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Every Door Needs Its Keay

Summary:

Michael finds itself flung back in time to before Michael Shelley was sacrificed to the Great Twisting. Great! It can fix what happened, right? The spiral-incarnate can make a good simple plan that works, right?

***

In all the years - again, time is such a silly concept - Michael has been the distortion, even pulling memories from before it was Michael and Michael was it, it had never been able to go *backward* in time. It could go forward, it could send people into states of warped time. It could change time as it happened. But it couldn’t reverse it. It could never reverse it.

So then how is it 10 years before when it died?

“No!” It spits out, nearly terrified. Gerry’s eyes go back to the brick wall. “I-“ Michael thinks about its words. “I don’t know why she chose him. He didn’t deserve it. Doesn’t. I… I needed to remind myself that he doesn’t deserve it.”

Michael takes a steadying breath.

“And I need to do something to stop it.”

Gerry is ripe with questions, Michael is sure of it. Gerry always was too curious for his own good.

Notes:

Hello :)
Thanks for being here. I’ve written 10 chapters and am pretty confident that I can start posting slowly without killing all motivation I have for finishing the rest. I’m optimistic about it. I’m sorry if that optimism is misplaced lol :/
Basically, Doorkeay deserved a time travel fix-it fic written by me, and I was compelled to satisfy that need. They both deserved so much better. So I made a self indulgent fic. Sue me. (Please don’t). I can’t guarantee that everything will make sense, or even stay consistent between the 12ish chapters it’ll be, but I liked it, so there
Uh, also I found that I physically cannot describe the Distortion with less than 100 words. And, as you’ll see, I am a bit of a rambler. Bear with me. They taught me about commas in 2nd grade, I’ve never looked back.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Mad and Madder

Chapter Text

It’s over. And over. And over and over and

It rumbles slightly as it turns and turns and turns, every five rotations causes the front right foot to hit the linoleum with a BANG as it turns over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and 

A bright blue sock comes to the front, frothy with soap and water. A pant leg replaces it and it disappears into the mass of shifting and swirling and over and turns and over and …

BANG

Every thirteen bangs causes a shudder in the machine. It scrapes against the machine to its left which transmits a screeching vibration through to the next one. The washers sing together, hauntingly brilliant and dissonant, they shout as though they expect not to be heard, they rotate as if they know nothing else. 

The woman sitting in front of the washing machine knows nothing else. Not in this moment, in any case. She rotates her head slowly with the dizzying spiral of laundry, dreaming of shapes and colors within the never ending madness of beauty before her, she brings her head back upright with each BANG then gets transfixed once again to the over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over…

She reaches out to touch the glass seperating her from the meaningless shapes. If she had a consciousness of her own at this moment, she would wonder at why she wants to join it. She’s a hardworking woman, she lives a full life, she has family and friends and everything one could want out of life. But the shapes in front of her swirl with color and she drifts imperceptibly closer, pressing the flats of her fingers into the glass as if it will break and she needs to be ready to dive in. 

BANG 

In her momentary break of delusion, she rights her head and notices a faint crackle behind her. It pops and statics, it has low sounds of despair and high pitched hacking that could almost be a laugh if you’ve never heard a laugh before. It could almost be crying, again, if you’ve never heard someone crying before. And this woman, in her stupor, could swear she’s never heard crying before. So, she guesses, this is it. 

It’s hard to rip her gaze away from the laundry. It’s hard to turn her head away from the enrapturing mixture of colors and bubbles, from the over and over she has become a part of. 

Thankfully, she finds a new over and over and over to stare at as she turns around. It’s nothing like the washing machine, and yet exactly the same. It has golden spirals of color and shifting and over and over and over and over

The woman finds herself lost in these spirals-of-curls, of hair-that-never-stills, of forever-swirling-insanity. They go on and on, splaying over the floor in meandering pathways that her subconscious traces down. They spill over the maybe-shoulders of the thing in front of her. They jumble in traffic jams and sort themselves out, they move together and deviate and come back together, they are everywhere and nowhere and somehow and nowhen. 

The creature the hair belongs to is shuddering with not-cries, it moves as shapes with shading and objects with outlines, it takes arms that must be arms but cannot possibly be, long and spindly and too much for a person, it pushes them against the floor with hands that must be hands but cannot possibly be hands, too long and too knuckled and too much for a person. The creature the hair belongs to cannot possibly be a creature, it is and it is not and it is not what it is. 

It sits up now, if a creature-that-is-not-a-creature can do something as simple as sitting. It shifts in color and texture and lighting and sound. Tears made of light and denim streak down what must be its face but cannot possibly be its face. Music makes up its legs that it tucks beneath it. The purple of it’s outfit-suit-sweater-tshirt-dress shifts to blue shifts to orange shifts to plaster shifts to text. 

The eyes (that cannot possibly be eyes) meet the woman’s gaze and blink. The woman jolts back upright with the BANG behind her, but quickly tilts her head with the curls of gold she is reaching a hand towards. The creature sniffs - it sounds like what a dog sniffing looks like - and swallows - it looks like what a cube being forced through a slinky sounds like. 

“I wouldn’t,” it says. It sounds croaky and raw, staticy and backward. 

The woman brings her hand back to herself, snatching it back like a child from a flame. Her eyes widen in panic as they see the situation in front of her. She meets the things not-eyes and feels her body relax even as her mind splinters off from it. Her head tilts with the swirling creatures rainbow eyes, her mind screams at her to run. Her head makes it all the way around to the floor, her mind wanders. 

It looks away from her, though she continues her spiral. It sees the laundry machines behind her, she starts to move closer to it. She reaches a hand out, slowly. Her head is coming back up now, 75% of the way around a circle. 

“Where am I?” It says, taking small glances all around now. 

She takes a moment before realizing she is a person enough to answer. “You are here, doll.”

A ripple of some sort of emotion crosses its face at the unhelpful answer. It takes what can be approximated as a breath and seems to focus. It’s light and color and music dies down into texture, it’s flickering steadies to the beat of the banging washing machine. It’s hair moves only as if a strong wind was twisting it, it’s eyes still to a soft baby-blue with just an insignificant swirl of dark blue around the pupil. 

It almost looks like a man now. 

Almost. 

The woman returns almost entirely to her body, suddenly tired beyond exhaustion. Her hands drop heavily onto the floor and she has just enough wherewithal to sit up and lean back against the machine behind her. She eyes the almost-man with what would be suspicion if she had the energy for it. 

Its legs are made of fabric - or, no, it’s wearing pants. That’s more likely. It’s likely the creature in front of her is wearing pants, a sky blue pair of bell bottom jeans, but that would require more focus than the creature is actively giving it. It’s likely the creature is wearing a purple long sleeved shirt, but what is the difference between shirts and skin anyway? Its arms are long — too long — but reasonably so. Its face would pass as a happy man’s face if happy men tended to cry light and smiled through the light-tears as if its smile was the only thing keeping it grounded. Its hair reaches the ground behind it, and doesn’t extend further than reality. 

She lets out a sigh and closes her eyes against the headache that now presses onto her temples. The key difference is not the presence of the headache, but the presence of her temple to be ached upon. 

“Where are we?”

Its voice sounds like a man’s would over a phone. She gathers the energy to talk, deciding this person would be better to entertain in light of recent developments that she starts to reason could not have been real. “Manchester.”

It shifts slightly, leaning up against a different row of machines. “What’s the date?”

She ponders for a second. When had time ever mattered when the hair on your head is endless and the colors in your eyes could rival the stars? “uh… the 14th. I think.”

“Of…?”

“March.”

It seems to huff in frustration and she cowers slightly against the cool linoleum floor. “Of?”

“2007?”

Through her eyelids she can see the shifting of light emanating from the creature. It spasms in shock, color and texture and light flashing before it can reel it in again. Screeching notes of harmony from the creature play with the screeching texture from the laundry behind her. She cowers further. 

It settles down again, and now with most of her wits about her she can realize that the creature is definitely, assuredly, 100%, absolutely crying right now. Some people laugh when they cry. Some people sound like whining dogs when they cry. Some people are not people when they sound like both of these things at the same time. 

She is at a loss. Does she comfort the insanity-inducing demon creature? Does she ask it what it is? Does she run as soon as she can move her arms again? 

It shakes in grief and terror. 

“Are, uh, are you okay?” She winces at the terror in her voice. She winces at how shallow it sounds. She winces as she notices she cannot feel the depth she associates with her own humanity. 

The cracking sound from the creature registers in her mind as laughing. “What an interesting question!”

She doesn’t understand why the question was so interesting.

“What’s your name?” It says callously, switching between topics just as fast as it switched from incredulous to spiteful.

It should concern her more, that she cannot provide an answer. “I… uh.”

“Right. You. Don’t. Know.” It spits the words out in fury. It must be glowing, it must be shifting again, it must be filling the room with golden curls of spiraling hair, forever turning and continuously changing. 

She huddles into herself and firmly keeps her eyes shut, shutting out the light and unnatural pathways that she finds herself wanting to imagine. 

It cackles again, “Good luck ever finding that out.” It goes quiet, just the sound of the washing machine slowing down now. “I’ve been trying for a while. I guess I have more time now.” It lets out an incredulous snort, then it’s standing up. “You should go.”

There is a burst of energy and she can suddenly stand up. She grabs her basket and piles her wet clothes into it as fast as she can. She opens her eyes just enough to see the ground on the way to the exit. 

It halts her just before she leaves. “Oh, and a word of advice.” She freezes, one hand on the glass door outside. “Don’t use the yellow doors.”

With that she steps out into the cold air, holding a sopping basket of clothes that feels like it’s freezing against her pants. She opens her eyes fully, taking in the look of a street of hard edges and normal looking people. There is structure to the city. There is substance. 

Melody. 

Her name is Melody. She doesn’t know why she couldn’t remember that. She doesn’t remember why the world not spinning is a good thing. She must’ve met a dangerous person in there. 

There was never a person there. She doesn’t know why she’s making things up now. 

Nothing happened. If you can’t even trust yourself to know that you’re safe, then what can you do? No, there was nothing wrong with the laundromat. 

Still, she decides not to go back in for the dryer. She goes home. 

And she doesn’t even look at the mysterious door lurking in the alley by her house. 

***

It was a pop. 

A shift of pressure within its ears, a readjusting of the fluids trapped therein. One second to the next, everything changed, and all it had as an indication was a single pop. 

Maybe there’s going to be rain soon. 

One second - screaming, terrified. Trapped, locked out, rejected from the entity that it was and was-not. It was a hand cut off from its body. It flailed and banged on the door. It bled color and sobbed light, a marker that the entity that had killed who it once was was about to finish the job. It was reduced to nothing, tainted by its own inhumanity, flung from power and grasped by the aching jaws of all-that-it-is-not. It was dying and it knew it. 

Pop.

Then it wasn’t. 

It wasn’t dying physically, anyway, in whatever physicality it has. It wasn’t being reduced to ash or color or blood. No, it wasn’t being reduced to anything. 

It was still… all of it. It shifted rapidly between it all, between line art and highlighters and harmonies and light and over and over and over and…

It was over. 

It’s death, or it’s not-death, it was over. It was done. 

And now the pain hits. 

It tears through its ears first. It’s a bright pain, neon pinks and highlighter yellow zaps through what it called its head. Its hair wraps around it, comforting in the way a creature of it-is-not-what-it-is can be. It shifts and spirals. The pain manifests as a cutthroat melody creaking down its throat and as a deep cold within the veins of its wrists. It clutches its body close, forming a golden ratio  - the most comforting shape - and lays limp against a ground that is no longer tainted with the blood of the Stranger. 

The pain pierces through its core, a knife made of the same not-matter that it is manifested of. It curls deeper into itself. 

It knows it can never escape. Not truly. It knows the pain never goes away. It knows pain. It knows nothing. It knows it knows nothing. It knows the pain of its inhumanity is the pain it feels more than any other and it knows that pain never leaves. 

It lists all the things it knows. It knows it needs to stop listing things it knows. It knows it needs to stop needing to stop listing things. It knows its knowing of needs is worse. It knows this is making it worse. It knows it cannot stop. 

It thinks of all the things it has done wrong. It knows it could have done better. It knows it should have done better. It knows it’s breaking. It knows there is no part of it left to break. It knows there is one thing left for it to break. 

Gerry

The one thing it had left. It had lost its humanity. It had lost its mind. It had lost its ability to quantize itself. 

But Gerry could see him. 

The memories of Gerry could, anyway. 

But Gerry isn’t anywhere, now. Gerry died 3 years ago, in 2014.

And all that Micheal had left was its memories of him. A good life together. 

And now they fade away with the pain. This is what causes the most pain. Michael clutches to the memories of its boyfriend, and it slips through the cracks made by too-many knuckles and unwieldy lanky arms. It claws at its brain, it shuffles through textures and lights and sounds and forms and it continues to leave. It throws a metaphorical chair while searching for the memories of treasured experiences, it considers for a second to make that a physical chair. It doesn’t even know the meaning of the word, physical. 

Micheal knows it is crying. The thought of Being enough to cry is enough to make it laugh, a hideous, heinous laugh that just makes it cry even more. It bangs its tweed-leather-concerto hand against the ground. It rips at its own eyes. It pushes against the floor and crumples again in agony, cold spikes causing its cotton-green-paper skin to break out in feverish sweats. It scrambles for a memory to hold onto, anything that will give it a sense of belonging, of wanting. Nothing. 

It tries to remember his eyes, the way they measured him, the way they let it consider itself a ‘him’ in their presence. 

Nothing. 

They push up against the floor again, forcing itself upright (or as upright as a creature with no form can be). It wipes its light-diamond-Tchaikovsky tears from its sorta-face. The memories of Gerry are gone and they cannot even be upset about it anymore. They don’t know what to be upset about. It is still in pain, though. It just died. It just lost itself. It needs to be found. 

It will never be able to be found. 

It looks up at its surroundings for the first time. Michael is particularly surprised to find a world of reality. These are not its hallways, shifting and gradients. This is the real world. 

And there is a woman in front of it. 

She has dark wavy hair that goes down to her shoulders. It’s greasy and needs a wash. She’s wearing sweats and a T-shirt that has likely seen better days. She’s a mess. Her eyes hold wonders and nothing and everything and swirl ever so slightly. 

She is also reaching out to touch one of its curls. “I wouldn’t,” Michael tries to warn her. 

She snaps her head up, meeting his eyes. That’s not good. Eye contact, you know?

Her hand reaches up again, her head goes down, and her body starts to spiral with it. She resembles a slow moving smoothie in a blender. It sighs and decides to try to get something out of this situation. 

“Where am I?”

She is not currently in control of her self, so she waits before answering, “You are here, doll.”

Not a great answer. This is its own fault. It is the distortion, it-is-not-what-it-is, a creature of lies and madness. This is its own fault. This proves its own inhumanity. 

Okay. It takes a deep breath and focuses on its appearance. It stabilizes its textures - it creates the semblance of skin and fabric, though the two meld together at the edges. It ends its hair before infinity, though the spirals can never truly be beheld. It calms its flickering and forces itself to stop spinning. 

It’s hard to make an unfathomable thing become a being

The woman is slouched down against the laundry machine behind her, and Michael understands why it got to this place. It’s almost like home, almost like it’s hallways, spiraling and swirling and continuing and over and over and over… It’s a place of power for it. A place of comfort when the hallways are too much but the city is too little. 

And the woman was likely entrenched in the spiral long before it showed up. That makes it feel a little better, it supposes. It didn’t ruin a whole life by showing up. 

Not that it had much cared in the last 3 years, whether it was ruining lives. 

“Where are we?”

Michael is not usually one for knowledge, that’s the eye’s realm, but Michael also usually doesn’t just, appear like this. Not without specifically intending to, anyway. It is confused and needs to know what happened when it died. Or, possibly didn’t die. 

It’s really confused as to how it’s still alive. (‘Alive’ is a strong word in this context, but for the purposes of proper storytelling, we will let it slide.)

“Manchester.”

Michael lets out a huff. Right, as if that would help. 300km is nothing to an entity such as it, and yet it didn’t feel as if it entered the hallways to travel. It seemed to just… move. 

“What’s the date?”

“Uh… the 14th I think.” 

Useless. “Of…?”

“March?”

Oh? It was just June though? How long was it out? Time had always been rather meaningless to the distortion, days and weeks and months and years would bleed together and fractal apart in its domain. 9 months was nothing to the endless spiral of time. Though…

Something still doesn’t feel right. Maybe it had been dead, or asleep, or whatever, for much longer. Maybe it had been a year, maybe it had been more. It glances around the room, the technology looks the exact same as Michael remembers, but it’s not as though it had been paying attention to the technological upgrades done to washing machines. 

“…of?” It prompts. If it is capable of hoping, it is hoping for her to say 2018. The least amount of time (such a human concept, time) to have been out of commission the better. 

“2007”

It breaks concentration. 

Light fractals out of its amalgamation of lines and shapes. It shines burgundy and phosphorus. It tears into 3 entities made of yellow, magenta, and cyan, then it transforms into a trombone quartet sung by penguins. It sounds like denim and it feels like whispers, though its feelings are anything other than conceivable. It is an amalgam of all the head aches humanity has ever had and every head ache humanity has never had. It is all it is not. 

It is shocked, to say the least. 

In all the years - again, time is such a silly concept - Michael has been the distortion, even pulling memories from before it was Michael and Michael was it, it had never been able to go *backward* in time. It could go forward, it could send people into states of warped time. It could change time as it happened. But it couldn’t reverse it. It could never reverse it. 

So then how is it 10 years before when it died? 

It knows, now, that it died. It had to have. There is no other explanation. It died. 

“Are, uh, are you okay?”

She knocks it out of its revery, it’s shaking, it’s contorting and convulsing. Of course it’s not okay. Could you imagine? 

Being okay with this?

Can you imagine the world where this is a good thing? Where Micheal trapped within the distortion is okay with this, and the distortion trapped within Michael is okay with this? With being killed by itself and then sent back to do it all again? 

It laughs because there is nothing else to do. It laughs because it’s the distortion and the only way to distort pain is with laughter. It laughs because there is no other way to answer the question. 

“What an interesting question!”

The woman is cowering, it knows. It feels the light dancing with its own craze, it sees it play along the face of the woman, trying not to succumb to its luring madness. It sees the insanity that is reaching out to her. 

“What’s your name?” It is angry now, upset at its own inhumanity. It shows up here and is met with a piece of meat marked for the spiral. And it’s hungry. It cannot explain the joy it feels when it sees the woman shy away from her own pull towards him. She Is nothing but a meal for it, and it cannot stand it. It needs to know who she is. It needs to let her have some sanity. 

“I…uh”

The woman cannot find herself, even when shutting micheal out. The woman closes her eyes against the pressing swirl of light emanating from Michael. She cannot find what she is missing, she doesn’t even know what she’s missing, she is nothing. 

“Right. You. Don’t. Know.” Michael is spiteful and bites at every words that spills from its body. It slams a hand against the ground and gets up to pace circles around the laundry units. There is so much hilarity within Michaels inhumanity, it can’t help but to laugh. Don’t you see the joke here? Can’t you see what’s so funny?

Michael suddenly stands still and peers over at the woman. “Good luck finding that out. I’ve been trying for a while.” And it had. It had spent so long trying to find out who or what it was, what that meant for life, for love. It had pondered until it noticed it was saying the same things over and over again. The thoughts had swirled - spiraled - around it, and it was nothing if not on brand. A thought occurs to it. “I guess I have more time now.” It wants the woman gone, it wants the space to itself, it wants to be able to think. “You should go.”

The woman catapults herself out the door, taking her wet clothes with her. 

Micheal sighs. It knows she will start to rationalize the situation as soon as she’s out the door. It tries to warn her off of yellow doors, but she won’t remember. 

God, Michael is tired of being rationalized out of existence. It wants to *be*. It cannot be in any meaningful way. 

Michael locks the doors to the laundromat and sits in front of a washing machine, allowing the spinning water to lul it into a nice spiral-y almost-sleep. 

It relaxes. 

To a nosy passerby looking through the window, the sight would be completely unintelligible. They may see a shifting mass of hair curling up the windows, blocking the sight. Certainly it crawls up the walls, it layers around the machines. The hair does not have a mind of its own, and Michael does not will it, but somehow the locs come together to turn on every machine in that room. The loud buzzing and clunking and occasional BANGs set a precedent for sound that is far too normal to be in the presence of one-such-as-nothing, so they spice it up a bit. 

Static and pop music and cake fills the air in a sweet cacophony of sound and silence. 

Michael falls into a deep revery. The part of it that never stops, never goes out, never stills is working overtime in the background. It considers its options, it considers time travel, it considers the impossibility of whatever happened to get it here. 

The Michael on the surface hears none of that. It sits, flickering between everything and nothing, and stares at the spinning machine in front of it. 

I have to save him. 

Michael jolts in shock. This voice was its own, this voice was clear and concise, this voice expressed a want. This voice could not have been that of the distortion. It was everything it is not. 

Yet Micheal remembers this voice, this not-of-the-distortion voice that emanates from within it. It has spoken to Michael on many occasions, it is what drove many of Micheal’s more… human urges in years past. Or, years future. God time travel is going to be hard. 

This was the voice that drew Michael to Gerry. Sweet, spicy, poor, poor Gerry. 

I have to save Michael. 

Michael was still alive. Micheal Shelley was still alive, right now. Probably. And now Micheal, the distortion, the one-who-is-and-not, is here too. It can save him. 

Micheal is in the hallways before a single additional thought can occur. 

 

Chapter 2: Spiraling

Summary:

Michael navigates the hallways that it is and yet it is not.

Notes:

It’s my fanfic and I can put my original hallway design into it if I want
Also note that the pronouns are all fucked up for Michael, I normally use it/its for non-identity Michael and he/him for some identity Michael, but that’s about as consistent as Michael itself is (aka, not at all)
This is the shortest chapter of the whole fic, btw :)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text


Dearest reader, I say this completely sincerely. There is no pun nor sick joke within me as I say it. I know the etymology of the phrase is the very reason why this is happening, and I blame the person who came up with the common name of the Entity I am about to reference. They were probably some fool who thought it was a good idea, to give an obvious name to an entity related to the thing it describes. They probably had a really common name too, like Jim. Or Jon. Anyway. A completely sincere usage of this next phrase coming up. 

Michael is spiraling. 

Yes yes, I know. Avatar of the spiral, spiraling? How obvious. 

Just let us get into its mind. It deserves to be known by us, at least while no one else is around to do it. 

Michael slips into the hallways, into itself. They are dark and shadowed. Dark purples flow together with reds flow together with chimes flow together with the ambiance of dark academia but without any of the academia. It’s the wrongness of knowing nothing and comprehending nothing even when there are books all around you, mocking you. 

These are not its hallways. 

Chandeliers line the ceiling, crystals and mirrors work together to fulfill what Michael’s hallways used wall mirrors for. Bookshelves line the walls, wonky and unstable, threatening to crash in on you, urging you forward to a corner where you have to decide to go left or right. Left or right. Left or right. There is a door on the ceiling. No, that’s a door reflected in the mirror on the ceiling. There is a not-door on the wall between the left and the right. It is dark and broody, a regal mahogany, and somehow also a waltz. 

Michael takes 2 steps forward and 1 back, dancing an imaginary tempo that it knows is right. It feels it’s fear cloud its rational senses and acts on instinct, it’s inner distortion playing with itself. It turns left and sees the bookshelves stretch on, it walks backwards 3 more steps and pauses. It reaches out to the nearest book with text, a loud one that says “IT CAN-CANNOT BE-BEGONE” in bright denim text on faux-leather binding. Michael grabs it and steps back once more through a door, throwing the carrot it now holds up to the mirror above it. 

The steps are familiar, the steps are its own, the ones it’s taken so many times, and yet the setting is different. Around it now are greens and browns and dark shadows that engulf one’s knowledge of the surroundings. Previously they had been yellows and pinks and bright lights that fractal and divide out one’s knowledge of the surroundings. 

These aren’t Michael’s hallways. And yet the entity known as Michael knows them well. 

They once were. 

And that’s somehow worse. 

It leaves. 

And reality crashes down upon it.

Michael is not Michael Shelley but it knows everything Michael Shelley has been through and done. Michael is not the distortion but it knows everything the distortion has been through and done. Michael is nothing but many things wrapped up into one, spliced together and forced apart, divorced from reality and achingly close to it. Michael cannot be and yet knows that it is. 

When Michael was within the hallways, it knows that they were the same hallways it has always had and yet they were not his. When Michael is within the real world - though what is reality really - it knows that it’s the same world Michael Shelley once inhabited and yet it is not its world. Michael is nothing and Michael knows nothing and Michael Shelley was once of the known and Michael the future distortion will be of the unknown and the Michael of now is not the Michael of then and the Michael of nothing is and the Michael of Shelley is not. 

How can one-that-is-not be and exist even at the same time as the one-that-once-was? 

The creature sits now in a coffee shop. The dark door it came out of never existed, and the yellow doors it misses and hates will not exist. 

Michael has never had a clear goal, that was the whole point of its not-existence. To be unknowable, to be unpredictable, to be and not be. Its goal was once to have fun, to experience humanity from outside, to love and hate and eat. For a glorious few years… Michael didn’t even have a goal then. When Gerry was alive. It was all instinct. But it was good. 

Its goal, it supposes, was once to continue. 

And now what does it do? It cannot continue, it never was. It’s hallways are not his, his are not it’s hallways. Michael feels more like Michael than ever before, but Michael is still just a name. The distortion is a title not reserved for it, though a single title had only ever strove to identify a thing with no identity. Nothing can be done and yet the Shelley within Michael is pushing for something to happen. For Michael, the entity without want, to want something… It’s impossible. 

And Michael is a thing of impossibility. 

It stares into the latte with swirling foam on top, it watches the bubbles come up and pop, one after another foaming and frothing. It’s infinite and contained, it will end but not while Michael looks at it, it has started but has continued. 

“Uhh… I’ll get a latte please. To-go. If that’s alright.”

Michael’s approximation of a head flickers up. It’s… Michael. 

Michael Shelley. 

He sounds uncertain, though the creature knows Michael Shelley has been coming to this coffee shop almost every day for about a year. That’s just what he sounded like, back then. Michael Shelley is wearing his white collared shirt and blue sweater vest, his favorite combo. He has bags under his eyes and holds one arm close to his stomach as if cradling something. 

The teen (or young adult, Michael had never been good at ages even as Shelley) smiles kindly and took his payment. They have died blue hair with shaved sides, nose and eyebrow piercings, and wear an apron with pins. Michael had always been intimidated of them, though now Michael couldn’t conceive of why. “Of course. Everything alright? I missed you yesterday.”

Michael Shelley’s face contorts into a grimace - though contorting is not a good word for it when Michael can now properly contort its face into all sorts of features. His arm settles on his stomach before flicking away. “Yeah, I’m perfectly okay.”

It remembers this interaction. He had just spent the last 24 hours in the hospital, lightly stabbed while trying to get a follow up on a statement from a man he later found to be a criminal. He was embarrassed about it, for some reason. He didn’t want Gertrude to be mad at him. 

What a thing to be embarrassed about. 

“Alrighty then, I’ll believe you.” The teen flashed a smile with a conspiratory wink. “I know you can’t stay away from here for long.”

Michael flushes with the interaction. He takes his drink with a polite nod and nearly runs out of the door. He’s off towards the institute, ready to spend the day reading horror stories that he hopes are not true and continue not understanding. 

Nobody ever told him. 

He trusted them. 

And they never told him. 

The creature-of-nothing-and-yet turns back to the coffee that had turned up at its table. It’s made the same way as he used to take it, but it had not ordered. In the teens handwriting, a note is written on a receipt that says “on the house. You look like you could use it.”

Michael wonders what it looks like. It gets reasoned down to normality by most sane people, this it knows. 

Probably a mopey mess.

To it, Michael feels like a mopey mess. It can’t make it 3 minutes within reality before slipping into its head. It knows its curls are too long and shifty to be normal, it knows its skin often flickers to other textures. When it moves it’s seen as static and then the new position, there are no frames between movements. The humans in the coffee shop find themselves staring at Michael, losing themselves in it. Most look away quickly, wanting a respite from the “man” who is walking insanity. These people usually quickly forget what they just saw, chocking it up to their day dreams. 

It knows nothing, it wants nothing, and yet it keeps trying to categorize the situation as if it is something easily put into a box. As if Michael is the type to have boxes to put it in. It stares out of the window at the rotating earth, moving forward and backward and around and it’s soothing in a way, to watch. 

Michael Shelley worked at the magnus institute too long, it thinks. It has too much eye in it now. 

Hours pass. Possibly days. It can’t be sure. 

It comes to no decision, but it gets up and follows Michael. 

Michael is on the tube, heading home after work. He stops at a Chinese place for takeout, he lingers by a too-expensive shop. He flutters from place to place with his food in one hand and a wistful look on his face. He wants something, but he doesn’t know what it is. He’s looking for something, but it’s unknowable. 

Maybe Michael didn’t change as much as it thought. 

Michael gets to his home and takes the stairs. The distortion looks at him from a door - a glass one, the entrance to the corner shop across the street. It absentmindedly twists its barely-too-long fingers through its ever-twisting hair. It thinks back to the memories of this day, or what it assumes was this day. He had gotten home with Chinese takeout, as he did every time he lost the battle with himself because he was too tired to try to cook. He probably put a CD on, maybe The Daughters of Eve. He ate while reading over his last entry in his writing journal, then wrote another little blurb. By that time he was tired, he went to bed. 

It is dark before the creature of golden curls decides to leave the shop. It glitches in a walking pattern around the building. It turns, suddenly, as it is wont to do, into the alley. 

It nearly hits someone, but its form expands beyond the bounds of space and it reshapes on the other side of them. 

He snaps around to face towards Michael again. 

He has dark hair, dyed, his eyeliner creases as he glares at Michael. His hair is long and straight, he wears a dark denim jacket with spikes punched in the shoulders and homemade patches sewn in. His jacket is clean and devoid of rips, his black jeans have still-attached straps and have no hastily markered eye paraphernalia. Fishnets cover his hands and dark (almost to the point of freshness) eye tattoos there-on. Another eye tattoo graces his neck, and within a hair’s breadth of a moment Michael can remember every single tattoo placement on this man.

Oh my god it’s young Gerry. 

Gerry is frowning at Michael, his head is tilted down to display dominance even though michael towers above him. It’s not that Gerry is short, just that Michael is particularly formless. 

Especially right now. 

Michael feels itself fractaling under the gaze of all the eyes on Gerry glaring at it. It contorts (finally, a proper use of the word) between shape, color, and sound. Gerry would probably recognize it as stammering, though its sense of the world is rather limited right now. It thinks it becomes a peacock for a moment, but mostly it is comprised of white lines extending beyond the known universe and also contained within the alley. 

After a moment or so of surprised stammering by the creature, Gerry snaps, “What are you doing?” He takes a step toward it, trying to get it under control. 

Michael steals oxygen from the world and creates a sound. It probably sounds like a low cry. It stumbles back towards a wall that is far too real for Michael to be able to use it. The white lines that make up it’s hand pass through the brick on the first try, it doesn’t feel itself try again but it’s hand is now resting on the cool real wall. It is grounding in a way, and Michael can feel its lines solidifying and coloring in with markers. 

Gerry takes another step forward, “Why were you stalking him?” His voice is low and gravely in an attempt to be menacing. 

Michael continues to fall apart, but now in a more real way. Now instead of crayon scratches implying it’s shock, real light emanates from where tears may be tracing lines down its face. It is sitting down and leaning against the wall, staring at the oh-so-familiar face glaring at it. It shakes from shock and surprise and terror and being seen and, most importantly, grief. Gerry is here and is alive and angry and is still alive! 

Gerry is also dead, and has been for 3 years, since cancer took him from it. Michael mourned him, as much as a fear entity can mourn. Michael accepted he was dead, and Michael mourned him, and Gerry was dead. Gerry was dead. 

Gerry is standing right there. 

It knows it must be a sight to see, gaping at an angry protector - for Gerry is in protecting mode, something he often was, but it had never been so forcefully placed against it. Michael curls up against the wall, closing its eyes but still knowing it can be seen. It cannot stand to do so anymore. It feels Gerry’s eyes on it and it feels so similar and yet so different. It feels the eyes trace down its bent knees and long fingers, it’s shivers get worse. 

It remembers this feeling, it treasures this feeling. 

It cannot experience this feeling anymore. 

“LoOk aWAy,” it speaks as normally as it can manage. “pLeASe.” 

The prying eyes linger for a moment longer before slowly shifting away. 

The sense of relief is over shadowed by the knowledge that Gerry is standing right there, Gerry, him, his… Gerry. Gerry is standing right there, thoughtfully looking away, and he doesn’t know it. He isn’t…

Michael is no stranger to being something it is not. But Gerry… Gerry was a constant. And then he wasn’t. And now he’s different. 

This isn’t Gerry. 

Michael sinks deeper into itself, wrapping its arms tight and recalling its hair into a middle back height. It forms the smallest ball it can make before collapsing on itself before quietly saying, “thanks” as softly as it can manage. 

Gerry nods, devoutly staring at the brick wall over to Michaels right. “Tell me then. What were you doing stalking him?”

There is no compulsion within Gerry, he always liked seeing what people would tell him without it. Still, Michael finds itself speaking without much thought. “I just wanted to see. I needed to see what happened to him.”

Gerry clutches his fists and and shifts on his feet, antsy and annoyed. “Why him?”

“Heh.” The laugh Michael gives is short and full of spite. “I ask myself that all the time.”

Gerry sighs and starts to turn his eyes back towards Michael. 

“No!” It spits out, nearly terrified. Gerry’s eyes go back to the brick wall. “I-“ Michael thinks about its words. “I don’t know why she chose him. He didn’t deserve it. Doesn’t. I… I needed to remind myself that he doesn’t deserve it.”

Michael takes a steadying breath. 

“And I need to do something to stop it.”

Gerry is ripe with questions, Michael is sure of it. Gerry always was too curious for his own good. Before Gerry can get anything out, Michael is standing and there is no dark mahogany door not behind it. 

Gerry stumbles slightly off balance at the sudden movement. Michael grabs his chin, pulling his eyes with it to meet its own. Michael is towering over Gerry just slightly, leaning down to be very close to him as he speaks. 

Look at me.

His dark brown pupils widen slightly. The command takes effect and a slight orange light rings his pupils as he Looks. Michael leans a little closer. 

“I will stop this.”

Gerry, still Looking at him, nods slowly.

“Go to him. He will need you.”

With that, Michael disappears through the door-that-was-not-there, and Gerry is left reeling after Looking into the unknowable and having the unknowable look back. 

Michael, on the inside of a series of tunnels that it knows and cannot be known, walks confidently. It knows the way. It knows how to not be seen. It knows where it was and how to avoid it. It makes its way to the place where it all began. 

The Magnus Archives. 

Notes:

While writing this I made the note: Michael would love Mitski
I stand by it

Chapter 3: Mock and Roll

Summary:

Michael has decided to protect Michael, leaving Gerry disoriented after a weird af meeting.

Notes:

Bros I literally love coming back to the things I wrote like a month ago. It’s so fun, cause I remember the big things but all those small details that will only make me smile? I get to discover them all over again every time.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text


The archives are quiet after 8PM. Most of the workers leave between 5 and 6, those looking for overtime (or just caught up in their work) may stay for an extra hour or two, but at some point everyone has a partner, child, cat, or even just Indian takeout to get home to. 

Gertrude Robinson couldn’t care less about the Indian takeout that will never have her name on it. 

She sighs and leans back in her chair, tracing the wooden ceiling beams of her office and scanning over the case in her mind. It’s rather trite — a woman raving about her experience with some fast-growing mold on the meat she had left out for weeks. Really, as if she didn’t expect there to be mold on weeks-old beef, left in room temperature, covered with a single film of cellophane. 

The woman may not know how normal spore growing works, but Gertrude could still feel the kicking of curiosity at the back of her mind in such a way that she knows this woman has been fear touched in some way. Probably not the mold, no, but she rambles on and on, maybe spiral? She could also have just been around a Stranger, or the meat might be more Fleshy than it seems. 

Whatever is the matter with the woman, this statement is certainly not going to be enough to diagnose her. Nor would Gertrude do anything with the Knowledge. All Gertrude does is Watch. She allows others to help. 

Maybe she can get Michael to check up with the woman in the morning. 

The corner light flickers. Ah who is she kidding. She’s not going to send Michael out on his own for something like that. He wouldn’t even know what to do with a raving woman obsessed with mold. 

Now that would be a sight to see. Innocent Michael red faced from the contact as she holds onto him, trying to make him believe her. And he wouldn’t: believe her that is. He would pull the good old “I believe you believe this,” and overthink how to comfort her until he just leaves. 

Gertrudes lets out a breathy laugh and goes back to the page, writing her notes in the margins. She is deep in focus when she notices the lights glimmer purple and her empty mug spins quietly and slowly. 

Fuck.

“You look busy!”

The voice is mocking and echoey, it comes from behind her. She turns quickly, her chair knocking into her desk and causing a statement to fall to the ground. 

“Oh what’s this one…” it is behind her again. “Oh!” It sounds excited on the surface, and hints of hatred seep into the edges. “Madness mold! How fun!”

Gertrude spins again, back towards her desk. She steadies her hands on the edge of it and takes a breath. 

It laughs at her unsteadiness. 

“I don’t think it was one of mine, but then… knowing is really your job here, isn’t it. Well above my pay grade!” 

It’s playful. It cracks and splinters and collapses into itself. It balls a fist into being that it slams into the table. 

It’s hideous. 

And Gertrude glowers at it. “What. Exactly. Do you think you’re doing here?” She puts no power into the words, still trying to grasp onto the situation in front of her. She looks over the entity in front of her, infinite and unknowable, and she feels herself thrown into the deep end of a pool she’d never even known about. 

It laughs a sharp, incredulous cackle that pierces her eardrums and forces a wince from her eyelids. Her sight still does not waver. The creature tilts its head at her, 100 degrees, no, 120 degrees, no, 270 degrees, no- and smiles a sickly, wrong, smile. Its hair is golden and impossible. Its body is a purple sparkly suit that shifts hues with the light and the angle and with nothing in particular. Its mouth is too human and yet too wide. Its eyes are human and blue and yet too deep, they hold nothing and everything behind them. Its fingers are like if you crammed too many bones into a pair of stretchy gloves. Its knees would have too many joints if they could be quantized at all. 

Ah yes. 

The Stranger. 

A simple diagnosis really. Human but off. They take such joy in causing the fear of that of which you cannot see, which is exactly what Gertrude is experiencing right now. She cannot see this creature. 

A newly created, possibly. They havn’t gotten the hang of the number of bones within normal human range, but the new tend to get caught up on details like that. What Gertrude does not know is how such a newly created could possibly hold such spite in its demeanor for her. 

Though, Gertrude isn’t any stranger (pardon the pun) to enemies. 

“Interesting…” The creature says with static. “You don’t recognize me?”

She furrows her eyes, she had never seen this creature before. Even the beholding, when requested for information on the subject, cannot come up with where she had met this creature before.

“Ha ha! No matter, Archivist. You Will.”

It’s impressive to give such a blatant (and, though Gertrude would never admit it, terrifying) threat with such a pleased smile on its face. She narrows her eyes, settling on an emotion. Contempt. She will not allow this creature to attempt to control her in this way. She is better than this. She has, can, and will see the unseeable. This Stranger is no different. 

Mustering up her energy she says, “What do you want.” The power rattles her empty tea mug and the statements lining the walls shift in anticipation. 

The creature does not lose its smile nor shift in any meaningful way at the blatant command. It flickers slightly. 

Then it laughs. Menacing, hatefully, incredulously, it laughs, shaking and twisting. “Good job archivist! You asked a question!”

Gertrude focuses on not displaying her confusion as to why that didn’t work. Showing her doubts have never gone over well, so her poker face is well practiced. She doesn’t even wince. Perhaps the desk feels a bit more pressure from her fingers. Perhaps she feels a bit more pressure In her fingers from the desk. 

It sighs playfully, “That is your job, however, so I can’t be too proud. We wouldn’t want you to get too ‘mightier than thou’ on all of us, now would we?”

She draws up her energy once more, setting her resolve on prying answers out of this thing if it’s the last thing she does. “What are you doing here?

It shudders this time, seemingly tasting the air full of power waiting to crash down. “Oh Archivist! You spoil me!”

She knows she’s doing a bad job hiding her shock, her fear. She knows her right hand tends to shake when shocked, something she can usually blame on old age. She knows her heart skips beats when her adrenaline rushes. These are all things the eye supplies to her in this moment. None of them are how to deal with this creature currently flickering between happy relaxed poses and looming poses directly over her. 

It pauses on the looming pose, inches from her face, leaning over her desk. It tilts its head to the side. Its smile creeps ever wider. 

“Good.”

It switches back to leaning against a statement giver’s chair, nonchalant as if Gertrude isn’t still staring up where its eyes just were and trying to convince herself she’s not cowering. “What- what are you doing here?” She says it with no power, almost pleading in her attempt to gain back control. 

It looks pleased in a way that she wishes she could wipe off its face. 

“I’m here to deliver a warning, archivist. So listen carefully.” It moves jerkingly between positions in the room, seemingly pacing. “Speaking plainly like this goes against my very nature. I hope you appreciate what I’m putting myself through for this.”

She shakily nods. 

“And know that if I could kill you right now, I would.”

She lets out a small breath, involuntarily. She knows she has wards up, she knows she can’t be touched by most creatures like this. It doesn’t make this any easier. 

“I,,, am not a fan, you could say, of how this is going to play out.” It laughs to itself, an unknowable inside joke. “So.” It flickers closer, wrapping its body around her in a scaling temperature that feels unnatural. “Figure it out.” It loses its smile. “You’ve always been cleverer than we gave you credit for. I’m sure you can figure something out.”

She gives a confused nod, anything to get this creature out of here and placated. 

“No no no! Archivist. You do not Understand. I do Not Care if you stop the ritual. And, well…” It pauses, it’s mouth now widening into a smirk. “If you do something dangerous, I may even rejoice.”

Her mouth is made of cotton and her brain is too small to exist within, too much to sort through. She can do nothing but continue to nod.

It shifts back behind the desk, settling its too-many elbowed arms onto it. “But you Will. Not.” Its skin is made of red and highlighter. “Ruin Him.”

Gertrude cannot even think of her questions. She cannot file away her thoughts, she cannot catalogue her instincts. They take over. “Who are you protecting?”

It extends itself to it’s full height, taking a second to stare at her, just long enough for her to know it’s saying it of it’s own accord and not from her beholding.

“The only thing you haven’t ruined yet. The Innocent. The Sane.”

She struggles to pull her eyes away, to blink, to have a moment of reprieve from the digging infinity held within the creatures eyes.

“Michael.”

It is gone by the time Gertrude resurfaces to reality. 

Definitely not the Stranger then. 

The Spiral. 

Obviously. 

She slams her fist on her table in anger as she peels herself off the floor. She doesn’t even remember slinking off of her chair, though the ground was much more stable and grounding than whatever she had been on before. 

Ah yes. A chair. 

How could she have been so stupid? Allowing something like that into the archives, becoming scared of it? It was in Head Archivist training 101, do Not show your Fear to the entities that feed off of fear. Her lack of control, her flailing attempts to regain it. She was caught completely unprepared, and she Could Not let it happen again. 

Her foot seems wrong under her as she stands, her head seems to tilt to the left as the rest of her tilts to the right. She knows the creature is gone but its lingering effects keep her out of sorts. 

Gertrude really is an idiot. 

She knows, intimately, how important eye contact is. Specifically- do not make eye contact with avatars! You will lose yourself! It is a miracle that Gertrude has survived until now, and it was due to her ability to stick to the rules she made herself. She can’t let herself slip at the first sign of a scary situation. That’s her whole job! 

That doesn’t even start to cover how stupid it is that her mind is already working on detailing the things it said. She tries to find a connection between the creature and Michael. Why Michael? The kid doesn’t even know the supernatural exists, let alone the entities. Obviously he had some sort of reason for working here, but a spiral… body guard? Protector? 

How could Michael have gotten caught up in something like that?

Innocent Michael, he certainly deserves the nickname. Poor Michael, far too optimistic for this line of work. Unfortunate Michael, drawn into a picture much bigger than he will ever be able to enrapture. 

If Michael not knowing about the Fears was annoying previously, now she another liability to think about. 

She grumbles to herself even as she makes another mug of tea. It’s about to be an even longer night than she thought it would be. 

Spirals tend to be the least confident of the fears, baring the Lonely. They fear for the future, often spliting their thinking down many paths, getting wrapped up in what-ifs and maybe’s. They will lose themselves in theory, finding so many things to worry about that they could never give a straight answer without 15 addendums and a post-receipt recall. 

The creature mentioned not liking where this goes as if it was already set in stone. 

Gertrude frowns into her too-hot tea. 

It can’t be Spiral. 

That’s not how the Spiral talks. 

That’s not how the Spiral works.

They don’t answer questions of their own accord. If Gertrude isn’t able to pry it out of them - and we’ll get to why that didn’t work later - they never give straight forward answers. They never give information. 

Unless it is more logically confusing to do so. 

Which… Gertrude has to admit. This is all very confusing. 

It’s possible the straight forward answer is the most logically confounding one for it in this case, and all that Gertrude really has to do from here is keep Michael safe, appeasing his unwarranted protector. 

Gertrude deigns to not give this line of thinking any more of her time and instead sets upon her research into recent creatures like this. There must be one encounter she can call upon, one documented case that she can use to find when and where this creature came from. 

There has to be. Even if she has to pull a statement directly from Michael himself. 

She will do whatever is necessary.

And if her anger over the creature’s existence grows over the next few hours, well. I’m sure she’ll let off her steam somehow. 

*** 

“Rotten boy.”

“Undeserving.”

“Legacy.”

The words rattle around the space, possibly diabetic and possibly only within his head. 

Her eyes appear, sharp and withering. It’s replaced with sharp heels, clacking away from him, stabbing into him, leaving and returning to hurt, leaving and returning to hurt. 

“Unworthy.”

Metallic notes sound within his mouth, his nose is blocked and he breathes heavily through the blood and fear. The darkness spins and he can’t tell if his eyes are open or closed. 

His Eyes see in doubles, triples, infinities. The darkness around him stretches and splinters, spinning and rotating as if he were falling through an infinite void. He can make out a texture below his back, he does not slam into it so he must be stationary. The brick is cool and rough, the air flows and confuses. 

Mary Keay stands over him in an alley that encloses around them. She stares through her bottom lashes at him, too indignant to even lower her head towards her son. “Rotten boy,” she seethes. 

She is gone in a blink but the alley continues to tower over and enclose him. It rotates to the left and he feels like he rotates to the right. 

His hand is in front of his face — did he move it there? — his fingers are too short. They stub off after only 3 knuckles, don’t humans have 6? No — he should have 7. Nice, even number. 

The blood on his fingers — are they his? Did he steal them? They’re wrong, they can’t be his — only appears after an odd pressure wipes at his mouth. 

Gold comes back to him, an infinite amount of golden spirals weaving and interlocking and converging. His eyes blink and it’s gone from his vision, but they stay still in the back of his mind. They grow and ebb, they expand until it’s all he can think about, they retreat until the curls are nothing more than a presence that beats periodically against his various doors. He has doors in his mind? Of course he does, every tight security prison needs doors. 

He starts counting bricks. 

Smiles come next. They rotate and fly through his vision, they bang at the corners of his round brain, they turn from frowns to grimaces to smiles - hollow and wide, meaningless and joyous, like some perversion of happiness. He can feel the corners of his own mouth crack and tense from dried blood and unintentional smiles. 

22, 23, 24, 26, 27,… 25? 28, 30, 29, 28, 27, 32, 34, 35, 36

Did he skip 31? No no, he’s counted 36. 37 now. 40 now. 

The counting stabilizes him, it centers him in reality. The cool bricks below his body make for a good, rational pattern for his hands to trace as the walls try to ripple away from him. He smiles away the pain, he blinks away the images. 

He hears his mother’s taunts get further away until they are nothing but an echo of memory, locked inside a thrice padlocked door deep inside. The steady clack of her heels turn into a poster flapping in the wind. 

It takes some time to recognize that the alley walls are now straight up and away from him, not leaning over. His counting becomes steady now, he no longer misses numbers. He no longer has to scan the wall to find the next brick in line, now they stay where they were and consent to being counted. 

The blood dried to his faces cracks again when he finally can relax his muscles, reverting his face to his normal tired scowl. 

The world spins when Gerry sits up, but it no longer spirals. Blood loss does that without any additional supernatural help. 

The dark alley is unoccupied, save for him. The apartments across the way have all shut off their lights and the dim glow of street lights all seem to ask him what he’s doing awake at this hour. Michael’s apartment is the one Gerry looks for specifically, and they too are off. No cracks of windows are visible from this distance, no movement seems to happen within it. 

All of Gerry’s supernatural senses are off - overwhelmed from whatever creature he just encountered that he is currently compartmentalizing - and all of Gerry’s common senses are telling him to get to bed. 

So that’s what he does. 

It is well past 3am when Gerry’s head hits the rough black pillowcases he calls his own and passes out. 

It is nearly 8 am when Gerry’s eyes snap open, taking in his bedroom and making assumptions about the rest of the world. At least Gerry assumes he’s just making assumptions. He really doesn’t want to think about what it means if he Knows what’s happening in places he cannot see. 

Michael is usually awake bright and early, an early riser who likes to make a cup of coffee and toast and jam with a bit of light reading while he waits for the sun to fully rise. Not as though Gerry has paid much attention to him! He just, well, thought he had that air about him. 

And he smells like grapefruit, so that’s on him really. 

In terms of other things Gerry is lying in bed assuming (not Knowing, he knows nothing about Michael, that would be insane), the man living in the flat next to Gerry’s is currently trying to wrangle their two children out the door for school. He can hear their loud commands and exasperated bribes. 

The coffee shop down the way is opening 3 minutes late with a frazzled woman who absolutely hates being late shaking as she unlocks the doors. Her girlfriend had broken up with her the night before, but she didn’t even consider not opening the store in her mental state. Gerry should give her a large tip whenever he heads out. 

Gertrude is at the archives already as always, she… 

Shit. 

She didn’t even sleep. 

Probably, again, he is definitely not Knowing this and just assuming based on… Something. Pattern recognition. Probably. 

Welp, that’ll be why the Eye forced him awake well before his scheduled attempt at becoming nocturnal again. She must be working a pretty bad case to have worked through the witching hour again, it’s her favorite time of day. She loves being lulled to sleep by the screams and terror being experienced by all those who prescribe to the cursed times belief system. 

He sighs and swings himself out of bed, ignoring the swaying and lilting that tries to bring him down from his fast rise. He applies his makeup as fast as possible - it’s a different vibe when it’s messy, but still gets the point across - and heads out the door before the clock strikes 8:30. He stops at Nina’s for a coffee. 

He hesitates when she asks if he wants anything else. He could grab something for Michael. They’ve only technically met a couple of times, but he knows he’ll be there, it might open up a line of dialogue. There are things he has to ask him, and Michael might get that cute redness to his cheeks that happens everytime someone notices him more than he thinks he deserves to be noticed. 

He gets a vanilla chai for Michael (he assumes Michael never allows himself to get the sweet teas) and a black tea for Gertrude. It would look weird if he only got something for Michael. 

The 50 pound note slots easily into the tip jar and he takes the tube towards the institute.

Gerry is NOT at all (definitely not) looking forward to seeing Michael all safe and sound after that insanity inducing night. He hasn’t even begun to detangle everything he saw when asked to peer into the unknowable. All that is at the forefront of his mind for it is that Michael is not in danger, but was once. 

And… 

Gerry hesitates even within his own mind to say it. 

It’s possible that Michael was already turned into an avatar. A part of him, anyway. It seems unlikely with everything Gerry has seen of him. He seems whole enough, he’s certainly bound to the eye which couldn’t happen if he was a separate avatar. 

So Gerry really doesn’t know how he saw Michael Shelley within the center of the creature of dillusion from last night. It shouldn’t be possible, it’s probably just another silly dillusion shown to him, but his Eyes had seen it, and they have always had a basis for their sight so far. 

Even if the creature isn’t actually Michael, like he had seen, there is some strong link between the two. 

So, it’s not at all interesting that Gerry has a bit of a pep in his step on his way down the stairs of the Magnus Institute, towards the Archives. He’s just on a case, a mystery is waiting to be solved. He’s not at all excited to have his 4th ever conversation with the grapefruit smelling bubble of warmth that is Michael Shelley. 

Not at all. 

Of course, his steps stop dead when he opens the door and registers the scene in front of him. His blood runs cold for just a moment - a moment full of the nostalgic feeling of fear, a moment of dread, a moment of hopelessness as he returns to the moment where he walked in on his father bleeding and smiling with empty eyes and one last “I love you” before he never got to see him again - before his blood can start boiling over. He stomps his feet in his rage toward the two figures obscured in his blood-red vision. The cup carrier hits the desk with a bang and, with more energy than he had ever heard from himself, says “What do you think you are doing?”

Michael and Gertrude stop completely still, Michael’s face drops from a grimace of pain to a wide eyed fear, Gertrudes‘ from that of determination to that of shock, and both slowly turn their heads to the goth. 

Michael is half in his desk chair and half kneeling, leaning almost entirely back against the mess of papers on his desk that would usually be perfectly neat. Above him is Gertrude, the fury in her eyes fading, with her hands pressed against his neck. Michael’s arms are against Gertrude’s shoulders, he was trying to push her off of him as she cornered him in and down. 

Gertrudes mouth slams shut and her shock turns once again to fury as she realizes she has nearly been compelled. Taste of your own medicine, and all that. 

Michael opens himself up to the compulsion (or more likely doesn’t even realize you can try to resist at all) and sobs out, “She attacked me! I- I couldn’t help her, with, with whatever she was asking me. But she- she didn’t, I could have helped! I just didn’t know, and then she was- she was so close and I tried to, to, to get away, but, she,” He takes a moment to breath, tears glistening as they fall down well traveled lines. “She’s so much stronger than I thought, and I don’t want to hurt her, but then she was on top of me and- and- oh god.”

He vomits directly on the wooden floor under his desk. 

Gertrude is standing upright now, silent, watching. She straightens her back and flicks her gaze between the seething goth and the man curling over himself trying to put the oxygen back in his lungs and his mental marble pedestals on the ground where they belong. 

She is the first to notice the second head of golden curls that takes the seat Michael is no longer leaning on. Gerry is the second to notice the long limbs splayed across Michael’s desk - legs that seem to go on forever are propped up in a distorted semblance of relaxing. 

Michael would have hit his head on the underside of the desk when the thing starts talking if it were not for its hand there to stop his surprise. It’s surprisingly gentle with Michael’s head. 

“Well then Archivist! That was certainly one reaction to have!”

Her impassive watching morphs into a scowl. 

“I quite liked the part where you allowed him to take off his scarf first. It was… new. I’m sure you were just Salivating at the mouth when you saw that neck open up for you.” It laughs a sweet and deadly jingle. Michael, still looking at the ground and shivering, lets out a high pitched whimper. It extends its right hand all the way out and then curls it behind its head. “It’s too bad, really. Gerry got here before I decided my own un-unmaking was worth it to Kill You, Archivist.”

Gerry grimaces at the nickname - this was no friend of his. 

The gun Gertrude is pointing at the creature is silver. She cocks it back smoothly, her breathing is even. Gerry’s is a swift inhale.

“Hmm…” The creature (Gerry wants to call it Michael. Why does the Eye call this thing Michael?) Tilts its head at her, noticing the gun at the same time as Gerry. “Where does one shoot an infinite being so as to strike true?”

That’s really not what Gerry was thinking. It’s a fair question though. 

“There’s no missing it.” Gertrude’s long grey shawl blows cinematically as a BANG clatters through the archives. The thousands of paper statements lining the walls and the shelves in the archives proper do much to dampen the blow, but it still rattles around Gerry and Michael’s brains. He short circuits for less than a second, but it is more than enough time for the creature to be…

Standing up now. 

It’s tall, extremely tall. It’s all joints and angles and yet it slinks gracefully in a curved path. There are ripples in the air and its hair follows suit. A single bullet is suspended in the thickest air ripples, about a foot from the end of the barrel. It saunters (one step, one step, two, three, five) around the bullet and Gertrude, laughing at her twitching right hand and deepening scowl. 

“Oh Gertrude. Gerty, Gerty, Gerty. Archivist.” It pops the last t sound. “That would make far too much sense.”

Gerry, as quietly as possible, sneaks around to where Michael is still cowering beneath the desk. He pays attention to staying out of the direction the bullet was headed in and pulls Michael towards the archives proper. 

“Guns kill people, Archivist.” It has a jovial smirk on. “It’s what they were made for.”

Michael is shaking, his shoulders are rounded and he accepts Gerry’s arms and shoulder to cry on as he guides them to a space they are less likely to be in immediate danger in. Gerry soothes Michael, petting at his hair and giving quiet shushes when his sobs start to be too loud for a comfortable time hiding. He keeps his eyes on the Gertrude situation. 

The creature continues to circle Gertrude like a predator to its prey. Gertrude does not look scared, per-say, but she stays rod-still, swaying only in the way one does when focused upon by infinity. Her left hand is still holding the gun, her right still shakes in betrayal of her true feelings. 

It stops right at her ear. “I am not a people, Archivist. And I’m certainly not what you made me for.”

A shudder of breath leaves her as she sinks to her knees. 

Gerry had never seen Gertrude in a state like this. They must have some previous history, beyond just the conversation it had mentioned of the night before. Gertrude is so much better at hiding her fear than this. 

And yet, what would Gerry do, what did Gerry do, in this situation yesterday? He bowed to its power. 

Gertrude does too. 

It gives a single bitter laugh and stands up to its full height. It leans over due to the low ceilings, but it just exasterbates how tall it is. “I trust you will not commit the same mistake twice.”

She breathes loudly once more. 

“Good!” It’s cheery, a mocking juxtaposition to the last 5 minutes. “Off you get then, Archivist. You have Statements to Record!”

It turns without sparing her another glance and flicks over to where Gerry has stowed away with Michael. It stands some distance away but looks worryingly over Michael. 

The similarity really is uncanny. 

It wrings it’s hands just like Michael, bites it’s lips, even turns in it’s shoulders until it’s a reasonable too-tall height, just like Michael does anytime he’s nervous. It scans over Michael, calming when Michael is obviously breathing and becoming more and more conscious. 

Gerry continues cradling him. He’s sitting on a box and Michael is in his lap, head on his right shoulder and hands clinging to his jacket lapels. His hands softly flick over his now-flattened curls. Michael no longer cries but the tears do not let up. 

He stares up at not-Michael. 

“I’d think you’re of the Stranger if I didn’t know better.”

His words seem to knock not-Michael out of some sort of (heh) spiral. It gives a small smile. “The similarities between us are noticeable, yes. You’re better at knowing the unknowable than is good for us.”

Gerry has no idea if it is talking about the similarities between not-Michael and Michael or the Stranger and the Spiral. Possibly both. 

“He’s going to be okay.”

Not-Michael looks at Gerry with an indescribable expression for a long time. Is it regret? Sadness? Finally it grimaces and sets its mouth firm. It nods. “Yes. Of course.”

It seems, for a moment, like it’s going to reach out to comfort Michael, but it stops itself. Instead a door-that-is-not-there appears and disappears with Not-Michael with it. 

Gerry lets out a breath he did not know he was holding. 

He squeezes Michael tighter.

Gertrude drags herself up from the floor. She glances for a long moment at the two of them. Her eyes… she holds a weariness within her that Gerry has never seen before. He’s seen her calculating, sizing him and everyone around her up. He’s seen her angry, ready to do whatever it takes. Even her fear earlier was not all that surprising, though her inability to hide it was. 

No, in this moment there are previously unseen bags under her eyes. Her wrinkles droop down further than they ever have before. Her eyebrows are scruffy and her hair floats in wisps down her shoulders, a contrast to her normally sharp and well tamed hair. She looks tired. 

She turns toward her office and locks the door sharply. Gerry knows she will not be coming out for quite some time. 

Michael would probably call what he’s doing “resting his eyes,” but he lays asleep on Gerry’s shoulders, worn out from the adrenaline leaving his system. 

Now that there is no more threat Gerry can appreciate that this was not the 4th meeting he had wanted from the man. He’s still cute though. 

He really shouldn’t stay here, Gertrude could try again at any time, but Gerry feels almost self conscious about moving the sleeping Michael without his knowledge. Where would they even go? He can’t take an unconscious man on the tube, that would only raise questions he couldn’t answer. Taxi then. 

Michael wakes enough to walk with him, leaning his lanky body mostly on Gerry. They pile into the taxi and Michael wraps both his arms around Gerry. Gerry turns to look out at the passing buildings so Michael wouldn’t be able to catch a glimpse of the red shining through his foundation. 

What a way to start the day.

Notes:

What a way to start the day indeed, Gerry my Beloved.
This is my fic and I get to say that it was crush at first sight! I get to do what I want! I get to play with them like dolls, skin-free dolls that don’t want to kill me :)
Dear Ao3: let me use Markdown UwU pwees I want to have Markdown not HTML
I think my Michael speaks a bit more like Canon Nikola than Canon Michael, but I’ve never met a Canon in my life so who cares lmao

Chapter 4: The Good and the Bad of the Future and Past

Summary:

Michael and Gerry meet for the first time, in the past

Michael experiences grief

Michael and Gerry meet for the last time, in the past

Notes:

This chapter is dedicated to listening to Agnes by the Glass Animals on repeat for at least 13 hours in the last 2 days. Comfort song of the century, and I definitely don’t know all the words somehow.

What do you get when you mix a sad (sad is such a meaningless word, but there’s like 5000 words here that kinda explain it) author and an upcoming sad chapter? Yup! An extra early chapter. That’s right boys, I decided to read through chapter 4 today and then got all emotional about it (*again*, I’ve literally done this before within the last month since it’s been written) and decided to post it on a Tuesday rather then waiting for Sunday. I’ll probably still post on Sunday, but it’s my fic and my rules.
Anyway, beware emotions. It starts off happy though!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Life was hectic. 

That’s how he would describe his new life with his new job and his new flat and his same old thoughts floating around and crashing down on him from time to time. Same old Michael, same old lack of style, same old anxieties and crushing fear of loosing himself through all of it. 

Yeah, life is hectic. 

He settles down to another day of work with his first mug of coffee of the day and a spooky story to spend the time. The work is a lot - especially considering he’s just an intern - but quite interesting all things told. Sure, none of the particularly spooky bits are real, but every story is founded in some basis of truth and finding exactly what most likely happened is actually really rewarding. 

The coffee is bitter even with his addition of milk and sugar, but that’s the price you pay for the instant stuff. Maybe he’ll bring in his French press one of these days, or pay a visit to the thrift stores to look for a new-to-him one to leave here. It seems like he’s here to stay as of now, might as well make himself comfortable. 

BANG

The door slams open at 9:13 right when he settles down to get started with his day. Michael jumps higher than he’d admit, but his heart rate doesn’t settle as he hears loud clomping running go past the assistant’s office and watches as a dark haired and dark clothed man runs past the door. 

Towards Gertrudes room. 

Towards Gertrudes room!

People aren’t supposed to be down this way unsupervised!

He chases after him but the man is already inside her office before Michael even enters the hallway. The door slams shut behind him and Michael creeps up to the door. 

Voices ring out from behind it. 

“Gerard! I thought I told you not to come to the Archives, it’s for emergencies onl-“

“Gertrude!” His voice is deep and insistent, a contrast to Gertrude, his boss, who has a piercing midrange voice. “They called the cops on me!”

Michael’s skin gets cold and a pit of dread settles in his stomach. Is this man a threat to Gertrude? 

“That’s your own fault then, I told you not to get caught.”

The man lets out a frustrated growl, “I wasn’t caught. They knew I was coming.”

The scoff Gertrude lets out can still clearly be heard through the walls to where Michael stands, debating with himself on whether he’s eavesdropping or just making sure Gertrude is okay. She’s just a little old woman, he really hopes he’s not allowing her to get hurt by not barging in right then. 

“I don’t see how this pertains to me. You knew the risks. And you know how your name will make the cops react. If they haven’t already gotten you, they’ve probably completely pushed it under the rug by now.”

There are footsteps, loud and heavy ones, they seem to pace her office. 

“It’s not the cops I’m worried about. You know that. They knew I was coming, Gertrude. How did they know?” He sounds more level headed now than before, but hints of frustration still growl behind his words. 

“I’m sure you’re not accusing me of anything to do with it.”

The silence speaks volumes. 

“No. I suppose not.” 

“Good. Did you get it?”

He laughs, bewildered. “Yes. Yes I did.”

Michael presses himself up against a wall, hoping he can pretend to be doing important research while the man’s footsteps get closer to the door. 

The knob jiggles and then stops with the words, “And Gerry?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t talk to Michael on the way out.”

“Of course.”

“Now get out of my Archives.”

“Of course.”

The man steps out of the doorframe and immediately locks his eyes onto the blond trying to stare at a bookshelf in the hallway. He closes the door behind him and takes two large steps closer to Michael. He leans a forearm against the bookshelf and stares resolutely at the statements contained within. 

He’s so close to Michael. If Michael were to swing his head to the left he’d likely hit his forehead with his nose. Michael’s breathing is shaky and he focuses on it. In. Out. Like a normal person. He can do normal. In his peripheral vision he can see hair, long and straight and dyed black. He can see a black denim jacket and a plethora of spikes on the shoulders. 

In. Out. 

“What are we looking at?” He whispers, if Michael were less scared of the man he’d recognize the obvious smirk in his voice. 

Michael swallows. Hard. “Uh, for, uh…”

“Ah, I know! Statement of Ellie Clampton, regarding, let’s see…” He pulls one out at random and flips through it. “Murderous strawberry bushes? This one should help.” 

Michael takes the offered manila folder, “Ah, yes, uh, thanks, this should, uh, definitely help.”

Gerry finally turns to Michael and flashes a black lipstick lined grin, “Any time.”

Michael takes the moment to look Gerry over properly. The most notable aspect of him is the black lines tatooed over his throat, taking the shape of an eye. There also seems to be an eye tattoo just under both of his ears - on his jaw joints. They all connect with a thin black line that trace up both sides of his neck disappears down his shirt. 

How many more eye tattoos does this man have?

He spins on his heel and walks powerfully down the corridor and Michael can breath easily again. 

Until he turns into the Archival assistant’s office. 

“Oh! Uh, hey!” Michael yelps in surprise and goes down after him. He’s picking through the statements left on his desk, all neatly stacked and sitting next to an abandoned coffee cup. 

He’s messing up his stacks!

“What are you doing?”

Gerry flicks his eyes up, meet’s Michaels, and flashes another grin before going back to the pile of statements he deftly flicks through. “Gonna have to give it a bit more oomf next time, goldy.”

”Huh?” Michael walks up to his desk and looks closer at what Gerry’s doing. He notices that all of his knuckles have eye tattoos too, all connected with thin black lines that trace up the sides of his fingers. He also has defined tendons. 

Why am I taking notice of this random man’s tendons? Wtf brain? Now is literally not the time.

“Ah! Here we go!” He flourishes the statement like a bouquet and bows as he hands it to Michael. “Murderous succulents! Looks like we’ve got a mean spirited gardener on our hands.”

Michael, now holding two surprisingly similar cases, can only stammer. 

“No thanks needed, really.” He leans up against an empty desk - well, all the desks other than Michael’s are empty. He leans up against a not-Michael’s desk. “I just needed an excuse to disobey the resident authority figure. It’s for the branding.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal that he can purposefully disobey the one person Michael has been trying for weeks to appeal to. 

He sets the two statements neatly on the middle of his desk, taking his time and allowing his mind to be settled with the order he applies to his desk. He can feel the eyes of Gerry watching his little process, he can see them trace up his arms and he tugs down the sweater he had pushed up, covering his pale, long, and far too lithe arms. 

Gerry lets out a little cough and stands straight up. “Right, then, uh, I’ll go then. I’m Gerard, but you can call me Gerry.”

“I’m Michael.”

“I know.” He flashes a final grin as Michael glares at him. “Caio!”

And with that Michael has concluded the first time he met the infamous Gerard Keay.

What a meeting. 

***

Michael stands — or sits or lays or is or is not — in an empty void full of flat planes that curve and overlap and continue on and on and on to infinity. It is darker than its previous void space but just as comforting, the fractals of planes stretching away from it and extending in all directions let a wandering eye get lost for hours. 

And oh how Michael’s wandering Eye got lost in it. 

It walks the white abstract lines alone now. It balances on one foot and its other limbs splay out for balance. It falls around the line, landing in a different direction of gravity. It takes another step. 

In its mind — fragmented thoughts, held together by silly string and static — it imagines Gerry walking alongside it. Gerry would comment on the darkness, mention how it’s not like Michael at all and yet if Michael accepts it then Gerry would cherish it just like everything else. He would grip onto a line and place every foot with caution, even though he Knew Michael wouldn’t let him die. He would look at the continuitive nature of the space and remark on how full Michael is of life. 

Michael misses having someone who still thought he contained life. 

If Gerry were here, he would Look at Michael and call him beautiful. He would smile at him. 

Michael would be filled with a warmth that it could never explain, never express, and could only ever hope Gerry Knew about. 

Gerry is dead. 

The thought bursts through Michael's approximation of a gut like a gunshot — like what Gertrude’s gun would assuredly never be able to do to it. It spasms, falling off one ledge and through a line, then hitting another with its forehead. 

Gerry is dead and Michael will never see him again. 

Of course, Michael has thought this before. Has known this. 

Has felt this pain before. 

This racing pain, pulsing through the blood it only now realizes is there, it traces up it’s torso and burns through it’s face. It’s fingers twitch with grief and its knees curl into its chest. 

Gerry died three years ago. 

His eyes are hollow and his skin has none of his usual color. His cheeks curve in and the light brown of his roots is long before the black dye hits. He looks like death has come for him and he has begged for one last day. 

Michael can feel it in the air. 

Gerry notices Michael at the door. Even with his misery, the pain killers, and the boring white of the hospital room, his eyes light up when he sees Michael. He shifts in the bed so Michael can sit next to him, he says nothing but looks grateful. 

They sit next to each other in silence for a long while. Michael rubs little circles on Gerry’s leg, unsure of what to do here. It wants to appreciate the time they have together, it wants to find that joy that they can always create. It wants to replace the smell of death in the air with their laughter. 

It feels like a goodbye. And it doesn’t want to get to it. 

Gerry stares at Michael’s clothes, tracing its endless patterns and shifting colors with his eyes. Michael closes its eyes and feels the warmth radiating from Gerry. He’s not dead yet. He’s alive. He’s still there. 

They continue to sit in silence. 

Finallly, Gerry lets out a long sigh. Michael shakes its head ‘no’ and snakes a hand around his waist. It leans its head on his shoulder. Gerry continues to radiate a warmth that cannot possibly be attributed to a dead man. His light shudders are that of a properly functioning human body. One that’s crying. 

“I’m sorry, Michael.” His words hold regret and sadness, he chokes on its name.

Michael turns its head into the shoulder, shielding itself from needing to see anything. It can’t do this, it can’t deal with a goodbye. It shouldn’t have come, but it could not possibly pull itself away. Not anymore. It’s not leaving. It can’t. 

“I Know.” He sniffles a little and gives a single bitter laugh, “I know you won’t be able to say it back.” 

It squeezes a little tighter. It doesn’t want this to end. It doesn’t want to confront what they both know. What Gerry is saying. If it speaks it will be Real and Michael wants to stay in its little bubble of unreality. 

It wants to stay with Gerry. 

Gerry wraps his arms around Michael’s shoulders and gives it a squeeze. “This is real Michael.”

It whines a little. 

“Can you be here for a moment?” Gerry is begging for Michael to stop hiding. To be there for him after Gerry has been there for it so much. Michael would do anything for Gerry. 

It nods as it tries to pull itself to reality. It focuses on Gerry’s heartrate — it is steady but faint — and squeezes Gerry even harder, relishing the friction and feeling of his familiar skin. “I’m here. I’m here for you,” it whines. 

“I know, minnow. I Know. I See you.” 

Gerry can definitely feel Michael’s tears on his shoulder, but he says nothing as Michael gasps for breath and sniffles. Michael can feel an occasional drop of liquid fall onto its own shoulder, so it’s not alone. His hand soothes over Michaels’ neck and back. 

After a long moment Gerry gently maneuvers the two of them so that they are facing each other, their faces inches away from each other. Looking into his eyes is too much, much too much, so it memorizes his face. It notes the curve of his nose, it counts his freckles, it carves the shape of his eyebrows into its memories. 

Gerry gives a small smile and squints his eyes. He places his hands on Michael’s neck and cheeks, directing its eyes to focus on him. On the inside of him. On his soul and his power. On what makes Gerry Gerry.

They make eye contact. Michael can See Gerry. Gerry can Know Michael. 

“I love you, minnow. I-“ he chokes off his sentence, his eyes filled once more with water. “It’s the most important thing I’ve ever said in my life. I love you. So-“ He can’t make it through any more and leans forward to rest his forehead on Michael’s chest. He whines even as he gasps and clutches at Michael’s sweater.

Michael cradles him, wrapping him up in long arms and soothing sounds. Gerry sniffles quietly. “I love you too, Bookburner.” It reconsiders the title. “Gerry. Sweet Gerry. My Gerry.”

Muffled, he says, “You don’t have to say that just because I did. Just because I’m…” 

Michael brings Gerry up to be face to face again. They lock eyes. It whispers, “I’m not lying this time.” Gerry blinks. “I love you.” 

Gerry Looks for a moment more before his eyebrows break and the tears flow like a heavy stream. They lock lips, embracing tightly and breathing heavily. Their kiss is wet with tears and snot; they gasp into each others mouths. The kiss is unimportant but for the way they can be even closer. They grasp at each others backs, trapping one another in their every curve. It’s a hug and a kiss and a togetherness that stems from grief and fear and love. 

When they break apart it’s all too soon. They take their time peeling away their layers. They stop the kiss first, leaning their heads against each other and whisper unrepeatable “forever”s until they are too numb to even cry anymore. Then they back up from each other, keeping their hands clasped and roaming but no longer pressed side to side. 

Even when Michael stands up their hands do not leave each other. 

Michael takes the time to scan Gerry again and Gerry does the same.

“Say it again.” Its voice cracks with static and emotion. Gerry’s eyes snap up to connect with its. “Please. I- I can’t. Please.”

The corners of Gerry’s mouth turn up and his eyebrows come together in a deep but understanding sadness. He gives it a moment and then, with emotion, “I love you Michael. I have always loved you. You were the best thing to ever happen to me. Even in death I will love you. Michael. I love you.” 

It kisses him, far too short and chaste but it’s all they can manage. It’s everything they can do. 

Michael falls to its knees, lines of white and black wrap around it as it remembers the hardest day of all parts of it. It spins and stays still and floats in a plethora of pain and numbness. It’s all parts of its own grief, every moment is real and separate connected by the searing reality of death pressing in on Michael. 

Gerry is dead and gone and Michael has already dealt with it and yet it will never go away. This pit of dread and this missing piece of itself that is gone with him has not left or healed in the 3 years since their last meeting. Michael has pushed it away, refused to acknowledge it, but it has not lost its skin-tearing edge or its horrifyingly deep sense of despair. 

Michael is just as sad now as the day it felt Gerry’s light leave the world. 

And to think, the only reason this is coming up is because Michael saw Gerry again. 

Young Gerry, unblemished Gerry, a Gerry just as beautiful and ethereal as the day Michael met him. 

But that’s not its Gerry. 

The Gerry out there, out in the real world, out in the past and the present, is a Gerry without Michael. Without the smile Michael had come to cherish. Without the knowledge of Michael’s deepest fears. 

A Gerry without Michael is no Gerry of Michael’s.

And that’s crushing, to see the one you love and mourned walking around with no clue what he’s doing to you. To see him smile with reserve again, instead of his doting wide grin. To see the fear within his eyes caused by Michael. To be surface level once again with the only person who ever got deeper. 

It physically lost Gerry three years ago, and it lost its Gerry three days ago. 

The pain coursing through its heart — an aching heartache — is proof enough that Michael had never truly lost Gerry. Its Gerry was still alive and well in its subconscious, its Gerry was still being tended to and loved and cherished. 

And now Gerry is wrong. 

And Gerry will never be right again. 

Michael continues to spiral in this void of wrongness and its mind of wrong Gerrys. It stays there until time has meaning once more and it knows it stayed too long. It stays there until its form stabilizes into gold and skin and clothes and it knows it formed wrong. It stays until there is a Gerry in its mind that is a warped version of what Michael knows Gerry once was. There is nothing that can be done. Gerry is gone. The new one has forever shifted its memory of him. 

It stays until its tears take the concept of water once again. 

It stays too long. 

It could not have pulled itself together any faster. 

Inevitability is funny like that. 

Michael does not laugh. 

Cackles ring out anyway. 

Notes:

How’d you do? I’ve cried to this chapter only like 3 times, so like, whatever. lol

It’ll all be fine.

Chapter 5: Thinking

Summary:

Michael wakes up on Gerry’s couch after Gertrude tried to kill him. They talk.

Gerry thinks about the entire situation he finds himself within.

??? (The author flexes their thermodynamics class)

Notes:

Me reading the cringy cute stuff I’ve written: I write for myself. I write for myself. The intended audience is myself. It’s cute not cringe. It’s fanfic. It’s meant to be cringe. I love it. It’s for me.

Anyway, Fluff! Flirting! Have some niceties after last chapters sadities:)

If you get confused during the last section (you’ll know it), I explain a couple of the words at the bottom :)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The sweet notes of vanilla drift pleasantly through the room. There is also the bitter hint of coffee and an underlying musk of dust and… oranges? Like, blood oranges. 

The surface he lays on is soft, though he can feel a spring poking his lower back through a particularly worn section of the couch. As he wiggles to wakefulness he notices his back tweaking slightly. 

When he opens his eyes he is glad at the dark ambience that greets him. Light emanates through the darkly curtained windows, but it’s just barely enough to see by. There is a black and red blanket draped over him and he can see the shapes of what look to be band posters lining the walls. 

Michael’s head falls to the side when he thinks (incorrectly) that he’s awake enough to sit up. Instead, he’s able to observe the coffin shaped coffee table in the middle of the room. It has “Do Not Open” scratched into the top, but upon further inspection it is just a top - it sits on six criss-crossed legs made of a matte black metal. A desk covered in papers (statements Michael swears he recognizes, even without being close enough to read any of the text. So that’s where the statement of Patty Gorical went) and a closed laptop adorns the far wall. 

A clatter arises from behind him and he jerks slightly, finally aware enough to move his body in ways he wants to. 

“Oh, you’re finally awake.” 

Skyrim at this hour? Really?

Though, Michael doesn’t really know what hour it is. This could be prime Skyrim quoting hours. 

Rather than continue down those lines of thoughts, he pushes himself up into a sitting position, taking the blanket with him. He looks over at Gerry who is actively wiping up spilled bread crumbs into his hand to throw out, a plate containing a slightly disheveled sandwich being the likely culprit. He glances up to lock eyes with Michael, smiling sheepishly. 

“Sorry sorry, I was just gonna leave this by you for when you woke up. Startled me a bit, heh.”

Micheal feels the corners of his mouth quirk up. “Thanks, uh, I guess. Or, sorry.” He winces, god he’s so awkward. 

Michael looks around the apartment more while Gerry walks over. The kitchen is painted a landlord-white and has an island jutting from the wall. Gerry’s taste in decoration and furniture heavily match his fashion sense — it’s all black and silver, fancy silver knickknacks like the intricate ashtray mingle with cheap plastic skulls and dusty antiques. 

He sets the sandwich containing plate on the coffee table and a to-go cup next to it. “I, uh, got you tea. It should still be warm, I didn’t know what you liked…” Gerry rubs his neck in nervousness, looking down and away from him. “I figured you’d like a Vanilla Chai. If you’d rather have my coffee though, I haven’t drunken from it yet, so you can pick whichever.”

Michael has no idea what social protocols he should be following right now. He stares at Gerry, his mouth a little open, in complete awe of this magnificent show of care. Why is he doing this? 

He knew he was going home with Gerry earlier, while he was completely numb but still able to walk. He had woken up and not been completely disoriented - he’s the one who sat himself down on the couch, after all. 

But to have Gerry be so nice to him?

He made him a sandwich? And got him a tea he thought he’d like? (And was right???) And is biting his lips? Like he doesn’t know he’s being the most thoughtful person Michael has ever interacted with?

So what the hell is Michael supposed to say here? “Oh, uh, I like Vanilla Chais. They’re one of my favorite teas, actually.” Great, now Michael was avoiding eye contact, hoping Gerry misses the hint of pink definitely staining his cheeks. “Thank you, so much. You didn’t have to do anything like this.”

Gerry shrugs and plops down on the other side of the springy couch with his own sandwich and cup of coffee. “So then. How are you feeling?”

Michael’s stomach sinks at the question. He grabs the sandwhich and takes a bite. Chewing, he ponders. He was a mess earlier, that much he knows. It was hard to think of anything without also imagining those firm fingers wrapped around his neck, that look in her eyes of pure indifference at the act of murdering him. There was rage, there was determination, but there was no second guessing. 

She was really going to do it. 

So yeah, he was rather wrapped up about that earlier. 

But now? In Gerry’s home, the comforting scent of their drinks and the deeper scent of Gerry himself wraps around them. It’s dark and cozy, and Gerry is being just so thoughtful. It’s hard to truly remember why he’d been so worked up. 

It’s still there, the fear and adrenaline are available to him. But they are dormant. 

Here he feels safe, in a way that almost scares him. He barely knows Gerry, he’s never been here before, why would he feel safe here? But his logic has no influence over his fight or flight, and here he decides is as safe a space as any. 

He decides to tell the truth. “I feel much better than earlier. It’s… nice here.”

Gerry opens his arms wide and gestures at the room around them, “Well welcome to my abode. It’s been a while since it’s seen any visitors, so you’ll have to excuse the dust.” He gives a little grin and returns to his sandwich. After another bite he looks Michael in the eyes, “I’m glad you’re doing better though. That can’t have been a good experience for you. I had nightmares about my strangulation for weeks when I was kid, it’s okay if you aren’t okay right away, yeah?”

He lets his eyes wander the room before registering the words and turning to Gerry. “When, when you were a kid?” God he hopes that was just a nightmare. 

He doesn’t want to imagine child Gerry getting… He nods. 

Shit. 

“Yeah, I uh… Had a pretty rough childhood.” Gerry smiles through the grimace. ‘Rough’, huh. “I’m sure you’ve read some of the statements with my mother, Mary. Mary Keay.”

Double shit. 

“That- That was your mother? Oh Gerry,” he scoots closer to Gerry, hesitating only slightly before grabbing his hands. Michael has always been physical with his friends. “I’m so sorry, I had no idea.”

Gerry shakes his head, dismissing his dotes. “Nah, it’s okay. She’s dead now. I don’t do what she tells me to. I’m my own person. That’s what I, well, try to tell myself. It works, usually.” 

He squeezes his hands again comfortingly, trying to put all the things he can’t put into words in the squeeze. 

Gerry shakes off his growing distance and locks eyes with Michael again, giving a wry smile and tilting his head. “Anyway, I’ve got some experience with dealing with stuff like that, so, you know, I can help you through it.” 

Michael’s smile is as grateful as he can make it. “Thank you, really. You’re too kind.”

Gerry’s nose does a little scrunch, causing a series of crinkles around his eyes that look quite cute. “Come on man, I’ve got this whole intimidating image to uphold. You can’t be saying things like that.”

He giggles. “Yeah? What, goths can’t be kind?”

“No, they,” Gerry harumphs, “No, goths can be kind, but I have the whole ‘will step on you if you get in my way’ vibe going around the community.”

Michael is proud of his ability to keep the ‘*promise*?’ he thinks within his thoughts this time. It’s a close one, he had taken the shallow breath in and everything. He looks away and his cheeks go pink again. 

He misses Gerry’s eyes going wide and his own cheeks starting to burn while he stutters, trying to pass off the situation as if the Eye didn’t just provide him that particularly loud thought of Michael’s. “So, uh, I’d really rather people continued to, uh, Think, and know me as intimidating.”

Gerry stands, taking his sandwhich with him. He shuffles his feet a bit as he decides what to do. Michael keeps his gaze (and blushing face) directed firmly at his own half finished sandwhich. “Well, I mean, I don’t find you intimidating,” Michael says wryly. 

“Really? And why not?”

“It’s rather hard to find the man who was holding me in his arms and petting my hair gently while I cried all that intimidating.”

“I would find that quite intimidating” he looks Michael directly in the eyes, responding to the challenge.

“Really? The man who whispered sweet words in my ear to soothe me and helped me calm down after my boss tried to kill me? You’d call the man intimidating in that situation?”

“Absolutely. You don’t know why he did that, he could be, could be, uh, buttering you up. You don’t know.” Gerry flings his eyes all across the room avoiding eye contact and crossing back to his kitchen. He fiddles with the cleaning rack for a moment. 

Michael finds and holds Gerry’s gaze even as Gerry wavers. “Well. Are you?”

Gerry blinks. 

Michael cocks his head slightly. 

Gerry blinks again. “Do you want me to be?”

He gives a small smile in answer and hides his face as it turns tomato red once again. He brings his now empty plate over to Gerry and allows him to clean it. 

That particular conversation, by both of their shared understandings, ends there. It will lurk in the background of their minds for days to come. This whole will-they/won’t-they that they have going on is going to eat them up from the inside out. 

Michael wanders over to Gerry’s desk. He scans the statements that aren’t technically allowed to leave the institute (yup, there’s the ones that he’s been looking for for weeks) and finds post it notes stuck to every page with large sharpie writing on them, complete with arrows and addresses. 

“What’s a ‘Leitner’?”

His question is out before he even realizes he’s asking it. Gerry sets down the sponge and plate he’s holding and just looks at Michael for a long moment. Michael gets the distinct sense of being watched in a more powerful way then he’s ever felt when away from the Archives. It’s not a pleasant feeling, but it doesn’t seem malicious, so he just crosses his arms over his chest and waits for it to pass. 

“What?”

“A Leitner? You mention it a couple of times here.” 

“Yeah, no, I know what a Leitner is. Do…” Gerry looks even closer at him. “Do you not know what a Leitner is?”

Michael feels oddly self conscious and really wishes this weird feeling would pass already. Whenever it happens at work it usually goes away after a second or two. “I mean, ah, I’ve heard of Mr. Leitner. If it’s in reference to him.”

“Mister…” Gerry whispers in disbelief. He comes around the counter and grabs Michael’s elbow, leading him back to the couch to sit down. “Jurgen Leitner, the rich prick that killed countless interns and released even more evil into the world, that's the man we’re talking about. Yes, his books are called Leitners.”

There’s a tickle within Michael, just a general sense of unease. He gets the sense that he doesn’t know what they are talking about right now. He gets the sense that he should know something he doesn’t. Why doesn’t he Know?

“He didn’t actually kill all those interns though, right? Surely the police would’ve caught him-“

“Since when have the police ever done their job right when near a rich man?”

Michael winces. “Yeah, I know. The interns deserved better retribution. But isn’t ‘released evil into the world’ a bit much for a guy that just collected some messed up books?” He’s never believed in the supernatural, not in any way that wasn’t pushed out of him time and time again. The books are weird, yeah, but ultimately they all have reasonable explaination for how they got their stories. 

Right?

Gerry stares at him with wide eyes. Michael’s cheeks heat up and the urge to curl up against Gerry’s uninterrupting stare is strong. ”Messed up- what are you even saying right now, Michael? Messed up is more than a little bit tame for what these books do to people.”

“What?” He shakes his head. No, absolutely not. Gerry is pulling a fast one with him and he won’t fall for it. There are the things that are real and there are the things that aren’t, and whatever these ‘Leitner’s apparently do falls squarely in the not-real category. 

“Michael…” Gerry is looking at him with such sympathy and sorrow. 

Michael jerks away from him, the emotion being too much, and too wrong for this situation. Why would Gerry be sympathetic about silly little books, why would he be so Sorry for him? It’s wrong. 

It’s not real, he knows it’s not real, Ryan was not real, none of it was real, it’s not real. 

Gerry stays on the couch while Michael gets up to ruffle through the papers still on the desk. He’s looking for something but he’s being too frantic about it. He can’t make out any of the words in his blurry haze - ah, he’s crying now. 

“Michael…” 

“What? What do you want? I’m looking, I’m looking for, for- I don’t know!”

Gerry sighs behind him, maneuvering to stand a comfortable distance away. “I’m so sorry, Michael.”

“Sorry for what?” He snaps, still grabbing papers and tossing them aside without much regard for how they land either on the other side of the desk or the ground. 

Gerry softly picks up a paper he hadn’t gotten to yet, setting it gently on the coffee table. “I didn’t know how much you didn’t know.”

“*You* don’t know what you’re talking about. I know! I know enough! It, it” He takes a shaky breath, his anger slowly dissolving into despair and both his anger and despair showing themselves with tears. “It can’t be real. I- I was told it wasn’t real and, and, it wasn’t. It wasn’t real. It *can’t* be real.”

“All of it.” Gerry puts his hand on Michael’s shoulder as he slows his grasping at straws. “All of it is real.” Michael buries his head into Gerry’s shoulder for the second time today, gripping at the back of his shirt and choking down his sobs. He continues to shake his head and he feels Gerry’s soft assurances and strong arms holding them up. 

All Michael feels cannot be summed into words. He knows he’s crazy. He’s been through this before, believing the things like this is how you get put into asylums. He knows he has to reject it, the thought that there are books that summon deadly strawberries or drop you into a never ending pit. It can’t be real, because none of it is real. 

And yet the 7 year old Michael who saw his best friend walk through a door-that-never-was is latching onto the only person who is offering up what he knew was the truth. He, little Michael, needs it to be true. He needs that hope. That hope that he’s not crazy. 

He also desperately hopes it’s all a big game. If it’s not…

There’s a lot of bad out in the world. 

Michael mumbles into his chest, begs, “tell me.” He needs to know more, he needs to be brought out of the dark. 

Gerry continues his soft pets and they are laying on the couch. “I will. I’ll tell you.”

Michael’s tears slow and his breathing, loud and jagged, quiets to just an occasional large breath. He lessens the force he is grabbing Gerry but does not let go. They sit together, Michael laying on him, for a long time. 

It’s nice. 

Michael has always needed physical touch more than most. He’s been called needy, too much, his want to touch and be touched in return often comes across in the wrong way. Friendships have been called off because he went too strong too fast, and it’s hard to make more when the best way to communicate your love is usually met with contempt. 

He’s been alone for a long time now. 

But Gerry keeps his arms around Michael without any hard conversations about how he will do it only to appease Michael; he’s doing it on his own. Gerry’s soft touches ground him in a way he has not felt in many years, maybe ever. The circles he traces onto his back keep him from drifting through his void space of thought. 

It’s nice, having someone to hold onto. 

Michael takes a moment to lecture himself on keeping his feelings for Gerry platonic. Sure, he would be open for more. God, Michael would be ecstatic for more. Anything Gerry wants from him, any time, Michael would do it. But Gerry doesn’t mean it in that way. Gerry is being nice, kind despite his image, and doesn’t like Michael in that way. 

And that’s okay. Michael can deal with this being platonic. He can tamp down the butterflies threatening to stir his stomach up. He can keep his touches intentionally friendly, no more. 

Sure, this cuddling session might be a bit much for a 4th meeting and budding friendship, but he was attacked by his boss and told all the terrible things he’s been reading about is real. He deserves a bit of friendly contact. 

He sighs contently, snuggling deeper into Gerry’s side. Gerry is leaning on a pillow propped up against the arm rest and Michael is leaning against him. Gerry shifts to be laying properly on the couch and Michael finds himself squished between his body and the back cushions, his legs splayed off the other arm rest. 

Michael chooses not to move. 

It has been a long day, even though Michael has been awake for all of 2 hours total. Tomorrow he will have to deal with it all. He’ll have to process and decide what he’s doing about his work situation. The thought comes across his mind that he doesn’t really want to quit. Then there’s also all the things Gerry needs to tell him about the evil in the world. 

But that’s all a tomorrow problem. 

For now, he feels his mind winding down, calming with the constant rise of Gerry’s breath taking place right under his ear. The darkness closes in on his sight and he sleeps. 

***

Gerry surprises himself by drifting off to sleep. It’s not a deep sleep, but he’s missed so many nights over the course of his life that it’s enough to be restful. 

And the pretty boy wrapped around his waist probably has nothing to do with his good mood as he opens his eyes. 

Probably. 

He takes a moment — an incredibly self indulgent moment — to stare down at the sleeping face on his chest. The tear streaks have mostly dissolved into his pale freckled cheeks. His eye lashes are long and a dirty blond, his eyebrows serene and golden. His hair is messy — matted and frizzy and all the things he’s never seen Michael allow himself to be before. Michael’s arms wrap around his waist and his legs pin down Gerry’s own. 

He thinks he’d be able to push him off if he really wanted to get up, but he’s certainly not going to try it. Michael is far too cute sleeping to wake up. 

There is a hair tie on the side table by Gerry’s head. It’s a hard elastic, he’s pretty sure that’s bad for curly hair, but he can’t imagine Michael will much care about that. Not when his hair is up and off of his neck, where Gerry needs his own to be when he’s overwhelmed. He starts gently picking strands up, detangling them one by one, and gathering them up. 

While working, being sure to keep Michael asleep for as long as possible, he thinks. 

Michael knows nothing. 

For being an archival assistant that’s pretty damn good at his job, that’s incredibly impressive. Gerry had been given some statements to reference while looking for a Leitner, and the research was well done and thorough. It was well organized, though long paragraphs could start to veer off topic. It was one of the most helpful statements Gertrude had ever given him, and he was not surprised at all to learn that the researcher who did it was none other than OCD himself, Michael. 

By first impressions only, of course. His desk was incredibly neat that first time they met and he had started to clean it up again as soon as they got back to it. He had perfect little stacks of multicolored post-it notes, lined up with his pens and box of paperclips all laid with care under his monitor. His notebook — which was open and laid exactly 30 degrees off of vertical — was full of spirally cursive hand writing. 

By first impressions, his desk had looked like a movie set. 

Then during second impressions, he had started to notice the pile of sticky notes in his trashcan. They were covered in chicken scratch, highlighters covered half the page. Arrows connected to nothing and often turned into little spiral patterns or doodles. 

It was his outlet, Gerry decided. He was particular about his notebook, about the notes that found themselves in the hands of others. When he needed a moment of chaos or had something he needed to be frantic about, he would write it on a sticky note and throw it away. 

It made the already too-cute man so much more endearing, for some reason. 

But anyways, back on track. 

Michael is a good researcher. He is detailed and thorough, he finds the phone numbers that Gerry never would have thought seek out and they almost always end up being necessary. But to find out that he didn’t believe a single word of it? How can one who works at the magnus archives be completely without a clue as to how the world works? Or, not even how it works, but that it works? 

It’s insanity, that’s what it is. It’s insane to think that Michael never had a clue. 

And Gerry has always been one to help. 

Gerry is going to tell Michael everything. He already knew this, of course. Some part of him had decided that from the very moment he realized that Michael didn’t already know. The real question is how. Does he start with the fears? Categorizing them and giving him names to identify the rest on his own?

Would it be better to give a chronological order for how things were found out, detailing how the fears cannot really be categorized but getting to the ways people have tried to do it? Michael is an Archival Assistant, the idea that he wouldn’t have already picked up on some commonalities is outrageous. All Gerry really should have to do is give him the names to explain what he’s already picked up. The vocabulary. 

Gerry could start with the books. It’s the one he personally knows the most about, though he knows it isn’t the whole picture. Probably best to bring that up when asked. 

And then there’s other Michael. 

Gerry has decided now that it really is other-Michael. The way it had looked at Michael with such fondness and sadness at the same time (though identifying those feelings on a creature such as Not-Michael was difficult and took quite some time), it was so conflicted. It was obviously feeling something about being in the same place as Michael. 

Put that together with the Michael he Saw within it last night. It wasn’t like Michael was trapped — rather a part of it, a single fragment of a limitless pane of cracked glass. Michael was the basic shape of the glass but the cracks went deep. But Michael was there. 

And Michael was also sleeping soundly on top of him. 

Both true is impossible, and yet that is the very thing that a creature of the spiral thrives on. It is impossibility, it must be getting a meal by Gerry simply thinking about it right now, and so the impossibility of there being two mostly whole Michael’s out in the world is exactly what must be happening. Not Michael is, in some way, Michael.

And something happened between it and Gertrude. 

That much is clear. 

Gertrude was reckless, something he’s never seen before. She found herself out of her depth and rushed into killing the person it wanted to protect. Michael would have to deal with nightmares for his entire life revolving around Gertrude trying to kill him, having her hands around his neck and squeezing like she really meant it. She did. 

Gerry has never been so personally strangled before. Sure, he’s had his fair share of fights that turned into fingers on neck that turned into gouging their eyes out that turned into burning the place on the way out. But those fingers that grip his neck late at night don’t have a face to them, they don’t have a name. They don’t have a year long boss-employee relationship that has been broken over the course of a five minute conversation. 

No, Michael will have a lot to work on. 

There’s also the issue that Gertrude’s compulsion didn’t work on it. When Gerry’s own attempts were met with little response, he had chalked it up to being his own faint connection to the eye. He had almost been glad that he couldn’t compel the creature. But Gertrude is powerful. He has felt her power, he has seen her use it. He has seen Desolation avatars give their life stories for her, all the while struggling and bursting into flame or water or dust right after due to their energy being expelled all at once. Gertrude is nearly a proper avatar of the eye. 

How can the spiral resist her?

A creature of lies is hard to see, hard to comprehend. But when put under a microscope all things break down to their base components. Gertrude has never used that much power on anything, to Gerry’s knowledge. She seemed to be grasping at everything she could hold, throwing her entire soul at it. 

It makes no sense. Maybe that’s the whole point. 

Or maybe whatever happened between them was enough to give not-Michael invincibility to Gertrude. Or to the Eye. 

This conundrum is almost as incomprehensible as the creature itself. 

Michael shifts slightly, digging his head deeper into Gerry and squeezing lightly. Gerry’s breath catches as he does so, wary of his movement making the blond wake up. It seems as though he’s not waking up anytime soon and Gerry returns to breathing normally. 

Michael has every right to be tired right now. 

Gerry’s own eyes seem to be closing more often now too. The sun outside is blocked by his curtains — a product of too many late nights turning into sleepless days. He looks down at the tall man cuddled into him and allows himself a little smile. 

Perhaps he deserves this little time of peace. Just a moment of having a pretty boy on his couch and a deep sleep awaiting him. 

He allows his eyes to close and his mind to shut off to the vague thumping of his and Michael’s hearts beating in tandem. 

***

It’s cold. 

Or that’s what they would always say. It’ll be cold. It’ll be painful. It’ll be final. 

It’ll end. 

So it must be cold. In the end, it must be cold. The entropy approaches infinity as the enthalpy approaches zero. In the end, it is cold. 

.

It is silent. 

Or that’s what they would always say. It’ll be quiet. It’ll be a soft slip into the afterlife. It’ll be painful. It’ll be final. 

It’ll end. 

So it must be silent. In the end, it must be silent. There is a lack of noise, and that must be what silence is. It’s what they all said. In the end, it is silent. 

.

It’s dark. 

Or that’s what they would always say. It’ll be dark. It’ll be nothing. It’ll be painful. It’ll be final. 

It’ll end. 

So it must be dark. The lack of everything must be what dark is. There is no better explaination as to what the dark is. In the end, it must be dark. 

.

It’s emotionless. 

Or that’s what they would always say. It’ll be emotionless. It’ll feel like flying and like floating and like nothing at all. It’ll cease to matter. It’ll be painful. It’ll be final. 

It’ll end. 

So it must be emotionless. In the end, it must feel like nothing. It’s the death of everything and everything is emotions. In the end, it must be emotionless. 

.

It’s cold. 

Or — is it? The heat comes all at once, it engulfs the lack-of-bone deep cold and pulls the enthalpy up kicking and screaming. It’s total, all consuming. 

It’s like a flame. 

.

It’s silent. 

Or — is it? The crackles reverberate through the not-void, shattering not-eardrums and causing the calm to shiver. It tries to hold on but the silence cannot even scream as it claws against the not-space, trying to regain control. The crackles are total, they beat out the silence, it’s all consuming. 

It’s like a flame. 

.

It’s dark. 

Or — is it? The glow comes all at once, a fiery yellow that illuminates every corner of the nothing. It flickers between yellow and orange and red, it’s tinged with green, and overall it is light. It is not dark, it cannot be dark, because there is light here and here is a place because there is light and light cannot be in a not-here. The light is total, all consuming, nothing is left but light and light is here

It’s like a flame. 

.

It’s emotionless. 

Or — is it? The flames surround him. A total engulfing end, a here that soon will no longer be, consumed by flames and set free to the nothingness beyond. There is heat and sound and light, there is a here to be consumed. There are emotions that fly through the air. Relief, being set free from the void. Sadness, finding the end that was not coming but is now here. Anger. 

There is so much anger. 

It’s like a flame. 

They were right about one thing, with the end. There was pain. There was so much pain. 

And the anger clings to it. It bubbles like plastic set aflame, it spurts and crackles and lets off a terrible acrid smoke that will kill you. It boils over the pot and then keeps getting hotter, superheating past its boiling point and reaching instability. Entropy is at a maximum. Anger spurts out of the burning paper like plastic vaporizing. It spits and molts. 

The anger coalesces, it forms into something real, more real than he’s felt in years. It is a small pit of fire, a rubber ball placed into flames with an eye painted on it. It gurgles and rotates, it spins with fury and kicks and screams as it gets dragged into reality. 

And just like that, the void is gone. It is full. There are things here. 

And just like that, Gerry Keay is in the past. 

He passes out. 

Notes:

End notes tw: I’m gonna nerd out a bit, so like, be warned.

Wanna know what the hell some of the words in that last section meant? Well you’ve come to the right place. I am nearly an Engineer, and I have bested a Thermodynamics course that was nearly the death of me. If you understood what all those terms meant you have my utmost respect, let me know in the comments. If not, here’s a crash course that might honestly make less sense than the written text as it is, but whatever. I feel like it.

Enthalpy - think of this as heat (not necessarily temperature). Everything has Enthalpy, and so the absence of things would have zero enthalpy.

Entropy - think of this as chaos. Life is chaos, everything in life will move towards more and more chaos, the more chaotic something is the more likely it is to happen.

The heat death of the universe happens when Entropy (chaos) is as high as possible (infinity) and Enthalpy (heat) is at zero (which happens because the chaos was too much and so nothing is near each other anymore and so heat is not real). Life, right now, has a finite (specific number, aka not infinite) amount of entropy and a non-zero Enthalpy. Basically Gerry is within the heat death of the universe and then becomes life again.

And if you’re an astronomer who wants to correct me on what the Heat Death of the Universe actually is, uhhh, first of all realize that I’m an engineer and don’t actually need to know that, and second of all absolutely nerd out with me about this stuff I’d love to talk about it.

Final term I swear, superheating and reaching instability. When you take a liquid, for example water, and heat it, it turns into a gas, right? Well, not always. By changing the pressure, temperature, and volume you can make the liquid go into an unstable region (meaning it doesn’t like to be in that region but will do it under very specific circumstances). This is what happens when you microwave water without stirring it, it becomes superheated past the boiling point (it’s hotter than the temperature that water boils at; 100C or 212F) but due to the circumstances (it doesn’t have an activation point to start forming the bubbles of steam) it stays a liquid even though by all accounts it should have become a gas already. So this superheated liquid water is considered unstable, which is why it’ll start immediately boiling as soon as you jostle it. If you like graphs, I suggest you start looking up phase diagrams and PV diagrams and eventually Pressure Enthalpy diagrams and Temperature Entropy diagrams. If not, don’t.

I’m glad I didn’t have to figure out how to explain fugacity. Hope that helps! I can answer thermodynamics questions if you have them lol. What a place to get help on your thermo hw, but Doorkeay fanfics did keep me alive last semester, so I can pay it forward i guess.

Chapter 6: Fear

Summary:

Michael fears.

Michael fluffs.

Michael learns.

Notes:

Sorry for the late post, I was as the kids say “not doing so hot,” but we’re alive so that’s a win.

Anyway, fluff!!! There’s a bit of it, and it’s mmmm :) hard to write, but lovely to consume. And then infodumping! It’s not as bad as the thermodynamic tangent I took last chapter, mostly because you’ll all know what’s going on here. Hope you enjoy!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

It has been 4 days since Michael has been back to work. 

He thought the time off would be good for him, but all it’s done is made him feel antsy. He itches to know all the things he doesn’t, he’s terrified of finding out all the things wrong with the world. He never wants to see Gertrude again. She tried to kill him! Going back will be full of stress and strain, he’ll have to deal with Gertrude and the horrors and figure out how life works now that he knows things that he had refused to believe before. 

Somehow, the idea of just not going back to work doesn’t occur to him. 

Gerry had walked Michael home that first night and then he’d not seen him since. They never exchanged numbers and Michael doesn’t really know where Gerry lives, so Michael really can’t reach out. 

A part of him doesn’t want to. 

It’s the part of him that would rather stay ignorant. It’s trying to run away from Gertrude, from Gerry, from anything that might shock its perception of the world. It’s trying to protect him. Michael doesn’t know if he should thank that part of him, accept it totally as truth, or do the scary things. He really doesn’t want to do the scary things. 

So he’s procrastinated thinking about it for 4 days. 

It’s not that he’s not thinking about it at all, no. It seems like every waking moment he spends plagued by images of terrifying creatures, of spiders stringing him (or the poor statement givers) up and marionetting him around. He thinks of the things he read in the statements that he always assured himself were not real, and he cries. He dreams of waves, violent tsunamis, ripping down the world he once thought was true. Pictures of laughing butchers as they gut and skin their 300th pig (or human, they both look the same at a certain point) of the day bury themselves into his head, it anchors in and he can’t rip himself out of it. 

The most common thing he thinks about is a door. 

His friend, Ryan. His real, not imaginary friend, Ryan. His real, not imaginary, probably dead friend Ryan. His first bout of worried teachers and psychologists. His real, not imaginary, probably dead, stepped through a door-that-was-not-there, friend. Ryan. 

He thinks of the mahogany door he stepped through. 

He remembers the deep grain that would get smaller and smaller as you look at it, resetting without you ever knowing and pulling your attention in. He remembers the entranced look on Ryan’s real, not imaginary, probably dead face. The way his eyes could never focus again once it started showing up. He remembers how Ryan got obsessed, reading through every library catalogue and asking every teacher about the mahogany door that was not there. He remembers how Ryan would never talk about anything else after, how Ryan would no longer play Mario or pretend with him. 

He remembers the day Ryan walked up to the door, pulled it open, and stepped in. 

He remembers Ryan’s look back, the first time his eyes had focused in months. In it was terror. 

He remembers his own terror reflected back. 

So yeah, Michael doesn’t really want to learn everything about the fears, or whatever Gerry is going to tell him. He’s going to learn it all though. 

He has to. For Ryan. 

It has been 5 days since Michael was involved in an attempted murder that he is too scared of Gertrude for to go to the cops with. In that time, he has tried to cope with his newfound knowledge that the supernatural is real and is deeply connected to him. It has not worked, the coping. 

Still, he cooks dinner every night. He broke out his knitting needles to give his hands something to do other than ripping open his cuticles and rubbing away skin. He has watched through 3 seasons of the Great British Bake-off. He even decided to watch a kinda scary show, 1899, that required a lot of focus. It worked while it was going, he knew that everything in the show was fake as opposed to the real world, where the scary stuff is real, apparently. 

No, no. He’s trying to cope. He’s certainly living. And it seems to be getting easier to fall asleep every day. 

His heart sinks when there are three light knocks on his door.

He doesn’t have many friends, certainly no one that would have noticed him gone for the last week. The only person that this could possibly be would be the little old lady that lives across the hall (who’s always losing her cat, Whimpie. She usually takes solace at Michael’s, but not always) or Gerry. 

Michael knows that this is Gerry. 

He opens the door with a plastered smile, keenly aware of what Gerry would be here for. He’s rallying himself up inside, trying to prepare for a tough conversation of learning of all the terrible things Gertrude never thought to mention. 

Gerry has a slight scowl on his face that quickly changes to a soft smile when the door opens. Seeing his smile almost makes Michael’s smile genuine. Why was he so nervous for Gerry coming? This is Gerry — he’s gonna be nice about it. Gerry had never been anything but nice. Even if that is an utter 180 from what he looks like. Maybe it actually is punk to be kind these days. 

“Gerry! Welcome, come in.”

“Michael.” He says it with a sort of fondness that has always confused Michael. It makes him feel like they’re closer friends than they’ve had the time to become. 

“Tea? Coffee? Can I get you anything?”

They shuffle in, Gerry taking off his shoes (Michael sneaks a glance and finds pink socks with black skulls on it on Gerry’s feet) and Michael leading them to the couch. Gerry replies awkwardly, “Oh, uh, whatever you’re having would be fine.”

“Okay!”

Michael makes a quick cup of fruity tea for himself and decides that Gerry is probably a cinnamon and spices tea kind of person. He gives Gerry the pink and black cat pattern mug, his favorite, and he gives himself his abstract primary color mug. 

Gerry is lounging on the couch when he returns, looking at Michael’s chaotic apartment. Handing the mug to Gerry, he tries to imagine what it looks like to an outsider. He has shelves of knickknacks, all bright colors and fancy shapes that meld together into an agglomeration. His couch is a bright yellow suede and an armchair he got at an estate sale is bright blue. His coffee table is green with yellow squiggles that he drew on himself. His walls are white, but covered with paintings and pictures that he’s taken or found at thrift stores. It probably looks like a mess, but everything in here is something he liked, and he can’t be regretful for it. His apartment is like an extension of him. 

He analyses Gerry’s face, hoping to know what he thinks of it. For some reason, it’s really important to him that Gerry likes it. 

He doesn’t know why. 

Of course, we know why. 

Gerry looks interested, his eyes taking in every single thing that Michael owns. He smiles fondly at some pictures and traces the plushies lovingly. 

Michael needs to stop looking before he falls in love. Instead, he says, “So? Do you like it?”

Gerry turns to him and smiles, “Absolutely. It’s exactly what I expected; its you

Michael’s face gets warm at the compliment. It really is an agglomeration of Michael. And Gerry likes it. 

“I’d bet every single thing here has a story.”

Michael thinks and shakes his head. “No, some things I just liked.” He raises his shoulders. 

The goth laughs at that for some reason. “That’s a story all on its own. I’d like to know it, some day.”

Gerry is looking at Michael’s face, eyes flicking all over it. Michael can feel his face get even warmer, though he’s unsure as to the exact reason still. He’s just being nice. 

When Michael glances down at Gerry’s lips, they are smirking. 

What would they taste like? Probably cinnamon now that he’s had some of his tea. What would strawberry and cinnamon taste like together? 

God, Michael needs to stop that line of thinking before it goes any further. He quickly turns away and grabs his tea, taking a large sip even though it’s slightly too hot to do so. He runs his own eyes over his front room, looking for anything else to talk about. The splatter paintings he made? No, too off topic. The books he has laying out? Gerry might be interested but there’s too many to choose from. What about -

“Penny for your thoughts?” Gerry says innocently. His gaze still digs into Michael’s slightly panicking form. 

“Cinnamon strawberries.” Michael says the first thing that comes to mind, reaching for anything that is not terribly inappropriate or utterly baffling. Unfortunately, he thinks he does not accomplish the second one. 

Gerry’s widening smirk seems to think differently. “Yeah? What do you think that would taste like?”

Is it getting hot in here? Michael seems to think so. He’s on fire. “Uh, li-like cinnamon on strawberries, probably.”

“Should we try it?”

Michael shoots off the couch and busies himself with tidying up, shifting things in their spots slightly to pretend, anyway. The small huff of amusement from Gerry gets ignored and Michael allows the silence to stretch. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” Gerry says, sounding slightly disappointed but overall kind. He’s being so kind. “Maybe later?”

Michael blushes with his back still turned to Gerry. Will there be a later?

Michael would like so. 

Then he sounds regretful, like he’s putting the words as gently as he can, drawing them out of himself even as he wants to keep them without voice, “We should probably get to the explanation, then.”

Michael hunches his shoulders and breaths out a sigh of resignation. “Yes. I suppose we must.”

He decides to sit back down on his arm chair, Gerry sits mostly upright on the couch, and they both have lukewarm tea that helps give their bodies something to do when their minds are working overtime. He really doesn’t want to know, but he needs to. He needs to know. 

“I figure I’ll start from the beginning, unless you have any specific questions upfront?”

He looks so sorry as he starts talking, like he’s knowingly signing Michael up for world war 3 or something on that magnitude. Michael supposes he doesn’t know the magnitude of what he’s being told. Maybe he is already signed up. 

“Why did Gertrude try to- uh…”

It’s not the question that’s been pestering Michael the most this past week, but it had rattled the old brain box quite a bit. He almost surprises himself by asking it first. 

Gerry grimaces before nodding. “How much do you remember of the conversation right after that?”

“Not much.”

“Yeah, that tracks.” 

He had been crying quite heavily for a while there, trying to rationalize the irrational behavior that Gertrude didn’t even seem insane about. She had a look in her eyes that he had never seen before. She had done it before. His shoulders shiver at just the thought, the idea of working under a killer that didn’t regret it and would do it again. 

“So you didn’t see the other… ‘person’ that came in after me?”

Michael just shakes his head, trying too hard to remember that scene was hard. 

“That creature, or you could call it a person maybe, but calling it nothing might be better, so we’ll stick with creature.” Gerry shakes his head at the tangent. “It has decided to protect you, and it seems to think Gertrude was a major risk for your wellbeing.”

“Me? I have a- a, something protecting me? Why me?”

Gerry shrugs but his supposed unknowing doesn’t reach his eyes. Gerry never looks like he doesn’t know. “Things like this gets complicated. It might be best to take it at face value until you get a chance to talk to it directly.”

A chance to talk to his secret protector? In person? Or, well, person - creature/person/thing/not thing. What had Gerry said again? “What is it?”

“A thing of the Spiral”

It’s weird how sometimes Gerry says words that Micheal knows are supposed to be capitalized. “Why did Gertrude try to kill me because that, uh, thing, wants to protect me?”

“Well… I’m not entirely sure.” Gerry reaches up to scratch the back of his neck. “Gertrude can have some pretty Explosive reactions to this stuff,” his eyes sparkle at the E-word, “but she’s normally much better at planning than this.”

And that’s supposed to make him feel better? She’s going to do a better job next time?

Thankfully Gerry registers his mildly mortified reaction and quickly tries to retrify it. “No, no, don’t worry too much. She was confronted by a weird fear creature that was stronger than her and she just reacted badly at first. She won’t make that mistake again. 

“So she’s going to do a much better job next time,” he says wryly. “Great.”

Gerry just smiles sadly and nods. “This is her job. Stopping monsters. Most likely you won’t get caught in the crossfire, but with an avatar tying itself so closely to you it’ll be a close thing. She won’t want to anger it before she’s ready for it, though. You’ll be safe for some time.”

Michael takes that small amount of solace and stores it away. At least he shouldn’t have to worry for a little while. But worrying about his boss murdering him at all is still way too much. 

He should contact HR. 

“Avatar?”

Gerry nods firmly, “Yes. That’s getting into what I had actually wanted to discuss, so if you have anything else first…?” At Michael’s silence he continues, “So, the first thing to note is that fear is real, it is not just a reaction or thought due to something that happens, fear has a physical, tangible impact on the world past what we would consider natural. There’s a couple of disagreements on how exactly to categorize the fears, but all it comes down to is this: If there is fear, those fears can come to life. 

Most of London’s scene goes by Robert Smirk’s categories-“

“Oh! He’s that architect, yeah?” Michael is excited that he knows anything, it counteracts his growing sense of dread. 

“Yeah-p. That’s the one. So he and his little group of friends — toxic polycule really, but Gertrude hates it when I make that joke which is why it stuck — they came up with 14 main fear entities. The entities are more categories than anything else, I don’t think there’s actually 14 gods up there being molded to our human follies. They certainly can’t speak or anything like that, or interact directly with us. Instead, power gets sporadically imparted unto people or creatures that align with those powers, we call them avatars. Avatars range from unfortunate people that got given a gift they didn’t ask for, to evil people who were seeking power and got it. So not all avatars are terrible people, even if they are directly related to fear and survive off of the fear they cause. Everything making sense so far?”

Michael slowly nods, trying to sort everything in his head just to end up twisting it all up. 

“Okay great. Do you have a white board or something to write out the categories? There’s a lot and I’d rather you have something to reference when you need it.”

Michael has a large poster paper that they set up on his counter. Gerry starts writing names and describing the entities. 

He visibly cringes at the bug one, the Corruption as Gerry calls it. Sure, bugs aren’t like, the worst thing on the planet. But he’d definitely rather not have millions of little writhing larva crawling all over him and calling him mom. He’d rather they stay a good safe distance away, like all normal people. 

Gerry’s shortest explaination is of the dark, “it’s the absence of light, knowledge, fear of the dark, it’s one of the more primal ones. That’s about it really. Opposing that one is t-”

“Wait wait, that’s it?” 

“Yeah, I mean, we can’t really Know that much about it. It’s all about being ‘kept in the dark’, so we don’t have too much information on it. There’s a cult that worships it, but they stay mostly to themselves. Don’t wanna reveal too much, you get it?”

“But what about the monsters that you described for all the others? What’s the darks’?”

Gerry shrugs, “I don’t think they really have a proper monster. Their avatars usually darken the shadows of the room on their best days and cause full city blackouts on their worst. They don’t make too many Leitners of power because that would require a physical object that could reveal more than they would ever want to tell. Their whole point is to isolate you from knowledge, safety, your sight. Oh, that should be our next one, the Lonely. Similarly, the Lonely tries to isolate you from others, somewhat physically though a lot of it is mental. Anyone who fears their friends secretly hating them are feeding into the Lonely.”

Something Michael notices throughout the conversation is that he feeds into every single fear in some way. He worries that people find him much more annoying then they let on, something apparently having to do with the Lonely. He often glances over his shoulder when traveling around London, noting all the people who are (probably coincidentally) following him, which goes towards something called the Hunt. He has no candles in his apartment, partly because they aren’t allowed in his lease, but also because the idea of losing everything he has ever found joy in is terrifying. That sounds like Desolation to him. 

There are two more and Gerry seems to hesitate. Michael prompts him to continue. 

“Okay…” he hesitates. “Do you want something that I think probably directly pertains to you, or definitely directly pertains to you?”

“Uhh…” Michael racks his head about what Gerry could mean by that. “Oh, the creature? You haven’t mentioned it yet.”

He just nods sagely and writes “Spiral,” and draws a little spiral under it. Then he, in quotes, writes, “Madness, infinity, fear of losing your sanity.” 

“The Spiral is the fear of insanity, it’s patterns that draw you in or mazes that change so subtly that you think you’re the crazy one for not being able to follow it. There’s one creature I’ve encountered of the spiral, she calls himself “The Host,” it runs a Victorian style bed and breakfast that traps you in never ending hallways over night, only when you can no longer believe it’s a dream and start feeding him fear does she finally let you go, and it’s often been weeks or months since you left. Everyone ends up thinking you had a psychotic break and you start to believe it too. The spiral doesn’t have too many avatars, if there were too many then it would start to be a believable phenomenon and that would go completely against the point. The only other one I’ve ever seen is the creature that has decided to place you under its protection.”

He allows Michael to soak in what he’s said before moving on. “This… creature. It was once human, I’m pretty sure of it. It acted largely out of instinct, but it was a very human instinct to protect itself and what it decides needs it. That’s very human. And… it was crying the first time I saw it.”

“You saw it before?”

“Yeah, a week ago or so. It was following you.”

“It was following me!” Michael is aghast, how hadn’t he known? 

“Yeah. I asked it why, but it didn’t react well to me looking at it.”

“…why?”

Gerry grimaces. “I may be more of an avatar than I thought I was.”

Michael blinks. Then he blinks again. “You’re an avatar?”

“Yes.“ He seems to surprise himself with the conclusive answer that comes immediately. ”No. I… I hope not. I’m not fully one, anyway.”

Michael looks him up and down, obviously scanning for what he’s an avatar of. A thought occurs to him and it brings more terror to him than he would like, “Have… you killed many people?”

“What? No. Why would you jump there?”

Michael flushes slightly in relief and embarrassment, “I mean, you’re goth. You could be an End. I’ve heard an MCR song in my time.”

For some reason Gerry laughs, his bright floating laugh bringing light to the room and calming Michael down. ”Yeah, those guys were definitely on some End-coded bullshit.” He smiles up at the taller man and suddenly Michael realizes that Gerry has dimples. 

Why does Michael notice that Gerry has dimples. They are very nice cheeks, very nice… lips. Uh. His lip piercings are both tilted to the left. 

Michael wants to correct them. 

It takes everything in his power to pointedly make himself go back to their sheet. 

What were they talking about again?

“So what entity are you the not-an-avatar of?”

He sighs, the mood shifting back to their previous conversation. “The Eye. The last one we should talk about.”

“Ah, so, Looking at the creature. The Eye.” Michael tries to make the connection. “Fear of eyes?”

“Fear of being watched. Known. Like your every movement is being scrutinized. Like every detail of your life is being broken down for another’s entertainment.”

“Oh.” He’s full of apprehension. That’s not really what he was hoping for. 

“You ever feel that way?” Gerry asks.

“Yeah sometimes.”

Gerry pushes, “Where?”

“Like, when I was giving a presentation in school.”

“More recently.”

“Uh, at work.”

“Yup. You should.”

“I should feel watched at work?”

Gerry just stares into Michael’s eyes, unwavering. He offers no answer but Michael knows what he’s getting at. His stomach crawls slightly and he doesn’t want to say what he’s sure Gerry is saying. His palms are sweaty, sweatier than they were when Gerry was talking about any of the other entities and monsters. 

“The Magnus Institute…”

Gerry nods. 

“Fuck.”

Gerry has a sad, knowing smile on his lips. He finally elaborates, “The archives is a storage shed for all the Fear in all of London and most of Europe. It is a place that Knows fear, it collects it. It’s an incredibly powerful temple to the Beholding.”

Michael doesn’t think he can breath but he stays standing, so perhaps he is doing it anyway. He doesn’t think he can blink but his eyes flicker occasionally and do not burn, so perhaps it is happening. He doesn’t think he can talk but his mouth opens and his voice comes out, so perhaps he is out of his depth here. He sounds crackly and quiet, “Am I an avatar?”

His eyes go wide when he realizes what Michael is being so worried about and he immediately reaches for his hands. He starts to shake his head. 

“I don’t think Watching is for me, I can’t be an avatar, I’m not trying to hurt people, “ Michael devolves into mumbles and worried rambling as Gerry brings him into his arms. 

“No no, dear, you’re not an avatar. It’s okay, you aren’t of the eye, you aren’t hurting people, it’s okay Michael, Min-chael, Mincho, it’ll be okay. Michael, Minedal, Minnow. You’re okay.” Gerry soothes him. 

Michael does not cry but it’s a close thing. He’s instead staring straight forward into Gerry’s chest and slows down his words. 

“Minnow?” 

“Yeah. That’s what I said.”

Gerry just shrugs as Michael lets out a little laugh. “I’ve never been called that before.”

Gerry pats Michael’s back and lets him go, “well I guess I’ve officially changed that.”

His eyes gleam bright. 

Michael almost loses his thread of the conversation in those eyes. 

Almost. 

“So, you’re an avatar of the eye? And I’m not.”

“Well, I’m not a full avatar. But you are definitely not an avatar of the Eye.”

Suspicious wording, but Michael lets it slip. 

It’s probably nothing. 

“Okay. I believe you.”

“Great. Avatars of the eye can be pretty tricky to spot because they can range from just very curious and morbid scholars to actual beings made of security cameras or eyeballs. I know at least one security company that serves the eye. And, well. Gertrude.”

“Gertrude is an avatar!?!” Michael hadn’t even been thinking of her. She couldn’t have possibly known all of this, let alone be actively serving a fear god. Sure, she tried to kill him, and he was needing to come to terms with that, but she was just, uh, spooked. It’s because she didn’t know what was happening. 

“Micheal.” Gerry deadpans. “She is not helpless. She Knows exactly what she’s doing.”

His wince is definitely noticeable as Gerry answers his thoughts directly. “But, she’s so weak. She’s not, not a monster like the ones you described.”

“No, no she’s not. And that’s what makes her so dangerous.”

“Oh God,” he thinks he’s going to be sick. The whole time. 

And she never told him. She Knew

And she never said a word

He grabs a glass of water and downs it, slamming it down with a loud crack and a single spidery fissure races up the sides. It does not shatter but it just adds to his anger. 

How could she let him continue working there while he had no idea about any of it. Why did she keep him in the dark? How could he be so stupid, no, how could she be so cruel? He never knew and she allowed him to be ignorant. 

Gerry is stroking his shoulder, grounding him even as white hot anger dances behind his ears. 

He takes a large breath. 

“Fuck Gertrude.”

A wide smile replaces Gerry’s worried searching and he agrees, “Fuck Gertrude.”

“Fuck Gertrude.”

They both whip around to see a long figure lounging on his couch. It has bones that must be bones but do not follow a bones joint bone line up. It has gold hair that spills over the side of the couch nearest to the window and wrap around the little succulent pots. It throws a pastel rubix cube up in the air and it comes back down a jumbled mess of colors — it’s gotta be unsolvable now. There’s no way that square is even a color

It smiles, showing its pearly white teeth that almost look sharp but are completely and utterly normal. It’s completely and utterly normal. Except for the bones. And the teeth. And the hands. And the hair. And, well, when you don’t look at it it looks sinister. But it really is normal. When you look at it. But when you look closer. But it’s normal. But it’s hair twists and is not. But its smile is normal. But is it too wide? No. Does it have too many teeth? No. It’s normal. 

It’s most definitely not normal. 

Michael already has a headache. 

Neither Michael nor Gerry say a word, instead staring at the new creature invading their space. 

“What? I was agreeing.”

Notes:

Oooooo Michael showing up? In Michael’s apartment? It’s more likely than you think.

I made The Host for a Doorkeay fic set in an au where there’s an avatar Ball, and I quite like my multi pronouned quing so I will be using her again.

Also fyi I write in Markdown, so if I ever miss something surrounded in * or %%, let me know and I’ll make it html for Ao3.

Chapter 7: Cackles

Summary:

We go back to see where Michael has been for the last 2 ish chapters. Previously it was walking through the current Distortion’s void space, being sad and angsty about Gerry.

Notes:

Good luck figuring out any of the pronouns in this one. I love having an auto-accepted multi pronouned OC as much as the next genderfluid author writing about Michael Distortion, but by golly does it make readability go down a bit.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Cackles ring out through the space made of lines and the not-space made of darkness. It is piercing and all encompassing, it both burns your ears and caresses you gently. 

Michael is coming out of its revery slowly, it is meandering through grief and acceptance, it is twisting and turning as it imagines now Gerry and its Gerry as two separate entities that it could never truly separate. The sharp tickle of laughter pulls it straight out of its thoughts. It mocks it, laughing at Michael in a way it knows is associated with clowns who fall down. It also rings out with genuine glee. 

It is overall an extremely confusing laugh. 

Michael looks all around, spinning and falling as often happens in the void. It is in those brown hallways again now, the location of the walls and doors changing every time another laugh echoes through its skull. The lights change between yellow and green and black. The hallway has plants covering their walls, vines spiral and twirl and surround it. Then with a flash of static the hallways shift to being black with a small yellow light illuminating the dust covered doors and the dingy paintings that show people with elongated faces and buildings that are shaded wrong. With another flash of static, the hallways return to the brown bookcases and mirrored ceilings right to the current time, but they soon flicker again to older hallways. 

They have sets of armor, or they have trees lining the endless tunnels, in the older sets. 

Never, odly, does it flicker to Michael’s set of hallways. Perhaps this is because Michael has not been let into the distortion as of yet. 

It is the amalgamation of voices that is all of Michael’s predecessor and one specific predecessor that Michael never knew but laughed the same way when Michael Shelley came through the tunnels that first fateful time. They laugh at it. 

They laugh with it?

They laugh because of it. 

Michael was just thinking of Gerry, how it would never see it’s Gerry again, and now this amalgamation of Distortion is laughing at it. 

Michael wishes to laugh too. 

There, in the corner of its eye, a small black woman with too long of fingers who is way too wide to possibly fit in the hallways. Still she does, and still it can’t be seen when it looks directly. The hallways turn too soon, shifting as it looks but they were always like that, no? They were never longer than that. 

Now, to the left, down a hallway-that-isn’t, the same man, long dark hair fringed with blonde styled into a star shaped Afro, has a smile that reflects in the ceiling mirrors far past what they should be able to see. The wall to the left is immovable and was there the whole time. The ceiling still shows a hallway. 

His smile, in the ceiling mirror, looks kind. Its eyes pierce and draw Michael in. 

It is nothing and everywhere. The shadows in the corners crawl and grow, his hair can be seen in all the corners of its eyes, though its eyes are narrowed and can see nothing. No, it can see. But the world displayed in front of it is not the type of thing that could be consider being seen. It is an impression if nothing else. An idea. An image. It all gets so confusing when you try to make sense of it. 

“Look at you!! You’re so… real!?!?!?”

It staggers, it’s body glitching between hair that stops and hair that would never think of it. Her fingers scrape the floor and also exists as stubs that can’t even bend due their short stature. What do fingers look like again? Can they bend with less than 7 joints? I don’t think they can. 9 joints is a minimum for normal use. 

“And your hair!!!?!”

Michael feels its hair being lifted up and examined, though eyes cannot work in this world. 

“What a treat!!! So Similar and Different!” Its own hair appears if front of Michael, tight black curls with bleached tips that extend and swirl and cover whatever face it may have. “The hair I use is much darker, but that is no Matter! It is forever and Nothing!”

Michael knows of this person, of course. It recognizes itself, it sees the mirror and knows what it once looked like. Its mouth stretches from pierced ear to unpierced ear, its eyes dark and covered by hair. This was what has once known as The Distortion. 

“Your body is so well lined!” She compliments. Xer voice likes to rattle around Michael’s brain and switch frequencies as it does. “And yet! Your eyes glisten with my Spiral! You have never been here before! And yet!”

Its stomach would like to empty its contents, but it has both no content to empty and no stomach to call its own. It barely exists in this plane of thought, the hallway seems to be on a different layer and the Distortion, now wrapping around it, is on a different tab altogether. He talks with a sort of joy that invades your mind and makes you wonder why you’re not experiencing it too. It examines MIchael thoroughly in a way that would make it go mad. 

Good thing Michael is already as Mad as avatarily possibly. 

“Tell me, child, the way you got here. I must figure out where you came from! It is not from me, and yet! You are so like me!”

Michael finds its vocal cords hidden within its bundled pile of nerve endings and personality clutched in its hand. It uses it to speak, “Michael is a name.”

“Yes it is! How good of you to observe that!”

He smiles widely at it even as her body wraps a full 720 degrees around Michael. 

“Mine tend to call that-which-may-be ‘the Host’, and you may too!”

Ah, so that’s the name this Distortion had adopted. Michael knew that, somewhere. It was tangled in all the other names it has adopted over the centuries. Lots of things are tangled in its mind. 

“Now, somewhat!Michael, you called a door! That makes you one of two(2!) not!things on the planet able to call these doors your own! I, whatever an I is, you see, am Quite interested in knowing How!? You, whatever a you is, you see, can use these halls as your own!”

“My halls are brighter than these.”

At this, at Michael’s claim and the Host’s excited acceptance, the halls change. The flickery yellow light changes into long fouriscent lights that remove shadows in an uncanny way. The brown wooden doors change to yellow painted and peeling doors with slanted trim. Bookshelves get replaced with mirrors and the ceiling is popcorn rather than mirrored. The floor is made of arcade patterns that stretch forever. 

These are Michael’s halls. 

“Brilliant! What good design you have, the floor! The carpet, so patterned, and the color! You have so much color! Getting lost in here! What exciting prospects!” It flicks between close and far images of her examinations. He is upside down and large, then small and within a mirror. “And the mirrors! The ceiling is fun, but the side has so many possibilities! You can be a hallway or a door or a mirror, all while being a mirror! Or a door! Or a hallway! Or a mirror! And look at your lighting! The color! The drama!”

Michael feels much more at home here. These are the hallways it calls home, these are the hallways associated with its version of the Distortion. It has killed and fed and satiated here. It has been driven mad and driven others mad. These are the halls that Michael has made and has been made by Michael. They stretch forever and now Michael can trace them, it can feel the movements it can make. It can change the doors and the halls as it sees fit, it can find it’s own void room (a Void much like the previous one, but the out is white and the lines are rainbow, the wind blows leather and the silence drops sharpness upon those who stumble upon it) and see it’s heart. These are the hallways of Michael’s time. 

Or, they’re the most important bits. There are things missing. Michael can only spot one, the single repeated painting has one less petal on the flower than before. It can feel more, it feels slightly off in a way that reminds it of its encounter with that Stranger creature oh, a year ago. 

Really, the only thing that’s off is that these hallways are the essence of Michael’s hallways stuck into place years before they would ever need to be created. 

“I’m saving him.”

The look he gives it is almost reproachful. “And stop these beautiful sprawling hallways of madness? Yes of course.” She smiles, “of course you’re saving him, silly! He’s you!”

“In a way.”

“In every way that counts!” In less than a nanosecond it is standing next to Michael, looking up at it. “You are just as much a Michael as anything else. Your Host is long gone.” She takes a second to consider this, seemingly contemplating his own demise. “You are as much anything as anything else. As is what I is. Whatever I is.” She smiles. “I is a concept not reserved for us. But you are. You are quite Real.”

“Real is not a concept we can apply to ourselves.”

“Is it false?”

“We are lies.”

“And your own lies are enough for the both of us.” He shrugs and steps back. Her golden hair piece curls around their head. “You are a concept and I is a misnomer. Save Michael. Let both Michael’s be saved. Enjoy your us!”

Michael shakes its head and sits down on a bench that is not there and never has been. “These should be your hallways. I am not a here and cannot be.”

“Exactly.” She sits down on a bench opposite it that might be but has never been. “You cannot be and so you are.”

“Are you sure?” He says. This is Michael speaking. The people pleasing response from deep within him. It would never speak like this, but Michael is coming out more and more. 

“You are not!me! Your hallways are not!mine, no matter how lovely and maddening. The Host’d get lost in these and you know! She might!”

Michael allows itself to break a smile. Considering the Host is a part of it, xe really knows how to cheer it up. The smile, as always, breaks into it. The lines that covers its skin (skin? It seems to have calmed down enough to have a semblance of skin again) light up with the smile, the lines split and merge so many times that they cover almost the entirety of its skin, and if you look closely you can’t tell why it doesn’t. 

“See! Get lost, find yourself!” Xit tilts its head, “Maybe not that. Get lost!”

It says it with such joy that Michael doesn’t even recognize that she is gone for a period of time. When it next looks up his bench was once again never there and it smiles. The hallways flicker back to wood and yellow candled chandeliers, but Michael is secure (as secure as a madness entity can be) in knowing that these are its hallways too. 

It is still the Distortion, even in a timeline where it was never created. Even in a timeline where, if it can help it, the Distortion would never be it. And in a timeline where the Distortion will not dismantle it, like had happened in those final agonizing moment in its previous time. God, that’s a whole other thing to think about and allow to rattle around Michael’s brain-equivalent. How many is that now? Gerry is gone and replaced by a not-Gerry. Michael was broken down and essentially killed by itself. Michael can overpower Gertrude through, what, pure hatred? If it is still the Distortion even in this new timeline, then does that mean it’s also just as much Michael?

That last one isn’t something it has ever wanted to consider. Its sense of self is so warped. 

Michael is but a name, a name that now firmly belongs to the Michael Shelley within this timeline, and has no place upon this entities somewhat!being. And yet, Michael is still the most correct name for it. There is no better. It’s not good, not by a long shot, but it is possible. 

Okay, identity crisis put under an 80s arcade rug for the time being, what to do now? Gertrude tried to kill Michael after one(1) little conversation with it. That would not be ideal in the future. Michael seems to be immune to Gertrude’s power of persuasion, but this does not give Michael (Michael Shelley, that is) any additional legs up against her murderous tendancies. 

Michael knows that Gerry worked very closely with Gertrude, but he had always kept Michael away from it all. Its hatred of Gertrude would bleed through every conversation they had about his more sanctioned work, and eventually it stopped being brought up. 

And then Gerry died. 

It was rather distraught during the following year or so.

And then Gertrude died. 

And whatever Michael might have ever planned the first time became null. It was never able to make a clear cut plan, nor had it ever truly decided what it would have wanted to do to her. Yes, the anger was there, it would swirl around it in the hallways, red and blood and the increasing tempo of bass drums would echo off of its walls. Yes, it wanted her dead. But killing an avatar that knows all and can compel you to stop is rather difficult. And doing anything else, like gouging her eyes out or driving her mad (it was rather impressed it had thought of that one, even if it is an entity of madness and driving people mad tends to be second nature) was somehow even harder to set up. 

The problem here is that the fastest line between two points tends to be a straight line, and Michael has always had trouble with shaky hands. No two points can make a line to Michael, the path is always curly and 5 dimensional. It always falls apart before making it there. 

Now though. Now Michael is not the only Distortion, and is not the only Micheal, and knows much more than Gertrude. It knows so much more than Gertrude that even she cannot get answers. 

It’ll need help, it decides. It cannot plan this, it cannot even decide what it wants, but perhaps a clearer head will be able to decide. Perhaps the Michael that can see his future will be able to properly prevent it. 

Yes. Perhaps Michael Shelley will be able to make a plan where Michael the Distortion cannot. 

It makes a door, mahogany here, but the opposite side, the one into the real world, has a peeling yellow paint. It’s not exactly the same as its previous doors, as it-and-it-alone’s doors, but it has a comforting aspect to it. This is a door for Michael. 

It opens into Michael’s apartment. 

Michael takes a moment to calm its form, righting it to a slow spiral and solidifying its textures. Its hearts beat off-rythm when it spots Gerry talking to Michael but it quickly returns it to “normal.” *Normal, in this case, refers to Michael’s most common state of being when it is around Gerry, and not a) a human’s standard heart beat or b) Michael’s standard 3 heart bass beat at a disco. 

It just observes as the two humans stand at the kitchen counter, peering over a large paper of some kind that they occasionally write on. They stand less than a foot apart and both take often glances at the other when they’re not looking. 

The things they are saying are incomprehensible while Michael lingers behind the door, but Gerry would likely see it as soon as it enters the space. It’s possible that the same immunities Michael has to Gertrude could carry over, but it chooses not to risk it. It just waits, watching as Michael turns fully to Gerry in surprise, an obvious open eyed stare. Then, as he calms down, it watches Michael’s eyes drift lower, to those piercings that Michael knows Michael would just love to play with. They both drift in closer, their words trail off. It looks, to all the world, like they’re about to kiss.

And suddenly Michael turns back to the paper. Gerry, though Michael is doing it’s best to avoid looking at Gerry too much for fear of it going off the deep end at him, has an incomprehensible look on his face. It’s not because it’s being warped through the stained glass of the door this time, no, it’s because it’s a mixture of emotions. Gerry looks disappointed yet smug, like he wishes they could have kissed sooner but glad to know that Michael obviously wants to. He looks ready to pull Michael back to complete what they had just been leaning towards, but also accepts that Michael is steering the conversation in a different way, and allows himself to follow. 

From there they continue speaking while Michael looks on in envy. 

When Michael, as the Distoriton, had met Gerry, oh so many years ago and in the future, it had decided that the most unlikely thing for it to do would be to befriend him. The Bookburner was an enemy to just about every avatar, especially ones like Michael — those with more pronounced feeding methods. He never went out of his way to kill avatars, but he would not hesitate. 

So Michael, doing as all good Distortions do, had set about following him until they were close. It had quickly decided that he would be good to have close, and it specifically chose not to think about what the more human sides of it was thinking. So when Gerry was getting saved more and more often by it, it thought of it as doing the unexpected. 

Gerry, being the much more observant of the two of them, was the one to decide that a kiss was in order. 

It was a catastrophe. 

He didn’t tell it what he was doing, and how was it supposed to know what those weird looks meant! Humans are just weird sometimes! It didn’t know that turning into static would also make Gerry pass out, and it couldn’t have stopped it that first time anyway. It didn’t know!

But from there it was fast. Once it learned what kissing was (and that was, in fact, a learning process) it took almost no time at all for Gerry to continue their relationship. It was fast, and it needed to be. Gerry was in direct danger on 4/7 days of the week, and he was pursued and in danger at all other times. Michael couldn’t think about it too hard for fear of splitting into two, and current Michael knows just how bad that feels. So they followed instincts. They moved fast. 

They never made the faces that human Michael and Gerry are making at each other right now. They never chose to not take advantage of a free night. 

Michael is jealous. They had so little time together, and this Michael and Gerry get to have more. They will have more. It is going to be absolutely sure of it. 

The first step? Getting help from the humans it had come to see. 

It steps in right as Michael appears to start hyperventilating. He slams a glass cup on the counter and spits out some words about how ‘she never told me’ and how ‘she never said a word’. Michael, during this episode stemming from its human pre-counterpart, is able to splay out onto the couch without being noticed. Gerry steps closer to him (they were already plenty close) and grabs onto his shoulder. His thumb starts to stroke slightly. 

God, Gerry really is the exact same. 

No, the Gerry it lost knew that Michael preferred his soothing hand further up its shoulder, closer to its neck. This Gerry doesn’t know yet. 

Rather then getting caught up in that train of thoughts, Michael stretches its legs as far down the couch as possible, its right one ending up off the top of it and resting on the wall. It wills its clothes to change multiple times until it decides on a set it likes; a neon blue sweater vest over a white opal shirt, a pinstriped set of white pants where the pin strips change colors every time you blink. Its arm stretches behind its neck, the other trace patterns in the wall. 

Michael, the human one, breaks his seething silence with two words: “Fuck Gertrude.”

Gerry smiles at this, nodding and agreeing, “Fuck Gertrude.”

“Fuck Gertrude.” 

Michael just had to agree with the sentiment, Gertrude really is the worst. 

Instead of just agreeing and moving on, both humans decide to look at it with such shock that t’would think it had just killed their mothers. It’s rather sure it didn’t kill anyone’s mother recently. Of course it had, multiple times, but not recently. Or yet.

None of them move for up to a minute, though time has never been Michael’s strong suit, so at least 2 of the 3 entities present couldn’t tell you how long they stay still. Of course, Michael is the one who decides to defend itself, just because it doesn’t make sense for it to want to defend itself. 

“What? I was agreeing.”

Michael, the human, splutters and tries to find something to say. He babbles. All Michael, the distortion, can think of is how he looks awfully like a child. He has large innocent eyes that shine in the light from the window, his words are all confused and without meaning, his hair is youthful and bouncy. Gerry, for his part, does not look all that confused. 

Yes, of course, Gerry has seen it before. This will be Michael’s first time in direct contact with Michael, not physically, but he was rather upset last time. Michael does not seem to be taking this well with his continued scanning and white knuckled grip on the counter behind him. 

Michael, the distortion, though at some point we should find a better way to differentiate them, it once again decides to break the silence. “Hello, Assistant” it says with a nod to Michael, then to Gerry, “Bookburner. How lovely to speak to you both.” Michael knows that everything it says is bound to sound mocking, but it can’t help it. Seriously, it’s tried. 

“Distortion.” Gerry says in greeting, hopping up to sit on the counter and scooting close enough to press a knee to Michael’s side. “Is that what we should call you?”

“It is a name,” it replies after a long pause. “Though there are others. Did you not See?”

“I Saw your heart, not your name. Is the assumption correct, then?”

“That part of me is as much a correct name as all the others. For confusions sake, you may choose.” It gives a wry grin - it would be confusing to have two Michael’s, and it is a creature of confusion, so why not? “Michael, Distortion, you could even call me at eight.” It had heard that joke on some reality television that was playing in a laundromat while it was hunting, years ago now. It laughs airily.

Gerry just rolls his eyes, though they do not pop out of his head. 

Michael, the human, is just watching the exchange with an increasingly tired posture. “You weren’t kidding that you’d met before.” He sinks down until he’s resting on his elbows and his head naturally leans against Gerry. “What the hell are you saying?”

”The concept of a name is such an unnecessary burden.”

“It’s trying to tell us that it’s too good to have a name. We can call it the Distortion, it’s title.”

“The Host may also use that title, though she will not be bothering us,” Michael says nonchalantly.

Gerry quirks an eyebrow, “You are not his successor?”

Michael’s shoulders move in an uncategorizable direction, “As of yet.”

“So what made you?”

Michael is suddenly, in less than a blink of an eye, sitting forward and leaning in. It glitches in and out as its smile grows wider and its sharp teeth can be seen. “To be made implies the existence of a thing, and I am not an existence. The question you should ask, Bookburner, is what unraveled the threads of reality before and weaved the threads in a new unknowable order. The answer to that, of course, is larger than can be simplified. But the center? Who is the person at the center of it all, picking at things she cannot know and pulling until she can see it totally? Who is the person who cannot see reality from within it, and so bunches it up until she gets what she wants, and she will never get what she wants?”

It’s the human Michael that finishes what they were all thinking. “Gertrude.”

“Well done, Assistant.” It drawls. 

Gerry just watches. 

“Gertrude made you.” Michael starts fidgeting, tracing patterns into Gerry’s jeans and tapping his other hand’s fingers together. “What do you want though?”

The Distortion cocks its head, seemingly thinking about it. “To want… her dead. Would be a waste.” It glitches between colored filters Landing back on its usual yellow and purple hues. “She took an innocent soul and gave him color. I cannot want her dead.”

What the distortion wants is unknowable, so it tries to think of what it would be happy with. Based on the first time, her death was fine. It was nothing compared to the pain of losing Gerry, and so it was nothing. Even if Michael knew what it wanted, putting it into words and speaking openly has always been a problem. It had been nothing short of a miracle when it said those 3 imeasurable words at its last meeting with Gerry. 

Gerry. 

What it wants it cannot have. 

“She fed him to me. She twisted up my insides into something I didn’t want to be. And she did not hesitate.”

Gerry, old Gerry, young Gerry? The Gerry in the room is wrapping his fingers through Michael’s hair as Michael closes his eyes. He raises his eyes to look at the Distortion directly for the first time in minutes. He nods slightly down at human Michael in a silent question. 

The only affirmation the Distortion can give is a flicker between head down and head up, a staticky nod. 

“When?” Surprisingly it’s not Gerry who asks the phenomenal question, it’s Michael, still resting his eyes and slowly falling down to sit on the floor under Gerry. 

The Distrotion pauses. “Not yet.”

“No no, not when will you deal with Gertrude. When did Gertrude twist you up?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh.” Michael falls silent. “What?”

Straight answers go so against its nature, and all it knows of time is that going backwards is impossible. “It will not happen. But it did. And it would. Eventually.”

“So you, what, know the future?” He almost laughs as he says the absurd possibility he thought of.

“I am the future.”

Michael falls silent once again, opening his eyes to look at the distortion, the one that Michael does not know was once him but must feel, somewhere in him. They are kin, in a way. Michael does not know this, but they are one. Or they once were. 

“Yeah that checks.” Gerry dead pans. 

Michael, startled, falls fully to the floor. “What? You, you believe it!?!?” 

Gerry just nods before realizing that Michael won’t be able to see him. He continues looking the Distortion over. “Yeah, I mean, it makes more sense that whatever else I was considering. Long lost twin brother, split personality, weird voodoo magic done by Gertrude on you.”

He squeaks, “on me!?!?”

“Yeah…” Gerry peeks his head over the edge of the counter to look at Michael. “It looks awfully like you, don’t you think?”

Michael widens his eyes in shock and flicks his eyes quickly from Gerry to the Distortion. “No!??? It looks like a headache, I Do Not look like that.”

”If you say so.” Gerry shrugs and returns to his normal sitting position. 

“You are Not Like Me,” the Distortion says with an extra kick of migraine in the mix. It tilts and shifts, “and you do not know if I am Like you.”

Of course, the truth is that the Distortion is Michael but Michael is not the Distortion. Yet Michael does not seem to be ready for that distinction to be said aloud, so it remains in the ether. 

They sit in silence for a minute or so. Gerry playfully nudges Michael with his socked feet, Michael does a deft bat at it, successfully distracted from whatever temporarily avoidable things they were just talking about. 

The Distortion is, as always, a constant stream of movement. When it is not stressed out it can move fluidly, its hair twisting at a frame rate upward of 60 frames per second. Its head tilts like it had never been straight, and yet is still held in a neutral position on the arm rest of the couch. It’s fingers, normal fingers when you look directly at them, move in spirals and lines and beats. It looks, all told, like a normal person right now. Its fingers are perfectly adequate sized, its hair moves a reasonable amount, its knees bend the right way (and, importantly, there are only 2), and even its clothes are a natural sort of glittery. Yet, when you turn away, its clothes seem to glow. Its fingers stretch further than you should be able to see them. Its hair sways with a wind that is not here and has never been here. 

It really does look like a migraine.

When it speaks, it sounds like multiple voices in disharmony are whispering, but it quickly dies down into just its voice. “Planning has never been within the Spiral’s parition.”

Gerry cannot stop the “oh” that leaves his mouth, at the shock of being given something so close to an answer that the dots are almost touching. Its ability to know what it needs and actively try to speak of it is unheard of. 

Michael speaks softly, “What should we do?”

Gerry racks his brain, looking for anything that can be done. Killing her is out, they’d never be able to do that, even with a creature of the spiral on their side. Plus he doesn’t even really want to. The Michael/Distortion went through some shit with her, but all that Gerry has been able to see is her attempt to kill Michael (a very bad thing) and her stop some very bad rituals from happening (a good thing). But what else do you do? She’s too stubborn to back down, and just explaining the situation would do nothing to stop her from acting out against them, especially Michael. 

“I know what we do.” Gerry is confident that it would work, it would stop her from putting Michael in danger (something he really doesn’t want, for reasons still unsaid aloud) and give the Distortion some pay back (something he cares about a surprising amount, perhaps for that same unsaid reason in an indirect way). The only problem is his own trauma, but that’s something he can work through. At least he knows how to do it. 

Both Michael’s look at him with expectation. 

“We gouge her eyes out.”

Notes:

And there you have it! The dreaded tag, mentioned finally lol

Fun fact, the current Distortion (later titled The Host by me) was originally supposed to be much more antagonistic towards Michael, and it was going to get trapped in there for weeks until current Michael and Gerry (and other) realized that something was wrong. Then there was too much comedic timing to have Michael show up last chapter, so I scraped it.

Chapter 8: Mindsets

Summary:

Gerry is alive?
Gerry was once a kid.
Michael is alive?
Michael is alive.

Notes:

TW: pain, bodies being real, eye gouging (take a guess as to who, I dare you), some generalized religion talk, existentialism (yeah that one’s on me) (oops)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text


Pain, fiery hot and real, oh so real, races up his back and spikes directly into his head. It throbs and tears at his body, it tinges through every single inch of exposed skin and every single inch of skin that he does not have and has never had. It consumes him completely and totally, it consumes the parts of him that are not real but it lets him know that he is

A shocked laugh, wheezy and without meat, escapes him even through the silent screams that he has not yet remembered how to make sound. He is real. He exists

It’s sweet and unimaginable, it’s painful and too much. But if this is the price he has to pay to breath once more — he’s just about remembering the motions — then the pain is worth it. He can breath

He needs to. 

Right. 

Breathe. 

He burns hot under his own skin, the weight of it is too much, much too much, and he needs it Off. He burns cold, icy fingers of wind and air brushing against his skin that is still Too Much. His hair — something he never felt as a ghost, even if he’d seen it — brushes against his neck and shoulders and it crawls and itches and burns and brushes and is and he cannot. His skin is flaky and smoldering but it’s too much and he can’t get rid of it. 

The pain is immeasurable. 

But it’s real. It’s so real. It’s like a sickly sweet glass of lemonade on a sweat pouring day; it’s sick and too much and you’re dehydrated and it’s so nice but you hate it but you keep drinking. He drinks it in, he rejoices in his newfound body. He writhes in pain but he’ll take it because he’s real, and that’s amazing. 

Breathe. 

Right. 

That’s something he needs to do now. 

And it’s not just his body that hurts. His head pounds and pierces through his skull. He has a never ending stream of information pummeling him from the inside out. He Knows it’s the Eye’s doing, and he does not find comfort in it, but it is Something and so he Loves it. It tells him of the governor, a man who he now knows too much of his spending habits and questionable sleeping tendancies. It tells him of the woman a block from here, who is terrified of being found out about her smut writing tendancies. He Knows of the flammability of all apartments within a mile, and he knows what apartments are well loved and what would best be left alone for the other fears. And it’s not just a stream of the eye just telling him all of this, it’s a heightened awareness. He isn’t told it, he just knows the best way to destroy the lives of each and every person around him. He feels his hunger to find out more and it’s a burning fire. He seeks to destroy. 

No, no. That’s not from him. 

It’s a tingly feeling, tingly in the back of his throat and just behind his brain. It’s a feeling he hasn’t felt in, oh, three years. He hasn’t felt much of anything in three years. He gets to feel again. 

But this is the tell-tale sign that a fear is trying to influence him. Right. 

The destruction is new. 

He hurts, and he rejoices, and the first thing he tries to do (and it takes active work to even realize that it’s his first decision of this new life) is block out the influence the fears are pumping into his brain. It has been a constant necessity since he was born, this active blocking, but he’s out of practice. It’s been so long since he’s been real and now that he is, he immediately is getting attacked by knowledge and hunger and pain. 

His skin is still hot, so hot, so much, he’s burning and flaking and his skin is so light and flammable. When he touches his own skin it feels rough and textured, and he can’t for the life of him remember if this is what skin feels like. His hand brushes against his face, pulling his hair which is coarse and silky at the same time. It itches where it touches him and he realizes he has remembered how to make sounds when he whines at the feeling. His hair moves against his hand and he retracts it. 

The ground is rough below him but if his limbs would cooperate he would kiss it. He writhes and breathes and lies and tries to remember how to think and how to exist and how to do both at the same time. 

It is 2:56 in the afternoon and he has lain there for exactly 27 minutes, according to the Eye’s impeccable Knowledge of time. Why Gerry would have come to life at 2:29 PM on a random Thursday the 28th of April, 2007? 

Wait, 2007?

The Eye confirms the date, helpfully supplying Gerry with various calendars that adorn the spaces of nearby homes. 

Fuck.

Really?

Damn. 

Why the hell is he in 2007?

He died in 2013, he’s relatively sure of it. Then Jon had said it was, what, 2017 now? Then? Eventually? 

Whatever. 

2007 is definitely not the year to come after 2017, nor even 2013. Yet, either the Eye and the whole world has collectively decided to fuck with him or he’s actually been brought to life but in the past. 

Hurriedly — too hurriedly, there was a reason he hadn’t opened his eyes yet and his pounding migraine decided to tell him in extreme detail — he looked at his skin. If it’s 2007 then his tattoos should be brand new. If it’s 2007 then his hands should be relatively devoid of cuts and scrapes and scars. If it’s 2007 then his whole body won’t be covered in burns. 

What he sees, once his eyes adjust to the dim lighting and his vision can be brought into focus, is not the hand of a young Gerry. It’s not even the hands of a cancerous Gerry, pale and pin pricked from the needles and IVs he had needed too many of. It’s similar to the hands of Ghost Gerry, who he was when he had last Lived, goth and put together, but it’s still different. It’s still off. 

No, what he sees is his hands. They have his paper cuts and his knife scars. They have his burn scars that cover every inch of his body other than the half inch or so around his tattoos. They are his, definitely. They have his old tattoos with lines tracing along every limb, connecting the eyes in a sprawling web of ink. But the tattoos… well. They don’t look like ink needled into skin, they don’t have the same bleeding, they don’t sheen in the way old tattoos do. It’s the texture, the tattoos look smooth on his rough skin. 

And his skin, it’s rough. There’s no hint of hair, even where he knows he is supposed to have a light dusting on his whole arm. It’s marked up with scars, yes, but they don’t have the same textures as they used to. They used to be layers of skin, stretched and pulled, raised higher than his tattoos where there are none. Now it’s like they fade into the skin. Not by color, they are still visible, but they are just a part of the skin now. And all of his skin is rough. Except for his tattoos. It’s like they’re drawn on. 

It’s like his whole hand is drawn on. 

He looks closer and he sees it. That roughness, that sheen of his tattoos, the way his skin burns and flakes when he touches it to the rough ground. It’s paper. 

His skin is made of paper. 

His tattoos are literally drawn on, ink on paper. It still looks the same, it’s still him, but it’s paper.

And looking even closer, into the miniscule details, he can even still see his veins. They are dark and inky, they swallow the light that reflects through his thin paper skin. 

Double damn. 

He’s made of paper now. 

Insane.

***

Gerry was 5 when he was fully introduced to the world of Fear. It’s not that he was unaware of it before hand, no, he was born into a legacy that he never could have escaped. It’s not that he hadn’t seen the books his mother seemed to love more than her own child. It’s not that he hadn’t felt the general unease that accompanied all of his mother’s clients. It’s not even that he hadn’t been told bedtime stories of the entities, stories of flesh ripping apart and making anew, stories of darkness consuming whole towns, stories of going insane from your own willpower. 

No, by the time he was five, he had a pretty good grasp of what his mother was doing, what powers she was playing with. 

But he was 5 when he walked in on his father gouging his eyes out. 

And he was 5 when his father subsequently died. 

So he was 5 when he was introduced, properly, into the world of Fear. 

It was a messy affair, something he hadn’t seen the likes of yet. Of course, by now he has seen monsters and scenes of horror the likes of which cannot even be compared to the relatively tame image of that fateful day. But those eyes…

He had been playing in the road with some of the neighborhood kids, kicking a ball around and running after it. His parents were too busy most of the time to watch him, and he had long since learned that being out and doing things were preferable to watching the people who came in to buy, or more often sell, books. If he was in the house he’d be roped into talking to them, and that usually left him shaking and terrified more than he had the words to describe. So he was out. 

Something had called to him, telling him to go inside. Maybe he had just needed to use the bathroom, which was a fair thing to confuse with otherworldly powers manipulating him. It wasn’t strong, but it was urgent. He Needed to go home. 

So he went inside. 

The house was still relatively neat at that point — there was a succulent by the kitchen window that was green, the floors were still a light colored wood, the table was adorned with a single bill and a salt and pepper shaker. Sure, the bookshelves were covered in cobwebs and cast weird shadows along the walls, but that’s just how bookshelves work. He never knew anything different, anyway. The house was normally neat, which was why he knew immediately that something was wrong. 

There was something in the way his feet felt on the floor, some weird squelching that wouldn’t cause a conscious thought but that he could feel. 

There was a knife missing from the block. The sink was empty. 

The lights were turned on in the middle of the day when nobody was supposed to be home yet. 

It’s the little things that you can’t put into words, that aren’t wrong enough to cause a strong reaction, they’re the things that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. They’re what tells you that there is something wrong but it doesn’t lead you to the problem. It itches over you, the sense of wrongness, until you are a nervous wreck that can do nothing but scan the room looking for *what is it* that is causing this feeling. 

The spider in the corner? No, theres no spider there. Just a cobweb. 

In the end, it’s the sounds that tip him off. It’s little grunts, little gasps, little, uh, cries? It sounds like crying, but that can’t be right. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen his father cry. He doesn’t think it can happen. Still, he follows the sounds to the bathroom. It smells acrid and vile, Gerry can’t identify it but he knows it’s wrong. It smells metallic. 

Closer now, it’s easier to tell that the sounds belong to his father. 

Eric, his father, had always been loving to him. Based on what he saw of other kids (his incessant watching was not a recent habit), he actually had it really good. He never beat him, never put him in time out, always answered his silliest or most serious questions with an open smile (and had a surprisingly wide knowledge as to why the sky is blue or where the birds go in the winter). Sure, maybe if he was around more often that would change. Maybe if Gerry was pestering him all day then his father would start to act more like his mother, annoyed or downright scornful of his questions. Maybe if Eric was home more, Gerry would do something unlovable in front of him, not just in front of his mother like normal, and he would take it out on him. 

But he wasn’t home more. 

So he was a good father, as far as he knows, to Gerry. He’d get him ice cream on the way home some days. Occasionally, on a weekend, they’d go to a museum, and he’d answer every question he had for hours on end. And when he goes to work, Gerry just deals with Mary, who always hated the term mum, and tries to leave the house as often as possible. 

Gerry never did see all the sad looks given to him by his father when his back was turned. All the terse conversations Mary and Eric would have about how his schooling should work. He was completely oblivious to the way Eric would do anything for Mary, but Gerry could steal his heart in an instant. 

Gerry, later, would blame himself for getting teary after a particularly good weekend. It was normal for parents to go to work, he Knew this, he had Seen this, but he just hated it. He didn’t even know what was wrong when he was at work, but he knew he didn’t want it. He knew Eric hated it too. He wanted Eric to not go to that terrible place. He’d only ever been told the bare minimum about Eric’s job, but he could not shake the feeling of being watched whenever Eric told him about it. And the far off look he’d get. 

So yeah, Gerry begged on one particularly vulnerable morning for his father to not leave him that day. 

And the next day he found himself drawn to a bathroom, occupied while all the possible occupants should have been at work, with the whimpering sounds of his father stemming from it. He was scared, of course he was. His father shouldn’t have been there. He shouldn’t have sounded so pained. 

And he shouldn’t have been laughing, if both of those things were true. 

The door was not locked. Gerry opened it slowly, fearfully, his body tensing and waiting for the worst. Eric was facing away from him, his head was in his hands, or his hands were doing something? His shoulders were moving with his sounds, the laughing and the sobbing happening simultaneously. 

Gerry was confused. Is he okay? Can he help? What is he doing at home on a Tuesday? What is he doing?

“Dad?” He says trepidatiously. 

If Eric was startled it blended in well to his already sporadic shaking. He turned slowly towards Gerry, stopping about 3/4 of the way around. 

He smiled. 

Gerry has since seen many horrible, terrible, disgusting things. But none are burned as deeply into his memory as that of his father — his loving, truth telling father — smiling wide — like he was as happy as could possibly be — with red blood streaming from his hollowed eyes. His arms stretched out as if reaching for him, like he was going to reach for a hug, but his hands were covered in bright red blood that hit the floor with loud, terrible drops. “Gerry!” He sounded so excited, like he’d just had good news given to him. 

And his eyes. His eyes were what he’d remember for the rest of his life. 

They’re hollowed, yes, but it’s a botched job. There is a cave of flesh, jagged and incomplete, carved into his eye holes. His eyelids are covered in blood and hang limply against nothing, twitching and bulging, parts are scratched and missing. The lines of blood coat his cheeks, blood is smeared around his eyes, it drips down his neck and onto his clothes. 

And they stare. That’s all they do. They look and they do not see. 

Gerry takes a step back. 

“Gerry?” His father looks worried, but he still looks oh so happy, and what kind of monster has taken over his dad? His father takes another step forward and his hip digs into the counter for the sink. “Are you there?”

He’s breathing rapidly, obviously in fear and panic. There’s blood on the counter now, there’s some sprays on the walls but mostly it just pools on the ground. 

“Gerry? It’s me,” Eric says kindly. 

No. 

His father is kind. This, this thing, this is not his father. 

It can’t be. 

He wouldn’t do this. 

He, no, it, it must be an it because this is a monster and is not his father, it must be one of those monsters his mother works with. It takes another step towards him, flailing slightly with its arms to look for him. 

He takes a step back once more, now hitting the wall on the other side of the hall. He freezes. 

“Gerry, I’m free!” It laughs in joy and smiles wide. “I don’t have to go back, I’m free!”

Gerry cannot escape this thing that is not his father. It smells of blood and it looks of blood and is sounds like blood and his whole being is surrounded by blood. It’s warm and cool and suffocating. It infiltrates every thought he has ever had and all he can see is those eyes, those sockets where there are no eyes, those bits and pieces of cartilage that just hang there. 

Apparently he was screaming. 

He knows this because his mother appears at the end of the corridor. 

He knows she showed up because the next words that he makes out are a scathing, heated, “Oh you insolent man.”

He runs. 

The courts would end up saying that she probably did not kill him. That it was likely suicide, due to the obviously self inflicted eye trauma, and the fact that the official date of death was multiple days after the eye gouging event, they were likely tied together. And, even if she did kill him, the courts do not want to deal with the likes of Mary Keay, so they do not. 

Gerry does not come out of his room (hidden away under the bed with just a small sketchbook and pencil that he doesn’t even come out to sharpen when he’s ripping up pages due to it’s dullness) for 3 days after Eric officially died. He sees his mother, idly reading a newspaper and smiling softly to herself. As if nothing happened. 

She looks up at him, nods, and returns to her newspaper. As if nothing happened. 

She mentions the weather being nice for the next couple of days, and how she might end up drying some things outside as an excuse to get out. As if nothing happened. 

Gerry gets a glass of water and does not speak. She does not like it when he speaks out of turn. So he drinks his water as she mentions doing some reading and gathering supplies for the “exciting next couple of days.”

There is no funeral. No one would come for it other than Gerry, and he’s rather too small to even know that’s a normal thing for the dead. No, there’s no funeral. 

In fact, there’s not even a grave. 

No, his father died, and there was no significant change in his life. His mother still roped him into talking to her monsters, and he continued trying to not be there as much as possible. He continued to learn about the Fears as she was planning on teaching him, skipping over primary school altogether. 

But it was on that day that Gerry was properly introduced to the Fears. He was inducted. 

Gerry is still haunted by those eyes, those lack of eyes. Those hanging tendrils of blood and flesh, the way the flesh of the eyeballs gathered near his father’s feet as wet clumps of nothing in particular. 

Yeah. On that day Gerry knew Fear. 

And now they just have to do that to Gertrude. 

Easy. 

***


In the beginning, there was nothing. 

Most religions, sciences, and people when pressed for an answer can agree on this one thing; before there existed anything, there was a point that existed nothing. From there most everyone diverges greatly as to the exact method used to gain substance. Science will say it was a random chance; for every spin on the wheel of probability there was a chance, however small, to have something be created. And so, on the off chance, it was. It was inevitable really, it never could have not happened, because, well, if it didn’t, we wouldn’t really know about it, would we?

Religions will often attribute creation to some all-powerful God(s) who somehow existed in the non-existence and decided to create. It’s beautiful, really, the idea that there is a person or thing or upper dimensional entity that had so much beauty in their hearts that they needed to paint a whole universe. 

Most people, on the majority, have not spent a lick of time considering the oddity of there being something that came from nothing. They have barely spent marginally more time considering their own role within that something, and even that can often create a type of existentialism that comes from considering your own insignificance within a larger universe. 

In a way it was only a matter of time before something came along — the God you believe in, the chance you believe in, the time you are so insistent of not having enough of — and, well, Created. Was. 

But, how much time was that? 

The universe is older than the concept of time — how can one define time without a universe to backdrop it against? Without a constant sort of spinning, what makes up ‘one’ unit of time? Actually, that gets deeper into the point;

Without consistency, what is time?

The universe needed to Be before time can be defined, so in the before there is no time. So really it took no time at all. It wasn’t and then it was. 

And isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that inevitable? There was nothing and then there was something, and it was protons and neutrons and electrons and quarks and whatever other terms the physicists are using to describe things that Are. You are a painting of science, a series of genomes and atoms in a perfectly random set that could never be perfectly matched because you are you and you are unique, lovingly crafted by a science so indifferent to you that you are able to find joy and meaning within it. 

Or, you are a methodical, beautiful, work of art put together by your God. You were lovingly crafted by something that cares even when no one else does, because who doesn’t love their art? Or you were created by a god who is indifferent to you, and yet you are still able to find joy and meaning within your life. How beautiful, joy within the insignificance. 

Or, you are both. A blend of science and magic, wrapped up in a small container that contains so much.

You are, within the universe, nothing, and yet you are so much. You are beautiful. 

In the beginning, there was nothing. 

Then, in no time, or in an inevitable amount of time, or in an infinite amount of time, or negative, or or or. In time, there was something. There was you.

And there was me.

And there was fear. 

With every thing that can Be, there is the possibility to Not Be, and with that comes Fear. With every breath from the first animal, the first fish all those years (years can be defined!!) ago, an unbridled fear comes with it. It was the End at first. Then, others. Fear overtakes and consumes, it ebbs and flows and dribbles into every crack of the universe. When society was made, fear solidified, it branched out, it became real. Monsters were created through myth and legend, fears transformed into physical forms. 

The Distortion was made alongside Minotaurs and sirens. It was a terrible entryway into the labyrinth, always changing, inescapable. It drove you mad, it could not be and so it was tossed aside, nothing more than a myth used to scare children away from the door that should not be. It was a terrible siren call, enticing, using your own wants and fear against you for its meal. It drove you mad, it could not be and so it was tossed aside, nothing more than a myth used to scare children away from drowning within their own greed, entering a state that should not be. 

The Distortion was not real for all of human history, and so it was. It’s inconceivable like that. If it shouldn’t, it is. 

The Distortion was not always Michael, but in a way that is all Michael is. Michael is the Distortion and the Distortion is Michael, but they are separate and the same and oh so different. Michael is not Michael but it is not anything else and so, in an inevitability that it struggles against, it must be Michael. 

It does not like being what it must be. That goes against its nature. 

Michael fights against its nature. It makes a plan, it works with others, it looks Michael the human in the eyes and tells him what it wants. It claims a name — the Distortion for now, Michael later — and becomes conceivable. It exists, to the extent that it can, and it exists in one space for quite a long time; though time, of course, means nothing to it, it does mean something to the people around it, and therefore weighs on it terribly.

It fights its nature. It does not spiral as it sees Gerry’s eyes, kind and piercing, looking deep into it as its Gerry once did. It does not allow itself to imagine its Gerry in its arms one last time, skin bright as this one is, hair longer than this one’s, beautiful scars showing the deep history he has had. No, it does not think about his kisses, sweet and soft, hard and needy, knowing and smug. It doesn’t think about him at all. It fights its nature. 

So caught up in not succumbing to its all-consuming nature, it doesn’t notice anything wrong. Anything shift. 

It doesn’t feel it, but something changes. It’s imperceptible to all but the most in tune supernatural, and Michael has never held a tune in its life. 

So Michael doesn’t feel it then, when the future once more changes. 

What Michael does notice, in a dreadful parallel to its own appearance, is a single pop. It’s rather quiet, and Michael pushes it off as a car engine from outside (London can be quite loud, you know). 

If it, subconsciously, notices anything, the changes are subtle. If it, perhaps, starts to fidget more, well, it’ll hardly be noticeable among its previous fidgets. If it’s hair, for instance, starts to have a small amount more pep, such as a lingering strand of hope that is rejuvenated, well, it’s hair was already plenty pep-y. If it, unrealistically, zones out of the conversation more to think about it’s Gerry, well, Gerry never really leaves its mind and the conversation has never been quite as interesting as him. 

No, Michael does not notice when Gerry comes into this world. 

Most things don’t, actually. 

But, and this is hardly likely, of course, but, perhaps, the little piece of Michael’s conciousness that constantly looks for Gerry is suddenly more sure that it’ll find him. And it changes nothing about the present. But in a time where present, future, and past, are so interwoven, well. 

I guess it doesn’t really mean anything that his presence is not felt in the present. 

***

Michael believes in himself.   
  
Not in a self love sort of way (though he has put in a lot of work towards that end), but in a purely metaphysical way, Michael believes in himself. He believes he exists. He believes he is real. He believes that most things he sees are real, and simply prone to misinterpretations.   
  
Obviously that last one has taken a large enough nose dive in the last week, but that's not my point.   
  
On a metaphysical  level, Michael Is Real. He likes being warm in the winter time and cool in the summer, he likes coffee with too much sugar, he likes people liking him. He experiences joy and finds exhilaration in being able to see snowflakes cling to his eyelashes. He also, regrettably, feels anger welling up in him every time someone asks him questions that he shouldn't have to answer, or questions his integrity, or questions why he's nice so much. He just is, okay?   
  
Michael is real. He experiences the whole range of human emotions, he cooks dinner, he crinkles his nose when he catches a particularly unpleasant London scent, he gets sick every couple of months.   
  
This was a hard realization to have when he was 6, when Ryan became not-real and he had to grapple with the fact that Michael stayed firm while Ryan apparently never was. Grapple with it he did, though, and though his mind has never been able to fully reconcile what he saw as not real, fully say that Ryan never existed when he did, he was able to come to terms with the fact that he was real, and he is real, and he is a person who does normal person things.   
  
That's why it's so fucking weird to see something that is not real lift and wiggle its shoulders when it doesn't have a confident answer to a question. That's something Michael does, and he's never noticed anyone else do it, and it's subtle enough that no one else could even pick up on it, but it does it and Michael notices, of course he notices.   
  
It smiles at the end of a question, cocking it's head to the side at the same time. Sure, it has more teeth showing. Yes, its head can tilt much further than a normal persons. Of course, the smile is slightly threatening and the whole thing is more maddening than endearing. But, as you'll guess, that's something so uniquely Michael that he can't even imagine seeing it on another person.   
  
This is not a person.   
  
'Who' Michael is has always been less important of a concept than 'that' Michael is. He is real and he exists and he is a person. It doesn't matter what the finer details are, those tend to change and conflict; it is impossible to sum up an entire person within a few words, and even if you find them, they'll need refining every night. There are, however, some through-threads that tend to stay the same.   
  
Michael is nice -- he'd rather bring positivity into the world than take it out. Even if he's tired and over it, he'll be as nice as he can manage.   
  
Michael likes to laugh -- he laughs when something is funny, yes, but also as a stress relief. He'll laugh to break the tension, or when there's a horror movie that's getting to him. He'll laugh anytime others laugh, and he hopes (so much) that his laugh is as contagious as he has been told.   
  
Michael has an imagination -- that's what everyone said to him as a child, and even now he writes as a hobby and spends his nights picturing his characters going on long winding adventures through maddening forests and hallowed hallways trying to save the prince from the dragon. Sure, he's pretty sure he wasn't imagining Ryan all those years ago, but they would play similar games together before he got taken.   
  
Michael is real, he exists, and he is nice and laughs and creative.   
  
The Distortion is none of those things. Okay, it does laugh quite a lot. And it's pretty creative about how they can trap Gertrude to get her eyes gouged out. But it's definitely not nice, it's trying to gouge Gertrude's eyes out! Nice people don't do that!  
  
…  
  
We aren't going to mention how Michael is also a part of this plan.   
  
And even if the Distortion shares his laughter and his creativity with him, and arguably his niceness, it is not real. It does not exist. And Michael does. So the Distortion is nothing like Michael, not really.   
  
Michael is a who. The Distortion is barely a What.   
  
But man does it's laugh sound an awful lot like Michael's.  
  
But no. That is just an eerie creature of madness that has decided to copy the mannerisms of someone in the room, just for shits and giggles. Nothing more.   
  
That thing has no part of it that is actually Michael.   
  
That would be insane.   
  
And Michael believes in himself. He knows he's not insane.   
  
He is real.   
  
The distortion is not.   
  
He is not the Distortion.   
  
No matter what Gerry was alluding to.

Notes:

I’m starting college again tomorrow!

Chapter 9: Go or Meander, but Go

Summary:

It’s go time bois. Gerry goes, Gerry meanders, but goes anyway. Gertrude goes.

Notes:

Oops forgot to post on Sunday :/ Wednesday is basically Sunday these days right? lol

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text


Planning on how to gouge Gertrude’s eyes out honestly went way faster than expected. Even with the Distortion veering off topic every couple of sentences, Gerry and Michael were able to keep the discussion coherent enough for a plan to come through. 

It was almost too easy. 

Gerry is a paranoid person; it’s a requirement in his line of work. The moment you stop being paranoid, you get complacent. The moment you get complacent you die. 

It’s his paranoia that has saved him on numerous occasions, and those close calls are exactly why he has built up a strong tolerance to things that are ‘easy’. Things don’t just go smoothly, let alone planning sessions with an embodiment of madness. And assuming anything will go to plan when trying to go on the offensive against Gertrude Robinson? 

Laughable. 

But now all Gerry can do is hope that things are salvageable when they fall apart. 

The night is quiet. Gerry swings his feet, adorned with heavy combat boots, off the edge of the roof. He’s on lookout duty, positioned two buildings down from the Archive’s fire exit. Gertrude usually leaves late, working well into the night. She’s a workaholic but it’s worked well for her so far, so it’s probably fine. 

He doesn’t want to give in to the Beholding, the Watching that is trying to consume him. He wants to Look into the building, he wants to Know that the Distortion is paying attention. He wants, more than anything, to check up on Michael. 

But no, no, he can’t. Not yet. 

He has to focus on himself. Keep himself safe. Like he’s always done.

When things go wrong… maybe. Maybe he’ll make a deal with the devil for him- I mean, their plan. 

And, in the safety of his own mind, he thinks of Michael. He hopes, in secret, in a squashed sort of way, for his safety. Hope is nearly as deadly as expectations. 

Gerry can only hope it’s not misplaced. 

Stars do their best to poke through the London haze, the quarter moon and city lights come together to light the alleys well enough to see into. It’s hard to know if he’s seeing or Seeing, but either way he knows there’s no movement. 

And then, all of a sudden, there is. A click of a door handle, a creak of the basement’s fire escape opening. Gertrude slips out silently, her long flowing grey cardigan trailing after her. She clutches her handbag close and glances around nervously. When confident that there are no immediate threats, she wobbles quickly down the alleyway. 

Gerry watches her go passively. She turns right out of the alleyway, away from the institute. 

With a lack of speed he gets up. He takes the time to stretch out his back, tense from sitting for numerous hours. He grabs his small bag and flings it over his back. 

Trailing Gertrude is much too easy when considering she is an avatar of Knowing Too Much. Now, Gerry has always had some amount of immunity towards it (an eye cannot see itself and all that) but Gertie doesn’t even take the basic precautions that he has had pounded into him since birth. She doesn’t stick to the light in fear of the Dark trying something. She doesn’t stay away from the crowd in fear of the Eyes on him. She passes right by a butcher shop without so much as a second glance. When she passes a stranger, she doesn’t glare them away like Gerry does instinctively, daring them to try anything. She’s hubristic. She just continues on.

She does, however, take a direct path.

It’s not too surprising, that one. She knows there is an avatar of Confusion and I-Can’t-Be-Lost after her, taking a winding path would put her in too much danger to risk it, even for the purposes of shaking off sneaky goth men who have a tendency to know too much. Gerry stays a large window back, going around corners just about when she gets to the next one. Gertrude walks home. 

***

“Excuse me sir, er, sorry, ma’am?”

Gerry flinches at the words directed at him. His eyes flick up to take in the blue haired barista. They flinch at the piercing Sight that stems from him. 

“Uh, sir. We’re closing up for the night.”

Gerry just blinks. He stays eerily still, just as he has for the last multiple hours. 

They fidget slightly. “I can, um, make you a drink or something to-go, if you need. Do you want some bread? It’s on the house, we’re gonna throw it out anyway. But you are going to have to go. Sorry.”

His head slowly, methodically, nods. The barista just nods back and nervously takes a step back. 

He barely notices the passage of time between when they leave his sight and when they return holding a large hot drink and a bag full of old sandwiches and bread. 

The drink is in his hands before he knows he’s reaching out for it, and he’s standing on his feet before he realizes that’s the proper order of things. He knows he says thank you, but he can’t know if he smiles. He knows the barista is placated by his mannerisms, so he must have smiled. The night is dark but he doesn’t know if he’s dressed for the weather. He feels warm — oh so warm — but is that the sun’s fault? There is no sun now. How could it be the sun’s fault?

Is it him?

Is he at fault?

The city changes around him — no, he changes location. He’s walking. 

Yes, that’s what’s happening. The city is not the thing that’s moving, Gerry is. Gerry is moving his legs, and that is moving his own body through the city, the city that is stationary. 

He feels like he’s floating. It has been awhile since he has regained a body, but he’s back to feeling like a ghost. It’s too much, there’s too much information, it’s too hot, feeling is too much. He misses being alive the first time. He hasn’t even registered the fact that he’ll need to grieve Michael now that he’s in the past and it isn’t. Now that he can feel again.

Instead of feeling it all (oh so much), he’s shut down. He shacked up at a coffee bar — he doesn’t remember getting there, and he can’t for the life of him remember if he’d been there before or if his memories of the place were all from within the last 7 hours. He stayed there and ran through his mind. It’s what he was always taught to do, when experiencing too much. 

Find safety. 

Sit down. 

Organize your mind. 

But there was so much to think about, so much to turn around and examine, so much to feel and so much to push out. So he blanked. 

Michael would be proud of how well he spiraled. 

Well, no. Michael would be quite concerned at how well he spiraled. 

Michael was always too good for him. 

London continues to morph around him— no, Gerry continues to walk around London. It’s nice, actually, to pretend that there’s a normal reason why his muscles are burning. He hasn’t had a walk like this in years, since the week after his hospitalization. Everything moved fast then, and he had to practically escape from the hospital just to go outside one last time. 

And then he died. 

And then he was a ghost, which wasn’t nearly as nice. It hurt, every second. 

But now, he can walk around London. He watches the pigeons fight over scraps of food. The lights flicker. Bars come to life and attract crowds of people, other businesses turn off their lights and close up. 

He Knows things about all the people he passes. 

He can’t tell if he recognizes them or if he just Knows them too well.

He passes a man, touched by the dark. His white hair and pale skin is a clear contrast to the dark pulling shadows that he attracts. He glances around the corners and stays in the dim street lights, huddling up against the dark. 

The woman on the other side of the street twitches nervously, hand tucked into her handbag. She has been threatened by the Spiral, a door of madness giving her an ultimatum against saving the world. She takes the most direct path she can home, but though her sense of direction is unaffected, she still doesn’t trust it. She can’t trust herself, which has always been the only thing she can rely on. 

Another pair he passes is a couple. They do their best to not look him in the eyes, and he can understand it. They both feel the paranoia, the mark of the Eye on the other. They feel the other watching them, analyzing their movements, looking for any sign of unfaithfulness. They push back, going through the other’s phone and feeling closed in upon by the other’s own paranoia. They both think that they have the right to be paranoid but not the other, as they both know they didn’t do anything. 

He passes a goth, black denim jacket covered in patches and heavy combat boots that make a much lighter sound than they look like they should. He, the goth, averts his eyes from Gerry, staring instead ahead at one of the people he has already passed. He has tattoos and long black hair, slightly shorter than Gerry’s own. 

It takes about 10 seconds to realize who exactly he just passed. 

Gerry?

He turns on his heel and stalks behind his counterpart. 

What a turn of events, to pass yourself in the street. It’s weird that he recognized him at all, he had never thought he’d be able to do that, but he is a rather striking person. The tattoos really should have given it away sooner. 

Gerry knows the way his younger self is walking, he can see the way his chest leans back slightly in faux relaxation. He’s following someone, and based on the patterns, he’s following that Spiral woman. 

Gertrude. 

Fuck, how didn’t he see it? She was old, grey, paranoid. He didn’t get a good look at her, but now that he thinks about it, it was definitely her. The frame of her body under her classic grey cardigan, it’s her. 

Why is Gerry, young Gerry, following Gertrude?

He doesn’t remember ever doing that. He had considered doing it, sure, but Gertrude would (suspiciously) always give him an extra task on the nights he planned on it. Plus, it’s way too early for him to be working closely with her. He was still in the process of realizing he was his own person at this point, with his mother still popping up occasionally and his book burning habits still going mostly unpunished. 

And what was all that about Gertrude getting pursued by a door? 

Michael was not Michael yet, if he remembers correctly. He had met Michael Shelley a few times before he was eaten by Michael. But he doesn’t remember any stories of Gertrude getting threatened by… The Host. The previous Distortion. He’s pretty sure that was their name. 

The Eye is being quite unhelpful about what the current Distortion is. 

Had his coming back in time already done so much damage that a Distortion threatened Gertrude and Gerry decided to follow her home about it? Surely not, but what else could have possibly done this? Is he in a different universe? But everything else seems exactly the same. 

Is it possible that someone else had also traveled through time? Maybe drawing him in, why else would he have returned here? Did a Distortion send him through time somehow? Even when he was dead and gone already. 

No, the distortion couldn’t have given him a new body at the same time. 

Gerry continues to follow the mostly unscarred Gerry. He’s not expecting to be pursued while actively following someone else, so it’s easy to follow closely behind. 

It’s interesting, actually, how their footsteps line up. It’s like a metronome, two different metronomes, where future Gerry walks slightly slower and with wider steps. Their steps sync up and then diverge, both sound incredibly similar. 

The young one quickens his steps. He speeds up in turn, keeping him just in sight. 

He darts into an alleyway, dark with shadows spilling out. The shadows twist and turn along the brick, they play with the purple — yellow? — light coming from an old-fashioned wrought iron light post.

He approaches cautiously, sticking to the wall as he nears the corner. From inside he can hear static, he can feel an itchiness creep over his body. He wants to know — he Needs to Know what is going on. It feels familiar but it’s been so long; everything feels familiar in a way. 

It’s almost self destructive, in a way, how quickly he decides to enter the alley. 

He steps into the entrance, his silhouetted shadow stretching long into it. His eyes glance over the scene and his eyebrows raise in shock as he takes a step back. 

Michael?

***

Gertrude has had a terrible, no good, very bad day. 

It has been, what, 15 days since she was threatened by a Spiral? And still, she has no clues. She has read every single recent statement even barely correlated to the spiral, every bad trip turned into useless ramblings, every staircase haunted by no one and their mother, but none include this golden haired monster that has so adamantly named itself an enemy of hers. How could a creature decide that it hates her so intensely and she has no clue where it even met her before?

Surely she must have met this creature before, or even a previous version of it. The main creature of the Spiral is the Distortion, but the Host is still in her place at its helm. That was the first thing she checked, and the Host even came by for tea and a good laugh. No, this isn’t the distortion that’s after her. 

Maybe this avatar was once a human? But in the list of her enemy’s (many of which also have a place on her Allies list) there is no one that fits the bill. No one has Golden hair, messy and spirally and oh so drawing. No one has the dress sense of an 80s disco librarian. No one has the tendency to loose themselves within life itself. She’s missing something, she knows it, but every time she tries to think harder about that creature, harder about the human that was once within the creature, she thinks about the way one of its elbows (how many elbows are people supposed to have?) would spiral in on itself. Or she would get caught up on the way its eyes were there, of course they were, but held nothing and contained everything. 

Yes, Gertrude has been having a very bad week.

She leaves the institute at around 9 pm. It’s the earliest she has left so far this week, and she has started to feel the exhaustion within her bones. Her knees would rather give out than walk her home, but walk she does. All this reading has made her paranoid, so she scans the area for doors or hair before deciding on her path home. 

She hopes she’ll be able to take the most direct path. 

With spiral creatures like this, it’s only a matter of time before she becomes utterly and hopelessly lost. All she can do is hope she’ll be able to See a way forward when it happens. She knows it won’t be that easy, it never is. She could never deighn to hope to See into the Spiral. 

Her gun is in her purse, and even if it’s mostly useless against this creature it’s still nice to have insurance. She holds onto it, fingers wrapping tightly around the cool metal. 

She is an Archivist. A child of the Beholding, favored with both knowledge and power. She runs a tight balance between needing to collect knowledge in her pursuit of ruining rituals and stopping herself from falling into full stature as an Avatar. She has fought this struggle for 40 or so years, and the struggle for power and knowledge was nothing new to her when she got the position. 

Gertrude Robinson is not the type of person to be thrown off her path like this. 

And that’s what makes it cut so deep. She should be able to handle an avatar of the spiral; she’s done so plenty of times before. She’s used to having enemies, she’s acclimated to other’s hatred of her. She Knows what to do in situations like this, even when she didn’t see it coming. She should be able to deal with it easily. 

But somehow it’s getting to her. She wasn’t able to compel it, she’s never met a non-eye avatar she couldn’t compel. She didn’t see it coming, she didn’t know of it before it Became and then it just Was and that’s not how these things work. She should have seen it coming, and she just didn’t. 

She’s a terrible excuse for an Archivist. She’s not trying to be a good one, but she’s definitely a terrible one.

When she finds herself turning into an alley that she wasn’t planning on taking, she’s not suprised. It had been, what, 3 weeks of normality? Of paranoia? It had to happen eventually, why not now. 

The doorway is closed. It’s a bright yellow with peeling paint revealing the brown door underneath. The brown is almost familiar, if anything with the spiral could be considered familair. 

Ah yes, that should be said. The door reeked of Spiral. 

Gertrude can see most things and Know what they align themselves with. This door is itself rather innocuous. It sits alone on the brick wall at the end of the alley. The brick is well lined and straight, the door is well framed, a normal door with three panels. Nothing is amiss. So the pull to open it and lose yourself is really quite strong in comparison to the lack of else to think about. 

She takes multiple steps towards the door before she stops herself. 

No, she’s prepared for this. She knew it was coming. 

She is not going to fall for it. 

She stops dead in her tracks, glaring at the door. Said door continues to stand innocently on the wall as if there is not an avatar of Beholding turning her relentless Gaze upon it. It stands as if there is nothing amiss. 

Maybe she should get just a little closer, so she can have an idea of what it looks like in case it shows up again. 

Her left foot moves forward. 

And how does she know, truly, that it is anything more than a door that someone once painted yellow? She wants to know, she Needs to know, for sure, that the door is actually as Fear-based as she assumes. 

Her right foot plants firmly. 

It’s rather repetitive, don’t you think, for two different avatars of the spiral to be based around doors? There’s no reason to think that this golden haired fellow also uses doors, so why would she jump to it? She simply must be absolutely sure this door is actually what she (possibly foolishly) believes it to be. 

Her left foot. 

She needs to know what is behind this door. Gertrude Robinson has had a terrible week and this could fix it. Finally, she could set this to rest. She can Know what is calling to her. She can Know the unknowable. 

All she has to do is walk through that door. 

She can Know it all. 

Her right foot hesitates. 

She can Know what is calling to her. 

It’s calling to her. 

She backs up, suddenly realizing she was mere feet away from the door. No, absolutely not, she will not be going through any sort of door that is actively trying to get her to go through it. She does not bend to the will of those that treat people as their playthings. She’s Gertrude fucking Robinson and she will not, under any circumstances, go through a Door that is trying to eat her. 

Gertrude turns away, losing her Sight on it. 

Now she can See clearly once more. She scans the area, the dead-end alleyway with purple lighting and swirling shadows that seem to not have a source. Red bricks extend up to the sky on all three sides, and there are so many rows. Hundreds, she’d say. She can’t see them, she can’t count them, she can’t Know how many. They end, of course they end, but how many are there? There is the sky, black and starless, but how many bricks are there before the sky pokes out? 

“Gertrude Robinson.” A lilting voice says from behind her, accompanied by the squeaking of a door hinge and the music of a, well, an orchestral concerto might be an apt description. “Don’t you want to play?”

And oh how she wishes she never turned into this alleyway. Still, she firms her voice and shows her superiority; she is a superior to it, she’s been doing this far longer than this little fledgling. This powerful fledgling. “I do not play games with the likes of you.”

“Oh Gertrude,,,” It sounds mockingly sad, “I love the game of cat and mouse we play as much as the next… thing.” She can hear it stalking around behind her, its footsteps a squelch where there should be hard rubber on pavement. “But don’t you want spice?” It drawls out a long ‘oooooh’, “Come on Head Archivist. Play with me.”

Call it a cliche. She’s always been too curious for her own good. “What would be the terms.”

It sucks in a breath with such joy that she can see the purple light burn bright gold. “Archivist!” It chitters in excitement. “Oh you lovely little Head Archivist! So much more fun than the last guy, he just stabbed himself on my fingers and needed rescuing.” 

Gertrude keeps her eyes resolutely away from where she Knows the thing is. What an interesting set of words. The last guy? Perhaps its last victim, an interesting person to compare herself to, she’s never been like anyone else. Perhaps the last Head Archivist? But he was a terribly stuck up little man, too sexist to survive in a world that takes its fear from everyone with no thought to gender or anything else. 

“He did have beautifully moisturized skin when I last saw him though! You might want to ask him for some tips.”

This is going nowhere. “Do get to the point.”

A static crackle reminds her of a laugh, “I will try, Head Archivist, but it is simply not in my nature.”

“Yes. I would imagine so.”

Her dry words fall flat against the creature of joy and lies and joyous lies that still stalks right behind her. It moves close to her and she tenses, but she Knows it is not going to kill her. It doesn’t even touch her, though she can feel the air popping near its changing form. 

“Head Archivist. I would like to play a game.” It whispers into her ear though its head seems to be on the other side. “You can try to Know me, and I will try not to be Known.”

“You want to be Known?”

Its laughter is like a kettle starting high in pitch and then getting shifted lower until it’s a constant “ah.” It says, “No.” It cocks its head, “Not by you.”

“So why the game?”

“You see, Archivist, Head Archivist, I have a statement. You have some pain to go through to get it. Seems like fun, don’t you think?”

Gertrude closes her eyes. It doesn’t sound like fun, not by a long shot, but it does seem interesting. “If I win?”

“My statement will be very interesting for you. She-who-is-not-really-her is planning something you seem to care about. And I will leave you be, if you so wish.”

It’s bargaining information on the Stranger, she realizes. How would it have that information? She barely even knows anything about the oncoming ritual, just that it’s due to happen within the next decade or so. And this thing is willing to share it with her?

“What’s the catch?”

It seems to preen at the question. “I will be very. Very. Hard to know. It will be painful for you. And for me, I suppose. You won’t like what you find. It will be very, very, fun for me to see you trying and failing.”

She shudders. That’s about what she had expected. She Knows what her answer should be. There is no winning against madness, there is no amount of Truth that can fully decode lies. There is no playing with matches that does not burn something down. 

Sue her. 

She’s curious. 

“Very well.”

***

Have you ever tried to jam a whole apple inside of your mouth? The apple is large and hard, your mouth opens wider and wider, teeth scraping against the skin of the apple until your jaw is aching from how wide you’ve pushed it. Your jaw clicks as it shifts and you try to find the angle to get it ever so slightly wider, you try to push more into your mouth, saliva drips out and everything hurts but the apple just won’t go in no matter how much you stretch and how much you shove. 

At what point do you stop?

Have you ever listened to 5 or 6 different audio experiences at once? You put them on hoping to overwhelm yourself in a positive way, to make all the bad noises, the bad thoughts, all of the above stop because you’re listening to enough good ones. If you pay attention, you can start to pick out the baseline of one song. It’s muddied and you keep getting confused with another one, but you can maybe grasp it. But more than that? The other songs fall away because it’s just too much for you to grab at a time, they all squash together and distort and dissonate until all you can hear is noise and maybe a word or two that you continue to grasp at. 

Your brain simply cannot handle that many audio files at once. 

Have you ever tried to see the entire sky at one time? If you lie down in a meadow far from any trees or hills you can just about capture the essence of the sky. You can see that it is blue until the horizon, darker in the middle and so so much. But if you try to look closer? Any one cloud only exists as you see it, as you Look at it, and the shape of it disappears when you glance away. You cannot look at one cloud and Know that all the other clouds have stayed still, you cannot know the whole picture and all its details without also losing details elsewhere. And if you’ve lost the details, then you really don’t know what’s going on. 

At what point do you say that you know what it looks like, if it is constantly changing?

Gertrude tries to See the entirety of Michael. She tries to jam its whole self, it’s whole not-being, into her brain. When should she stop? She tries to pick through all of its audio files at once. She cannot handle it. She tries to See its little details but there is never a point where she is confident that it has not changed since she last Looked. So she cannot know if she truly sees it all. 

She has the general shape down. 

It is like a cube, if a cube had 5 lines per vertex that all criss-cross between planes and times. It is like a sphere, if a sphere had no definable inside and if that sphere was still somehow filled with yellow and purple and teal E-flats. It is like a person, if that person was twisted and contorted and made of funhouse mirrors that liked to smile when they should frown but never truly move in any discernible way. It is incomprehensible, if an incomprehensible thing could bare its soul plainly. 

Gertrude tries to capture it, she tries to see it all. She sees a sprawling system of pathways that end and corners that do not connect; and yet with all its disconnect it simply never ends. There is no middle, that would be too simple, a simple concept within a sea of solid twisting rubber. It cannot exist. She does not look for it. 

The middle comes to her in a flash. 

It’s golden curls and soft smiles. It’s a beating heart and yellow on black. It’s a blue cardigan and macaron shaped side table. 

It’s Michael. 

And then the middle is gone and she is left reeling. She pulls back but her eyes stay trapped on Michael’s, she falls once more into the maze of Micheal. She must Know it, she must See it, she must Comprehend it. 

There are multiple paths playing within its eyes. It’s hard to pick them out, they overlap and merge and tear at each other. 

The first human, Gertrude, steps through a door, whimpering, “will you be okay?” She gets lost in the bright pink flames and she spins myths from their power. The map pulls at him and leads him inward, but in is out and around is through. The world is terrifying and confusing and the human gets lost before she even knows what being found would be like. Roads lead to nowhere and take you exactly where they were always going to. 

Michael is unmade and retwisted like a rope that had started to fray. He is brushed into strands and braided and pulled and counted until there are too many strands and he starts to fray again and the process starts over. It forms as a spring, a coil of energy but it’s never constant. The exclamation point that it creates in the air is yellow and purple and tripled and ecstatic. 

Gertrude can see it all but nothing can be differentiated. 

“She did not hesitate.” 

Gertrude sees herself, a monster, teeth sharp as she leads Michael Shelley to its death, mouth stern as she leads Michael Shelley to his, the Great Twisting’s, failure. Gertrude sees how Michael was unKnown when he closed that door. She sees the way he dries his humanity with fear and how his insanity takes up the space. 

She see’s Helen trapped in the halls, soon. She see’s him offering her a door after she gives a statement to the archivist. She sees her walk in.

She sees so much and she understands so little. Michael continues to stretch infinitely even as she combs through its memories and its being. She looks through passageways that feel oppressive, through rooms that are covered in string and color, through doors and mirrors and doors that reflect mirrors and mirrors that reflect doors. She sees remnants of chandeliers and bookshelves but she mostly sees arcade flooring and yellow peeling paint. The hallways continue and stretch and she continues but there is no progress. 

The first human knows what it means to go insane when her family tells her that she couldn’t have possibly been in the woods for days when it was just an hour. The first monster fears their unconcious, unfixable, unaccountable change and there is the Distortion, the monster before monsters, feasting. A man falls into their work and falls into the Distortions arms. 

Black clothes tangle with static-y suits on the floor. Eyes and doors close together. 

Gertrude feels the entirety of Michael pushing in on her, forcing itself into her, into her brain, into her eyes. The apple forces its way into her mouth and her jaw aches and locks. The audio files merge and muddle. The sky is unknowable. Schrödinger rolls in his grave. 

At what point does she stop?

 

Notes:

I remember this chapter taking me weeks to write, it’s why I was so glad I was waiting until I was nearly done writing before I started posting. It’s not my favorite chapter, but it does have some parts that I’m proud of, like that last section of Gertrude looking into insanity. Like reading that part over made me go mmm cause I haven’t taken an English class in years and it’s a little cheating that I literally wrote it, but like forcing apples into mouths as a metaphor to being eaten like a roasted pig? The mixing of four or so different stories into one incomplete paragraph? Tasty little literature things were done by past me, good for you.

Chapter 10

Notes:

Tw: past suicidal thoughts, unreality (that’s been the theme of the whole thing though). Eye Gouging
We’re at the climax boys.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

By the time Gerry darts into the alleyway, Gertrude is already Looking into the Distortion. His own attempt to look into it had been surface level at best but it still left him reeling for hours, reduced to counting bricks that kept shifting and focusing on the cold that felt almost burning. Even with her being much more powerful than him, she will be thoroughly distracted by the onslaught of information brought by the maddening spiral that was once and will not ever be Michael Shelley. 

She stands hunched over, grasping onto the Distortion’s arms while she lags. Her fingers dig into its form but it doesn’t stop smiling, meeting her gaze and leaning forward in the same intensity that she does. She mutters as she takes in half statements and falls deep inside of the unknowable not-entity that is the Distortion.  

Gerry quickly moves forward, positioning himself to the side of the pair. He prepares knives in both hands, looking into her eyes and noting how he’s going to have to hold them. They feel heavy in his hands — more than just self defense, as he has always considered them, now he prepares to harm without direct action. Gertrude has never been anything but… professional to him. 

Nice. 

She hasn’t really been nice, not in the way that Michael offered him coffee after only seeing him twice before was nice. But she knows how to destroy the Skin Book. She gives him statements to read and research, he burns her books. It’s a very professional relationship. 

He cares for her more than he should. He cares for her more than she does for him, he knows that. 

But he has seen into the Distortion. He Knows that she sacrificed him, sweet, poor Michael. Even if she hasn’t yet, it would happen. She doesn’t care for him, not really. Either of them, him or Michael. 

And he cared a great deal for his father, who was smiling through the blindness. 

Yes, he cared for him. He cares for Gertrude. 

He cares for Michael more, in a way that still has not been said aloud. He will not say it yet. Not during this. Not with so much going on. 

Someday, though, Michael will know the why he’s so quick to gouging out Gertrude’s eyes for him. Michael will look at him with those big eyes and red cheeks just like that first time he winked at him, and they will know it wasn’t just a joke. 

For now though, he protects. He grips his knives tightly and draws his arms back. 

He can’t miss. The moment he touches her she will be knocked out of the revery, and if he’s not done permanently damaging her eyes by then, there’s no telling what will happen. No, it’ll be better to just pierce both eyes at once. 

Just don’t miss. 

His stomach clenches as he tenses, his body a spring that will drive both blades deep into her head. 

Just don’t miss. 

***

Michael has been stationed at the entrance of the alleyway. 

He is, on paper, supposed to be keeping possible witnesses away. Really though, he was a little queezy at the idea of gore. It sounded fine at first, but then he tried to imagine what it would be like to feel that knife slicing through flesh, warm squelchy flesh, and he couldn’t take it. The blood that would squirt, the way the knife would go easily through the eye and then catch on other types of flesh, on cartilage, the way it would take force to go through. 

No, that’s not for Michael to do. 

So instead he took the position of lookout. He makes sure no late-night partygoers stumble in, he keeps wandering onlooker’s eyes away from the deep alley. He watches for people who are drawn to the Distortion’s shifting fog and shakes them out of their compulsion. 

Somehow Gertrude cannot see him. She is not looking, and he has always had a habit of fading into the background. A good little assistant, willing to help and keep away when she needs silence. He is good at helping. He wants to help. 

When the Distortion shows up he finds his mind wandering a bit more than before. He finds his thinking turn to Gerry, how grim and determined he was about the idea of stabbing her in the eyes. How he kept looking at him so intensely whenever the Distortion would trail off on angry rants about Gertrude sacrificing it (to it? Did it get sacrificed or did it receive a sacrifice? It’s hard to tell). 

He finds his thinking turn to the way Gerry took off his denim jacket just before leaving Michael at the alley. How he said, “See you soon,” with such weight. How his lips were freshly painted with black as part of his pre-hunt ritual. How those lips moved. 

Then his thoughts drift to the Distortion, the way its curls bounce like they’ve never known different. 

He keeps a man from wandering into the alley with a grin and a word. The man huddles away from him and keeps walking without even a glance further in. 

He thinks of how the distortion talks with such playfulness, how that playfulness hides its anger and other emotions, how there is so much depth within it and so much to think of even while it shows a rather simple body. He thinks of how easy it is to understand the Distortion, how it’s so obvious when it’s angry even if it keeps laughing. How it changes position without seeming to notice, how it twitches. Yes, the distortion is quite easy to see and understand, to him. 

It’s quite odd how sure Gerry was that simply looking into it would keep Gertrude off guard for minutes on end. Michael had tried it, but only found himself spacing out for seconds max. He already turns the wrong way on his way home more often than not, so perhaps he’s just good at recognizing his own lost-ness already. 

As his thoughts wander he does turn back to look at the Distortion. He can tell that he is doing it, he can feel his attention get trapped by the infinity that is pouring out of it. It looks like a well of experiences, they want to have his. They have his. He can feel his mind peeling as he looks at the definition of insanity. 

And then Gerry is there, next to the statue of hardness and Knowledge and the shifting putty of madness and infinity. He tenses and takes out his knives. Neither the distortion nor Gertrude seem to see him, lost in each other's insanity. 

Gerry breathes and readies himself. 

Michael breathes and grips a brick behind him. 

Gerry, standing right next to Michael, takes a hitched breath and a staggering step back.

Wait, what?

Michael has no time to drag his attention away from the scene in front of him and towards the new person that snuck in without his awareness; the Gerry next to Gertrude swings and stabs deep into her. 

Time breaks and chaos breaks out. 

***

The sea of knowledge is broken with a sharp pain to her whole being, her whole power. She topples over off of her pedestal and flings herself away from the attacker. The yellow within her sight turns to red and then turns to black and then turns to light and dark. Her breath leaves her lungs as she slams into a large hard object. 

She doesn’t know what it is. 

Trying to tear her eyes open leaves her breathing hard and gasping in pain. It’s a physical pain — it’s sharp and piercing and throbbing and is located near both of her eyes — and also metaphysical — she doesn’t Know. She tries to Know and she Can’t. Her hands go up to her face and she clutches at her eyes, she covers up the wounds that spill blood onto her cheeks and coat her hands. 

It must be a wall behind her. Probably. 

Scuffling sounds get closer to her, someone, whomever stabbed her, is running closer to her. She pushes them away and takes multiple steps back. The pain is agonizing, but she’s not safe. She needs to run, to fight back, to keep herself safe and allow herself to heal. She’s weeping blood, she can’t think straight, she doesn’t know what to do. 

Instincts lead her to holding a shaking gun that she tries to point in whatever direction that person is. 

“I think I did it. She’s blind,” he sounds conflicted, both relieved and nervous. 

Her finger spasms and the gun goes off with a loud BANG. 

The person (it sounds like Gerry?) yelps and another, staticy voice does the same. Static starts to fill the air. She panics and shoots again, hoping to get her attackers away from her if nothing else. 

She is an animal, backed into a corner and lashing out. She has been beaten and battered, and it is all she can do to stay breathing, upright, and hold her gun towards whatever she can hear. A person takes a step near her and she shoots. A person takes numerous running steps starting further away and getting nearer; she shoots. Static fills the air, prickly and disorienting; she shoots. Gertrude feels the adrenaline within her blood, it strengthens her bones, it courses through her; she shoots. 

They shout for her to put the gun down, they say they aren’t going to hurt her. 

They already have. She shoots. 

It’s the first sound of pain that she’s heard from anything. It’s not new, but only now does she recognize the groans within the static. Now that she Knows it, she Knows how it cries. She heard it howl and whimper when it died and now it has anger fueled grunts that fill the space and weigh deeply on her eardrums. 

She shoots again, though she knows it goes wild. 

More shouts go up from the people all around her, how many is that? Perhaps there are 2 people. 3? They tell her to stop, they tell someone to sit down, they tell her to put the gun down. 

She cowers against a corner — at least, she thinks she’s in a corner. She’s far too exposed so she makes herself as small as possible. Her gun is clutched close but she decides not to shoot anymore, she decides to let them think she’s out of bullets or that she’s stopped for good. 

What does she do instead?

She opens her eye. 

It’s painful to open it, covered in blood as it is. The cut right above it is dangerously close to it and it bled profusely, bleeds profusely, but her eye went undamaged. She pries it open from her huddling body, protecting her secret from being seen by those who would finish their botched job. 

She looks out upon the scene, surveys her attackers and weighs her options. 

The monster — Michael, she now knows its most correct name is — lays in front of its door. It is splayed out as if opened for the world to see, and perhaps that was Gertrude’s doing. Her inability to understand it fully would have still impacted it; even with the process incomplete, she still Saw it. It lays as if torn open from the inside, and a clear bullet hole bleeds highlighter pink (yellow? Crystal? Plastic?) blood. A person drops to their knees in front of it, whom she does not know. She’s Knowing more now, but she’s not suprised that she can’t know as well as usual. 

The other eye did get properly stabbed. 

The walls curve in overhead and she Knows without knowing that there are more bricks than mortar. The distance between her and the street extends unnaturally; her escape route will undoubtedly be contorted by the Spiral’s touch. Doors appear and then unappear on all the walls and even within midair, they coat the sky (a hard surface though infinite) and then sputter out of existence. Some are yellow, others brown, some clear though obvious and others opaque but not there at all. All have little pink drops of highlighter stylistic blood staining them. 

Another person looks rather panickedly between all other parties. He turns rapidly between the monster and the person pressing their hands into the wound, his eyes dart back to Gertrude (who closes her eye as fast as she can and turns into the wall as if still cowering), he turns back to the pair on the ground. 

That looks like Gerry. She hadn’t seen it coming, but she’s not suprised. He’s the only person able to get close enough to her that also had the pure bravery required for a stunt like this, the Keay-Delano she’s watched grow up from afar. It was inevitable, really. 

She prepares her gun in her hand. 

Gerry first then. 

***

It had been 3 weeks since Gerry last saw Michael. It’s not uncommon to go days without seeing it, and usually it wouldn’t even realize anything was wrong. Time is messed up for it. 

Gerry has understood that. Gerry has gotten used to doing his work — searching for leitners — and taking advantage of the times when Michael saunters through that yellow door smiling a secretly sweet grin. Gerry allows himself to get excited for the randomness that accompanies Michael, he allows himself to get swept off his feet when it comes to visit and then live his life normally when it loses itself within itself. 

The only reason why Gerry even knows how long it’s been this particular time is because it’s felt so much longer. 

3 weeks ago Gerry got diagnosed with cancer. 

And Michael was nowhere to be found. 

Sure, they don’t have the steadiest of relationships. They’ve never properly talked about it, they’ve never told each other… They’ve never said the truth aloud. Not really. 

There are signs, of course there are signs. Gerry knows Michael better than anyone else on the planet has had the pleasure to. Michael has opened himself up to him, and Gerry knows how hard that is for it. Michael knows Gerry would never want anyone else, could never want anyone else. He tends to get lost in Micahel’s eyes; there’s no room for anybody else. 

They know they are each other’s everything. 

But saying it is so much more daunting. 

They haven’t felt the need to, just yet. 

Soon, they may need to. He’ll do it, he knows it won’t be able to. He needs to tell it plainly. 

Maybe it’ll soften the blow, when it comes. 

Gerry has never been scared of death, not in the way he is scared of all the other fears. In some ways he’s mostly been scared that death wouldn’t come for him at all. Now that would be terrifying. Trapped in a world of monsters and fear without an escape. Trapped in the pain and overwhelmingly clutching at any semblance of the life that comes with the absence of death. Trapped by your own instincts to breathe and the clenching of your stomach that compels you to eat.

Yes, life seems like much more of a trap than death does. 

If he had been diagnosed with cancer just 4 years ago he would have welcomed it. Back then he was just coming up with a plan to get rid of his mother. Nothing more than skin in a book and she was still making his life miserable, still worming her way into his life and commanding him as if she still had power over him. And he would comply, of course. He had nothing else to live for. If he had been told that he had an end date, that he wouldn’t have to listen to her for much longer, he would have breathed deeply for the first time ever. 

If he had been diagnosed with cancer before he met Michael, he’d have welcomed it. 

Now, though, all that consumes him is worry for how Michael is going to take it. 

Michael, the bright light in a distorted life. 

Michael, the wide grin that gentles tears with laughter. 

Michael, the love of his life. 

It is not going to take his death well, he knows it. It has a tendency to spiral through dark feelings and lash out if you make a wrong move, and without Gerry to calm it down? Imagine a tornado. That’s wrong. Imagine a cat. That’s wrong too. The tornado has claws and the cat whirls through the city, Michael will lash and cut and spin and destroy. 

Gerry doesn’t want Michael to hurt like that. To be hurt, that is. 

It has been 3 weeks since he last saw Michael, 3 weeks since he was diagnosed with cancer, and 3 weeks full of agonizing and planning and worrying about the best way to tell it. He wants to make sure it doesn’t hurt too bad before he even dies. He needs to prepare it. He wants to let it down easy. 

He doesn’t want to hurt Michael. 

It hurts whenever he realizes just how hurt Michael is going to be at the news. 

Gerry is in his living room, staring inattentively at a moving tv screen. His attention perks up at a familiar squeak, though he doesn’t move at all. 

He just doesn’t have the energy for it. 

Michael struts in, wrapping itself around a chair in the corner and springing lightly as it looks at Gerry. It watches him, gold coils bouncing and eyes glittery, it traces the edges of Gerry. It peers confusedly at the show the tv is turned to. 

“You look like hell,” it says jovially. Though it sounds happy, as if it’s simply making fun of him, Gerry knows there is concern deep under its facade. 

He knows it already feels the twinges of worry coursing through every hallway. 

It decides to sit next to Gerry and then it does, barely a key frame between the two positions. It perches on the arm rest and its fingers pick absently at its nails. “You don’t like this show. Housewives, right?”

It’s not Gerry’s fault he starts crying. 

It’s all the tension of the last 3 weeks crashing down on him. It’s the way Michael knows him so well and displays his concern so subtly. It’s the way he’s so fucking happy being with Michael. 

It’s the way this is all going to end way too soon, and he hasn’t even gotten to know what it’s like to casually say “I love you.” It’s the way he never will. 

Michael wraps him up in a hug and Gerry cherishes the way Michael’s elbows poke into his back and fingers poke gently at his sides. Michael gives soothing chittering sounds into the top of his head and it sways slowly with him. The TV changes to pure static and the sound is soothing — it’s the sound of Michael in a way. 

Gerry sobs into Michael’s arms without offering any explaination and Michael does not require one. It’s the kindness that Michael displays, the way it will care and protect without any questions or requirements. It knows exactly how to help.

When Gerry finally can choke out how he has cancer, Michael doesn’t say anything about it. When he explains that it’s not curable at this stage, it just keeps soothing him with soft touches and secretly warm smiles. When Gerry shows his worry for Michael, Michael parrots those same worries right back at him. It would sound mocking if Gerry didn’t know the love held behind those eyes. The love that they both know exists, even if there has been no words. 

Later, when it becomes more real, Gerry has to deal with Michael’s outbursts. Of course it lashes out, its Gerry is dying. It hates terminus, it hates illness, it traps scientists who just aren’t working hard enough or fast enough and could have helped its Gerry but didn’t. Gerry calms it down on rough nights of spiraling through the worst of it. It tries to trap Gerry in its hallways more than once, hoping that it could keep him (the semblance of) healthy for (the semblance of) longer. 

He talks it down, every time. He calms it, stabilizes it, keeps it level. 

Michael visits him in the hospital and they say their goodbyes. 

And then Gerry dies. 

.

Gerry has never had to see Michael get hurt in the same way that he was. He’d show up on an average Tuesday with bruises covering the left side of his body and lacerations down his arms. He’d patch himself up and take a painkiller and deal with it. He felt his most human when the pain came. 

The most pain Gerry had ever seen from Michael came from those last 2 months. Michael was lashing out, he knew it, and it was all Gerry could do to calm it down. It lost a lot of its more human characteristics, its fingers were often sharp and cutting. Its hair would grow unpredictably and lose all sense of itself. 

Michael swallowed a killer, once. It came to him with long cuts that swirled at the ends and spill bright pink blood. It had tried to patch him up, wrapping bandages around Gerry’s perfectly fine middle section while he stared in horror at Michael’s swelling smile and over abundance of cheer. It got sharp when Gerry tried to help it with its wounds, even though it was seemingly actively getting more. Tears were falling from its face as blood spilled away from it in ringlets and Gerry couldn’t help. It didn’t want Gerry to help. 

He thinks Michael might have wanted to try out the pain, see how bad it was. 

That was the extent of Gerry’s knowledge of Michael experiencing pain. Michael rarely gets hurt, he’s able to glitch out of most situations. 

Gerry is rather concerned when he sees Michael fall to the ground after getting hit by a stray bullet. 

It doesn’t even matter to him, that he is in the past and seeing Michael during a time when it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t even matter that it was doing something to Gertrude of all people, or that she’s the one who shot the bullet. It doesn’t even matter that the younger version of him had apparently just tried to blind her. 

What matters is that Michael is on the ground, bleeding that damned highlighter blood, and it looks so ready to let it consume it. What matters is how Michale’s eyes are without sparks, full of knowledge and torn open from it. 

Gerry runs to it. 

Its hair coils wildly, sharp and staticy where it touches his knees when he collapses next to Michael. Its arms jerk, flashing between reaching for him and touching its wound and covering its eyes and reaching for some other unknown not-thing. It mumbles something about time, counting indecipherable numbers. It whimpers a grating, harsh sound. It cries a soothing drifting whine. 

Blood covers Gerry’s arm as he instinctively tries to fix the wound. It’s on Michael’s stomach though it drifts slightly with Michael’s staticy shift. It’s hard to get a good grasp onto it and even harder to know what to do to help. Pressure, right? Do normal gunshot wound tactics even help with a creature such as Michael? What even are normal gunshot wound tactics? He presses on the wound, hoping, praying, wishing, wanting to believe that it’ll help. 

The Beholding, so deeply intrenched in him now that he’s died and Become, offers no information of use. Any other entities with their grip on him also leave him completely alone to deal with this. He looks Michael in the eye and sees a wandering conciousness. The Beholding tells him that Michael has not been properly looked into. It says it’s hungry.

He’s not going to do that. Obviously. 

Black liquid drips onto Michael’s bright body. It mixes like a tendril, slithering over and in the brightly colored blood, high contrast and swirling patterns stemming from where his inky tears land. His breathing and sniffles are hard to control, his tears are impossible. They spring from him like an inkwell, they drain down onto Michael and mix with his blood. 

Another gunshot goes off and Michael cowers into itself, flickering to a fetal position and back to the splayed out way that seems to be its most stable form. Gerry flinches away from it, especially when he hears himself give a low groaning sound. 

No, that wasn’t him. There is no pain stemming from his body, no loss of breath, no inky well where blood should be. 

The other Gerry then. 

Michael continues to space out and Gerry continues to be terrified for it. 

At this point the situation catches up to him. Gertrude shot it. Gerry, the past one, is collapsing to his knees since Gertrude just shot him too. Gertrude has a pistol aimed at Michael, the past one, who is trying to get to the past Gerry to drag him out of the alleyway. Michael, the Distortion, is almost dying, and it was Gertrude who shot it. Now she’s trying to kill everyone here and get away to tend to her wounds. 

His fury almost completely overshadows his concern for Michael. He Knows her, he Knows what she is capable of. She betrayed him, desecrating his body and his trust after his death for nothing more than a few questions that she never even decided to ask him. She shot his partner, his past self, she wrings destruction with every passing second. She sacrificed the human Michael and is preparing to kill him now. 

She’s selfish and entitled. She Knows, now, what happened to Michael. She Saw it. 

Still, she takes aim. She‘ll willingly kill her only assistant for only the good of herself. This is all she finds him worth. 

Gerry stands up straight, his paper skin burning black on the edges with fury and desolation. 

He will make her hurt, he will make her suffer for the suffering she has wrought. He Knows her, he knows everything she has ever done. He Knows why she’s scared, he can taste it in the air. He feels the pressure of her fear and resolve within her, and he can feel his own hunger wanting to tear at it. It claws at him waiting for him to crush her, destroy her, flay her and leave her for the maggots to consume. 

Gertrude Robinson. I Know your Fear” 

He has never properly compelled before, not like Gertrude can do, but it feels so right. He’s flexing a muscle that yearns to be set free, and she cowers under the weight of it. 

She closes her eye — ah, so she wasn’t fully blinded then — and presses against the wall, brown and wood with brass features. “W-what?”

Gerry steps away from Michael and toward Gertrude, his vision is ringed with fire and hatred. “The Greater Good is only as Good as your own Greatness, Archivist.” He glowers at her and he can feel his hands turning black with singe marks. “Or is that not the point? You fear your own destruction more than that of the world. Your power is more you than any human instincts you have ever had. To keep your humanity or to keep yourself? You would choose yourself every time.

Gertrude drops her gun now, shaking with the pressure of Gerry’s eyes, Gerry’s destruction. “What are you?” She tries to compel him but her power is weak. 

The question is a good one, but not one Gerry is concerning himself with at this moment. He focuses on his rage, his care. He does this not for himself, he cares not what he is. He stands, at this moment, for Michael. He stands for Gerry, past Gerry. He stands for the Gerry that died and then came back

I am what you made of me. I am unimportant, a page in a book, there to be known and to know you back. I am the fire behind every heinous act you have exhilarated at, come to release you of your debts. I Know your deeds and I am your deeds incarnate.” He stands tall over her now, his eyes burning a bright orange and little black and orange eyes appear all around her. 

Past Michael succeeds in dragging past Gerry out of the alley, even with the walls stretching confusedly. Michael, his Michael, shades its own eyes from the onslaught of Beholding and Destruction that is emanating from Gerry at the moment. Gertrude too shields her eye, though her curiosity is as damning as her past actions. She peeks up at him and flinches at his unwavering stare. 

Look at me.”

Her eye locks onto his. 

Look and See your Corruption

He projects onto her mind every single thing she has ever done wrong. It’s the big ones first, the one’s she knows about. Her role in Agnes’s death. Her sacrificial assistants. Her role in his father’s entrapment and following blinding and death. He projects his own feelings about that one, he makes her feel his despair, his hopelessness, he makes her Know the suffering she caused. He shows her his own death, the way she left him in America and then turned him into the thing she swore she destroyed. He projects to her the pain of the void, the cold of death, the way having no body makes the pain even harder to think away as every bit of the pain is already only a thought. 

He forces her to Know her impact on the world, he makes her relive the first time she killed a person. She didn’t even remember it, so long ago and inconsequential. She remembers now. She knows every doubt she had, and she remembers how easy it was to disregard. She remembers how easy it was to move on. He forces upon her the Knowledge of every piece of collateral damage her ritual stopping habits have had a tendency to rack up. 

He shows her the new Archivist, already so far along on his journey merely 9 years from now. 

He lets her connect the dots on her own significance between now and then. 

It takes her taking her own knife, once wedged in her belt, and slotting it neatly into her working eye for him to stop the onslaught of information. She screams out in pain and falls to the ground, groveling. She reels and cries and rocks back and forth as she deals with the pain in her eye, the pain of losing her connection to the eye, and the pain of Knowing, intimately, everything you have ever done wrong. She wrenches her knife out of her eye and starts stabbing it into the ground, clawing at it with her fingernails. She punches a wall, a door, she tries to distract herself from the pain by using her most immediate method: more pain. 

.

Gerry walks away.

***

Colors are so interesting, wouldn’t you say? Have you ever looked at a color and thought it looks spicy? Like the spicy of a good pineapple, yellow so bright it prickles at your eyes and its all you can do to keep from reaching out and touching it to stop the illusion. 

A perfect gradient is boring, it’s the brush strokes that bring life to the painting. 

Would Michael be made of brush strokes if it had more life in it?

Is Michael nothing more than a mess of gradients? Devoid of life?

A perfect gradient can give depth and color, it can transform a layered cake into a sunset, the yellows and yellows and yellows of a rainbow cake mixing into the yellows and yellows and yellows of a sunrise. 

My favorite color is yellow. It’s the color of the sky, the color of the ocean, a bright yellow that consumes the world, it is the color of most of nature. 70% of the world is yellow, and it similarly consumes my dreams. Or it’s a cool yellow, a baby’s first blanket, a beautiful color of berries and water. 

My favorite color is yellow. I sit in the woods and look up at the yellow trees. See how it comforts? See how it’s the color of life, of growth, of moving on and sticking to your roots. Life is worth living when everything is yellow. It soothes a broken heart with the power of plants, beautiful yellow plants. 

My favorite color is yellow. The color of love. Of passion. Its intensity can fire me up, the color of infamous roses that would smell as sweet. See how lovely yellow is? How bright, how peaceful, how lovely of a color it is. 

Michael is yellow. 

To be walked upon is to be real enough to be tossed aside. To be torn open and left to rot is to be real enough to contract disease. It’s to be real enough to be gutted and flayed with the sheer knowledge that was sorted through. 

Michael is yellow. 

It was never supposed to be defined more than the word, more than the poetry that is barely readable. Michael is yellow and that is all, he is the color of the roses and of the ocean and of the trees and he is yellow because that is all Michael can be characterizes as without being defined. 

But then Michael was called purple and the world fell on its head. 

Can the world have a head? It certainly didn’t land on its feet, so it must have fell on its head. Or maybe its hip. That would be sufficiently unlikely. 

Michael was called blue and the world spilled its water. 

Micahel was described and the world stopped spinning. 

Oh. 

It’s bleeding. 

The world continues spinning. 

It tickles, in a way. It’s grounding, and that’s not only because it’s on the ground. 

Michael was torn open for the world to see. It was organized and seen: defined and contained: ravaged and left behind. It lost all sense of itself, and worst of all it knew that it had a sense of self at all. The pain of being seen is nothing compared to the pain of being understood, and though she couldn’t get it fully, it’s still enough to knock it out. 

And then there’s the tickle of pain — or whatever counts as pain these days. It’s been shot. 

Oh bother. 

Imagine a slice of lemon being squeezed into your eyes, but your whole body is your eye and the lemon is a gun. Now throw that away because it’s not like that at all. Imagine a piercing pain within your abdomin, a cramp if you’re unlucky enough to have them. It burns and throbs but it’s steady and like a scream that was transformed into pain form. It is without start, end, or location. It is everywhere and also centralized. Crawling into a ball is nothing and staying laying flat is worse. There is no good. 

Michael is yellow and pink and blue and green and it swirls with nothing and pain and the world is screams and doors and static, but what are the screams but doors and static and what are the doors but screaming and static and what is the static but doors that scream. He starts at the beginning, and there must be a beginning, because it remembers a time when this pain was not. It ends at the end, and there must be an end because it feels it creeping nearer. 

It’s dull, near the end. Its colors desaturate when it thinks of it. The end. 

Michael had more surface area than normal, but perhaps that is the blood that spreads out along the ground. Oh right, grounding. Blood. There are so many doors, are they Michael’s?

Michael likes doors, it thinks. 

Ryan would like these doors. 

There’s blood on the tiles, bricks? I don’t know how it got there, silly blood! The floor doesn’t need a blood transfusion! I think it’s supposed to be in me. 

Do I need the blood?

Michael is on the ground, feeling grounded. The blood pools on the ground too.

Maybe the blood likes Michael?

Yes! It’s crawling up Michael’s midsection, I think it likes it. Wow, there’s so many doors. Maybe Ryan is behind one of them!

Ryan!

Are you there?

Hey, what’s all this blood doing here?

Oh silly me, I dropped my highlighter. 

Is it yellow?

Ryan! You dropped your pink highlighter!

Oh, Michael is here! Hey, you got highlighter all over you. 

You need someone to clean it off of you, I think. It’s hard to clean up highlighter when your bones hurt and your abdomen keeps spilling more highlighters and your colors keep swirling and mixing. 

Are you a gradient? That’s so boring, Michael. Be a brush stroke, a character. 3D. 

I think Michael is more like 5D. 

It sprays water at you. 

Oh, there’s highlighter on the ground! What is that, green?

Green is my favorite color! It’s the color of sunflowers, of the sun on a bright morning. It’s cheerful and happy. 

Gerry seems to like the highlighter. He’s kneeling directly in it. Those colors don’t go well with his dark pants, but to each their own I suppose. 

Micahel, you’re spilling all your highlighter! It’s supposed to go on the paper, haha! Not onto Gerry’s arms, pressing desperately at your stomach. 

There is a swirl of colors on and surrounding Michael. 

It’s easy to see when a black tendril drops onto it. It’s an inky black that swirls in tandem with the pink and green and yellow and yellow and yellow and yellow and yellow and pink and clear. It swirls out, mixing and twirling the other colors in an unknowable dance, it twists and lengthens and pulls. 

More splashes of ink fall into the mix, they contrast and pull at the eye, they spiral and coat Michael’s stomach in lines. 

Gerry’s arms are covered in bright colors when he stands up to confront Gertrude. 

His hands are a black soot when he comes back. 

The black ink has now settled nicely onto Michael. It has lined its blood streaks, outlined the bullet wound and found its way into the other cracks where Michael needs outlines. Michael looks 2d in a 3d world where the creature is neither. 

It’s odd, though, how a gunshot wound in 2d doesn’t look nearly as scary.

How the blood seems contained when it has lines bounding it. 

How it can slow to a trickle when every drip has ink defining it. 

Michael is still disoriented, Michael has lost a lot of blood (and is a creature of disorientation). But its colors are bright and its confusion mostly just stems around the person who just saved its life by creating meaning within a meaningless situation.

***

Gerry walks away calmly. His fires die down, though his hands are still singed with charcoal, having burned off all the pink blood from the heat of his skin. He’s high strung, forcing himself to keep it together after such a display of power and emotion. 

He sinks down next to Michael, his Michael.

Slowly it turns a head to him and looks at him confusedly. “Gerry?” It speaks with a floating whisp as if it’s not anywhere near its own body and is rather unsure of how it came to be here. 

He nods meaningfully, “Yeah. I’m here.”

“I thought humans hair don’t grow that fast. Has it been that long since this morning?” It seems sad at the idea of losing time, it’s confused, it whispers as if it doesn’t remember what speaking is. 

Gerry smiles softly and places his hand on Michael’s cheek. It’s disorienting, as it always is, but it’s so real. He wasn’t real for so long. Now he can be dizzy again. “I’m right here, Michael. My Minnow.”

Its eyebrows scrunch together at the nickname. “You didn’t call me that yet,” it accuses, confused. 

”And when would you rather me do it?” 

Michael looks deeper at the rest of him. “I can’t tell. What’s happening?” It’s searching him, searching for him. It’s trying to power through the madness that consumes it and find the truth. It doesn’t know yet that this Gerry is its Gerry. 

Gerry rubs his thumb over Michael’s pink blushed cheeks that have little white spiral freckles dotted into them. He glances over all of them, they are all the same as before — moved, of course, but still there. He looks into Michael’s eyes and sees the sparkle, the confusion starting to get cleared but still there full force. 

Gerry doesn’t say another word. 

He kisses it. 

It’s just like their first kiss, it’s sparkly and dizzying and glitchy. Michael’s breath hitches and the air flow feels like a thousand tiny cold needles scratching lightly at his skin. Its mouth moves position a few times as it fazes in and out of frames and reality. 

Then Michael grabs the back of his head and pulls him close. 

It steadies its glitching, though it’s still just as dizzying. Michael moves against his mouth and Gerry relishes it, he feels the love seep between them, he feels fingers run against his scalp and lower back. His own hands tangle in Michael’s hair and run along his shoulders. They kiss and hum and move and when they break apart they stay close and look into each other’s eyes. 

Gerry takes a moment to get his bearings again. 

“Michael,” he breathes. 

“Gerry,” it says with stars in its eyes. 

Gerry can feel his smile breaking through even as he starts to cry more inky tears. He’s relieved, so so relieved that he is real and he has Michael again. He’s in pain and worried and scared of his new powers and body and ability to overpower Gertrude. He is, most of all, exhausted. 

But Michael is right there, looking at him like he’s the best and most insane thing to have ever happened to it. So he cries in relief and love and tiredness and clutches onto whatever part of Michael he is currently gripping. 

“But, the dead stay dead,” Michael tries to ask how he’s here. 

“And the dead usually don’t time travel, Michael,” he says with a smile. 

It just looks over his face in wonderment some more. “Life is quirky like that, I suppose.”

“I love you, Michael.”

It refocuses on his eyes again. It sharpens its gaze until he feels the prickles of madness peering into him and it says, with the gravity of someone who has been waiting years for this moment, “I love you too, Gerry.”

*** 

 

Notes:

Aaaaa I love them <3
Just one more chapter! That I’ll hopefully post within a normal amount of time! (Maybe an epilogue but it’s not written so it probably won’t get written at all)

Chapter 11: Slash

Summary:

Michael and Gerry become a slash. Gerry and Michael become a slash. There are slashes in this chapter, and I don’t mean the ASCII character. Also I put in a trope because I WANTED TO.

Notes:

Holy shit this is the last chapter! I have loved you guys so much, and these two(4?) doofuses deserve so much love. There is a possibility that I will write an epilogue soon and post it to my tumblr (or increase this by a chapter) but I really just want to say that I finished something for once. Plus I am out of my writing phase and mostly out of my doorkeay fixation too, so the words aren’t coming (and I don’t want to force it right now).
I hope you’ve liked this fic! I’m really proud of it, it’s definitely something I could show my therapist and let her identify every single thing that I wrote as a coping mechanism and all the things that I wrote as a direct response to the craziness my life has been in the last couple of months.

Tw: small misunderstanding that leads to an insane amount of self hatred, but that lasts like 3 paragraphs max and then it gets better

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text


God Gerry hates Hospitals. 

For how often the line, “I’ll be fine,” crosses his mouth, he should probably have been in the hospital more often. He’s probably the last person to think “I should go to the hospital” in any given situation, and he more often than not tries to go without until he literally faints and gets carted away. 

He hadn’t fainted this time, but the look on Michael’s face when he tried to say he didn’t need it was enough to shut up his whining and just go along with it. It’s not even that bad, really. It hadn’t hit a bone so it was mostly a clean wound, through and through. A liver or intestine would heal up on its own given the time, he really didn’t need to go to the hospital. 

For some reason the hospital staff also didn’t like his insistence to do the bare minimum of giving him a bandaid and a lollie and sending him on his way. They sedated him almost immediately and brought him into surgery. 

Now he just has to lay there, in the infuriating quiet broken only by even more infuriating beeps and distant footsteps, counting the ceiling tiles and wondering about what comes next. 

At least Michael would be allowed to visit him soon. 

Visiting hours are very strict here and simply calling him his boyfriend wouldn’t be enough to give him a free pass, he Knows it. He would though, without a second thought, if it would allow him to see Michael more often. And can you imagine the blush he would get about it? He’d worry and wonder himself sick about if Gerry meant it that way and Gerry would get to see the way he would look at him surreptitiously while trying to work it out. 

But no, that woulnd’t give him better visiting hours, so Gerry just has to find other ways to subtly tease him. 

He waits, drifting off to a half sleep filled with dreams of Michael’s cheeks and cheeky sly humor. He traces the edges of the ceiling, imagining himself small and able to climb walls. He imagines being an ant, describing the world as if venturing into the depths of an unknown biome, a pioneer into the unknown and indescribable. Where phones are monoliths and paper holds cave drawings of indecipherable pictograms. 

It’s a good way to pass the time. 

Michael comes in with a soft smile, unsure of himself as always at the beginning of their visits. He hesitates by the door until Gerry acknowledges his presence. He smiles deeply. 

They talk for hours about everything and nothing. They speak of the way modern lights are green shifted to more closely resemble the light that comes from the sun. They describe the fear entities and how they are both tied to the Eye in ways they didn’t intend to be. They defend their music tastes to the other; ending up resolved to just have to listen to them both together until they can decide which has the better taste. They bring up Gertrude just once. She isn’t okay, her body in shock from both the wounds and from losing all access to her powers. But she is alive and that’s more than what the alternative would have gotten her. 

Gerry stares at Michael and his true, authentic self that seems to glow and twist and swell from within him. Michael gets lost within Gerry’s eyes, his endless knowledge, and the way his mouth will quirk up on one side when Michael is getting close to a revelation. 

Isn’t that how it always is with them? Michael gets lost within Gerry, gives him something to look for. Gerry stares at Michael, knows him, finds him.

Michael keeps glancing around the room to try to find something to keep him here. He looks Gerry over again, fiddling with the blankets that got wrinkled, smoothing them out, tracing the faint lines, smoothing them out again. 

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Michael’s eyes flick up to meet Gerry’s and then return down. He says, “Time is hard.”

Gerry nods sagely, “You have another 30 minutes, though. You don’t have to leave yet.”

This seems to satisfy Michael, allowing him to relax his shoulders ever so slightly. He doesn’t have to leave yet, even if his mind is trying to tell him that their time is almost up.

“Oh! I brought you something.” He ruffles through his bag, the disorganized chaos in it making whatever he’s looking for impossible to find. 

“Oh?” Gerry says, interested. 

“Yeah, you’re stuck in here for the next little while so I figured you’d want some…” He pulls out a little vial, “lipstick!”

Gerry is dumbstruck. “What?”

“I didn’t know what brand you usually use, so let me know if I should go get some different stuff, but I figured you’re always wearing it so you must like it, and I stopped by a corner shop anyway and saw it and I thought of you, and you don’t have access to-“ Michael rambles on, trying to defend his gift and decision. 

Gerry stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Hey.” He smiles, “Thanks. That’s really thoughtful.”

He blushes and looks away. 

“It’d be mostly for you, ya know. I don’t really have a mirror and I doubt the nurses care. Would you say that you’ve been looking at my lips enough to warrant putting it on?” He’s coy, as if he doesn’t know how much Michael looks at his lips. As if he doesn’t glance down at Michael’s just as often. 

Michael’s face is red and he can’t make eye contact. When he does look over at Gerry’s face his eyes land right on his lips and then he looks away again, the red creeping down his neck. “Uhh” he stammers. 

“Well I would absolutely put it on right now, but I’m a little shaky at the moment.”

“Oh! Of course, sorry, I didn’t think of tha-“

“No no, I still want it on.”

“…Huh?” 

Gerry smiles as innocently as he can. “Yeah, I couldn’t do it right, no mirror, gunshot wound, you understand of course.” His eyes glimmer as if he knows exactly what he’s asking for (and, of course, he does). “Could you help?

He stutters, “You, uh, you want, um, me to… put the lipstick on you? Apply it?”

“I would love that.” 

“Oh, uh, alright.”

Michael uncaps the cheap black lipstick he had just bought and brings it close to Gerry’s face. He has his arm extended, staying as far away as he can, trying to not be in Gerry’s personal space. 

Gerry reaches out and pulls him in, making him scoot his chair closer and bend his arm. “You’re gonna want to be as steady as possible. Brace yourself against the bed and my head.” He maneuvers Michael until he’s right in front of Gerry with barely inches of breathing room between them. 

Michael looks Gerry in the eyes until he’s sure that Gerry is okay with this. Which is insane, of course, because Gerry made this happen. It just feels so intimate, and Michael isn’t even really sure why his heart is beating so much. Like he knows, of course, that he wants to kiss him. But who wouldn’t? 

Finally his eyes flicker down to Gerry’s lips and he starts to trace the upper one. Gerry has his mouth open slightly and watches Michael’s face steady in concentration as he starts applying. 

He traces one archway and then the other, connecting them and drawing down to the corners. He fills in the lip, working slowly and methodically. 

His eyes drift down to Gerry’s snake bite piercings. His thumb traces over them, he feels the cool glint of silver constrasting his rough warm lips and hot air that exits his mouth. Gerry’s breathing is shakier than it was a minute ago, but Michael supposes that just because he’s so close now. He can feel the way Gerry is looking at his own lips, the way Gerry leans into his touch. He can feel when Gerry decides to swallow, can feel his throat moving up and down. 

He mumbles, without realizing what he’s saying, “I wonder what they feel like.” Michael doesn’t have any piercings, always having been too sheltered and then too busy to get even an earring. Gerry is covered in them, in cool silver and black adornments and that give him so much character. 

Gerry’s voice is hot and low when he whispers, “Would you like to find out?”

Michael leans forward imperceptibly, his own breath hitching as he realizes what Gerry means. “Yes.”

Gerry is the one to drag Michael forward, crashing their lips together. Their noses hit each others cheeks and Micahel lets out a small “oomph” at the force of it. They quickly meld into each other, hungrily moving and pressing faces against lips. Michael’s hands grip into Gerry’s hair, not pulling or moving him nearer but keeping him there. Gerry’s one hand stays on Michael’s lapel, gripping him forward and down, his other hand clutches onto the hospital bed to keep himself from moving too much and getting hurt. 

It’s hot and breathtaking and neither really know where it came from — that hunger, that need — but both know how right it is to be kissing each other like that. 

When they come apart, Gerry allows himself to lay fully back down on the bed, breathing heavily and letting his arm flop down next to him. The heart rate monitor beeps fast and all Gerry can do is look at Michael and smile,  panting. 

Michael leans forward against the bed, arms resting on Gerry’s arm and eyes latched onto Gerry. Michael has black stains covering both his top and bottom lips, an interesting look that matches perfectly with his starstruck expression. 

“Did you feel it?”

Michael just breathes for a moment. “What?”

“The piercings.”

“Oh.” Michael tries to think back but all he can feel is the adrenaline and the joy and the fact that he was kissing him and the way Gerry’s hand had clenched his shirt near his neck. “No.”

Gerry gives a wry smile. “Guess you’ll have to kiss me again sometime.”

He nods, still breathless. “Yeah. Guess I will.”

*** 

Michael should not be able to walk directly after getting shot. Of course it can’t, it got shot. It bled out. It died. 

No no, dear reader. 

That would be far too logical. 

For a creature of lies and illogic, it was improbable that it would ever be able to get shot in the first place. It did, of course. It did bleed, however unlikely the idea of it having something as logical as ‘blood’ is. It wept and it felt pain, however a creature such as that feels pain (it seems so far removed from something such as pain; therefore, it feels it). 

And then, like no gunshot wound victim ever, it simply gets up. 

Blood drips into the air and stays still, frozen in place, even as it moves away. The blood is lined in dark ink, the line art that is visible even within the 3 dimensional space. It stumbles and trips, the fall transforming into a seamless cartwheel and it returns to an upright position. Well, an onlooker would say it’s “laying down? But its feet are in the air and its head is in the air, so it must be upright,” but we are no onlooker.

We are something else entirely. 

The reader, the writer, the secondary experiencer. 

We are that which can know what no primary subject ever could. 

Michael leans on Gerry for help walking, though Gerry seems to stumble far more than Michael does. 

If you were to trace the line of blood that stems from Michael back through the alleyway even as they leave it, you would think it could fly. Perhaps it can. It seems unlikely. 

So it can. 

It crisscrosses and drifts, it separates and picks up again, it turns into drops and splatters against the wall and then resumes its midair drift. It’s like a child learned about color theory and demonstrated their prowess within an antigravity chamber. That’s a good way to describe Michael in general actually: a child who learned color theory and immediately disregarded it. 

Gerry stumbles once more, disoriented and confused from Michael’s mere presence, exhausted from that extreme display of power that was both more than he’s ever done and also completed after returning from the dead and not having had any sort of nutrition for the last 3 years (while dead). Strangely, he feels only tired, not hungry. 

Gertrude was a feast, bringing her to the point of complete self destruction. To bring her fear of destruction so high that she chooses to inflict it upon herself, that’s the real treat. To be known so completely that you choose to no longer see a thing. Gertrude was amazing.

And now Gerry has Michael in his arm — on his arm? Walking arm in arm, though the exact beginning and end of Michael is hard to quantize — and he doesn’t have to worry about Gertrude and he can figure everything else out later. Right now, Gerry has a Michael to get to a place of rest and healed up. 

They end up at Gerry’s apartment. It’s not his, in the way that his name is no longer his own — it’s shared — his apartment is no longer his — it’s lost his history — and his life is no longer his — it’s dead and returned wrong. Sure, the other Gerry will be wanting it back, but for now it’s a place that is empty and recognizably Gerry’s. 

They collapse onto the couch; it’s dark and shabby, just like he had acquired it as. There are springs that jab harder into you than would be entirely comfortable, and Gerry notes passively that there are fewer broken springs than he remembers. He lays Michael down first, “You have a gunshot wound, Michael.” Gerry then goes to sit next to it but finds himself falling through what was once a corporeal form. 

Somehow, Gerry doesn’t know the specifics, but they end up with Gerry comfortably (again, the couch cannot be comfortable, but consider this an approximation) laying down and Michael laying on top of him, curled around and cuddling as close as possible. It almost seems as if every inch of Gerry is engulfed by Michael and its need to be touching, confirming, real-izing his presence. 

He manages to cough, “uh, little less, please.” 

The all-consuming-ness of Michael decreases and it takes the form of legs that wrap around Gerry’s middle, arms that squeeze Gerry’s shoulders, and head that presses into his collarbone. There also seem to be legs that wrap around Gerry’s legs and arms that stroke along his shoulders and head, but he chooses not to think about those considering his headache is only getting stronger the more he tries to remember a) what being real is like and b) how much Michael is not real. 

Like it’s real, it’s right here, but it’s less that Michael is in reality and more that reality is Michael’s to play dolls with and it often forgets about them in the back of the cupboard. 

Gerry falls asleep to the comforting feeling (oooo he just remembered he has feelings! He’s experiencing this! The adrenaline is gone and he can recognize how nice this is!) of Michael (Michael! He’s here with Michael! His Michael! His distortion! His Minnow!) twisting his vision until all that plays is a neon and black swirl. 

Michael does not need to sleep, not like humans do, but it does feel exhausted. Is it exhausted? It is over life, that much is for sure. It would be happy succumbing to unreality for the next thousand years, allowing society to crumble and the next one to create their own myths of its sprawling labyrinth in their own unique way. 

But then it squeezes tighter against the faintly breathing form beneath it and entrapped by it. It looks at the love of its life and not-life combined. 

It wants to be real, at least for the next little while. 

Because Gerry is real. 

Gerry is real!

Gerry is real and here, in its arms. 

Gerry is alive and real and remembers it and loves it. 

So Michael will be most of those things too. 

All, if you expand your definition of alive. (Eats. Uh. Communicates somewhat. It honestly doesn’t check off much in terms of “alive” but there is the attempt.) 

Gerry shifts in his sleep and Michael clings tighter. There is the fear — the type that is strong enough to make its way through Michael’s built in firewall — that its eyes are playing tricks on it. That Gerry is nothing more than his wants and fears realized, and that it will soon find out that its own mind can play the same tricks against it that it plays upon others. There is the fear that Gerry will be gone when Michael next trusts itself. There is the fear that, even if Gerry is real, that he will decide to leave when he wakes up simply because he realized that this is the past and he can find a better partner here. 

That he doesn’t need Michael anymore. 

Gerry’s skin is smooth and rough — Michael can’t remember if that’s normal skin texture or not, but it doesn’t matter. It’s Gerry, and that’s enough. It runs a finger along the dark ink lines that trace from his ear to the edge of the eye on the front of his throat. Looking closer, dark ink lines run along his neck, thin and covered with skin but dark and spidery. Looking closer, the veins within Gerry run rampant with ink. Looking closer, the veins fracture and split, they overlap and reach, they push and pull a fiery black with all the ferocity of a teddy bear smiling while clutching a knife. 

Michael could get lost in tracing Gerry’s new ink veins for hours. 

Perhaps it does. 

Michael does settle eventually. It’s form calms and it finds itself able to loosen its grip on Gerry — it doesn’t. But it knows it could. 

At the end of the day, if Gerry disappears or chooses to leave, Michael will deal with it. The important thing is enjoying what little time they have now. It would go through the pain of Gertrude’s piercing gaze a million times for even these short few hours they’ve had together. It would flay itself open for the whole world to gaze upon just so that Gerry would look at it too. 

Gerry is in Michael’s arms and Michael gets to be happy about that. 

It doesn’t feel as though it deserves it. But it has it. That is enough. 

The veins within Gerry’s skin are varied and compelling, they run deep and hold layers that cannot simply be beheld. Michael loves it — it loves the infinite nature of them, the way the dark veins contrast so heavily against his light papery skin, how the larger veins have a definite pulse to them. That pulse is so much stronger than it was last time Michael saw him. The hospital had a way of dampening Gerry in every single way, from cutting his hair off to slowing his heart rate. Or perhaps that was the illness at work. Gerry had a hard time even opening his eyes by the end, though he’d never let that stop him. 

Michael relaxes on Gerry. It doesn’t sleep, it doesn’t need to, but it falls into a trance-like state while thinking about Gerry and the ink that runs through his veins and how his body is warm and how that warmth is so comforting. Micahel could get angry at so much, but why would it when Gerry is here and alive and pulsing and heating and here. 

Warm bright light streams in through the slits in the curtains when Gerry shifts, he brings his arms up to wrap loosely around Michael. It is late morning and Gerry sighs a large breath. His fingers tease at an end of Michaedl’s hair, wrapping it around and around and then pulling out his finger, then wrapping it again.

Michael peers up at him from his chest, wracking over his face, studying the peaceful way his cheeks lay untensed and how his eyes squeeze shut as another large yawn takes over. Gerry slowly opens his eyes and looks down at Michael. 

He smiles, an innocent, pure smile, that makes him look like he’s never seen the wrong side of a knife in his life. His eyes are devoid of bags and his eyebrows curve up and into an open sort of feeling. It could almost be called Love if you are okay with being direct about it. 

“Hey.”

His voice is low and husky, it curls at the ends and carries so much peace with it. 

“Hey.”

Michael responds with the same emotion, voice cracking from the hours without using it. It starts to feel Gerry’s Sight fill it, pierce into it and slash through it, but it is not upset about it. Where Gertrude was infiltrating to kill, Gerry looks to check in. He flicks between its eyes and he makes sure Michael is happy and healthy. 

Michael has not been happier in years. 

Gerry Knows. 

He softly caresses Michael’s shoulders, his strong fingers grounding Michael and communicating his intent to stay. 

“So.” Gerry says, “how long was I out?”

“Negative 7? Around there. Not bad timing, honestly. A little early, but what is time even anyway.”

”More like 10 I think. 2017 to 2007.”

Michael stops its tossing of a little ball of yarn to look up at Gerry in confusion. The ball stays still in the air. “Huh? Year check? 2014 wasn’t thaaaat long.”

Gerry just winces and grabs the ball out of the air, dropping it directly onto Michael’s head. “Yeah, I uh, didn’t fully die.”

“Oh.”

Michael fiddles with the yarn, it’s pink and shines like a disco ball. He wraps the line around his finger once, twice, once, thrice (and so on and so forth).

“You…”

Man it’s so hard to take your insecurities and put them to words. Michael Knows it’s being irrational, that’s its whole thing. It gets to know that it’s crazy and it never gets to know how to be sane. Of course Gerry didn’t find you, you selfish monster. He had said goodbye already, it was the perfect time to leave you, he needed a bit of time away and sometimes time turns into years and years turn into spirals of beautiful imagery. How could you feel something, anything, about a perfectly logical thing for Gerry to do. And that’s just it; it’s logical. He didn’t want to be near Michael. You were making him be around you, he didn’t like you. Not really. You’re selfish for even thinking he would want to be anywhere near you. And now look at you, spirals in your eyes as you make him worry, you’re hurting him, you’re trapping him and forcing him to worry about your irrational thoughts. Gerry knows what’s best for him, just be happy that he faked his death instead of dumping you. Gerry did the rational thing, really, he knows what’s best for himself. He’s always been more logical, why would he want to be with an incarnation o-

“Hey!” Gerry squeezes Michael’s body into his own, slapping its face and then holding them eye to eye. He looks into Michael just enough to knock the thoughts out of their orbit. “Look at me. Hey, Michael. I see you. Okay? I’m here.”

It’s the way Michael can feel its body solidify with a resounding thunk, transforming from it’s panicked and self hatred caused swirls of color and sound and texture to a more 3 dimensional body with legs and arms and a torso, the whole shebang. It’s the way Michael feels Gerry look into it and see it and make it real in a way that doesn’t allow for frivolous spiraling into nothingness and sadness. It’s the way Gerry’s arm snakes around its shoulders and clutch onto it as if there is nothing else for him to be holding. It’s the way Gerry’s other hand pulls its face to meet his. 

Light escapes its eyes and Gerry knows it as the tears that they are. He wipes at the crystals as Michael lets out a laugh of bitterness, a laugh of anger and sadness and relief and hatred rolled into one. 

It would sound like a croak if one had never heard of a frog before, “You’re here?”

Gerry nods, his eyebrows are pulled together in concern and his lips are pressed together into a half smile. “I’m here Minnow, I’m here. I couldn’t find you before. But I’m here now.”

The crook of Gerry’s neck houses Michael’s face. It’s bright from the tears and Michael keeps chittering, shivering with static, weeping. Gerry soothes along its back while whispering more assurances. “I missed you, so much. I was put in the book, I couldn’t escape, I couldn’t die. I missed you, Minnow. I wanted to find you. I’m here now. I’m here for you. I love you, Minnow.”

Michael’s static drums out the rest of the world and it is only them, clutching at each other and whispering. The distortion cannot be clear so it takes to poetry. 

Michael whimpers, “The sun is bright and look at you. It was night, so long, it was night.”

“I’m here for you, it’s okay. It’s all okay. We’re here.”

“The light does not like the dark because it cannot see it.”

“I See you. I’m here.”

“There is no light or dark without you, where else could I be? Without the light and without the dark and without the absence of light and dark without you. Where was the light?”

“Gertrude put me in the book. The skin book. She still had it.”

They continue to clutch at each other, though the crying subsides with time. 

“She had it?”

“Yeah.”

Michael remembers the relief that would flow through Gerry every time the book was mentioned, how he would sag and smile distantly as if cherishing the feeling of freedom that comes with being rid of it. 

“Fuck Gertrude.”

Gerry snorts. “Fuck Gertrude.”

The apartment is quiet and the world outside is unimportant. They share a couch and they are together. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. They are together. The door has found its Keay.

They lay there for an inconsequential amount of time. Time is fake, of course. Together it feels like forever as they savor every moment. They run their hands along shoulders, reverently touching the person they haven’t been able to in years. They look into each other’s eyes and remember what the other’s love looks like. Sweet kisses of blood oranges and grapefruit remind the other of their newfound existence.

For Gerry, it has been 3 years since he has existed. It has been 3 years of void and nothingness and what is not cold nor silent nor dark nor meaningless. Within Michael he finds the chaos that that book could never have hoped to contain. He finds the care and the passion that he had lost with lifelessness. The way Michael’s hair wraps around his throat, gentle caresses that remind him of his body. His new body that is his and real and oh so warm. 

For Michael, it has been 3 years since it had a reason to exist. Sure, it would put on a semblance of existence at the start of its hunts — and oh how people loved to obsess over his reality with just a hint of its un thrown in there — but that was hunger. That was playing. This is acceptance. Gerry doesn’t care if it exists or not, he’s proven his care for all versions of it. So its existence gets to be its own choice. And it chooses to be here, present, in this existence, for Gerry. It can feel Gerry’s rough skinned hand smoothing against its back and it can feel the warm brush of air as he whispers to it. 

Together they lay, warm, warming, in warmth. Together they stay, loved, loving, in love. 

Notes:

Gerry/Michael and Doorkeay end up making a trivia group until they devolve into infighting, each pairing saying that they are contributing more to the team, until they end up going to separate tables and becoming the fiercest competitors at the restaurant. Future Gerry is a fully realized avatar of the eye, so he has a leg up on the Gerry/Michael team, but he not only gets rather hot-headed about getting something wrong, but he’s also often distracted by distraction itself, so he’s rather debuffed. The restaurant has had to throw them out for yelling at each other like 3 times, but there’s so many people that come to the trivia nights just to watch the Gerry/Michael and Doorkeay competition that they get more than their money back for the inconvenience. Of course, this fighting is entirely contained to the trivia nights and on most days they are perfectly good friends. Michael comes to terms with Michael (and that counts both ways) and the Gerry’s commiserate about their fucked childhood. They find that it’s easier to heal when there is someone else to talk about it with who actually understands.

Thanks for reading! I love you! Spread positivity in all that you can, I love you and everything you try at. Your trying is enough. <3

Notes:

Thanks for reading! Find me on tumblr at Blurred-Honey, I’d love to think about Doorkeay (or just about anything else) with you

By the way the inspiration for my Gerry’s paper skin and ink blood was from another fic on Ao3 called “A Trip Down Memory Hall” by I_3arn_My_L1fe, their Gerry doesn’t have the exact same body shenanigans going on, but the imagery of book guy=book body really stuck with me. I highly suggest you read it!