Chapter Text
The first time Gerry saw the door was about a week after he’d made the decision of not working with Gertrude anymore. That is to say, a week after he’d been discharged from the hospital to find that she’d moved on without him sometime during the course of his treatment.
He’d made it back to the UK alright by himself – he’d had enough money after all – but he still felt betrayed and had decided to strike out on his own, rather than returning to the Institute. He’d bought a small shop – don’t ask how he got the money for it, you’re better off not knowing – and remodelled it into a book shop, to use as a cover for acquiring Leiteners.
He hadn’t been sleeping well since he got back. He was paranoid and would jump at every little sound but be equally suspicious of the silence. After the first night he had taken to sleeping with the lights on. So, when, after a week of fitful sleep and nightmares, he awoke in the early hours of the morning to see a yellow door in his wall, where there definitely hadn’t been a door before, he panicked a bit.
He’d heard about it of course. The Spiral. Read about how it would follow people around with its doors until it drove them insane and they gave in and entered. Knew exactly what Gertrude had sacrificed to stop its ritual. What he didn’t know was how to protect himself against it.
He spent the rest of the night awake, staring at the door, waiting for something to happen. Of course, nothing did. The Spiral was known for playing the long game, after all.
All Gerry could do was make sure that none of the doors he walked though were yellow. Surprisingly, they never were. Nor did he see the yellow door anywhere outside of his bedroom. Unable to sleep with it there but unwilling to play into its hands through sleep deprivation, he bought sleeping pills. They helped him sleep but couldn’t stop the nightmares.
Weeks went by, still the door was simply standing there. Gerry started getting used to it. He still didn’t let his guard down, checking the colour of every door he walked through, but he knew it wouldn’t do him any good driving himself mad with suspense waiting for something to happen.
The attack happened five weeks after the door had first shown up. The power went out, which was enough to send Gerry into a panic attack. Then something was there. Something that was darker than the pitch-black room. It was coming towards him and he couldn’t move. Then, suddenly, the creaking of a door opening, followed by a bright light that caused Gerry to blink. When he refocused his eyes, the thing was gone. A moment later the lights came back on and he could see that his room looked exactly as he’d gotten used to. There was nothing betraying that the yellow door had been opened. Yet, he was sure that’s what had happened.
The incident made him rethink his stance on the whole door business. Intellectually, he knew that the Spiral had most likely not wanted to lose its prey to the Dark, but… that wasn’t what it had felt like. It had felt protective. And the point stood that he still wasn’t feeling any of the effects that were associated with contact with the Spiral. Until then he’d chalked it up to knowing what to expect. But, well, would it really be the Spiral if it did what was expected of it?
Despite his brain screaming at him that it was foolish, he started to relax around it. It had simply become a part of his everyday life, with the added perk that it ate monstrous intruders. And honestly, he’d take death by weird Spiral Corridors over cancer any day. At least he wouldn’t have to go to a hospital.
The next time something changed was the day someone brought in a Beholding Leitener to sell. Gerry had bought it of course, and the costumer hadn’t even charged all that much. He clearly hadn’t known what he’d gotten his hands on and, lucky for him, hadn’t read it. Gerry had waited for the costumer to leave, then he’d turned the sign on the door to closed and headed into the back to burn it.
At the end of the day Gerry had returned to his apartment above the shop in good spirits, as he usually did after some good book burning. He’d taken one look into his bedroom and known that something was different. The door was gone. Gerry hadn’t realised just how used he’d gotten to having it there, until he noticed how upset he felt that it was gone. That night he couldn’t bring himself to take his sleeping pills, afraid that he’d get attacked again in his sleep and wouldn’t wake up in time to protect himself. Not that being awake had been of any help last time.
He lay awake until 3 am when the door returned, at which point he fell asleep almost immediately. The very presence of the door made him feel safe. It should probably have made him suspicious, considering that it was part of an entity that literally fed on fear, but he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore.
-*-*-
And so it went. Gerry resigned himself to the fact that he only got a good night’s sleep when watched over by one of the very fear entities he was trying to fight and accepted that his life was at the mercy of a yellow door. But things were good. Or, at least better than working with Gertrude, not to mention being controlled by his mother.
The shop was doing well, both in normal book trade and bringing in Leiteners. It even had a reputation, now, within the “monster slaying” circles. Circles that Gerry hadn’t even known existed until they started showing up at his bookstore. The “monster slayers” – they insisted on calling themselves that even though the situation was a lot more complicated – were people who were aware of the existence of malevolent supernatural powers in the world, but still managed to stay unaligned to any specific entity and dedicated their lives hunting these monsters – although the use of the word hunting was discouraged due to its connection to the Hunt. There were a lot more of them than the statements in the Institute would have you believe.
The first Monster Slayer Gerry had met had come into the store to ask about the sign outside that said he was specifically interested in Leiteners. It had not been the smoothest conversation.
“Saw your sign,” they had stated, casually sliding up to the counter.
“Which one?”
“The one about Leiteners.”
“You looking to sell?” Gerry was immediately on guard.
“What if I said I was looking to buy?”
“You’d be out of luck, why would you want one?”
“Why do you want them?”
“I have my reasons, were you looking for a specific one?”
“No, how come you don’t have any when you’re specifically asking for them. In my experience people are often eager to get them off their hands.”
“Maybe they’re just not for sale.”
“You tryin’ to start a collection?”
“Hm, that didn’t exactly end well for the last guy, did it?”
“No, I suppose it didn’t, have you ever read one?”
“No, but I knew someone who has, you?”
“Only heard stories.”
It had taken them an hour to determine that they were on the same page, not avatars, and wanting to burn the books. Once they sort of trusted each other Gerry had invited the visitor into the back, and they’d had a proper conversation without dancing around each other. Gerry’s background in Leitener hunting and book burning had branded him an expertTM and he was now the Monster Slayers’ go to guy for book disposal. Gerry was more than happy to help, and glad not having to be the field agent anymore.
Gerry looked up as the bell above the door chimed, welcoming a costumer.
“Hello, Joshua,” Gerry greeted as he recognised the visitor.
“How’s it going? Getting any books sold?”
“As you can clearly see, business is booming,” Gerry deadpanned, gesturing towards the otherwise empty shop. Joshua just raised an eyebrow. “Really, though, it’s fine, I earn enough to scrape by. But I’m guessing you’re not here simply to ask about my financial situation?”
“No, indeed, I heard from Nathan that you used to work at the Magnus Institute.” His voice was friendly, but Gerry knew him well enough at this point to notice the hidden suspicion.
“I didn’t,” Gerry snapped, immediately realising he was only incriminating himself further. “I didn’t,” he repeated in a calmer tone, “or I wouldn’t be here with my eyes still intact. I only worked with the Archivist, because she helped me out and I didn’t think there were anyone else.”
“Alright, but you’ll have to admit it didn’t sound good, especially with those eye tattoos you got.”
“Fair enough. Suspicion keeps you alive, after all.”
“Indeed– hold on, what was that you said about your eyes?”
“Ah, yes, you can’t quit. You start working at the Institute, you’re there until you die. Except, well, my dad worked there, and he found a way out. Gauge your eyes out. Didn’t do him any good, though, when my mother killed him not long after.” He lapsed into a dejected silence. Finding the tape labelled “Statement of Eric Delano” while he’d been helping Gertrude disorganize the Archives… well, let’s just say the content had been quite the shock. The fact that Gertrude never told him she knew his parents really should have been a red flag. Along with a whole bunting of others. Hindsight sure is 20/20.
“Ah, I’m sorry,” Joshua said, clearly uncomfortable. Gerry waved him off.
“It doesn’t do to dwell on. Everything sucks and then you die, that’s life.”
“I guess that’s true, in our line of work, but coming from you it just sounds like an edgy teenager.”
“Well, it’s not my fault I never got the emotional support needed to grow out of my emo phase.”
Joshua huffed a laugh.
“As nice as it is talking to you, I should get going. I’ll see you next time I have a book to get rid of.”
As the door fell shut behind him with another chime, Gerry took note of the time. Less than half an hour till closing. He decided to close up early. After all, the sign said to ring the doorbell at any time if the visit regarded a Leitener, so it wasn’t like he risked missing anything important.
He had just finished cooking dinner and was just about to sit down at the table when he heard the distinct creaking of a door coming from the direction of his bedroom and froze. His first thought was, if I’m gonna die today, couldn’t I at least have gotten to eat my dinner first?! his second thought was, you’re gonna die, this isn’t the time to be concerned with dinner. His third thought, which occurred to him when the creature of the corridors came within view was, wait, I know that guy!
“Michael?!” Gerry burst out, as only a small part of his brain screamed in incoherent panic mood, making the rest of him feel rather calm in the face of the probably lethal situation he found himself in.
“That is a name,” the thing confirmed.
Gerry had never met Michael Shelley. He’d seen pictures, though. Heard of how he died to save the world. Figured out that he hadn’t known that’s what was going to happen on that trip. He had notheard any accounts that suggested he had survived. But you always had to expect the unexpected when it came to the Spiral.
“Are you going to kill me?” Gerry asked, because he was one of those people who liked to get the pleasantries out of the way early on in a conversation.
“I don’t think so,” the thing that may or may not have been Michael Shelley answered, a look of confusion crossing his (its?) face. Entirely unhelpful, typical Spiral.
Gerry contemplated asking what it wanted but came to the conclusion that he wouldn’t get a clear answer, so there wasn’t much of a point. Instead, he sat down, hoping to eat his dinner before the thing made up its mind. Then he realised he was being rude.
“Food?” he asked, gesturing to the seat opposite him, already getting another plate out of the cupboard.
Michael looked even more confused but accepted the offer. Gerry hoped that might make it less inclined to eat him later.
They sat in silence for a while until Gerry’s curiosity got the better of him.
“So… Is there a reason you’ve been hanging out in my room for the last couple of months?”
It laughed at that. A grating sound full of static that would probably have been unnerving to most people, but that Gerry found oddly endearing.
“Reason? No. Reason isn’t in my nature…” Even as the laughter died down it was still smiling. Impossibly wide. Still not reaching its eyes. “But I suppose you could say that I am here because I hate Gertrude Robinson. And you do too.”
“That… actually makes a lot of sense,” Gerry conceded, surprised. Michael hummed in discontent but didn’t refute the statement. “Enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.”
Did he hate Gertrude, though? Suffice to say his feelings on the matter were complicated. Could he bring himself to hate the person who saved him? For years he’d stood by her because of what she’d done for him, despite everything she did to other people in the name of “the greater good”. Then she finally does something to him personally – something not even close to as bad as what had happened to Michael – and that’s when his opinion of her changed? Seemed a bit selfish, didn’t it? But that didn’t mean being left to die from cancer in a hospital – in the US to really add insult to injury – hadn’t hurt worse than the actual tumour. Intellectually, he knew that he was lucky to have gotten an out. It would only have been a matter of time before he’d ended up as the next sacrifice to stop a ritual. But did he really hate her for it?
Then he looked up at the person sitting across from him. Took in the too broad smile and the eyes which didn’t seem to stay the same colour for more than a few seconds but invariably held so much pain. He didn’t know how much of Michael Shelly was left in there, but the emotions those eyes held were too human for Gerry to believe that he was completely gone. And that was honestly worse.
“Fuck Gertrude!” he exclaimed with feeling. It made Michael laugh again. Gerry was pretty sure that was a good thing.
-*-*-
After that Michael started to visit frequently. It was weird. Becoming friends with the literal embodiment of madness was not a position he’d ever imagined he would find himself in. And it said a lot about his life that it was the friendship part that seemed the most unreal to him.
Not that he would call Michael his friend. He was way too emotionally constipated for that. It would be unwise to develop anything beyond a professional allegiance with something that was most likely just waiting to kill you. But whichever way you looked at it, Michael was the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend. Somehow the only person in his life, outside of hunting Leiteners or trying to stop rituals, was a supernatural entity. What even was his life?
And, well, the fact that he had a semi-permanent yellow door in his bedroom made it pretty much impossible to form a closer friendship with any of the Monster Slayers. To be fair, he probably wouldn’t have done that regardless; at least now he had an excuse. But he lived in fear of one of them finding out about his acquaintanceship(?) with the Distortion. They were not very forgiving towards people who aligned themselves with a Power. And even less forgiving towards something as intrinsically part of a Power as Michael. Not that that mattered to Gerry. It did.
The day he told Michael to call him Gerry was the day he stopped lying to himself. They were friends and there was nothing he could do about it. He still didn’t trust it, still checked the colour of every door he went through. The thing with things that weren’t quite human was that they might suddenly decide that eating you would be a great way to express their friendship, so even if they didn’t have malicious intent you still had to be careful. And, yeah, at this point Gerry was pretty sure Michael didn’t have any malicious intent towards him, there was only a small part of his brain yelling at him that’s what it wants you to think!!!!! but at this point he was too happy to have a friend at all to be bothered. After all, if Michael decided it wanted to kill him there wasn’t exactly anything he could do to stop it, so there really was no point in worrying about it.
-*-*-
Everything hurt. This was why he didn’t do field work anymore. He tried to remind himself that the last time he’d been stabbed he’d had a splitting headache throughout the entire mission as well, courtesy of a brain tumour. Remarkably, thinking about a time when he’d been in more pain didn’tmake his current stab wound any less painful. It was honestly a miracle that he’d gotten away at all. Running fast enough to somehow shake his pursuer with a knife sticking out of his stomach was an accomplishment, to say the least. Thanks adrenaline.
Once he’d collapsed in the dingy alleyway it was all out of his system within seconds, though, and the pain was all the worse for having run. Now it was just a question of whether he’d bleed out or be found first.
He looked down to see an alarming amount of blood all over himself and had all but decided he’d probably bleed out when he heard running footsteps approaching, accompanied by faint bagpipe music. He’d probably survive long enough to be stabbed again, then.
Just as the Slaughter Avatar rounded the corner, effectively blocking Gerry’s way out of ally with a gleeful shout of victory, Gerry noticed the door. He didn’t know how long it had been there, but it definitely had not been there when he’d entered the alley.
Under other circumstances this might have been a difficult choice, but for Gerry it wasn’t even a question. He took advantage of the last dregs of adrenaline the reappearance of his assailant had brought out in him, stood, wrenched the door open, and all but fell inside.
-*-*-
When Gerry opened his eyes, he wasn’t in pain anymore. He figured he must be lightheaded from the blood loss cause weird colourful shapes seemed to be swirling in front of his eyes. His head buzzed with static, muddling his thoughts. He vaguely registered the fact that he was inside the Distortion’s hallways. It was surprisingly pleasant. He let his eyes fall closed again.
The next time he came to Michael was there, lying next to him on the floor, throwing and catching a ball that didn’t seem to follow any laws of gravity. The buzzing in his head was louder with Michael this close by, but he no longer seemed on the brink of passing out. He glanced down, noticing the knife wasn’t in him anymore and the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Technically, that shouldn’t have been possible without some sort of bandage, but he figured the Distortion wouldn’t want its victims bleeding out on it.
“You saved me,” Gerry mumbled, still feeling somewhat dazed, but at least aware enough to realise that those floating shapes weren’t simply a symptom of light-headedness.
“Did I?” Michael responded as it tossed what Gerry now realised was the knife he’d been stabbed with, all twisted up, into the air again.
“You did,” Gerry insisted, prompting a distorted laugh.
“What makes you think I won’t simply kill you myself, now that I’ve finally gotten you to enter my domain?”
Gerry shrugged. “That’s not the point. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to die, but I’d rather die in here than from bleeding out in some creepy alleyway, and much rather than alone in a hospital. So, yeah, you saved me.”
There was a pause as Michael seemed to consider this, it’s piercing gaze fixed on Gerry with an indiscernible expression.
“Although, I don’t think you will kill me, either way,” Gerry added when he felt the silence was dragging on for too long.
“Oh?” Michael asked, clearly amused by the sentiment.
“You hardly have anything to gain from it, do you? You don’t actually feed off of killing people, you feed off their fear. I’m not scared of you, so you have nothing to gain from killing me now.”
Michael neither confirmed nor denied this analysis.
“Why aren’t you scared of me?” it simply asked.
Gerry just shrugged again. He didn’t really know, he thought he probably should be scared, but he just couldn’t bring himself to it. Ever since Michael saved him from that attack of the Dark Gerry had started to associate that yellow door with safety, and it seemed like he’d successfully conditioned himself into feeling secure whenever Michael was nearby. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why Michael seemed so keen on hanging around him, but he figured that if it actually wanted to hurt him, he would have started to feel the creeping madness by now. And, yeah, maybe he was a little mad for befriending the humanoid manifestation of a fear entity, but that was of the sort of mad that made him less scared, which would be very counterproductive if Michael wanted to feed off his fear.
Gerry didn’t tell Michael any of that.
“We’re friends,” he said instead, because it was kinda true and also because he thought it would catch Michael off guard.
Gerry figured it probably had, because in lieu of responding Michael’s physical manifestation flickered out and a door appeared on the wall. It seemed like today wouldn’t be the day he died, after all.