you do kind of get used to it. Just... not to the point where I don't still kind of want to throw up."

Half-snort. "I'm the one who asked for it. Thank you again, by the way. I do appreciate it, even if it's not... coming across right now." He is just going to slump against the wall, it having occurred to him that laying all the way down is a bad idea if he's likely to throw up. Now that he doesn't look like he wants to eat her, he mostly looks tired and in pain.

"...yeah. You're, uh, I don't think I can say 'you're welcome' with a straight face but how about 'I'm glad you're less dying than you were an hour ago'."

She looks around for that water bottle she remembers getting him, because possibly a few sips of water would improve his situation slightly, and when she finds it she gets up and nudges it over to him.

Water! He can sip at the water. Slowly.

"I know I said I would eat three normal meals a day but that might want to wait a bit. Given the, uh." He gestures to where he had thrown up earlier, at which point it occurs to him to grab a tissue from the desk to wipe it up. "This is--probably going to suck for you? I'm sorry. I can give you Jess's tape, if you want." He does, in fact, sound sincerely sorry.

"Yeah no that's valid, I'm not gonna make you eat food just so you can immediately lose it, that's not at all what I'm going for here. Who's Jess?"

"My, um. One of my victims. Jess Tyrell."

"What's the significance of her tape?"

"It's, um. There are--side effects? I know I told you about the nightmares, I--don't remember how much detail you got, since, well, it's not like you were going to give a statement. Except now you have, so."

"I got that there'd be nightmares, I didn't care a ton about finding out the details because having nightmares where I get taught my whole Cave Thing vocabulary all over again is already terrible enough that adding more terrible on top is just, like, whatever. Assuming it's not going to give me cancer or make me bleed from the eyeballs or some fucking thing, but apparently you already took statements from everyone else around here and I've never caught any of them bleeding from the eyeballs, so."

Snort. "No bleeding from the eyeballs. More panic attacks, probably. And you'll see me... watching... when you're afraid.

I don't think the other Archive employees get that, they gave statements before--before the coma."

Wow this is unpleasant to talk about what happens if he pokes the words again aaaaaaaugh it still hurts, why did he do that, that was a stupid thing to do.

(law (rule (order)) / society (people (comprehends-law)) / fairness ...)

"Lucky for me I'm not afraid of anything, then," she says flippantly. "No, yeah, I might as well listen to the tape."

The tape recorder politely shuts itself off and pops open! Jon sighs and levers himself to his feet. Jess's tape isn't marked, but he finds it quickly.

You can listen to it here or read the transcript here. 

Particularly relevant to April:

I’ve been – dreaming of that tunnel again. Nightmares. Oh, god – awful nightmares. Nightmares, where the, where the hand keeps pulling, and I go deeper and deeper and, and deeper into – (shaky inhale) It takes me places I do not want to go. And he’s there the whole time, just… watching me. Watching me scream and thrash and – (inhales again) He’s all eyes. He’s all eyes. (inhale, less shaky) Look. I know that’s not – (half-hearted laugh) That is my brain. I’m not blaming him for, for being in my dreams. You know, I guess I can’t.

[SHE SNIFFS AGAIN.]

That’s absurd, right? It’s no – But I feel like I’m seeing him when I’m awake, as well? I’ve been- I’ve been having a lot of problems, since he talked to me – well, since I talked to him. (she swallows) Since I told my story. Th-The claustrophobia? It’s back, you know, worse than it ever was, and I can’t do my job. I have these, these screaming panic attacks every time I try, and – and what am I supposed to do? It feels like every time I’m even slightly underground, I –

Can’t even go into a shop basement anymore without feeling that – hand. Every time I do, every time I get that – panic just rising up my throat, I see him.

He’s there. Not when I look properly. But just at the edge. The corner of my eye.

April doesn't recognize the voice of the person talking Jess; after Jess leaves, Daisy comes in, and has a conversation with him. She can probably guess that it's Martin, given the content of the conversation.

She keeps a close eye on Jon while he's upright, but when he manages to get the tape loaded and sit down again without falling over, she relaxes and listens, mostly not reacting except for an occasional dark chuckle.

When the statement giver leaves and Martin starts talking to himself, she sits and listens a little longer and then sighs and gets up and heads for the tape, hunting for whatever button turns it off.

"How literal is that 'all eyes'?" she wonders idly. "Guess I'm gonna find out."

Jon walks a lot less shakily than she's used to him walking! He doesn't have to lean on anything, and his movements are confident, fluid.

"Let me know, I suppose? It's not like I can see myself in the dreams. Too busy watching."

It's a pretty stark difference and is both heartening and, from another angle, kind of alarming.

"Sure," she says, with a wry smile. "I'll tell you all about it."

He actually smiles back at her! He is in a much better mood than April's ever seen him. The smile fades after a moment, though.

"It--wasn't mind control, if you were wondering. That's why we were at Hilltop Road, where you came out, was to find out. Martin--he wants to believe the best of people. But it wasn't anything like that. Just me."

"...yeah, I just about figured." She shrugs. "It's... not the biggest surprise to hear somebody saying you cornered them in a coffee shop and dragged their story out of them. It's been pretty obvious from day one that that's a thing you're having a hell of a time not doing."

He winces. "I don't--" Sigh. "I wish I didn't want to. I don't like being like this. Sorry, I-- know it's worse for you than it is for me."

He's sitting again which means he can once again use Extremely Unpleasant Words as a distraction from saying things he shouldn't.