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The cold of the hard floor against Mike’s face was a relief of sorts. A break. He could almost imagine it an ice pack. Protection for his face while a boot made contact with his side. Hit bone, not flesh, but no crack or give. A good sign.
A second kick forced him onto his side. Hands tied behind his back prevented a full turn, put a white hot pressure on his shoulder. Had turned with his bad eye up, so all he could see was a plateau of concrete, spattered dark brown and fresher red, and out near the horizon, two pairs of black leather boots. Another boot in the foreground silhouetted a further chunk of his useless vision.
Some prior blow to the chest made breathing difficult. His deepest breath hitched at its peak, a sudden sunburst of sharp ache, was unwillingly released as a sob. Only the barest wisps remained for a whispered, “I don't know, I don't know, I don’t know.” The question had long since fled his mind. Was never the point to begin with. Pictures to taunt Base with? That seemed likely, but Mike could never be certain what he was being hurt for, which made it all the worse.
A gloved hand around his arm, fingers digging into his skin. Lifting him up relieved pressure on the one shoulder at risk of dislocating the other. If only he could get his feet on the ground to help with the motion, he’d stand himself, he’d sit, he’d lay down, he’d do anything—but fatigue and the force with which he was being lifted conspired to make that impossible, put all the weight of his useless body into that single burning point.
And then, like a cord snapped, something gave way. He was falling. Hit an elbow first, which made him cry out, but then he was free to roll back onto his stomach, to try to once more use the ground as some sort of protection.
The floor was no longer cold. Was, in fact, rough. Itchy. Sensations that didn't make sense, and when Mike opened his eyes, even less made sense: Dim warm light, not harsh subtly flickering fluorescent lights. Colors other than red and brown and gray and black.
“Mikey? Was that you? Wh—oh, holy shit, Mike—!”
There was movement coming at him from the right side. He flinched away unthinking, let all air out of his lungs so the impact wouldn’t force it out of him. But no impact came. Had to fight through the lingering impulse to wince and curl in on himself in order to turn his head and look up.
It was someone who looked like him. It was him. Some version of. Older? Not that Mike had seen a mirror in ages, to compare.
“Fuck, what the fuck happened—” This other Mike spoke gruffly, not quite finishing any of his muttered curses. Hands on Mike’s arms, then face, then tugging at his wrists for a few moments. “Fucking zip tie—? Hold on. Shit.” Then left.
Gave Mike a reason to rest his head back down. His thoughts moved sluggishly. A rug. A living room. Another Michael—and something in him told him to use the longer form: Michael, M-I-C-H-E—no, M-I-C—
As the zip tie was cut off, his arms fell to a more natural position by his sides. A burning ache at regaining that range of motion, but a familiar one. Less familiar: the care with which Michael rolled him over. The ceiling was painted off-white, not tiled panels. Something smelled like what he remembered gravy smelling like, nauseatingly rich and overwhelming.
“What the hell happened?” asked Michael. “Shit, Mike, what do you last remember?”
“I was—” Mike winced when Michael took his left hand. It wasn’t really pain, but now that he had reason to suspect he wouldn’t be kicked or beaten for at least a few minutes, he wanted to lay still in as little ache as stillness could offer. “I was with the Flinchites. I think they were Flinchites. You—you weren’t who pulled me out?”
Something had made Michael go pale. His thumb. Michael still had his.
“No,” said Michael. “You were just sleeping. Thought I’d wake you up with some dinner. Then I heard a thud and…” Michael put the hand down. “Mike, do you know where we are?”
A spark of annoyance wormed its way into Mike’s head. The first emotion he’d had the energy for all day. He hadn’t even managed gratitude yet. “Where are we? I should be asking you. Where the hell—” The answer suddenly presented itself to him, like math done just below the layer of consciousness. “Latvia,” Mike breathed, not fully believing it himself. “We’re in fucking Latvia?”
“Well, there’s a good sign.” Michael sat back. “Fuck, you look awful. Let’s take care of those injuries before you bleed all over the fucking place.”
Mike wasn’t entirely sure what Michael was referring to. Everything hurt, a wall of unending ache that demanded his attention at every inch. But Michael had brought a first aid kit along with the scissors, and a sharp stinging cold cold cold wet rag across his side suggested some sort of gash there. Mike surprised himself with how much energy he still had to yelp and jolt away, even sitting up with the force, but he had often been surprised before by his horrific resiliency.
“Sorry,” Michael muttered, though he didn’t slow the cleaning.
The frustration had left cracks for other emotions to begin to seep through. All of them, apparently. Only a few shaky breaths as any sort of warning, before horrible gasping sobs that hurt more than the open wound on his side for how they aggravated every bruise and cracked rib of his captivity. He curled himself over his legs, tugging his knees in tighter, which hurt, of course, but helped him feel mildly safer.
Safe. He was safe. In an apartment. Under the care of an older iteration. But experience told Mike that wasn’t true safety. Nothing was. Any moment, the world could suddenly alter itself around him, and then he’d be back on the ground with a boot on his back and blood in his mouth.
But for the moment, it was Latvia, 2022. They were in 2022 because this time was just fucking full of corrections to be made, the absolute shitshow of Base’s first stumbling forrays into control over spacetime itself. He remembered making some of those corrections already, like a particularly vivid dream steadily unfolding itself the more Mike thought through it. In that timeline, it hadn't been all that long since he’d last seen Edgar. He hadn’t been captured by the Flinchites. He could see out of both eyes.
Only when the sobs had withdrawn to mere tears did Mike realize his side wasn’t stinging quite so much. Michael had backed off, given him space. The look on his face was not quite pity. Sympathy.
Pieces were arranging themselves in Mike’s head, except rather than falling into place, the jagged edges pierced into each other. This morning, he had woken up hungry, as ever, in a room without windows or doors that was always a bit too cold. This morning, he had woken up in a shitty (but compared to the alternative, luxurious) apartment in Latvia, under a pile of blankets stacked up more for the weight than warmth. The latter still felt like a hypothetical intellectual exercise, even as he tried to focus on the things tethering him to this reality. Here. Now. Sunlight—real sunlight—through the windows—real windows. Michael carefully moving closer again, now pressing dry gauze against the wound and taping it there. Then, Michael took Mike by the chin in order to turn his head and get a better look at—though Mike couldn’t quite see, he had to imagine—his bad eye.
“Fuck,” Michael growled, low. “I think I’m getting what happened. They’re probably working out connected travel right about now.”
Some of those pieces, at last, began to find their place in a coherent train of logic.
“B-Base,” Mike stammered out. “Base—it was—those fucks and their fucking braindead connected bullshit fuck—”
“Whoa there,” Michael said. The image of him pacifying a horse was impossible to ignore. Mike knew there was an explanation for that accent if he dug into his other set of memories, but for the moment, he just had to accept it. “Figuring out the timeline?”
“The cart,” Mike said. Michael watched him expectantly, and Mike hated that he’d have to talk through this, this shitbrained mistake which had weighed on him day after painful day. “That night in Tier 2, when Marissa drove the cart through the fence to save us—save me. Later—after Rugby, so you wouldn't have had to decide… later, we wanted the cart out of commission, but that meant no cart to save the day, and then…” And then me.
Pushing through the pain, as he was so accustomed to doing, Mike began to stand. But he couldn’t get through something as simple as Michael’s firm hand on his shoulder.
“I need to tell them,” Mike said. He still couldn't gain control over his wavering, almost whimpering tone of voice, continually at risk of stumbling back into incoherent sobbing. “I need to correct them. Need to stop them and stop this and—and—”
“Not in your current state you’re not,” Michael said. The force of it fixed Mike to the ground as effectively as the hand while Michael turned back towards his supplies. The cold wet rag again bit into him, his exposed back this time. Mike couldn’t be sure if he was cleaning off dirt or blood.
The tears weren't stopping, no matter how many he wiped away. Talking at least meant not weeping. From what emotion, he was too exhausted to unravel. “Let me undo this,” Mike said, more than aware of how meek and small he sounded. But it was the only thing that mattered, that could matter: to make those years of torture have never occurred.
Michael didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he gently pushed Mike back down on the ground, exposing his chest, a wave of vulnerability that felt like panic but Mike couldn’t do much to resist. There had been some sort of seeping wound there, dripping blood down himself. Before the reddening rag had even touched skin, Mike winced, hissed out a gasp when it made contact.
Finally, Michael said, “I’m not letting you go until you’ve got all your wits about you. You’ve only got one real shot at a correction. Don’t want you to get into a situation where you’ve gotta disconnect the timeline more to prevent this, and—well.”
Wind up like you. An offshoot barely connected to the events they were correcting, whose history was now largely beyond changing. A Mike Walters whose trauma was permanent, even if the (fucking dumbshit moronic fuckhead) Mikey of 2022 evaded it. He remembered, distantly, like a memory of a memory, having both thumbs as recently as yesterday. Yet the gravity of the situation and the gravity of Michael’s voice made the gravity of the floor pale in comparison; he wanted to jump up, do the correction now, as if every second brought him farther from this timeline, even though rationally he knew it didn’t work like that at all. Stymied by Michael leaning over him, pressing him down with a bandage, some part of him itched with claustrophobia, all those times he had someone pin him down in order to better exact more violence upon him.
“It hurts, it all hurts. Let me go—please.” That claustrophobic part now pushing itself forward: the impulse to beg openly, confess anything the Flinchites wanted him to, cry out again and again because he never ever got used to it. “You don’t get it. It was worse than anything you’ve gone through—” Michael gave him a look, but that only made Mike redouble his efforts “—so much worse. And I can stop it. Stop existing like this. Just tell them not to make the connection.”
“You’ll collapse on their goddamn doorstep. No.”
Mike couldn't entirely disagree. But Michael was still leaning over him, holding him down, and the pace of his breathing was again careening away from him. It’s just Michael, but only part of him had ever actually lived with the older iteration, the more distant part now, and the tears in his one good eye made recognition even trickier. So, this was just a large man holding him down. The usual.
It took all the rest of his energy to place his hands on Michael’s chest and push, but even that managed only a small movement in Michael’s shoulders. Despite that feebleness, Michael paused, then leaned back, giving Mike the opportunity to follow through a motion he had become very familiar with by now: rolling over onto his side and pulling into himself. Waiting for the renewal of blows against his back and side. Tasers this time, maybe.
Of course, nothing came.
“Sorry,” Mike choked out. He was being ridiculous. Practically hysterical. This trauma was temporary and would be corrected before long. But. He had just been there; he was no doubt still in the process of forming bruises, and a light taste of blood lingered in his mouth. He was still waiting for the relief to hit him.
“Not your fault,” said Michael. Just to upset Mike more with his sympathy and care. “Five years, right?”
Michael could have said any number. Mike hadn’t been allowed to keep track. It only sounded right when Mike reached for this other set of memories of a comparatively downright blissful timeline: five years.
Impressive how much more fatigue could heave itself onto him.
“Look,” said Michael. “How about you get a good night’s sleep—” Mike scoffed “—a good night’s sleep. Then you can go give Early Base a talking down.”
A “good night’s sleep,” Mike decided, would only come in the timeline where he hadn’t woken up from nightmares of torture, followed by actual torture, for the last five fucking years. That unbearably close timeline only one well-placed correction away. But he couldn’t convince his muscles to move—not even his mouth, not until the feeling of a hand nudging his shoulder made him jolt. Michael had stood, was very slightly looming over him now, hand outstretched. In a stunning victory over every ache in his body, Mike used the help to get to his feet. Then collapsed into Michael’s side.
Michael, at least, seemed prepared for it, and didn’t stumble. Another small spark of annoyance that Michael wasn’t dropping everything to hop over to the United States himself, but given his divergent timeline, he wouldn’t necessarily know what exact correction to make; Mike was too tired to resent anyone but the present-day Mikey for this.
It would be nice to have direct, real-feeling memories of a decent bed.