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How did I become so obnoxious?
What is it with you that makes me act like this?
I've never been this nasty.
You deserve worse.
That’s what he tells himself the first time it happens. Or what he’s sure is when it starts.
They’ve just adjourned a meeting that seemed to be going nowhere. Nothing but everyone playing the blame game, Janet included. Hell, even Jason seemed to snipe at Tahani, and since when did that guy have a spiteful bone in his body? Tensions were running high since the discovery about Linda, or rather the ‘Linda suit’ – Michael doesn’t dare to let his mind wander to how the real Linda is doing after they took her skin, hoping they gave it back to her. That’s how these things work after all. He still dreads the thought of meeting the human he was given his from, if there’s anything left of the poor, handsome schmuck.
Linda was a plant, a foiled attempt to sabotage them from Shawn and his pathetic cronies. But it didn’t work. They should be celebrating. Instead, all Eleanor does is seethe in his…her chair. She’s barely been able to meet his gaze since they came off the train station and she’s been snapping at everyone. Except him.
He sees the tension bubbling around her. It’s like watching a see-through kettle.
This is his fault, he knows that. He needs to fix it.
He waits until the group have left, all of them rather eager to be out of Eleanor’s destruction zone, until he approaches her.
“Hey. I know today might seem like a bust.” Michael tries, gently as he can be; “But think of it as a victory. We managed to get under their spy's skin and now we don’t have to worry, we can just focus on helping our subjects.”
She doesn’t speak. That’s worrying. Eleanor is never speechless.
She gets up out of her chair and leans her hip against the desk, her back to him, eyes on the wall. He sees her fingers tapping against the wood. Easy, Mikey.
“Remember what I said, they’re desperate. They know we’re going to win.” He says to her, edging closer.
He sits against the front of the desk and tries sidling as close as he can. He doesn’t care about the steam rising off of her in her aura. A little heat never hurt him.
“Look. As someone who has dealt with a few, or rather eight hundred or more, setbacks in all of my projects, I’m sure I know exactly how you feel-.”
She turns, swinging her fist at him.
It collides with his nose and he stumbles back, grabbing at the desk for support. Not due to the pain, there’s almost none of that. More the shock. Fork, what was…?!
He touches his face briefly before pulling it away. If he were human, he suspects she’d have at least given him a nosebleed. As it is, there’s nothing.
Nothing but the glaring green-blue eyes drilling into him when he looks up.
“You know how it feels now? Do you?” She yells at him; “No because I’m just a weak, forking human. If we swapped our strengths and I still got to punch you then, yeah, you’d know how I felt right now! Except only a little bit because there would still be the mountain of other shirt I’ve been left to deal with….because of you!”
Ah. He’s been waiting for this. His hand moves up to his chest at the twinge of that…guilt feeling.
“I never asked you to-.”
“You gave me no choice.” She reminds him, coldly, “You forced me to step up…and then you took Chidi away.”
What?
Now that he doesn’t expect. It punches far worse than her small fist did. He blinks, rapidly.
“I never…He asked me to-.”
“You should’ve fought harder! You should’ve come up with some bullshirt excuse for why you couldn’t do it! God damn it, we shouldn’t have let him…”
And there it is. We. Not you.
She’s not blaming him for having to sacrifice Chidi. She blames herself. It’s completely irrational. Michael is beginning to accept that Irrational is human emotions in a nutshell. They never make sense, always seeming to contradict each other. But he can’t help but wonder if there is some truth to her accusation. Could he have argued more? Could he have thought of another solution?
He tried. Damn it, he tried so much. Anything to spare Chidi’s memory, to keep him here, to see him and Eleanor happy together. Anything to spare Eleanor the pain of watching someone she loved carry on without remembering her. A torture that Michael knew all too well.
When he looks at her again, he can see there are enough invisible barbs and spikes around her to risk trying to comfort her. Now isn’t the time. He might not be good at understanding human emotion, but he’s always been skilled in how to react to them, what intentions created the desired responses. Usually misery, at least that had been his original MO. Now all he wanted was to take Eleanor’s misery away, shove it into a trash bag and hurl it into the sun.
“I’ll…give you some time to breathe. I’ll be at Mindy’s with the guys.” He goes to leave.
He can help. He knows they’re all feeling splintered right now, not too happy with Eleanor’s handling as team leader.
Tahani and the rest all but confirm it after the disaster with Brent.
He tries to talk them around. They need Eleanor. She’s having it rough right now but she is the Willpower that is required for them to get through this. Of course, just his luck, she doesn’t appear at the right time to hear him trying to defend her. No, she has to walk in and believe all of them are conspiring against her.
He didn’t believe in any sort of all-powerful deity that controlled destiny. But he was starting to think someone who hated him had a handle on fate’s controls.
It’s up to him to find her. It’s up to him to remind her of what’s important – to try. To keep trying.
Just as she once told him.
He gives her back her confidence and, after a much-needed shower and change into her own style instead of mimicking his fancy suits, she’s ready to get going again. She’s their Eleanor once more.
“Hey, dude…”
She finds him the next morning in his office before the others have arrived. Michael is relieved to see all the sharp energy barricades gathering around her have fallen. She’s open, bright and radiant again. Even the sun can burn sometimes. It’s still beautiful, he thinks with a smile.
She reaches to touch his face and it brings a frown on him to start. Because her light dims when her eyes pass over his cheek bone.
“What? Please, don’t tell me I have shaving foam there? I don’t even need to do it, I just like squirting the can.” He confesses and it makes her grin.
“I’m sorry I punched you. That was a world of Not Cool.” She tells him straight.
He should shut it down there. No, it wasn’t cool. Never again. He doesn’t know much about friendship but he knows that friends don’t hit each other, with the exception of fist-bumps or those chest high fives that jock guys do at football games.
He doesn’t shut it down. He doesn’t let her be in the wrong.
She’s had enough of her friends get on her back for screwing up in the past twenty-four hours. It’s over now. They can start a fresh.
“Oh, please, you call that a punch? It’s like being hit by a fruit fly!” He quips.
“Hey!”
“C’mon, that’s a step-up from cockroach.”
Her eyes widen, insulted; “Cockroach?!”
“Yeah, like Team…Oh wait, shirt,” He had been meaning to do it as soon as the experiment started but everything kept getting in the way; “…I need to give you your memories back. All of them.”
She blinks; “Seriously? You can do that? I don’t have to just keep binging vids on Janet’s tablet?”
“Nope. I can give them all back, if you want. I wouldn’t recommend right now, best pencil it in for a day you have some free time. The effects of having three hundred years worth of memories unlocked in your brain may be a little…disorientating, to say the least.” He warns her.
Because a lot of those memories are not happy, romantic times with Chidi, which is almost all she’s been shown so far. A lot of those years are filled with anxieties, lies and treachery. She might not think he was worthy of that apology when she remembers everything he did to her. It might be best he puts on a helmet and some padded clothing.
Eleanor simply nods; “Say no more. I’ll get Janet to put a pitcher on hand to ease me in.”
“That might not be…Yeah, sure, go for it.” A drunk Eleanor’s punches will be easier to dodge. Maybe.
“Thanks, Michael. For the memories and…last night. I still can’t believe you came after me, considering what a jerk I was.” She sighs, heavily; “It’s not your fault Chidi sacrificed himself.”
Isn’t it? He snapped his fingers. He could have refused, as she said.
“Like I said, I barely felt anything. Not half as bad as the stabbing.”
“Stabbing? I stabbed you?” Eleanor’s eyes widen. She looks both horrified and amused.
Michael smirks; “Twice.”
Given what he was, what he did, that was the light end of the spectrum compared to the flesh and bones he’d torn apart with his bare hands and, before that, tentacles. He deserved any shred of pain that the humans were able to dish back at him, from the stabbing to trying to break his thoughts by making him believe he was the one in the Bad Place, or making him listen to Chidi’s rap about Kierkegaard. He deserved a good punch in the head to remind him that he was not done, never done, atoning for what he was.
The fact that Eleanor and the others could still be around him, the fact that she was smiling beside him now, was more mercy than he should be given.
He deserves worse.
*
After the snap, once she’s opened her eyes, she plays it all cool. He hands her the margarita as requested and there doesn’t seem to be any negative side effects, other than some slight dizziness. All of her memories from her first time waking up in his fake ‘Good Place’ up until they left on a train to Bad Place HQ are snapped back into her head.
Obviously, there’s a piece missing. Their journey on the train all the way until their trials in the Judge’s chamber. Michael explains how, due to his powers being connected to Janet’s stored database of the original neighbourhood, he can only restore her experiences up until she left and the little pocket world he created was dismantled. He fills her in on the important details; the biggest one obviously being her kiss with Chidi.
“Right there in front of the Judge? Hot diggity dog!” She exclaims, proudly.
“That’s what I said.” He’d grinned.
What they’d both said. They had been so in sync back then.
It's all a lie, of course.
He could restore those memories but why bother. There’s nothing that happened in the Bad Place HQ or the Museum that’s worth giving her too many details about. She doesn’t need to know about silly little things like how much Michael appreciated her telling him to be careful. She doesn’t need to know about him giving his pin and thinking he was saying goodbye to her forever. They won’t have the same significance to her as they do for him.
He never wants her to know how strongly he cared…How he cares about her. It would just complicate things. He doesn’t want her to feel like she owes him or anything stupid like that.
He will take it to Retirement if he has to. To his grave at the end of eternity.
Only he doesn’t.
It happens again.
What is it that he says which causes her to snap at him? And it’s always him. She never takes her anger out on the others. A few harsh phrases, a snapping tone, maybe. But it’s almost as if she stores up the worst parts of her feelings for Michael to come along. Maybe because, after the first time, she knows that he can take it. He can take anything she throws at him.
He’d only been trying to help. Having to torture Chidi was clearly bringing out a darker side to her than either of them intended. There had once been a time, back when Michael wasn’t fully reformed, when the image of a Demon Eleanor drove him wild. Sometimes, when alone, he still indulged himself with the fantasy, inappropriate as it might be. But not like this. The Demon Eleanor in his head was a riot, she was fun and brimming with power in just one look.
This Eleanor, the one first trying to torture Chidi and then to him…was simply mean. Cruel for the sake of being cruel.
Of course, she loves Chidi too much to be overly harsh with him for long. She breaks down and Michael has to shoo the oblivious nerd out the room before he freaks out too much about making God sob like a baby.
She loves Chidi too much to hurt him. But she needs to hurt someone.
Thank the stars Michael is there.
He only wants to hug her at first, cautious hands reaching out, before they’re quickly slapped away. Then she’s on her feet and shoving him against the wall. He puts up no resistance. He lets her flail her fists on him and curse him for making him into her.
“Did you really miss it that much, Mikey?” She yells at him, palm smacking against his chest; “Did you miss torturing him so much that you had to manipulate me into doing it for you?!”
Is that what happened? Maybe. He hadn’t meant it like…
Oh, what difference does that make.
She’s right. He deserves this. He deserves to be the outlet for her grief; not Chidi. It’s nothing but pathetic little slaps really. Her upset will always hurt more than any physical attack she could give him. Her words are barely thought out before they leave her lips. She’s just angry. It’s fine. She can be upset. She can be whatever she needs to be around him.
The only time she touches a nerve is when she says;
“You will never understand what he’s done for us!” She shouts, nails dragging into his skin suit as she slaps him; “You will never know what it’s like to sacrifice everything because you’ve never loved anyone in your miserable billion years of existing!”
And that’s when he snaps.
As in, he literally snaps his fingers.
Eleanor stumbles back, eyes blinking rapidly, face going through a variety of emotions as the last piece of memory is slotted back into her brain.
“Be care…You didn’t gimmie a…That’s great but now is not…N-no no no wait, wait!” She mumbles the words swiftly as she relives them again.
Her hands reach out at the air in front of her.
Then she stills, opening her eyes. Her jaw drops as she gawps at Michael.
He takes a breath and straightens up.
“Don’t…ever…tell me…I don’t understand.” He whispers to her, biting his lip; “Don’t…”
Eleanor continues to stare in…What? He can’t read her.
Is she that shocked, after all they’ve been through together, that a disgusting monster like him would care enough to sacrifice himself to save her? Did she really doubt him that much?
You refilled her head with three hundred years of mental torture. What did you expect?
Fork. He has no right to judge her judgement. One stupid act doesn’t erase several lifetimes worth of abuse and torment. What good is making her know what he did going to do? The way she keeps staring at him, he starts to fear that he broke something in her brain. Shirt. He should have been more careful. That stupid, pointless memory wasn’t worth-
She darts forward and wraps her arms around him.
Oh.
Wait, what?
Michael gasps, looking down to see Eleanor crying into his Hawaiian shirt. Her fingers curl in the fabric as she clings to him. What is this? Did he truly ruin her to the point of tears? That wasn’t the purpose of why he let her remember. He was just proving a point. It didn’t mean anything, really, not to anyone but him…His hands hover over her before slowly resting on her shoulder and hair.
“I…I’m sorry?” He frowns, wondering if there is a way to remove the memory if it’s that bad, without messing up her head anymore.
“No…No, God, Michael, damn it!” She pulls back and looks up at him; “Don’t forking apologise! I had no…I had no idea what you did, why didn’t you show me that before?”
He blushes, looking away a little; “…Well, it just…I dunno…You already feel bad enough about Chidi’s sacrifice, I-.”
“You were going to be Retired. Not just lose your memory for a year, you were going to forking die!” She reminds him, seeming to grow angry again; “That’s…That is THE sacrifice, dude! You’re right…No one, least of all a shirtbag likes me, gets to school your ash on them…Damn it, Michael, why would you ever…?”
He doesn’t answer. He just slowly detaches her hands from around his middle.
Why does anyone do anything for anyone? Eleanor was the one who brought him into the light. Eleanor was the one who showed him a new world, one that would be warm and accepting and loving…at least, up until recently, it felt, but that was his own fault. He owed her everything, especially after all the bad things he’d done.
Her hand touches his face. A nice touch, this time, fingers stroking down in front of his ear to his jaw. He still can’t look at her. It makes the knot in his chest twist tighter.
She kisses his cheek and he blinks in surprise again.
“I know it’s not quite on the level as the portal thing but…”
“Thank you.” Michael smiles back at her.
A thousand slaps, a million punches and countless stabbings are worth taking for just one kiss on the cheek from Eleanor Shellstrop. He would condemn himself to any torture for the sake of her smile.
He deserves worse.
*
The next time is different. He’s not even sure if he can honestly count it with the others. And there are others. Nothing too big.
He forgets to bring her coffee one day because he was too busy helping Tahani learn to compliment John in return of his criticisms. Eleanor clearly slept little the night before. Michael should really know how important her coffee is for her in the morning. He’s not the same without his daily vanilla antimatter. She tells him that he’s useless, that he can’t even do the most basic of Assistant jobs, let alone being human. He can’t really tell if she’s just winding him up, teasing him. Her tone is so sharp.
She loves to shoot his suggestions down the most, with more vitriol and mockery in her tone than she ever gives the others. To be fair, the Musical Day idea was rather atrocious, and he deserved to be humiliated for it. Eleanor accused him of just wanting an excuse to play his ‘crab guitar’ and maybe she’s right. He decides to keep his ideas to himself, suggesting some to Tahani and Jason, which they later let slip as their own. Eleanor is kinder to them, even when she turns them.
That’s what humans do. They’re good to each other, when they’re friends, when they care. Michael shouldn’t be expecting the same response. The fact that they are all willing to be in the same room with him, to have him on their team, is a blessing. He’s so grateful they want him this close.
Eleanor is allowed to be stressed and annoyed. She’s allowed to snipe at him.
He’s there for whatever she needs, after all.
Even one night when she barges her way into his office, tears on her cheeks, looking as though she’s just ran across the entire neighbourhood to get here by her heavy breathing. And he knows her cardio isn’t great as it is.
“Eleanor? What’s wrong?” He’s on his feet and out of his chair in an instant, “Is it the Bad Place? Have they done something? Did they hurt you…or one of the other humans?”
If they have, if the’ve dared tried anything again, he won’t have it.
They might think him to be a wimp, a coward, but he won’t stand for another hair on his humans heads being harmed again. He hates it enough they punched Eleanor before. The next time, he’ll set them all ablaze if he has to make his point crystal clear. No one hurts his friends.
Her eyes are on him, looking down, then back up, her body carefully moving in closer.
“Say that you love me.”
He blinks, feeling as though she’s given him another shove.
“I…How did…?”
“I know, Michael. An idiot could work it out and you know I’m no idiot.” She says to him and, damn it, was it that obvious? Her hand reaches for his; “Say it. Say that you love me.”
Michael pants, lips suddenly awfully dry.
“…I love you.”
That’s enough for her to launch herself onto him, grabbing at his face, introducing him to probably the roughest first kiss he could get.
Very soon, she has him lying back on the desk and she’s straddled over him, knees either side of his own. He feels helpless, a willing vessel, as she undoes his bow-tie and kisses him some more, unbuttoning his shirt and littering him with the feel of her lips. He doesn’t know quite what he’s supposed to do at this point but. This is the deal. She can do what she wants.
Her hands touch the sides of his head, fingers combing through his hair.
“Say you won’t ever leave me.” She orders again. That’s what it is.
She’s the Boss.
“I…won’t ever leave you.” Obeying her words invites more kisses and. Kisses are nice.
Her touching, no more slaps or punches, just grabbing and groping and feeling….is nicer. He tries to copy back what she teaches him. Her response is always welcoming to whatever he can give, unless she firmly tells him otherwise, shoving his hand away with her own or pinning him back.
Every now and then, she demands an affirmation.
“Say that you’ll always stay with me.”
“I will…always stay with you.” Why would he ever want to leave? Even when she hurts him, when she breaks him down, it’s preferable to what he had before. It’s better than being alone.
“Say you’ll do anything for me, Michael. Anything.”
He breathes as her body gyrates against his own, far more inexperienced. Far more vulnerable.
“I will do…anything…for you….Eleanor Shellstrop. I’m yours.”
Now and always.
He’s offered to die for her before. He would do it again and again and again. But right now, at this moment, fork, he’s so glad to be alive.
That is until Chidi comes into the office.
“Oh! Oh man, I…I did not think…Oh, I am so sorry, I should have knocked!” He covers his eyes with his hand as the two of them move off each other and quickly work to get their clothes on.
Eleanor puts her hand out; “Hey, Chidi, it’s okay! We’re sorry, we-.”
“Nope, no need to apologise, I…I’ll find you tomorrow.” He leaves with an awkward laugh, presumably having his mind blown by finding out the resident God has a sex drive and was sharing it with her fellow angelic Assistant.
Normally Michael would be happy to revel in at least a little bit of Chidi’s torture…but…
Eleanor wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
She looks at Michael as he pauses rebuttoning his shirt.
She grits her teeth and grabs one of the square wooden pencil holders from the desk. She smashes it into the side of his head, knocking him back a few steps. This time…he does feel it. Just a little.
“Why the fork did you show me that stupid portal memory?” She hisses at him, “Don’t you think I have enough of a headache right now without needing even more confusion up in here?”
He stares at her. Oh shirt, he was right. It was a bad idea to show her.
…How exactly did it confuse her? He doesn’t understand. She used to be the one to help him understand. Did she run out of patience to teach him anymore? Is he that beyond help?
“I just…I wanted to show you that I understood-.”
“You can never understand! How could you understand any of the shirt we go through?!” She shouts at him, slapping his chest again; “You’re not human! You’ll never be like one of us! Never love like us! You’re just a…thing stuffed in the costume of a person, pretending to be something you’re not! You’re pathetic!”
She throws the desk ornament at him again and it bounces off his front before she storms out, slamming the door behind him.
What….What was that? What was any of that about?
Even knowing what he’d done, how far he was willing to go to protect them, to save her, she still thought he didn’t understand what it meant to sacrifice yourself? To love someone that much? It must be different for humans. A different standard. A demon would have to do more than simply offer himself up for Retirement or whatever eternal torture awaited him. A demon would have to try harder to prove himself worthy of any appreciation.
He would try. He would always keep trying. Anything to earn their already fragile trust. Anything to make Eleanor happy with him again.
The next morning, she leaves a basket of mini muffins on his desk with a note.
Sorry, bud. Got plans with Tahani but drinks later? – Your favorite dirtbag.
She knows he loves triple chocolate chip. Any anxiety he had carried over from the night before quickly melts away. It’s just the tension. They’re not getting the results they hoped for and it was almost as if something was deliberately tripping them up. Maybe they were all paranoid.
He’s about to dig into the muffins when Chidi comes into the office.
Michael apologises for Eleanor’s absence, as well as what he had to witness the night before. Chidi waves it off, admitting his surprise, but also saying how it made a strange sort of sense. Michael doesn’t question what he means by that.
He makes a mental note to be sure to apologise to Chidi once he gets his memory back. Yes, Eleanor kissed him, but he was hardly throwing her off. He didn’t even put up a fight. It was as if he’d been too in shock to think about anything or anyone else outside of that moment, frozen in the dot above the i. He doesn’t know why she kissed him or what it meant for her…but he didn’t want to tear them apart, no matter how much he envied the brilliant, amnesiac dork in front of him.
In the end, it’s Chidi who apologises, or rather asks Michael to pass on an apology to Eleanor.
“Please tell her that I’m so sorry I forgot our check-up. I’d met up with Simone for lunch earlier and…we ended up getting rather carried away, spending time together. Once I remembered my meet up with Eleanor, it was almost the evening. I feel terrible.”
At first, Michael is merely biting his tongue from lashing at Chidi for being such a dunce that he passed up a chance for time with Eleanor, memory or no memory.
Then it hits him.
Eleanor wanted time with Chidi the day before, but he was with Simone. She had seen Chidi and Simone together. She’d seen them…and decided to come to him. She’d worked out his feelings for her and…knew he wanted her. She’d wanted him to use him to get back at Chidi, leaving the door unlocked for him to walk in. Oh. That is diabolical. Once upon a time, Michael would have been so proud of her for such devilish planning.
Now however, he feels numb.
When he takes a bite of one of the mini muffins, it’s surprisingly bitter on his tongue.
But. He deserves worse. So much worse.
*
The worst is the moment that it hits him. The moment he realises that no amount of punching or cruel words are going to be what grants him redemption.
He’s done nothing but been there for all of them, especially her, these past couple of years. Done nothing but put his very existence on the line, bend the laws of time and crossing dimensions, to rescue them. He thinks back to the moment when Shawn handed him his senior management pin. Everything he had ever wanted.
Respect. Gratification. Acceptance. Fame. Glory.
He could have had it all.
But instead he chose to give it up. Everything he had been working, striving and stressing about, for three centuries or more was finally being presented to him. He could have let Shawn take his friends and he’d be drinking glasses of pig urine with the big guys in Upper Management right now. Instead, he chose to save the humans. He chose to give up his entire identity for them.
Why?
There had been many factors. Many moments shared between them, when torturing them had lost its thrill and turned to boredom and then, in the end, to something unthinkable. Making them happy was what gave him his new kick. Making them…Earning their acceptance, their forgiveness and friendship, had been his new goal in life that gave him a reason to leave the office every day and not just slink off back to the lava pit he first crawled out of.
Most of all, it had been her.
She who was there to comfort him during his freak outs. She who called him out on his bullshirt while still holding out a hand to help. She who took him out for drinks, helped him study, stayed up with him watching trashy movies. She who worried about him. She who believed in him.
Where had she gone? He missed her.
He’d almost died for her. He’d brought her back from the dead. He’d loved her so much.
This Eleanor who wears her face, the one who only looks at him with scathing resentment in between bursts of regret and a shadow of camaraderie, doesn’t believe in him. He’s let her flail on him, beat him until the human suit almost started to imitate a bruise, taken every poisonous word from her mouth into his essence. He still loves her. He can’t escape it. And what is his reward? Doubt.
“Get out of here. You’re not a part of this huddle.” She hisses.
Not a part of this? This…Isn’t all of this happening because of what he was willing to do for them? Aren’t they all here and not being tortured in the Bad Place, or locked in boring voids, or stuck in their dead end, miserable mortal lives because of what he was willing to do for them?
And this…This is the thanks he gets?
Don’t be stupid, Michael. You lied. It doesn’t matter what your reasons were or how you justify it. Lies are unforgiveable. If you’re a human, sure, you can try to make up for it. But you’re a demon. You’ve only proven that you will always be evil. That you can never learn to change. She knows it. She’s always known it. Faith has its limits, you dingus.
It’s so much easier to turn his resentment and anger on himself. It’s what is right. There was time he would take out the mental abuse Shawn and others dished out to him on easy targets like Tahani. No more. He knew how much that stung and he wouldn’t wish it on any of them. It’s just an endless cycle. He had to be the one to break it. But much like cutting off a river, it only means he stops the water spreading elsewhere. Instead it gathers and festers and drowns the spot it finishes at.
Him.
When Eleanor demands he takes off his suit to ‘prove himself’, he’s not quite sure of her logic there but whatever, he has no choice but to tell her what he is. How revealing himself will not only endanger the experiment but also change the way they all see him. Judging from the look in her and Tahani’s eyes when he gives a description of what lies beneath the suit, he’s right. Only Jason, who is Jason, can say he would still be friends with a gross abomination. The others give him no such reassurance. If anything, for Eleanor, she looks as though he’s merely confirming what she’s always suspected. That he is, indeed, nothing but a thing in the shape of a human.
Not something that can know friendship, or ethics, or…love. Not something that can ever be truly hurt by whatever toxic attacks she is capable of.
She doesn’t want him? Doesn’t trust him?
Okay. Fair enough.
He grabs the demon gun that had burst poor Glenn like a balloon moments ago. He doesn’t want to do this. Damn it, he’s forking terrified, his hands shaking. Tahani tries to stop him. Not her. She just stands there. She wants him out of her hair. She wants him gone. He should have known that weeks ago, before any of this suit crab. Before giving her back her memories. Before being so scared at the thought of them suffering at the hands of a fake version of him caused him to have to hand things over to her. Before he had to walk back into her life again after messing it all up with his damn snow plow.
Before he ever tortured her. Before all of it.
He can’t stand it. The thought of her thinking he’d betrayed her, of her hating him again, was what had caused his panic attack in the first place. But she already hated him. She already admitted that she didn’t trust him. He was living through Shawn’s torture before they had even lost. The only thing worse would be their actual suffering, which he will do anything to spare them from. He can’t pinpoint what it was he did wrong, other than the lying, but it was enough. He let them down. He failed. He deserves their doubt. He deserves their loathing.
Better to be a tank of goo stewing away on the shelf, away from all of them, than have to bear another second of this. He would never hurt them in a million years, but better to put render himself formless and immobile for months so they can at least feel safe without him around.
He hears her words in his head as he turns the gun on himself.
Be careful. Yeah, I’m worried. Stick with the programme, demon buddy. I knew he was on our side. It’s okay, bud, it’s okay. I’m right here. Our honorary human.
Your friends will always trust you.
Fork, he misses her so much.
He deserves to lose that Eleanor in place of this one beside him who doesn’t say a word to stop him. He deserves to be tortured by her. He deserves to be hated, not loved. He deserves-
*
That had been a tough one. But they made it. Her and the British Hot Stuff had made a decent team after all. Tahani just needed to build her confidence a little. Realise where her strengths lay. To think that when they had met, Eleanor had been convinced she thought herself to be so perfect. And with that bod and that accent and being so unbelievably nice, who could really blame her?
It turned out that her original motto was current. Pobody’s nerfect. Tahani has as much to improve on as any of them. It’s that drive that makes her even more, who would have thought it, special.
As much as Eleanor adored her, she couldn’t deny the elation that pulsed through her when they got the alert that the others were back from their rescue trip to the Bad Place. She’d been back and forth between the town and the station, multiple times, pacing along the platform and quietly praying for them to come back soon. The longer she stared at the deserted tracks, the further her heart sank.
She had prayed that Janet hadn’t been tortured too much down there and that she wasn’t hurt that they didn’t even notice she was gone. She prayed that no demons go their hands on Jason and that he was able to throw a few well-deserved Molotovs in revenge. She prayed that Michael…
Oh, crab. Michael.
It hadn’t been until he was gone that she truly felt how tough this was to handle on her own. Everything she had to deal with before had been stress and anxiety egged on, unknowingly, by the spy planted among them in the form of their friend. On top of having to watch her ex live each day without recognising her, watch him make goo goo eyes with is new ‘soul mate’. It became too much for her to handle. She wanted to scream at the useless humans in their care for not improving quick enough. She wanted to slap her friends every time they failed to come up with a useful suggestion or laid it all on her to fix.
She didn’t. She held it all back, locked it in a tiny cabinet in her head and threw away the key. Just as her mother always told her to.
Problem was that Michael kept insisting on breaking the damn lock.
The first time she’d hit him…it had been a mistake. No, it had been pay-back for how he failed to protect her getting punched by Not-Linda. For putting her in that position in the first place. It was never supposed to happen again. Except, it wasn’t a big deal, because, as Michael pointed out, demons could barely feel pain from humans.
So, when it did happen again, and again, and again…it wasn’t as if she was really doing any damage. Right? She may as well have been venting while playing Wii Boxing.
It wasn’t real. It didn’t hurt him. He doesn’t feel things…like that.
Oh, Eleanor, who the fork are you kidding?
Even now, as she watches the three of them return and step off the cart, she’s trying to spare herself the guilt of how she’s been behaving. But she saw it. She saw the look in his eyes, when she accused him of not understanding and he’d forced her to remember…that. She saw how wounded and open the demon could be. And even though he’d managed to prove himself, be willing to repeat that sacrifice again for their sakes, she couldn’t escape the sting that guilt left her with.
It was okay. They would be okay.
She knows how much the big doof loves her…loves them all. He could never stay mad at her. What right did he ever have to be angry at her after how he’d treated them all in the past? If he dared to accuse her of anything, there’s almost eight hundred examples she could list that he has yet to repay her for.
Fork. No. She doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want them to have all that past drama of who they used to be destroying who they were now.
After they’ve all debriefed in Michael’s office, given a bajillion apologies to Janet who reminds them she can’t bear grudges, they call it a night. As Michael rightly says, they’ve all done a good job either keeping the neighbourhood running or being heroes and they deserve a decent night’s sleep. Eleanor waits for them all to leave before she faces Michael, who has yet to look her in the eye since he walked off the cart.
“It’s so good to have you back, bud.” She sighs, almost moving to give him a hug before he slides around the desk and takes his seat instead.
“Glad to be back.”
Okay. Going back to oddly formal. She doesn’t accuse him of taking her chair. It was his first.
Strange. He seemed to be his old self around the others, smiling and bouncing on his heels, showering them with praise and positive reinforcement. Now it’s just the two of them and Eleanor doesn’t think she’s seen him act so cold and distant since he had to put on the ‘act’ of being disappointed with her revealing her true identity all those centuries ago.
It’s up to her to break the ice. That’s only fair.
“Look, uhm…I know the last night we were all together was…rough.” She starts, not very good at apologies, even now.
“Hmm. Yep, it sucked.”
At least they can agree. That’s one good start.
“I’ve got something for you. Or rather, I made it.” She starts, digging something from her back pocket; “Or, actually, I got the Janet babies in the cross-stitching group to help me make it after we stopped them all glitching.”
She presents him with an orange knitted crochet pattern with blue circles at the top of its long neck and ten dangling arms at the bottom.
“It’s a fire squid tea cosy.” She explains when he frowns at it; “I don’t have a clue what a tea cosy is but…apparently it’s something like that. I dunno, maybe you can use it to hold your antimatter when it’s too hot or…Yeah, it’s lame, I know.”
“No, no, it’s sweet.” He gives her a small smile and puts it in his drawer; “Thank you, Eleanor.”
She curses herself for not thinking of a more exciting gift but she was pressed for time and with limited resources until Derek got things under control. Michael’s reactions to ‘humany’ gifts were usually a lot more animated. He seemed to have to force the smile he was giving her and was all too quick to shove the stupid thing out of sight.
He’s still upset, clearly. Why did demonic squids have to be so forking sensitive?
“Gotta say, I wasn’t expecting a present. After everything the other night…I was afraid I wasn’t part of the group anymore.” He says, sounding exhausted.
And there it is.
Eleanor scoffs; “As if. You’re stuck with us, buddy.”
She moves around the desk and reaches to touch his shoulder. The muscles tense beneath her fingers as he looks at her hand there.
After a while, he smiles, and gives it a fond pat.
He looks up and meets her eyes properly. Here we go. All it took was a cheesy, simple handmade gift and a reminder of what they were, he’s back to being putty in her hands.
“I mean let’s face it, where else are you gonna find a bunch of good-looking humans willing to take a smelly old squid into their gang, huh?” She jokes at him.
Michael’s smile falls. He removes her hand from his shoulder and stands up, moving around to the other side of the room.
“Damn, did you leave your sense of humor in the Bad Place?” She frowns at him, watching the tall idiot lumber away; “Lighten up. We won!”
He stops in front of his collection of human artefacts; “Did we?”
“Well, we might not have won the game, but we scored a pretty awesome point, that’s worth being happy about, isn’t it?”
They’d had enough garbage to deal with. She just wanted it to be over. Or, if nothing else, to be allowed a forking break.
Michael gives his bowling ball a sad smile.
“Right. We win the game no matter what we have to sacrifice along the way, right? Or who.” He whispers and Eleanor wonders if he’s even talking to her, really.
“Jeez, man, I was talking basketball, not stupid chess! There’s no sacrificing necessary. Well, except for Chidi, but that’s not permanent. And you didn’t have to go turning yourself into blue pudding so no harm done, right?”
He nods and turns to look at her.
“No harm done.”
The giant chasm between them in the room spoke differently. The way his voice broke as he repeated her words sounded the tiniest bit like he was mocking her.
“Michael, if you’ve got something to say, spit it out already. Because I’m starting to wonder if it’s really you again or Vicky in there, annoying the fork outta me.” She shoots at him.
“Would it make a difference? Would you care if I was really me or not?”
“Of course, I care. How can you ask me that?” She asks, hurt.
Did he not see how upset she was the other night? How hard it was for her to have to push him out like that? To have to admit that she didn’t trust him, almost let him do something stupid and awful as it was the only way to be sure they were safe? All of the shirt she had forgiven him for in the past, all the weaknesses he had she let slide, why would she allow any of that if she didn’t care?
“Look, you know all of this is your fault so don’t start guilt tripping me!” She launches at him; “You were the one who didn’t tell me about the suit!”
“Because it wouldn’t have made a difference. You still would’ve spent the last two months doubting if it was really me!”
“Maybe, but at least I would have been aware what might be happening, We’re supposed to be a team, we’re supposed to be handling all this shirt together! But you’re so paralysed with fear that you can’t do shirt and leave me to handle everything! And you know what, you’re right, I did pretty damn good without you here. Better, even. So, tell me, Michael…What is the point of you?”
It’s easier to ask him that, to put the blame on him, then admit that she made a mistake. That she handled things poorly or screwed up.
Michael shows his hands; “You tell me.”
She can’t. She was expecting him to remind her of why she needed him as her Assistant. A part of her knows why, she can list all the answers in her head, she just refuses to be the one to say them out loud. The whole point of the knitted tea squid was so they didn’t have to do this stupid talking-your-feelings bullshirt.
All Eleanor does is shrug and go to move to the side door.
“I’ll let you know if I think of anything. Until then, see you in the morning, Mikey boy.” She gives a brutal wave before opening the door.
“No, you won’t.”
She pauses.
She steps back and closes the door, looking at him.
“…What did you say?”
“You won’t see me in the morning. I’m…going away.” He tells her.
She feels the air shift around her as she re-enters the room and faces him again.
“…You’re leaving? You’re bailing on us?!”
“No, not like that, I…” Michael defends, waving his hand; “I just…I’m gonna take you up on your suggestion. I’m going to spend some time in Janet’s void, with Bad Janet. I’m going to be out of your hair at last, both figuratively and the goo kind. Don’t worry, we won’t be conspiring against you all. I mean to help her.”
Eleanor feels her blood run cold. He sounds as if he honestly expected her to accuse him of that. They had already talked about giving Bad Janet a chance to learn from their experiment, as crazy as it sounded, Eleanor just wasn’t aware that meant losing Michael in the process or she would never have…
“But you don’t need to go anywhere. You just got back.” She says to him, “I told you, it’s okay now.”
She moves across the room, wanting to reach out, to touch him.
He steps back, still avoiding looking at her.
Eleanor frowns; “Michael. I believe it’s you. I know you’d never do anything to hurt us. C’mon. Don’t leave us all out to dry because I was a deckhead.”
“That’s not it. And I’m not leaving you all.” He explains; “I’ll still pop in every day to help with the experiments and see how things are doing. I’ll probably meet with Tahani and Janet for our cream teas and catch-ups. I promised Jason to play those virtual football games after watching the actual football. I should really start learning the rules.”
He isn’t leaving then. Or rather, he’s not leaving the others. He still wants to meet up with them. To be friends with them.
“So, it’s just…me?” Eleanor blinks; “…You’re just leaving me?”
He takes a deep breath; “As I said, I’ll show my face for updates and debriefings, whatever help you need. But…Nothing else. No more going out for drinks or bowling or whatever. Nothing that doesn’t involve the experiment. I just…think it’s for the best.”
“The best for who?! You know what I’m going through right now, more than anyone else!” She raises her voice; “You’re going to abandon me when you know I need you most!?”
“What do you need me for, Eleanor? You just asked what the point of me was.” He starts to round on her.
He has her there. She hadn’t been expecting him to turn that around on her.
She hadn’t considered the possibility that he would leave…
“Michael, I…” She sets her jaw and tries to sort through the screeching in her head; “…I can’t do this without you. I put on a good show, I know, but that’s all it is. Please. You’re the only one I can really talk to…That I can really share what it’s like…”
She steps closer to him and reaches for his hand. She holds it in her own, turning it over, smoothing her fingers over his long ones. Those hands that have always hovered so close around her. Comforted her. Kept her from falling apart.
She looks up at him, catching him gazing with curiosity more than hurt down at her.
“We’re the same, you and me, right? Two manipulative demons who are experts in making other people miserable? That’s what you said. At least when we’re together, we only have to hurt each other. Isn’t that for the best?” She tries to laugh it off.
His brow furrows and he uses his free hand to stroke her hair.
“I’d blow myself up before hurting you, Eleanor…But you want to hurt me?”
Is that what she said? It can’t be.
Eleanor looks appalled, a cold, drowning sensation plunging her soul; “Of course I don’t!”
His hand drops; “It’s the only way I seem to be useful to you.”
Now it bothers him? He never spoke up before. He always waved it off as nothing to worry about. Nothing that would cause a scar. Now, suddenly, he’s the victim?!
“Look, I know I’ve gone a bit wacko on you in the past, but…You must know I never meant any of it. I just needed to let off steam, you know, and you’re a demon so it’s not like you can be hurt. Right?”
“I’m not talking about the hitting or throwing things at me. I don’t feel them.” He tells her and she almost feels relief before he continues; “It’s why you do it that hurts, Eleanor. Because it shows how little you think of me.”
“Dude, no human that you have met in your entire existence has given you more of a chance than me! Everyone else thought I was crazy to trust you and maybe I was! I mean you’re a literal demon but I still-.”
“Jason said I wasn’t a demon anymore.” He cuts her off, stunning her; “Not to him, anyway. That it was okay for me to feel guilty about what I used to do but it didn’t change who I was now. To him, I’m just a…cool old guy. That’s what I wanna be, minus the old. That’s what I am, Eleanor. Jason accepts me. Janet knew how hard it was for me to go back there. Tahani nearly crushed my suit when she hugged me when we got back. I even got to blow up an evil version of myself.”
She sees a hint of light return to his expression as he talks about the experience, one that clearly both haunted him and liberated him. He manages a proud smile.
“You see, they might not understand, but they accept it. They accept that I don’t want to be a demon. I never did. That I hate who I was, from my real body to the evil acts I committed, I reject every inch of it. All I’ve ever wanted is to be human and, sure, that might not ever be physically possible…But they’re willing to treat me like a man instead of a monster. I can just be Michael to them, not Michael the demon, not Michael the gross fire squid…”
Michael walks around to the desk and opens the drawer, retrieving the knitted lava-sea creature she had made.
“But you? You don’t let me forget what I am. When you were interrogating me, you told me that I was either a demon in a Michael-suit or Vicky in a Micheal-suit. It never occurred to you that I’m just…Michael! You tell me that you’re my friend…in spite of what I was, instead of for who I am. For who I’m trying to be.” He tosses it back to her.
She catches it and looks at the stupid thing. She hears Chidi’s words in her head from the time Michael tried to win their forgiveness with tacky gifts before.
“And you’re right. I can’t blame you for hating me, for wanting to punish me for what I did to you in the past. And I know you'll never love me like I love you, I've accepted that.” He tells her, hands in his pockets; “I only wish that you would choose between wanting to hurt me and wanting us to be friends. Because I can’t do both, Eleanor. Not anymore.”
She drops the pattern and moves across to grab at his sleeve.
“Okay. Okay, I forked up. I’ve been a mess, we all know this.” She says to him, her voice shaking with panic; “No more hitting. No more yelling. We’ll forget the whole fire squid thing, I promise. Just…stay with me, Michael. Please.”
She reaches one hand up to try to draw his eyes down to her.
“Help me get through this. I need you.” She whispers, having to clench as she fights through the struggle of admitting when she’s lost.
Michael looks at her sadly.
“You know I’d do anything for you. I wish I could believe that it all ends now and we can go back to how it was before. But…I need you to understand that, when you told me you couldn’t trust me, that you'd rather I was gone…it broke my heart.”
She laughs. She laughs because, if she doesn’t, she’ll break down in tears.
“A heart? What heart? Forking Tin Man had more of a heart than you, dude!”
He winces and pulls away from her. He clearly didn’t get the joke. It wasn’t supposed to be another attack. It’s just how her words always seemed to come out. Cruel, thoughtless, just like she used to be.
“Michael, c’mon….You know me. I’m just kidding around!” She tries to give a fist-bump but he moves his arm back, as if avoiding another hurtful blow.
His eyes look through her.
“It’s no longer funny. Read the room.” Michael snipes; “See, I was able to confront the darkness inside of me. I even got a chance to blow it up. But you? You won’t face it, so you take it out on me. The big bad demon who you can’t possibly be lower than. Am I right?”
He’s talking like…old Michael. Clever, manipulative, know it all, still pretty evil Michael who knows everything and just what buttons to press.
She feels her temper skyrocket; “How much of a forking hypocrite are you? I offered to be your friend when you were barely out of the torture-loving demon phase! I was there for you at your worst. But you can’t do the same for me?”
“I changed for you, Eleanor. Because you were worth changing for. And you’ve changed too, you’re a better friend now...for everyone except me. I keep waiting here, hoping that I’ll get back the friend I had, but I never find her.” He cringes, his lip trembling as he looks down at her; “Was I not worth changing for?”
Fork.
“Michael…” She breathes, the weight of everything crashing down on her. He gives her a familiar smile.
“I guess you can't help but be your mother’s daughter.”
She regrets the slap before she’s even done striking his cheek.
He barely flinches, merely a turn of his head, before biting the inside of his lip. Eleanor covers her own mouth. Damn it. What is wrong with her? There has to be something…
Michael looks down at her, his gaze so hard that it’s almost unrecognisable.
“Let me give you some last advice. Forgive me, don’t forgive me, whatever you decide, I’ll go with it. But stop torturing someone you care about. Because, take it from an immortal idiot, at some point during the next three hundred years, you’ll realise the only one you’ve ended up torturing is yourself.”
He moves past her to his door. She doesn’t watch him go but can practically sense him hovering in front of the handle. She wants to scream at him to stop, to give her another chance, but she’s frozen in place, the reality of what she's done sinking in.
“We both deserve better than this, Eleanor.”
He closes the door. Not a slam. Dude doesn’t even storm out without being polite.
*
The rainbow of lights cross over her and it’s difficult to keep her eyes open. Janet has to do it three times because she keeps blinking. It’s worse than going to the opticians.
“Scan complete. Running results.” The not-a-girl and not-a-doctor tells her, “And they’re done!”
Eleanor gulps, sat on…her desk, in her office. She grips the edge and braces herself for the worst.
“Give it to me straight then, babe. What’s the damage?”
Janet simply keeps smiling; “All good. No sign of any poisoning or cerebral tampering. There's way too many images of naked mail men and pornographic muppets than is usual but that's nothing too serious.”
All good? Eleanor holds her breath.
No. That’s impossible.
“W-what about possession? Demons can possess people, right? Or make them see things that aren’t there, I know Michael’s done that…” She digs her fingers into her jeans.
Janet begins to look concerned.
“Eleanor. I can confirm that there is nothing wrong with you.” She assures.
“Then you need to check again! You must have missed something!” Eleanor demands, her voice cracking.
Janet blinks; “Why are you so sure that Bad Janet did something to you while I was gone? Have you had any worrying symptoms or felt any pain or behaving erratically?”
Eleanor bites her lip and looks down at her hands, feeling like a little kid caught out trying to break into Macy’s.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me.” Janet says to her.
She can’t. Even someone as least judgemental as Janet won’t be able to look at her if she tells her.
“What is the matter with me?” She asks, tears building in her eyes; “What the fork have I done to him?” To herself?
Janet’s mouth forms an ‘o’ as she already seems to know who Eleanor is talking about. She’s Michael’s oldest and closest friend. Of course, she’s picked up something or he’s confided something in her.
“Why did I do it? I need to know. Why did I hurt him?” Eleanor asks.
It’s another question that Janet can’t give her an immediate answer for. She seems to ask a lot of those these days.
“I’m sure whatever happened between you two, Michael will forgive you. He knows that you’re going through a lot and, at the end of the day, you’re only human. That’s what he loves about all of you. You make mistakes but you can move past them. It doesn’t make you-.”
“Wrong? I’m not wrong for hitting him? For making him feel like shirt so I can feel better about myself? For using his feelings to hurt my ex?” Eleanor throws back at her, tears slipping down her cheeks; “Yes! It’s bad. Do not…Don’t try to justify it, don’t forgive me. I need help! Please, Janet. Just tell me I’m bad. Tell me it’s my fault Michael’s gone. Tell me I deserve this!”
Her words dissolve into violent sobbing as her knuckles turn white around the desk, shoulders hunched forward. Janet doesn’t obey her request. She doesn’t give her a hug either. The best she can do for her lost human friend is sit beside her on the desk.
Eleanor curls against Janet’s arm and lets her tears fall into her sleeve, hoping that the sound of her crying reaches the demon in her void.
“I’m sorry….I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”
I forgot to say out loud,
How beautiful you really are to me.
I can't be without.
You're my perfect little punching bag.
And I need you.