"...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. 

"...so, on the one hand, yes, but, on the other hand..."

She chews on her lip for a moment, trying to figure out how words work.

"...not wanting to hurt people and then finding yourself hurting them anyway can really fuck you up, I think. That's not—that's not less a thing just because the other person is also in fact getting hurt and is probably having a worse time about it."

"I did," he says very quietly. "I did want to. I didn't--find myself hurting Jess Tyrell. Or--or you. It's not like I did it on accident. I could have just... not. But I knew it would hurt you and I did it anyway, because I wanted to." His voice increases in volume as he goes. "Sorry, I--normally only talk about this with Daisy. You can go if you want."

"—yeah, no, I—wasn't saying it right—it's, like, okay." She sighs. "I've already told you the several worst things that ever happened to me, what's some personal drama on top of that—I mean, you also have the option of not talking to me about this, I just—want to try to say the thing I meant to say the way I actually meant to say it and the best way I can think of to explain is to tell you where I learned it in the first place."

"It'd probably come out right if I asked, but I'm assuming you'd rather not."

She smiles crookedly. "If I fuck it up just as bad the second time around, I might consider it."

A pause to get her thoughts in order, and then, "So my ex-boyfriend. He wanted to hurt people. Like—the thing you've got going on, you want to eat people's trauma, which, yes, does hurt them, but hurting them isn't the goal, it's just - hard to separate from the goal, yeah? If, I dunno, I had the psychic equivalent of the really good rehab drugs and I could just get you to quit and you stopped dying about it, you would not on top of that want to keep chasing people down for their statements just for the fun of it. Sean, on the other hand, once lit a teacher on fire for yelling at him about not doing his homework. And yet."

She drums her fingers on the side of her leg, trying to organize the words into semi-coherent sentences, then keeps going.

"The reason I broke up with him is because he kept giving me that look—you may have seen it in the mirror, it's not the same exact look but there are definite thematic parallels—and then I'd be like, Sean, you're looking at me like you want to eat me alive again, and he'd be like, I'm not going to hurt you, if I was going to hurt you I would've done it already, and I'd be like, you see how that's not the maximally reassuring thing you could've said, and he'd be like, yeah that's fair, and we'd have a big fight about it and nothing would get resolved and we'd have the same fight again the next time I got scared of him. And, I mean, it was reasonable of me to be scared of him! He's a scary guy! But—he didn't want me to be scared, and I think, even if he did want to hurt me, he didn't... want me to get hurt? And I could see it getting to him, how he'd—make a sudden movement and I'd flinch and—he kept making a point of telling me it was fair, that I was scared of him, that I didn't trust him, and, yeah, it was, but he was getting hurt too. I maybe didn't realize it at the time as much as I should have, but it hurt him to scare me like that. Even though between the two of us I was definitely having the worse time, it's... he was not exactly out for a picnic."

...slight crooked smile. "He's the one who got fed up with it first, actually, which I felt pretty weird about at the time, like, you're dumping me because you almost raped me? But—no, looking back I think I get it, I think... it actually did fuck him up, and it was legit of him to be like 'no okay I'm done with that', I just have a stupidly high tolerance for bad things happening to me."

Half-smile. "I realize the irony of me being the one to say this, but it sounds kind of like you should get higher standards. But no, I--I get it, I think. Let me know if anyone invents psychic rehab drugs."

"I will super let you know if anyone invents psychic rehab drugs. And I will do my best to check whether they make people bleed from the eyeballs before anybody tries them."

"I voluntarily listened to those noises, I am pretty sure I can take some bleeding from the eyeballs." His voice is light, teasing, but he's not not serious.