Chapter Text
There isn’t anything. There isn’t anything and there is everything. Contained within- what is it, now? He cannot call it his hallways. They, technically, were never his to begin with. He was as much a part of the hallways as the hallways were a part of him. But that’s. Severed. And there’s nothing and everything and it’s all too much at once and yet not a single sensation reaches Michael, or what might’ve been Michael, at one point.
He remembers the door. The locked door. The spiral never locks doors and his door should not have been locked and, oh, god, why was it locked ?- he had something to do. There was an itchy Archivist underneath its fractal-snowflake-skin and he had to squash it like a bug. But the door was locked. And the Circus was occupied. And. And. What came next? Next. Time… a fragile thing. Michael recalls flashes; nonlinear, inconsequential things. A land that did not exist. A map that could not have been read. His own laugh, making whatever head he may still have throb with an echo of pain he was never all that familiar with.
There’s the pain, also. Pain, pain, pain , indescribable with any language ever spoken or thought. Having the very atoms of his being torn apart and reordered, whenever, at whatever time it may have been, having something so intrinsic to the core of his being pulled away, forevermore unreachable as it always was. Michael had touched something that was not there, that was never there to begin with; what was he supposed to do now that he had nothing? Everything? It is all so much. And so little.
An unblinking, unbreathing, unmoving husk of What-Might-Have-Been-Michael is slumped on the floor. What floor? Irrelevant. It is a floor, but it is not the floor where the Archivist took Michael’s statement. If it were that floor, the husk would have been flayed by the Circus by now, and as far as it is aware, it has not been, so it is a different floor. A softer floor. It desires to be called carpet, but isn’t quite. Old carpet, perhaps- scratchy, tangible, but soft enough under the husk that there is a give when it tries out a cautionary twitch of the limbs it must still have. Four? Four. A bother, to have quantifiable features. The husk is now aware it has two arms that jerk at the wrists with latent energy, uselessly tucked at odd angles underneath it’s… well, the rest of it. What must be legs, the other two, ache in a way unfamiliar and disconcerting, because ‘ache’ is not something the husk is capable of feeling. It might have an open mouth, matching open eyes, though neither do anything. Those nerves, if they were ever there, have not reconnected yet and the husk’s open eyes mean nothing to it because it cannot see. It doesn’t know this is because there is a tangled mass of hair blocking its view. It would not be able to make sense of what it saw anyway.
It is cold. It is cold, it cannot hear, it cannot see, and its movement is sluggish and limited in a way it has not known for millennia. Anyone would think it may be a corpse. But the husk knows it is not around anyone. There’s a presence , not a person. The Watcher- come to see the last of its life leak out? How undignified that it may not even die alone.
It does not move.
It does not move, and it waits.
-
“-Sorry, you’re saying he- uh, it - wasn’t here this morning?”
Martin stands a good few feet away from… Michael.
When Jon had asked him if he had the time for a quick conversation after work, he’d imagined a café. A pub, or- something. Look, maybe if Jon didn’t like public settings all that much (and who really does, anyway? Martin’s always conscious of who could be watching) a cup of tea at his new flat. He’d thought that would be it when Jon opened the door to the building and led Martin up three flights of stairs. What he had not expected was this.
“I think I’d notice a corpse on my living room floor regardless of how awake I was.” Jon sighs and continues pacing, the same back-and-forth vaguely-panicked stomp he’d started doing when Martin swore at the sight of a deceptively normal-looking distortion, laid prone on the floor as if it’d been struck down by a truck.
Martin considers it. Jon’s perceptive, sure, but he’s unintentionally ignored plenty when overworked and underslept. Out of everything that could happen, failing to notice something that very much has the capability to escape such eyes in the early morning, pre-coffee and pre-statement- whatevering , is not as far-fetched as other possibilities that Martin knows are much more likely to actually happen. So, he shrugs.
Jon, understandably, balks at this, “Really? Look, I know I’m not always the most aware of everything around me, but- Christ’s sake, Martin. He’s got floor length hair and is dressed like he walked out of a Kidspace dark room. It was not here when I left. I came back to get lunch and, well, then it was .”
“...Alright. But why call- me? I feel like ‘body disposal’ is more up Daisy’s alley, or, hell, Elias might have an idea-”
“I’m not telling Elias about this.”
There’s a pause. Martin looks at Jon, who looks at Michael’s body. He’s scrutinising it, eyes trained on the golden hair like it might still leap to life and strangle them. Oh, Martin doesn’t like that idea. He decides he is going to take a few more steps backwards from it.
“Besides,” Jon starts, slowly, “...I’m not sure if it’s a corpse.”
“You’re saying the Distortion is alive and in your living room.”
“No! Not- exactly. Alive, maybe. The Distortion? I… don’t know.”
Martin raises an eyebrow, “As far as I’m aware, that very much looks like Michael.”
A noncommittal hum. Jon steps closer, circles the body with intention, like a hawk. He comes back to where he was standing.
“But you can see him.”
“I have eyes, Jon.”
“No, look. You can see him. He’s not changing. It all… works out.”
“Huh.”
And now that Martin does look, really look beyond just considering why-the-fuck-is-there-a-body-in-Jon’s-flat, he’s right. If it could be the Distortion, it’s got to be expending an insane amount of power and self control to maintain such a stable form for this long. Whilst it definitely has the former in droves, Martin is perfectly aware of how little restraint the Distortion has when it comes to bother them, not to mention if this is some long, complicated game it’s playing with the end goal of the Archive’s total annihilation. The hands would’ve changed by now, at the very least. But they’re human: slender, if a little bony, with normally rounded fingernails and a normal number of joints in them. It solidifies that Jon is right just by the fact that Martin can count the number of fingers on one hand without getting a headache.
Two stationary arms, two long legs, and hair that does not swirl or coil in on itself obscuring the face- the only part that could be… off. Martin’s terrible at guessing height and all of the like, but the body is maybe six foot even, if just a bit over. Early thirties at most.
Jon’s watching Martin take this all in, silently as always. Then, he pensively adds, “Michael was a person, you know. Before. Well. He was consumed by- himself? Itself ?” He huffs a laugh, “I suppose the confusion is exactly what it wants.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“He told me,” Jon shrugs, “Used to work for Gertrude and, uh… that ended how it ended.”
Martin sighs, “That explains it, I think. So, um…”
With a start, Jon’s eyes fly wide open and he stares with all the intensity of the sun at Michael’s body, attention away from Martin’s proposed question and seemingly uncaring for what it was going to be anyway. Martin follows his eyeline to the hands. Nothing.
And, then, a twitch. Noticeable. Another. The head jerks to the side, jostles the hair around it ever so slightly out of the eyes. They’re open. And they’re brown . Normal, very human, very unremarkable tree bark brown.
The groan that Michael- or not, they’ll figure that out later- lets out is like fizzling TV static. It’s raw and hurting, starting with three distinct tones that all slide into one by the end of the, very long, pained sound. Martin has a moment of silence to deduce that no, he does not feel light-headed, before there’s another, much louder moan. One tone, consistent. It’s broken by what sounds like a hiccuping sob.
Both of them stand stock-still, trained on Michael in case he still retains any sort of murderous desires, hallway-adjacent or not. Jon’s face gives nothing away, but Martin would like to think that he’s feeling the exact same way he is. That is, to say, a horrifyingly odd combination of piss-scared and concerned. If Michael’s capable of feeling pain, that certainly sounds like it comes from a fair amount of-
“....Huur…tssssss…”
Well, there’s that answer. Michael’s voice is the same, if without the edge of curling in on itself and the general insanity it employs. Martin watches as it drags one limp arm across the carpet in front of it to clutch at its head with its measurable-length fingers. There’s another short groan, ended with a rasping gasp that overshadows any outside noise.
“Um, Jon,” Martin turns his head, “We should… do something?”
Jon nods, hand under his chin and chewing at his lip, “...Yes. We probably should.”
They don’t move. At least, not until Michael opens his mouth and screams lowly, body curling in on itself in frustration and agony. Martin, panicked, takes the initiative to tentatively hook his arms under Michael’s, who is not quite awake enough to try and struggle, thank God. When the plan of action catches up with Jon, he goes to pick Michael up by the legs and follows Martin’s steps towards his bedroom- at the door of which, he stops.
“Hang on,” Jon grunts with effort, “I don’t want Michael on my bed . He could be bleeding or… worse.”
Martin heaves and adjusts where Michael had been falling out of his grip, “Do you have a guest bedroom?”
“Exactly how much more do you think I get paid than you do?”
“Right. Sofa?”
Jon makes a noise of approval, which is good enough as a yes. They move Michael to the sofa and set him down as carefully as they can manage. As soon as they let go, he’s back to the fetal position he was in before they picked him up, moaning quieter now with his face in the cushions. Martin looks around for a blanket and throws it over him, arms crossed.
“Do you know if he, uh, eats…?”
“He seems human enough to. Probably won’t- water might…”
Martin walks quickly to the kitchenette, fumbling around the cupboards for a (plastic) cup and filling it, “Wouldn’t happen to keep a lot of ibuprofen on hand, would you? Seems like he,” He swallows, “He sounds bad.”
“Haven’t,” Jon shakes his head, “But I do have enough Nytol to knock out a horse, so…”
But Martin’s already found it in the first aid kit. He can’t believe Jon doesn’t have something as simple as a painkiller but has three packs of Nytol stuffed in it, all half-empty. He pops two out into his hand, pauses, then pops out a third for good measure. If there was anything in the world that could kill the Distortion, or a fragment of it, then it wouldn’t be taking over the recommended dose.
Approaching the side of the sofa, Martin leans down and waves a pill-filled hand over Michael’s listless eyes.
“Um, hello? Mi- Michael? Would you like some… water? And medicine?” He’s sceptical that he’ll be understood, or even heard.
To his surprise, though, there’s a very intentional blink and Michael raises a slim hand to where Martin holds the cup. He lets Michael take it, keeping a light grip on it anyway just in case, and deposits the three Nytol capsules into his open mouth. Michael swallows with what looks like great effort, his other hand rising to take the cup completely as he drains it quicker than he’s done anything this entire time. Once done, he gasps for air and attempts to sit up- this doesn’t go well, and he slumps back down into the arm of the sofa with an exasperated whine. Instead, he pulls the blanket up around himself until it covers half of his face.
“...Where…?” Michael slurs.
Jon takes this as an invitation to step in, thankfully allowing Martin to stand up and resume his preferred distance from Michael- quite reasonably far away.
“My flat. Have you got an explanation for why you were on my floor, or is this another one of your little games and I’m supposed to figure that all out on my own?”
“Hahh…” Michael sighs with an edge of playfulness, the most emotion he’s shown, and Martin could swear that if the blanket wasn’t covering him he’d be smiling, “ Archivist. Should have … known… ah, how terrible …”
Jon is about to start with another question, but then Michael’s eyes are closed and his breathing evens out into a steady pace.
“Wow,” Martin steps closer to Jon, “Some sleep aid.”
“They never work that fast for me.” Jon grumbles. It’s clear he wanted answers, and having to wait until Michael wakes up for them is not settling well with him.
Both of them continue to stare at Michael until it becomes apparent that they’re not on guard duty and just watching a… man?… sleep, and that’s a little too awkward even for Jon. He clears his throat.
“What now?”
“I guess we wait for him to wake up?” Martin rocks on the balls of his feet, keen to do something, absolutely anything other than watch Michael, “We could, uh,” He paces, veering towards the front door, “Get a coffee? Or, just, go on a walk, I don’t know-”
“Hang on,” Jon puts his hands up and waves them, shaking his head in tandem, “I’m not leaving him here alone. If you’ll recall, the Distortion tried to kill me a month ago.”
Martin pauses where he was putting on his shoes, taking them back off and standing up, “Well then we’ll watch a film. Do you have Netflix?”
“I’ve got iPlayer and DVDs.”
Martin hums, and Jon adds, “Also, another TV in my room. So we don’t wake it up, or something. Best to let it. Rest.”
Plainly ignoring the flush that getting a direct invite to Jon’s bedroom gives Martin’s skin, he decides instead to begin questioning Jon on his selection of DVDs, as well as how much he actually does get paid to be able to afford two TVs. They leave Michael softly asleep on the sofa.