Hey! I loved your headcannons on jonelias and Jon x Mr.Spider!! Can you please do more?
Yes!!! This will also be a rambling mess, sorry lmao
- The Web likes Jon, and Mr. Spider has a personal investment in him. A person’s first monster, a future avatar’s first brush with the supernatural, is a special sort of relationship.
- All things considered, their interactions were brief and indirect, but Mr. Spider had spent a good, long time observing him beforehand to make sure that everything was in place. The Mother always sent him too protect and mark its potential children, and it’s hard work to choose the right child and get everything to work out just right so that he gets the right meal.
- So Mr. Spider was pretty familiar with Jon already, and VERY familiar with how his patron works. The Web likes children, and most of its chosen are marked young, tiny kids in clothes that don’t fit right, from homes that they don’t fit into right. The Mother draws them in, offers them protection and home and belonging within its web, and Jon fit its usual criteria to a T.
- So Mr. Spider watched and saw this small, shy, and painfully lonely child struggle in the face of rejection from everyone around him. And maybe he got a bit attached. It didn’t start weird, or at least not any weirder than any entity’s involvement in someone’s life, but part of started seeing less Jon as a meal ticket and more as a future companion, a potential agent of the Web.
- So everything carries on as it does in canon. A Guest for Mr. Spider conveniently finds its way into Jon’s hands and the bully very conveniently takes Jon’s place as the next guest and Jon walks away with permanent childhood trauma.
- But it doesn’t end there. Of course.
- Maybe Jon dreams of spiders. Maybe he wakes up wrapped in spider silk. Maybe he feels hungry but somehow non-threatening eyes on him for years afterwards. Maybe, when he gets his first crush, he doesn’t daydream about holding hands with the sweet girl a few houses down or sharing closed mouth kisses with the boy who sits next to him in class. Maybe, instead, he daydreams about sharp fangs and long, bristled legs wrapping around him.
- Maybe he’s horrified by that and disgusted with himself. Maybe he isn’t. Maybe he shoves it down as far as he can. Maybe he doesn’t.
- The first main possibility is that the Web marks him as usual and then gently guides him to the Beholding, a supposed gift and offering, a perfect little Archivist to usher in a new world.
- But maybe the Web regrets letting him go. It didn’t anticipate the loss it would feel when he was claimed by the Eye. It realize how perfect he was for it until he was already gone.
- Or maybe it never intended to let him go fully, not really. He always belonged to the Mother, and what good mother would give her child away so recklessly? But maybe he could belong to both the Web and the Beholding, be a stronger Archivist and more aware Weaver with more eyes to See and more knowledge to Control.
- Or maybe the Web doesn’t want to share. Maybe it decides that Jon’s been the Beholding’s long enough, but it wants its child back now.
- And this is where Mr. Spider comes back into play. Because, as I said earlier, a person’s first monster is special and who’s better to bring a stray Spider back to the Web than the one who marked him as a Spider in the first place?
- There’s a lot of ways Mr. Spider could come back.
- Someone coming in with a statement about a children’s book they recently encountered, relighting Jon’s need to Know, the natural curiosity that led him down this path in the first place.
- Or the book itself reappears. A sudden new addition to Artifact Storage or the Institute library, or slipped into bag somehow didn’t his next shopping trip, or slipped into his flat through the slot. Or maybe it just suddenly pops up in one of his desk drawers. Either way, it’s there and Jon feels just as drawn to it as he did when he was a child.
- Or maybe there’s a knock at the door.
- A low tapping on the door to the supply closet. A sharp little rap on his bedroom door as he tries to sleep. Just constant knocks, on every door, everywhere he goes. Never when anyone else can hear them, but still there. And he Knows what they are. He Knows there’s no human on the other side of the door. He Knows that, it he opens the door for that knocking, he’ll be consumed.
- What he doesn’t know is whether or not that’s a bad thing. He doesn’t know if the knots in his stomach are fear, anticipation, or desire.
- Now his dreams are back. The wet dreams filled with web and fangs from his teenage years are back in his head, and so are the dreams from the perspective of a spider, the ones where he’s settled in a web of his own creation, content in the knowledge that this is his Domain, exactly where belongs.
- OR!!!
- (there’s a lot of ors and maybes in this post, sorry about that)
- Maybe he came into his Becoming before he became the Archivist. Maybe he was a Weaver long before he ever stepped foot in the Institute, safe in his Mother’s Web, secure in his strength and power as an avatar of the entity that controls so much.
- Maybe Mr. Spider never left him and instead stayed his constant companion. In every way.
- In a version with jonelias, this would mean an outright battle. Mr. Spider would be pretty secure in his relationship with Jon, but would still fight to keep him bound to the patron, to make sure that he doesn’t stray too far. And Elias would be FURIOUS that his Archivist has already been claimed, even if the Web is willing to share and even if that claim is what makes him so perfect for his role. Elias would do everything he could to strengthen Jon’s loyalty to him and the Beholding.
- Part of him would realize how much he’s being manipulated, how much Jon is taking advantage of his possessiveness to get their relationship where he wants it. But knowing that you’re just a puppet dancing to someone else’s tune doesn’t make it any easier for you to cut your strings.
- I’m just imagining Jon reaching out to embrace Elias, smiling so gently, while massive spider legs frame him from the shadows.
- I actually have a little ficlet about this posted on ao3 but I don’t want people to read my other shitty ficlets so I might repost it here, let me know if there’s any interest.