Chapter Text
Sasha considers her options – she’s alive, what should she do now? Nothing’s going to go back to the way it was. First off, when everything was the way it was, Sasha wasn’t a part of that. By all practical means, she should still be dead, would still be dead if it wasn’t for everything that happened – Oliver’s strange attunement with death that seemed all too natural to be unfamiliar to anyone but her, the circumstances that everybody but Sasha weathered together, and Jon’s considerations telling her that she’s the one to come back and confront all of it. And that means she has to.
It’s not like there’s anywhere else she can go. She doesn’t have anything she’d usually carry with her – the only things she was found with were the bloodstained clothes on her back and that crumpled sticky note that she didn’t have when she died. That was the first proof that she had that she was real, that the limbo she was in made her real. It feels like a dream, but it’s something she can hold in her hand. And she doesn’t have it any more. She has the tapes, though, she’s listened to them more times than she can count now, listened to Jon calling her to the stage and everyone singing for her and Tim laughing the way someone can only laugh once everything’s over. It’s the closest she knows to what the present is, and she knows it better than the ground she stands on now. How could she not since it’s how she got here in the first place, the silk-thin bridge between death in 2016 and the start of her life again a year later.
Since Sasha came back, she’s walked an hour and a half to her block of flats to see if there’s anything that’s hers anymore save for her face, and even the world doesn’t agree with her on that. She doesn’t know what she was expecting but it wasn’t being told straight to her face that she moved out of there in August, remember? So, there’s…that. She still – even after wandering around for another two hours – can’t let herself think about it for more than two seconds without wondering what happened to her cat, or where the Not-them lived after and what it did with her goddamn salary, or what it did with everything that was hers.
It took five lives and more breath than she had in her just for Sasha to get out with the bare minimum. She can forget about closure at this point, much less having to worry about weird looks from anyone who thinks they should know her when she says her name. She doesn’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed that the woman at the block of flats didn’t look at her face as they asked. Nobody knows her enough to care, and anyone that even really knew her is gone now. It’s all hard, she’s been here before yet there’s nobody to vouch for that, so how true could it even be? Whatever’s true or isn’t, it’s not worth a cent if she stands here feeling sorry for herself.
Sasha has read something before, about quantum immortality – how it’s impossible be dead in every universe, how your concious fades back in somewhere other than where it started. She wonders if that’s true – if she’s in a world where she was never supposed to exist, if the exchange that brought her to life couldn’t be made directly. None of it matters, though, one way or another she is realer than the world tells her she is. This universe, the one she’s in, has a hole at the center and she feels like she’ll fall into the void again if she doesn’t come back to the place that killed her. She’ll make the best of this, she’ll learn how to keep going, and maybe her name is enough for some of the people who don’t know her well to feel like they do. Sasha considers her options, of which she has only one.
The only thing she can do now is make her way to The Magnus Institute. She has to. Honestly, the most surprising thing is that it took her so long.
–
This is the first time Sasha has stood looking at the Institute since before she was a researcher – what did Tim say again about the time before working at the Archive meant anything? That sounds about right. She is a guest now, though she died as an Institute staff member, everyone’s words made it very clear that being replaced means she's not bound in the way everyone else was any more – all exits blocked off. It's more like the Institute door is the only one that’ll open for her right now.
It looks exactly the same, academic grandeur radiating out of it like velichor that’d dissipate without a quality of either novelty or nostalgia. Her apparent shaky hands and curiosity suck in more of her thoughts than the building itself does, though its presence inspires the sinking feeling to deepen. The Institute is allowed to stay the same, it doesn’t have to fight to be the only thing at the end and still keep going like normal after she missed everything. Sasha wouldn’t know if the inside kept going the same, would she? Still, it’s something that’ll open for her. And open it does.
She steps straight into the pit in her stomach that’s eating her alive, and sees Rosie at the front desk – she’s familiar and won’t find Sasha familiar at all. Rosie Zampano’s eyes crinkle, equal parts friendly and judgmental as she greets the visitor. “Welcome to the Magnus Institute,” she says – not her friendly “Hello, Ms. James,” from when Sasha used to come in for work, before the most mundane of greetings was taken away by the Not-them too.
Now she’s just met with the blank stare of a first meeting – something she no doubt has to know to exist, but it hurts because it’s all she has. Sasha doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to this standing in the same place she’s stood so many times, looking at the sky that sits just where it’s always been, and being the thing that is idiosyncratic – this shouldn’t be a beginning, she’s been here before, but it is. Everything has already happened, and Sasha’s just here to follow it up. None of this is new. And she needs familiarity now more than ever.
“Can I look at a few statements from the Archive?” Sasha asks, trying to maintain politeness despite the dread clawing at her stomach at how lonely this place feels. “I have a list of statement numbers if that helps at all.”
Rosie appears to think for a second, tapping her foot beneath the front desk. “Did you call ahead?” she ends up asking. “We only let people into the Archive by appointment.”
“Is anyone else coming in today?” Sasha asks pointedly. People didn’t come down into the Archive often, at least they didn’t when she worked there, so there shouldn’t be any need for her to schedule in advance except to preserve the professionalism lost by the Institute’s connection to the esoteric. Sasha’s observed this, this is something that hasn’t changed.
“I suppose not,” Rosie responds, deflating a bit. “Though the Archive is…severely understaffed right now. You might have to wait a bit for everything to get in order. I’ll also have you fill out some paperwork to make sure you have access to the material you need.” Rosie reaches for an almost full stack of forms, and gives Sasha one before instructing her to sit down over there on a bench Sasha already knows is uncomfortable and calls whoever occupies the basement after everything, telling them that someone’s coming.
Is anyone even…down there? She doesn’t know if the new sitting Institute head cares about replacing people this early on, and Sasha wasn’t asking enough questions to be sure that someone held down the fort alongside Martin. There has to be someone in the Archive, though, because someone had to be there to find Sasha there beneath.
She sits on the hard bench against the wall, puts the blank document down next to her, and takes a look around. They repainted, or at least did some touch ups – everything’s that same warm beige and everything’s changing without her . She wasn’t even gone that long and everything still changes and changes yet Sasha stays the same. She clicks the pen to fill out the form, wondering what the world thinks of her now that she never existed in the first place.
Her sleeve slips and there’s more evidence that she’s supposed to be dead. Under the bandage holding her stitched-up wrist together is a searing red line – that Stranger almost took her skin, peeled it back like in a dissection. She’d have been unrecognizable not just as herself but as human if she wasn’t alive in that tunnel. And maybe she wasn’t – yeah, for a year she was something else, but now she is and she doesn’t have time for maybe or when times were different.
And she has to fill out this menial paperwork in order to feel a little less like nothing. The pen clicks in her hand again as she writes in and circles things – wonders if it’ll ring a bell for Rosie when she reads over Sasha’s name or if she’ll think it’s coincidence, they look nothing alike. She circles ‘professional’ when asked for the purpose of her visit, checks a few boxes, writes in the statement numbers and comes back up to the reception desk.
Rosie skims the paper and says “Can you bring this with you? Our archival assistant has stubbornly–” she sucks her teeth and pauses “well, she doesn’t want to come up to get you. Do you want me to walk you, or are you alright on your own?” Sasha quickly responds with the latter, she sees the look in Rosie’s eye of that’s not the same Sasha who worked here – didn’t she go missing and so many other thoughts behind the woman’s eyes that Sasha can’t take right now. Rosie hands the paper back and Sasha nods. “Come back up to my desk if you need anything, alright, um, Ms. James?”
–
It’s not a long walk down the stairs, but Sasha takes it slowly, having no clue who’s alive to meet her at the bottom. This is supposed to be the beginning, she isn’t supposed to take so long just to wake up, she was supposed to want this, and she does. Still, she needs time to think. She knows it can’t be anyone who knows her – what’d happen if Oliver lied or changed the rules after the game was over or something and it was Jon or Martin or Tim greeting her and telling her she doesn’t have to be alone after it was decided that she did. Even one of the two who joined the Institute after she got replaced – at least they know her face. At least they would know her face, if they were there, which they aren’t. No going back, remember, Sasha? You are completely and entirely alone with yourself.
Sasha wavers halfway between the ground floor and the Archive. She’s not going to cry even though it’d be nice, even though she doesn’t remember the feeling of tears on her face and goddamn it, how could she forget that? She’s supposed to remember, she’s not supposed to forget the world she lives as easily as it forgot her. She’s not supposed to be in love with ideas, she’s supposed to know things in full, not be at the level of the Stranger that killed her and hid the body.
Still, she doesn’t want to break down before she rises to her feet in the first place – she’s supposed to hold on. But the tears feel real and she jams her hand over her eyes and the fissure line in her wrist stings with the tension of fast movement. She’s going to come down to meet whoever refused to take her down the stairs and she’ll already look like a mess. It’s a human thing, to look like a mess, isn’t it? Well, it’s just as much of a human thing to not have an existential crisis over eyeball water. Sasha wants everything to be real, but once it is, it’s too real. She can’t regret it, though, that’s five lives worth of regret.
Sasha’s going to get help. She’s going to know what’s happening, she’s going to learn everything she missed and finally be able to be grounded in her present. She just has to rifle around in the disorganized boxes that still didn’t feel like home when she died, even if they were hundreds of times better than her research days. Nobody but her remembers that now – she just has to listen to some statements then she can actually start with some direction in her new life.
She scrubs her hand over her face again and calls out “Hello?” as she reaches the bottom of the steps that lead into the basement. She doesn’t know what she expects but it’s not the sound of combat boots pacing towards her and the sharp face of Melanie King with an expression shifting from piss off to something beyond words as she sees a face she recognizes. Before Sasha can even process that – Melanie saw her for who she was, she was the one the Not-them couldn’t hide from – Melanie responds with “You…you still work here?” and a look like she’s seen a ghost – honestly, that isn’t the most far off that someone could be.