#random rambles!!!!!!

Nikola, though… oh boy.

Two potential candidates. One of them’s rumored to not really know much of anything, and the other knows plenty. But while both have gotten strong, one of them’s going to be stronger.

Kicker’s that the potentially-stronger one probably won’t actually fit properly because he’s too tall. And he’s all twisted, so that won’t do at all.

So instead, she’s been talking to Jon about the gorilla skin, like in the original series.

Being a super creepy motherfucker and all that.

Y’know.

Anyway, Michael did not get anywhere near death, so Oliver didn’t have to go in and help out or anything, but… Elias has realized that michael keeps getting himself into situations where he nearly gets killed, and does not seem to handle them too well, so he’s experimenting and seeing if he can have Jon be a “backup archivist”, which i’m sure Nikola’s absolutely delighted by…

Still… Michael does get visited by some of the stranger’s gang eventually.

Just “checking in on our dear old archivist!”

(Michael does not feel comforted.)

(He is also not particularly thrilled.)

(Especially when she casually mentions not being able to use his skin in particular, because it “just wouldn’t fit right………….! You understand… don’t you, archivist?”)

He tries to burn her with the spiderweb lighter.

No wonder Jude Perry liked him a lot- (he’s actually now tried to set two things on fire because they were bothering him- but I haven’t posted the part where he yeets a lighter at the other thing yet lol-you’ll see)

Obviously, it’s ineffective… but it lights up her face for a moment before miraculously snapping shut upon hitting the floor.

Or… where her face should be.

Michael screams, his friend finally gets the lights working, and Nikola is gone.

…Fun!

OH HEY WAIT WHAT

OKAY SO

If Michael gets this tape! (Which he definitely would, cause he would have completely missed everything.)

Obviously with a few edits!! But!!!!!!! That shit would just.

Like a goddamn jagged-edged sword getting shoved STRAIGHT through his torso, GOD that stupid bit of commentary would hurt so BAD-

Jesus, Elias, stop trying to make your archivist feel like a disposable paper bag that somehow managed to make it out of the landfill, the hell are you doing, man????

Michael’d probably just try and mirror-jump to Jude Perry or something and be like “hey, my boss is a sick bastard and I hate him, want to help?”

Not sure if I’m /j or /srs, but Martin might be on board lol

Michael’s having more and more trouble with the whole… mirror-hallway trap thing. Although, like with canon, he probably ends up figuring out a way to drag out the whole process of victims slowly kinda going nuts so that he doesn’t actually have to kill anyone, he can just… “bother someone” in order to keep things going.

Which actually winds up working better than the “drive em mad and then whoop there they go” method.

He doesn’t like how it feels, cause it’s basically making a bunch of people go through what Ryan went through, but he tries diffusing the messing-with across more than one victim in order to make it not be as horrible for each of them.

Oh, and on top of that, he still has to get statements.

Does Jon send him the statements he gets (and his own notes on them) after he’s done with them, so that they’re both on the same page with things? (And does it work..?)

And if so, does he get to hear the “dust to dust” one, finally?

*Sound of Michael nearly popping a stress ball open with one hand*

(>:(((( Bruh Gertrude what the fuck)

AND HEARING HIS OWN VOICE ON THE TAPE…

Just rewinding and playing it over and over again. Just to hear it.

It hurts to know that his voice doesn’t quite sound the same.

He’s lost the stutter that he hated so much. He almost misses it.

Might actually mumble the words a little, in a half-hopeful attempt at getting his voice to sound like it did back then again. It works, for a moment or two, and in that little sliver of time, he feels like… himself again. Like Michael.

But he can’t hold it for long.

Still… it was there.

He was… there, somewhere. He wasn’t completely gone… so maybe there was still hope.

(HhhgfhhHhhHHHHHH I wanna hug him so badddddddddddddd aaaaaaaaaa 🫠)

Anyway, so Jon gets taken by Orsinov-

And the only reason Michael doesn’t pick up every time Elias tries to call him to tell him to get Jon is cause he’s got Elias’s number registered in his phone as “old sod” and just sits there pressing “decline” every time the phone starts ringing with that name.

It’s very fun to do.

However, eventually Martin’s the one who calls him, sounding a little bit panicked, and explains what’s going on, and Michael feels like an asshole, rushes out the door- (“hello good morning I’ve got to go get Jonathan out of situations he keeps getting in don’t kill me don’t get killed please don’t leave things on voicemail if they’re important, lesson learned, ohgosh bye-”)

So the Michael appears! No doom threat, just Michael apologizing for being “so incredibly late” and being like “oh good lord these are creepy oh sh- you’ve got a gag on- I’m very sorry-”

And he notices that Jon’s…. Looking at him, like… he wants to ask something, but doesn’t know if he should.

Michael… forces a smile, getting the feeling — based on the last tape he’d gotten from jon — that he knows what he wants to ask about. “Can we… t…t-“ oh, of course- and just at the moment he’d rather it not be an issue, here it was, again, in the way of him getting his words across. “It- I- We don’t- there isn’t much… much time to share… stories.”

“She won’t be back for-“

“I just don’t want to.”

He didn’t mean it to come out sounding so snappy, and winced a little at his own voice. “She…she’s just… a bit of a hard subject, as of right now…”

Jon looks a little bit… desperate, though, and it occurs to him that he most likely hasn’t been able to get any new statements in days.

If he were to go through the mirrors… he might not be able to keep himself together in there. Or he might get lost, or…

“Ask me.”

Jon blinks, looking a bit confused. “Didn’t you say you-“

“Yes, I know. It doesn’t feel good, but if you don’t-“ he takes a deep breath, and sighs heavily. “Please. Just… this once. And it’s all… good.”

…”What was she like?”

Oh, that question hurts.

A string of expressions pass across his face as he tries to think of the words for the things Jon wants to pull out of him. Needs him to let out.

“…different… she- she told me a lie.

I thought I knew… why she was who she was. Why I was… her… assistant.

I- but i didn’t. Really. She was cold… and… I just fell for it.

He takes another deep breath and sighs, but… no, it… isn’t done, is it.

It all spills out, like blood gushing from a deep, arterial wound.

He tries to twist it, to lessen the tearing sensation that the eye gives as it drags the information out of him, but it just… happens. The words aren’t quite his to control.

The Sannikov trip is the most painful to feel.

Once, it might have been a tale told in horror, of the near-death experience of his mentor, the old woman who fell over the side of a ship in the middle of a storm. About how he almost went insane, but that could have been a dream, and she had been saved, and then they had gone home again.

He told Jon all of this story, the statement riddled with sarcasm and frustration, and hurt.

And then he told… a different story.

The one he’d had in that vision, or dream, or nightmare- whatever it had been.

He told the eye what it already knew, and — in a way — begged it to answer him, instead. Tell him if he had just been… a pebble to be kicked into a trap so that it could be made safe to pass through.

He explained his fear that Gertrude had, in fact, killed one of her old assistants, a woman named Emma Harvey. She’d burned her alive.

And then he recounted his terror upon waking up in the office that one horrible night, when the doors had not been the right doors, and had nearly taken him and swallowed him and taken him apart.

How the fire had roared around him.

The rest of the story, Jon already knew, and so his talking should have ended there.

But he mentioned something he didn’t want to.

About how much Jon had reminded him of her, when they’d first met.

And with this revelation, the story ended.

At once, Michael slid to the floor, his whole body drained of energy, fighting to keep itself together.

It was not a moment too soon.

A door had opened behind him. A horribly familiar one, and as it loomed over Jon’s bound form and Michael’s barely stable one, a voice floated through the room, coming from the figure standing at its threshold.

So… look at this from Elias’s perspective for a moment, if you will.

Jon, obviously, was hired in the hopes of having him replace Gertrude eventually, which would get Jonah’s plan under way. But there is a problem for him with this, and it is, unfortunately, a person. And people aren’t predictable. They do not do what you want them to do, no matter how hard you try to get them to do it. No matter how many strings you tie around their necks, they will wind up finding a way to follow some other path than the one you’re guiding them along.

Michael is a problem for him.

He had thought he could get rid of him by pulling him back into the archives and setting the whole thing on fire, but somehow… he was more than aware that some power was trying to interfere. But he wouldn’t let it take control of his archive.

No. He had to stop it, somehow, and there was only one thing he could do about it.

He had to put Michael in charge.

The man was underqualified enough. And Gertrude had done the job of preventing him from having access to any of the knowledge he’d have actually needed in order to run the archives, so naturally, Jonah could control him as far as he would need to. It was all just a matter of sinking the correct links into him, tethering to whatever boulder he needed to, and letting it roll him off of a cliff.

If he proved to be useful, then all the better for him, he supposed.

[ I don’t like thinking with Elias/Jonah’s brain at ALL-

(OH YEAH OK FORGOT TO MENTION UH)

(So basically before this: Michael finally gets jumped by the door, terrified out of his mind… and escapes! Though not in the way people usually do it. And as he discovers very shortly after, the method has left a mark.)

(And now he’s struggling to fight the occasional compulsion to basically do murder, and he can’t look at his reflection cause it’s all warped and stuff.)

(Elias is very intrigued about this.)

(Still working out the details of many different events, which is why those bits haven’t been posted)

Anyway-

So the whole Jon thing isn’t helping him work out how Gertrude basically lying to him the entire time feels, much less how his actual physical/mental/creature state feels.

Not sure how Sasha and Tim are yet, but Martin is probably gonna be nice to have around in the middle of all this.

OOHHHH BOY HELEN

Michael goes for a walk while upset over a particularly world-shattering tape. Sees someone get trapped in door. Hesitates at first, but then runs after her, trying to help. Jon thinks it’s him when she comes in for the statement, until Michael comes in JUST after the door closed, cause he felt it open in JON’S office and even if Jon HAS been snarky, it’s “for GOOD REASON” and so he BURSTS in, panicking, and jon’s like “AH FUCK- WHAT-????”

So Michael’s briefly VERY relieved, and apologizes, then realizes that someone else must have been there- then gets the whole story and is mortified.

Just… walks away to lie down.

Does not even bother assuming his “normal” form.

Nearly gives Martin a heart attack when he walks in to make sure everything’s ok- but like he’s not even threatening at all, he just seems really, really not ok, so like… why panic?

He just asks if Michael wants a cup of tea, and Michael almost starts crying again, but from GOOD feelings this time, and thus Martin keeps Michael from falling down an awful downward emotional spiral simply by fucking caring. I love Martin so goddamn much.

Over time, Michael starts learning more and more about a lot of things, actually. He may have been wrong about Gertrude as a person, but he had been right about her maybe knowing stuff that could help him understand. VERY right, indeed.

And even though he now knows she lied to him, he still finds comfort in hearing her voice. On some level, he’s gotten it into his head that maybe she just did it in the hopes that he wouldn’t ever have to worry about these things… after all, hadn’t she once said something about how he “really should be quitting by now”, or something?

Regardless, he finds that he actually sort of likes the new face of the old woman. She had this sort of fire in her… and he wishes he could have really known that side of her. Gotten to experience it a little. I mean, come on- she was honestly a bit of a badass!

And this new image he has of her just makes him miss her even more, on a whole new level.

And then he starts to wonder if maybe she knew anything about the door, remembering how she’d reacted to that awful book, ages ago. Maybe she’d (posthumously) be able to tell him what’s going on with him, and maybe even how to fix it?

So he tries looking through her tapes for anything regarding doors.

He finds nothing.

Maybe… creepy mirror-people?

There are a handful of incidents involving that kind of thing, but none that describe his situation.

He does find the one about the stair dude, and has to take a day off work after that, but he’s starting to feel pretty sure there’s nothing in the archives that matches anything he’s seen.

…Until he stumbles upon that worker-in-clay statement. The one in “sculptor’s tool”.

Reads the date on the statement after reading over it, (not aloud, or on tape), and it clicks. The boat ride. The one that he almost thought he’d just dreamt because of how bizarre it had all been-

She had said they were going to Sannikov land.

No wonder she’d been so worried about the boat turning around… they’d been off to go stop “Gabriel” from succeeding in starting the thing that had happened shortly after! But it had stopped… so clearly they’d messed it up anyway, thank goodness.

…but…

…why hadn’t she mentioned all of this to him beforehand?

If he was supposed to help her in that mission, why hadn’t she told him anything about what they were supposed to do?

How could he help her if he didn’t understand?

…If he didn’t…

In a moment, all the recent conversations and interactions he’d had with with others came back to him at once, and he looked into the mirror at his distorted reflection.

…what was it she’d called it…?

“It is not what it is?”

Indirect answers. The door. Mirrors. Even his own appearance never quite showed the truth.

And he’d been subconsciously noticing how much he relied on the confusion and lack of understanding of others in order to-

No.

He was thinking too far into this- and going based off of almost nothing at all, and-

Dark.

Snowing. Crunching ground under feet and footprints in shifting snow and the world around is wrong. And yet is also right, it knows better, much better, and more than he does, it is more than he is, to it, he is nothing, and-

Map. Door.

Go through.

There is

no

Way

Back.

And he is gone, but no, he is elsewhere, he is

It is there.

The center.

Replace it.

No. No, no no no no no no NO-

The fear crackles and piles up into a buzzing crescendo as the feeling of his entire body being rent apart and reshaped like clay is etched into his brain. And no one is going to save him.

She wasn’t there. She had won. He had just been an offering.

She was satisfied.

He was screaming.

The image broke like glass around him and he slid to the floor, gasping for breath and clutching at his head, hands, torso- reassuring himself that he was still there.

Still… whole.

He was still in his office.

Still sort of held the statement in his hands… although-

Claws. Laughter, and laughter, and laughter that would not stop-

He frantically shook off the punctured paper with a strangled cry, willing the talons to go away.

His fingers returned to normal.

But the feeling — that horrible twisting sensation, like his whole entire being was suddenly just putty, held firmly in a pair of hands that were warping and stretching and pulling him apart — stayed.

…and then, from somewhere in the direction of artefact storage… someone screamed.

It took him more than a few moments to realize that the vase seemed to have been made home by more than a few scuttling, eight-legged creatures. And when he did, he screeched, flailing around and knocking things over in his attempts to get the crawling spiders off of his hands and legs. They seemed to not be too keen on touching him, either, fortunately… and soon were out of sight, the pieces of the vase vanishing with them.

The next thing he knows, someone’s standing over him with a torch, shining the light down into his face. He must have passed out at some point, and though he could hear the muffled sound of their inquiring voices, he couldn’t make out the words, or see the details of their faces to know who they were.

So instead he clocks out once again.

The next time he wakes up, it’s in a hospital bed, arms and chest and other points of injury all bandaged up and tingling from whatever medicine they’d applied as treatment for the burns.

Only then does he finally begin to cry.

So- obviously, it’s Gertrude’s fire. But the police don’t know that, and neither does Michael. Nor do any of the other staff members — except, of course, Elias, who naturally keeps his mouth shut and lies through his goddamn teeth about not knowing anything.

Still, Michael is proven innocent, mostly because there’s no clear, irrefutable evidence that points to him being involved in the fire. He returns to the institute after he’s recovered enough… only to find his cubicle cleaned out.

For a second, he’s about to start crying again, frustrated that he’d now lost his job on top of everything else. And Elias hadn’t even bothered to let him know? What’s wrong with this institute?!!?!

Gertrude had been right- he should have just-

Tim vaults up onto the table before he can finish his thought, and Sasha appears out of nowhere beside him, both of them screaming “SURPRISE!” and throwing confetti paper into the air.

Trying not to let on that he’s pretty sure he just had a miniature heart attack, Michael asks what the surprise is supposed to be, and why is his desk cleaned off. Tim’s smile broadens at this, and he jumps down with a cheeky, suave grace and gestures down the hallway in a way that makes Sasha snort aloud. “aaa’right this way- your highest-of-honor-y-ness-“

Sasha can’t help but let out another laugh “Tim-“

“Sasha.” Childishly.

She laughs again, but tries to look at least a little disdainful by way of an eyeroll… “Oh come on, just let him see what it is before you give it all away in one sentence-“

Making ‘calm down’ motions with both hands… “Okay, okay, alright-“

beat.

“I’ll just tell him-“

“Nooo, timmmmm-“

He’s laughing too, now. “Oh come on, I’m just joking- hey! Mike!” There’s a little mischievous gleam in his eye as he stops Michael and motions towards a door, waving his hands a little for effect. “Showtiiime!”

And he opens the door.

It’s a decently-sized office room. The desk looks new, and so does most of the rest of the furniture. The only older things in the room… are all of Michael’s belongings. Sat there in boxes, waiting to be organized and set up around the room.

“Ta-daaa!!!! So, whaddya think. I think it could use a couple windows, but hey, I’m not the archivist!”

Sasha gasped in pretend horror. “Tim!!”

“Uh-oh- whoops! Guess the secret’s out now, oh well! Guess I never change-“

Michael had been staring at him with his mouth slightly ajar for a few moments now, and Tim only just noticed.

“Whoa- hey there, buddy- who pressed your pause button?” The joking tone melts into something that could probably be described as ‘lighthearted, slightly teasing, but well-meaning concern’. “Something’s up, you know you-“

“Michael.”

Michael’s face is drained of color in less than a second by the voice that’s coming from behind him.

“Oh, hey! Michael, this is Jon! He’s our resident psychopath! ‘S always listening to everything everyone’s doing around here! It’s kinda creepy!”

Michael turns.

The man standing there is relatively short, at least compared to Sasha or Tim. Michael tended to try and not compare heights based off of his own, as he was always towering over people no matter how average their heights were. But “Jon” was definitely short. Michael almost wanted to laugh aloud at himself for thinking he’d been Elias- imagine.

The definitely-short man looked unimpressed by Tim’s introduction, though the sourness in his face was, at best, only tart enough to curdle days-old milk. He didn’t have the heart, though he didn’t seem to want to show that on his face. The man sighed. “Thank you… Tim… I’ll take it from here.”

Tim shot the guy a double thumbs-up, and before Michael could ask anything more about what the hell was going on, he and Sasha had left.

Jon cleared his throat politely, though impatiently, and Michael turned to see that his hand was held out for a reluctant handshake.

Michael felt his ears redden a bit, and shifted nervously on his feet, not sure how to explain to the strange, cranky little man that he wasn’t exactly comfortable with doing a handshake. His mind was too much of a mess to even start a proper sentence- so he just settled for sucking it up and trying to go for it, trying not to be too obvious about how much this was making his skin crawl.

But before he can properly begin to shake, the hand gripping his recoils, and Jon’s face morphs from an expression of impatient neutrality to one of alarm.

Immediately, Michael starts to apologize. But it doesn’t look like Jon’s even listening. His eyes are locked on Michael’s left hand, regarding it as though it might reach up of its own accord and attack his face.

Michael’s words die on his tongue, and the two of them stand there in uncomfortable silence for another moment or two before Michael offers an awkward “it was good meeting you”, to which Jon only responds with a shoulder-shrug and indecisive “mm” before walking briskly away.

Well. That could certainly have gone worse… but it’s the sort of reaction he’s used to getting sometimes. Something wrong with his smile, something wrong with his posture or how he holds the other person’s hand, a fidgeting motion the other person doesn’t like, a mispronunciation or misinterpretation of some word or phrase… it all just becomes monotonous, repetitive nonsense at some point.

But the worst is when you have to see that other person every single day.

Habitually replaying the interaction in his head to try and see where he might have made a misstep, Michael’s absentmindedly rests his hand on the door handle of his new office… and realizes, with a jolt, what has been nagging at him related to Jon’s reaction.

Not wanting to look, but still wanting to be sure before making his conclusions, he looks down at his left hand… and lets out a relieved sigh. The hand still looked perfectly fine, shaped and exactly the way he knew his hand should be. Perhaps Jon was simply also a texture-sensitive person, and Michael could finally have someone to talk to about things that only ever seemed to make him want to crawl out of his own skin and run away. The idea made him grin as he walked over to his new desk to try out the swivel chair.