Chapter Text
The Distortion was always fond of the Eye’s avatars.
There was something so… joyous about making the pupil of the eye think of madness, to trip up the all-seers, to make them doubt their Truth and Rationality. An infuriating fondness , but one nonetheless. They were so...antithetical to one another, it was a delight. Always a delight. It was a fondness that lasted right until The Distortion mixed with Michael Shelley, merged wrong , merged too tightly and coiled to ever full be just the Distortion or just Michael Shelley again.
Yes, the Distortion was always fond of the Eye’s avatars, but Michael Shelley was not fond of Gertrude Robinson any longer.
Too messy to linger near her, with Michael's betrayal so fresh in their wounded soul now, a messy clawing thing that threatened to overtake them and make them collapse into a heaving pile of bones and limbs and flesh and blood and ink, black, black ink, ink as wet and lying as Gertrude Robinson's pen, to feel the same fond mischief he’d felt for the other Archivists before her time.
No, no. There was no fondness with Ms. Robinson. Not anymore.
(Except, as with most things in the Distortion’s nature, in the labyrinthian multitudes of spirals and fractals and repetitions and possibility , there was, sometimes, and that was when it hurt the most. When Michael’s soul and heart would ache, and ache, and ache, and they would sit in the Insomniac’s house and try not to claw at their face, to tear flesh from their arms in anxious agony .)
Oh, when she died, how they wept. A great staticky, shuttering collapse of angerfearjoyrelief. It was convenient for a day or two or three or however long time passes; Michael was so busy emoting that he could hardly wrestle control and autonomy from their body, from their purpose. Michael's psychic tears were easy to work through, to continue their purpose, to let their being spiral more and more. But the grief was loud and harsh for days upon days upon days, and they eventually found themself lying in an alley, a gloved hand holding onto tissue spattered with blood.
And angry . So angry.
A new sensation had begun with Michael , one of physical limitation. His flesh stretched strangely and it hurt , a dull ache that spread through their limbs, and when he grew emotional he'd cough and cough and cough, and their lungs would fill with cold, frigid air, the kind of cold that left them breathless and speechless and thinking of fading Arctic light landing upon long stretches if ice and stairways.
It was almost a laugh, sometimes. These Michael -perks were unique, new, and almost as maddeningly deceitful as the Spiral ought to be. But it was an inward feeling; nothing so satisfying about deceiving yourself with thoughts of icky human weakness.
Had they always been in the alley? Eventually, Michael found themself able to sit up, and pressed delicately sharp fingers into his cheeks, forcing reality to seep its way into the edges of their consciousness. Maybe so; the second they had felt Gertrude Robinson die, something had shifted in the universe, a great yawning pressure releasing, the tides changing, the see-saw balance upending itself. Michael realized dully that they'd never gone into a door, never went to the house to sit, never went anywhere; Gertrude Robinson died, and Michael had collapsed where they stood, howling and howling into the chaos of the universe.
Well, Michael thought, and oh how they loathed this inner monologue, the voice of a sweet simpleton blinded by falsehoods. The voice of a mere boy that was becoming more and more their own, blinding their purpose, blinding their path. That's that.
The spiral moves ever inwards.
--
“Why are you here?” The Archivist asked, and oh , how precious that this Jonathan Sims still didn’t know the potency of his Questions, still couldn’t quite control his Compelling nature.
Michael had quit pretending it bothered him, and curled strands of hair around and around and around his fingers to avoid shivering as the need to speak filled him Whole as much as the Spiral.
“You fascinate me,” He replied, simply, because oh, he could talk, and talk, and talk, and spin them both ‘round and ‘round ‘till their heads all but popped off, but they weren’t very sure the Archivist would care for that, and for some reason, something stirred within Michael that said do not make a fool of yourself . A deliriously human construction it would seem. Memories bubbled up of awkward coffee shop conversations and nervous hiccups in his breath, bad first impressions, and a lonely, cold bed.
The Distortion didn’t much care for the cold anymore.
The Archivist peered behind them, into the Endless Hallway of the Door, and Michael shut the door with a decisive kick of the heel, tutting as he did so, leaning closer towards his desk. “No peeking. Wouldn’t want to lose that mind of yours. Such precious eyes are in short commodity these days, it would seem.” Their laugh felt bitter.
Jon merely stared at them for a long, long moment, and when Michael made no movement, still as stone in a way that probably galled the poor human Beholding, he waved his hand towards the chair that sat lonesome off to the side of the desk, a thin sheet of dust on it; clearly, he didn’t often have visitors that linger.
Michael regarded him and thought of escaping back down the long corridors of their Hallway, but it would be a cowardly action, a weak action, and they laughed and laughed and laughed as they slunk into the chair, pulling up their long legs to their chest and pressing their chin to their knees, long hair flowing down to cover them like a blanket. Or perhaps a suit of armor to hide from the scrutinizing gaze of the Archivist.
“Do you… Want to give a statement?” Jon asked, and his voice cracked a little, uncertainty wracking his small frame into a fit of tension. Michael wondered what it was like to have a frame that didn’t bend and warp and move and terrorize.
The Archivist was scared. It was obvious. But he did a valiant job of pretending otherwise, and Michael realized with a start that they didn’t want him scared. To pull apart their own intentions and desires was like, ha, pulling worms from the flesh with a corkscrew; maddening, painful, elusive.
“Not particularly,” He replied, and his voice was quiet, quieter than usual. This basement was familiar in a way that hurt, and Who-He-Once-Was bubbled to the surface more readily here. The unreality of the Doors seemed so faraway when compared to the nostalgic familiarity of a place he once called home , once stupidly called his calling .
Jon Sims had done well to make it his own. To rob Gertrude of her influence. Not in any conscious, spiteful manner. Oh, no. Gertrude was a cold woman, and her office reflected it. A place of academia. A place to watch. A place to listen. A place far, far away from love.
The current Archivist was different. The office was lived in, loved, natural , and the messy chaos of it thrilled Michael to the core of their being. Jon’s desk was splattered in coffee stains, and a too-full ashtray balanced precariously on a stack of manilla folders. Hastily scribbled notes on fading post-it-notes dotted the myriad of files strewn in a messy, but clearly contained in some manner of organization that only Jon knew, and a whiteboard, not yet hung up but merely leaned against the wall, was strewn in names and dates and locations, the pink dry erase marker smudged in places from where it had been disturbed.
Michael breathed it all in, and realized all at once that he wasn’t angry to be in this place. Not anymore.
“Do you want me to give a statement?” They asked.
Jon shrugged. “Not if you don’t want to.”
And oh, eventually he’d have to take statements, he’d need it just as much as Michael needed the maddening spiral, but for now he was safe, was human , had choice.
Michael smiled.
That seemed to be that. Jon looked at him for a long while longer, and then gave a low hum, and turned back to the files he had been reading before Michael’s arrival. They sit like that, Michael peering quietly at Jon, a sense of contentment, of stillness, of rest filling his disjointed soul, until Jon had to leave for lunch, and by the time he returned, Michael ensured they were gone, the door clicked shut solidly behind them, and a sense of wholeness filling them in a way that has not been felt since long before Zemlya Sannikova.
--
Jon scoffed, and says, “You’re nothing but a poor man’s cheshire cat, you know.”
Michael’s smile grew wider, and though the Distortion once wouldn’t have known this, now they know, now they understand, that it does nothing more than to prove the Archivist’s point. Oh, how Michael had a fondness for animated films, and now, the saccharine shortcuts to make mind-bending reality from something-that-could-not-be proved to be a delightful little exercise in connecting the two halves of their being, a connection to their Nature that the poor Michael Shelley did not outright reject in passioned anguish.
“Oh, hm, a cat would do better to deal with my nature than your rationalist, meaty little brain.” He laughed, and for once, Jon Sims did not flinch away, and under the haze of the dark library’s lights, there was almost a smile playing upon his lips, the kind of the smile that would never dare cross Gertrude Robinson’s features, even when she played the gentle old fool and made Michael Shelley out to be a dimwit.
They stepped closer, and for a moment, they forget about their door, forget about their ploy, and loathe as they were to say it, this… dance … of theirs had changed, somehow. The-One-Who-Was-Michael felt a shudder wrack through them; a new sensation had been added to the Spiral.
The Archivist was quiet for a long, long while, so long that Michael assumed he might just not answer at all, but eventually he leaned forward at his desk, a ballpoint pen pointed with accusation at them. “I understand your nature perfectly, I think,” He murmured, and his voice was lost in thought, a weighty, sleepy little thing that lulled Michael’s mind to something almost approaching comfort.
The role he had been given suited him well, The Distortion thought, and cursed the little voice inside them that was saddened by that revelation. The revelation that soon Jon, too, would be swallowed up by their patron. They swallowed down something akin to bile at the thought.
Michael shuddered again at his words, though, their grin lopsided and fierce, their hunger to know, to see, to hear the Archivist describe them, perceive them, categorize them as strong as their own nature to do the opposite for a moment. It almost hurt; they wondered if this was what it was like to be under the gaze of the Eye, and they supposed they were under the gaze of the eye now, what with the look Jonathan Sims was giving him.
The Archivist just did not know his own nature yet. Could not understand the gift , the dove being handed to him when Michael chose to be truthful to him.
“Do you?”
“Sure. You claim you aren’t Michael, but I think you still are. Somehow. Just a little.” Jon cocked his head, the tip of his pen brushing against his lip, but whatever he was going to say didn’t matter anymore. The spell was broken, and the Eye no longer held any comfort to him. Them. It.
Michael wrinkled their nose, the Distortion wrinkled their nose, and a childish desire to rip and rip and rip at the Archivist for daring to Read him floated up, and they giggled and giggled and giggled all the way back into their door, leaving behind the Archivist to blink in confusion at where he mistepped.
Good. Let him be confused.
--
There was something in the water these days, perhaps. Jon’s sullen questions knitted Michael together, stitched the soul in, reminded them, reminded him, of who he once was. Michael Shelley had a family once. Michael Shelley had friends once. Michael Shelley was once a person who didn’t think he was mad, mad, madder than the hatter.
And now, it seemed, the Distortion had someone to visit. Quarterly, monthly, a fortnight, weekly; who was counting, really?
The Archivist asked him, during one of his visits, what he does with his time. What was his phrasing? Ah, quite a quaint, “How do you pass the time, then?” He sounded bored , but they knew better. Jonathan Sims was quite adept at lies, but they were the father of them, and no brusque, artificially deepened voice would trick them.
They sat for a long, long moment, limbs splayed on the floor of the office, fingers curled into locks of overgrown hair, and the Archivist just watched him, impassive, from behind his glasses. He tried, oh he tried to be impassive, but he wasn’t as good as she was. Hers was genuine, a dispassionate disregard that only Jurgen Leitner or Elias Bouchard could hope to surpass. His was manufactured. A shield, a shell, and Michael wanted to peel it away, layer by layer by layer until the Archivist was splayed before him. But they weren’t the slaughter. It wasn’t their nature.
“I lose time quite a lot,” He said, and must have startled Jon from his sudden response, for he jumped in his seat, and nodded curiously as he adjusted his glasses. “I’ve told you; something has distorted oh-so-wrongly. The corridors in my mind just don’t make sense.”
“The doors are wrong?”
“The doors are wrong.”
The archivist hummed and leaned back in his chair, pulling out a tin full of rolled cigarettes, and lit one up. The smell was familiar, like one would sense in a dream. Michael Shelley must have been a smoker. They watched Jon for a few minutes, and when the smell became too potent, the cravings in a heart-that-was-not too large (not just for the cigarettes, not just for them, never just for them, the cravings for him), Michael slipped behind their door and quelled their too-human emotions.