Chapter Text
When Mike woke, the world was dirt.
For a moment, he was confused. What was- why was the world dirt?
It certainly hadn’t been earlier.
No, earlier he’d been in his flat, content after sending some acrophobe tumbling through the glorious, eternally vast sky, and then… The Archivist showed up. He’d been confused then, too. How the hell had The Archivist known where he lived? He’d never interacted with the man in his life.
Something to look into later.
Still.
However Sims had found him, there he stood in his doorway, tape recorder in hand.
At the time, Mike thought him an idiot.
Amusing in his idiocy, but an idiot nonetheless.
And yet, despite this, Mike had been polite, civilized even.
Unfortunately, The Archivist, on the other hand, decided to forgo tact entirely, shoving his recorder where it didn’t belong. Stupid of him.
That idiot was messing with forces he didn’t understand, he should be thankful all Mike gave him was a taste of vertigo. He’s done more about less. Hell, he threw a guy off a skyscraper once for fun. Mike was in a good mood, though, so not only did he spare Sims life, he decided to humor him and give a statement.
Mike was a private person, but still, he gave The Archivist a statement. If only to get him out of his space.
And after he was done with his story, he released him, satisfied he’d done enough to keep the Eye off his back.
What had...Oh. There’d been a knock, solid against the hardwood of his door.
A woman, blonde hair styled in a sharp undercut, bright eyes blazing. She’d the air of a predator, but Mike was no prey, so he’d squared his shoulders and prepared to send her falling.
He never even got the chance.
She moved quicker than he’d anticipated, and the last thing Mike remembered before the dark had been a sharp pain as his head collided with the corner of his shelf.
Here, he lost time. He had no idea how long he’d been out. Only that when he woke, his head pulsed, his chest throbbed- had he been shot?- and the world was dirt.
For a minute, Mike was confused.
Why was the world- wait.
Dirt.
The Archivist.
The Hunter.
The throbbing in his chest, what he was certain now was a bullet wound, and the soil and the dirt drinking the blood that surely oozed from his injuries.
He wasn’t confused anymore.
Buried.
He’d been-
The world was dirt.
Oh fuck.
He couldn’t breathe-
Dirt.
He couldn’t see, couldn’t cry out-
Only dirt.
He’d been shot and buried, buried, fuck he’d been-
The world was dirt.
Dirt under his nails.
Dirt under his skin.
Dirt under dirt under dirt, thick and wet in his throat; he’d made the mistake of screaming when his confusion melted into mud and his eyes wept silt. He wanted to see the sky; he saw dirt, only fucking dirt.
Dirt sinking into every crevice, crack in his skin, sinking into his scar, into his chest where he’d been shot like it could gape his wound wide enough to sink its fingers past his heart to his airway, fill his lungs with dirt like his throat, scrape his insides with crust-coated fingernails and there was wet in his throat, muddy thick sticking under his tongue, between his teeth, choking him.
He couldn’t feel the Vast. He’d forgotten what it felt like without the hum of vertigo in his veins and for the first time in a long time, Mike felt his surroundings infinitesimal.
His god couldn’t reach him here, in the dirt, in the soil, in the grit and choke and the Buried’s fist wrapped around him, tight as a toddler’s around their favorite toy. Fuck.
He’d been buried and the world was dirt.
Pressing on him from every angle, The Buried was heavy, suffocating, pinning him down, like he was an insect in a glass case, stolen from a borderless, beautiful blue.
There’s no way the dirt would let him go, now that it had him. An avatar of The Vast? Buried alive? It was too good to be true.
He wished it wasn’t true.
He wished he’d thrown Jonathan Sims into The Vast this morning and never looked back.
He wished he could fall into The Vast himself, revel in the feeling of being so, so insignificant compared to the stupendous awe of it all.
Michael Crew wished a lot of things. They rarely came true.
~~
Time stopped existing, after a while.
There’s only so long a person can take, confined underground, immobile except for the racing of their own mind, before things like time lose their meaning.
Days, weeks, months, years- Mike didn’t know how long he’d been in the dirt. Sometime after time stopped existing, his bullet wound healed. He could still feel The Buried reaching into his chest. He could still feel it in his lungs.
Even though he knew The Vast couldn’t reach him here, he spent days, weeks, months praying. Calling out to the dizzy void for salvation. For a freedom it had granted him before, on a cold day in a bookshop, where he flung himself into its arms in reckless abandon to escape his demon.
Nothing came.
He knew The Vast couldn’t reach him here, but that did nothing to quell the aching fear that pierced his heart when nothing came.
Crushed beneath the surface, in a world of dirt, desperation began to creep up his spine. He needed out. He wouldn’t let The Buried consume him until his inevitable demise. Assuming the earth would let him die. That it wouldn’t just keep him down here for all eternity, feeding off his fear until he forgot how it felt to feel anything else at all, until he forgot everything but the pressure of dirt against his skin, his scar, his soul.
He’d already forgotten the faces of his friends. Well, friends was subjective. More like fellow acolytes. The Fairchilds, who he only saw every six months or so. Did they think him dead? Did they even know he was missing? It wasn’t unusual for Mike to drop off the map, spend a year or two traveling. It wasn’t unusual for him to ignore Simon’s texts either. There’s only so many “spooky deep sea facts” he could take in an hour. And it’s not like he really spoke to anyone but his fellow Vast avatars on a regular basis- if you counted once or twice a year as “a regular basis”.
Of course, he knew others. Other avatars who served different entities and whom he also liked to ignore, finding them annoying to be around. Jude, Annabelle, the Lukas family.
When you’re an avatar, it was important to be informed. To have contacts, to know who to trust- trust as subjective as the concept of friends- and who to avoid. And Mike was good at avoiding. Years of running from The Spiral’s living fractal had taught him that.
Now, he regretted it, just a bit.
Maybe if he worked to make actual connections, he wouldn’t be here. He could’ve been saved weeks, months, years ago. But.
Mike was a private person, seldom did he leave his flat except to feed.
God, he was so hungry. So, so hungry. When had been the last time he ate? He knew he had before. But that was before. Before was ages before now, and now his stomach panged needlepoints, his energy flickered like a faulty bulb. Every day, although he’d long-since lost the ability to separate his days from his hours, that passed without him feeding, his connection to The Vast weakened. Disconnected as he was, he could still sense its weakening. Mike wasn’t sure what would happen to him if, when, it faded completely.
After all he’d done to stay alive, he wasn’t sure he was ready to find out.
But his god couldn’t reach him here, and nothing came.
Resignation sat heavy lead in his gut. Terror and desperation bloomed. Sensations he hadn’t experienced in years.
He did not want to die down here.
He did not want his last sight to be dirt, last taste to be mud, last sensation the dry suffocation of soil.
Mike has always been willing to sacrifice himself to survive. He’s played Russian roulette with Leitners, jumped to what should’ve been his death, willingly became a monster, and gifted his humanity to the sky. All for survival.
So it’s not too big a leap when he begins again to pray. But this time, it’s not to his god. No, he’s established The Vast couldn’t save him from the dirt, and though he ached deep in his soul to be back in the atmosphere, falling undying, lose himself to the dizzy rush of air streaming past, tickling his hair, burning joy against his face, the swoop of his insides as they try to catch up with the rest of him as he falls and falls and is free- He knows he can’t. Knows that even though some visceral part of him whines in longing, he can’t because his god can’t save him from the dirt and nothing came
So Mike prays and prays and prays, to anything willing to come. It’s risky, but when the alternative was staying down here, embroiled in fear and the wrongness of his Entity’s antithesis...well, anything was better than that.
He starts with The Flesh. The Boneturners Tale wasn’t for him, but he was amicable enough with it. He hoped. Offering it favors- as if fear gods needed favors, Mike, who was the idiot now, fuck- did nothing, and it was all he could do to not scream, despite how that went last time- the mud in his throat had dried, a thick lump of clay blocking his breathe- how the bloody hell was he breathing- So he offers it his life.
Mike loved The Vast, loved it with a profound, intense faith and adoration that one held for their savior. He was it’s avatar and it was his lord.
But he did not want to die down here.
Mike offers The Flesh his life over and over and over again, pleading with blood and meat to dig him up.
Nothing comes.
Months, years, decades pass and distress gnaws as dirt presses down and he is nothing but an insect framed forever in the earth’s devouring embrace, so he turns to The Web. Spiders, some species at least, creeped below the soil. He offers it his life to control, to puppet. He cries to the Mother. Save me. Save me. Save me, please, oh god, save me.
The dirt squeezes ever tighter, sticking to and under his skin. It wants to meld into him. It wants to become him.
Mike doesn’t want to be dirt.
He cries and cries and cries.
Nothing comes.
Years, decades, centuries pass and Mike does not want to die. He can no longer recall the vibrant vertigo of his veins, they’re too mucked with silt, and the tether that ties him to The Vast strains. He doesn’t have long. He does not want to die. So he turns to The Desolation. He thinks he knew avatars of The Desolation- if he did he can’t remember their names, if they existed in the first place- and he sobs prayers through clenched closed lips. Take him, burn him to nothing if it must, just take him away. Please.
The Buried hums.
Mike chokes.
The world is dirt and he does not want to die.
Nothing comes.
Decades, minutes, centuries, hours- time stopped existing eons ago and Mike doesn’t care anymore, he just wants out, out, out out out- and he prays and prays and prays and cries and cries and sobs and he gapes and in that gape is dirt and he wants out.
He offers his life to The Lonely, The Dark, The Stranger, The Hunt, he offers it to almost them all.
Still, nothing comes.
Nothing comes.
Nothing fucking comes.
And Mike’s lungs are weighed down and he’s suffocating, really suffocating, he knows, and the world is dirt, he’s starting to forget what it was like when it wasn’t dirt and he’s so weak. It would be so easy to surrender. But Mike has always been stubborn. He refuses to be consumed.
Still.
He’s starting to think death wouldn’t be so bad.
The End would grant him rest, at least.
The Buried, he knows, will not.
He’s it’s favorite toy. He knows it laughs at his pathetic attempts of escape. He knows it delights in his suffering, in his terror.
So he offers his life to The End.
Of course, nothing comes, and Michael Crew does not die.
~~
When Mike is eight, he allows himself to be persuaded by his best friend Dominic to stay outside in a storm, and is subsequently struck by lightning.
What follows is a blur.
White hot pain seizes his limbs as all his nerve synapses fire bright and ozone writhes in the air and in him and he can smell nothing but storm and he can hear nothing but a raw scream and he remembers none of it but he knows. And then there is nothing. And then there is the hospital. And then he is home, and his scar stretches out in eternal fractals, far from his body.
Mike is eight, and he has been marked.
When Mike is sixteen the monster finds his house. The Lichtenberg figure following him through the years, frightening him and warping his reality. Ozone follows him as well. Mike is sixteen and he dreams of corridors of lightning that stretch and spiral and swirl on forevermore and he sees a forest that never ends, branches straining down from their storm.
When Mike is seventeen he stumbles across his first Leitner. It opens his eyes to the truth, it fills him with hope. He is still followed by ozone, but he won’t be followed by the Lichtenberg figure for long.
Mike is seventeen and his house collapses and his parents die, but Mike has long since stopped caring, long since been swallowed by a hunger. He’ll escape his horrors. Even if he has to forgo his humanity.
When Mike is twenty-two he discovers the Lions Street bookshop. Months are spent combing shelves, blowing money on anything remotely mystical. He is still running, but he’s determined. Nothing will stop him, not now.
Mike is twenty-two and he binds his monster, his madness, to the book and sacrifices himself to The Vast, in all its empty glory.
He feeds it and it feeds him.
He is finally content, and yet, there is still a small section of his brain that’s terrified of The Spiral.
Mike does his best to forget that fear.
~~
His connection is almost gone, now. Replaced by pounds of packed pressure. Mike’s world is dirt. And soon he will be too.
He’s too tired to pray anymore.
Nothing comes and nothing will.
...There’s one he’s yet to offer himself too, though. The one that haunted his youth, consumed his nightmares, and marked him ‘til the day he dies.
God, he wants to die.
Please.
Please let him die, he can’t take this anymore.
If he could, Mike would curl into himself. As it is, he’s forgotten how it feels to move. He’s forgotten so much.
He’s so, so afraid.
Anything would be better than this. Anything. If anything means he loses himself to fractals forever, so be it, he can’t take this anymore.
Centuries, seconds pass and Mike whispers one last prayer.
You can have me, I’ll come back, I’m yours.
Dirt worms through his body, caking every organ, muscle, bone. His tether shakes, minutes from the break, and he tastes iron, clay.
There’s dirt under his nails, his skin, in his veins, between his teeth.
Around him, the walls squeeze in, crushing him, choking him.
The Buried is laughing and Mike knows it’s time.
Still.
Michael Crew is afraid to die.
The tether, his last connection to his god begins to snap.
The dirt presses harder.
He cannot see but he knows what’s coming. Can feel The Buried’s fingers tighten.
If he had the energy, he would cry. But he doesn’t. And he is powerless to stop it from taking him. All those thoughts of survival for naught. All his survival for naught.
Mike doesn’t want to be dirt.
He doesn’t
He
“Hello~ It looks like you could use a door!”