Chapter Text
Helen is… better than Michael.
The more time Helen spends being Helen, the more that statement rings true. Michael had been a patchwork of things that did not belong together. Michael Shelley alone had brought both an earnest kindness and a burning hatred that had not been part of him until moments before their merging. Combining that with her lies and madness… Well, it was a wonder it had taken him as long as he did to collapse under the weight of his own humanity.
Her own becoming was not flawless, she could still feel Helen Richardson’s aversion to her nature, and her desire to help Jon despite only knowing him for about twenty minutes. She had decided to humor it, for now. Michael’s becoming had been messy and frantic, she would rather take it slowly.
In what could generously be described as her hands (she had done her best to look more human for the occasion but she could only do so much) she held a red scarf. It was red because that was the color it had been dyed upon its creation, not because it was the color it currently looked like. The fabric swirled in colors that had never been and hopefully never would be again.
The scarf is what she had placed Michaels Who into after she took over. She probably could have just left it to die but Helen Richardson, for all her faults, had not been the kind of person to leave a person to die if all she had to do was pick up and deliver a bit of fabric. And now neither was Helen.
Besides, this would help her get rid of a particular pest that Michael had gotten into her hallways.
Defining the place she found the human in as “somewhere” would be incorrect, because there was no such thing as a “where” within the distortion, but it was correct enough.
The human sat curled into what wasn’t a corner, grasping a heavy winter jacket in his arms like a lifeline. Helen wondered idly if being a man was part of something's What or its Who. In either case the human had once been a man and it didn’t really matter if it was or wasn’t right now because soon enough it would be one again.
Michael, in his anger, had kept Michael Shelley’s What, instead of discarding it as Helen had done with Helen Richardson’s. It was some sort of revenge, she figured. Forever trapping what remained of Michael Shelley within the madness he had feared more than anything else. It turns out that a person’s What was the thing that felt fear and the thing that wasn’t Michael Shelley had been a steady source of it since the great twisting.
Had it not been so connected to Michael she might have kept it. It wasn’t quite human enough to break down beyond use, to lose its mind completely.
The shifting colors and blood and skin that was not Michael Shelley briefly gave way to multiple eyes, staring desperately around before seemingly shriveling up in the face of the ever shifting halls that were nothing and never ended. That was another reason she wanted it out, Michael Shelley had been an archival assistant and no matter how much It Is Not What It Is had surrounded and torn at him and what remained of him that fact had not changed.
The feeling of eyes attempting to consume her from the inside out had been a constant thorn in her side since she became. They couldn’t succeed, Shelley was not strong enough, but it was still uncomfortable.
Helen did not kneel as much as she had suddenly always been at eye level with the thing that was no longer Michael Shelley. She did her best not to cut it as she wrapped the scarf around its neck and watched the colors that weren’t collect themselves into patches, spreading until she could see the crude outline of a person with golden curls.
A memory hit her. Not her own, but Helen Richardson’s. Crouching in front of her nephew as she zipped up his blue winter jacket and tied up his green scarf. Watching him puff up his cheeks and complaining that he didn’t need it, it’s not that cold out.
Helen Richardson had loved her nephew, always boasting that he was the smartest child in his kindergarten class even though he wasn’t. In her eyes he was, and she had made sure to celebrate everything he did as if he had been her own son. Had Helen not been what she was she might have felt bad. A part of her wanted to see him, out of curiosity more than anything, but The Spiral was not one to indulge impulses of The Eye and the part of her that was Helen Richardson recoiled at the idea of dragging the boy into the world of fears.
In front of her, Michael Shelley was taking proper form. His eyes were almost entirely done, and they reflected colors that were not quite there. She could tell the exact moment his sight properly returned to him because he immediately began pushing himself back into the wall behind him and opened what was not yet a proper mouth in an attempt to scream.
“Calm down, I am not going to hurt you,” she told him softly, still her voice echoed through what was not quite a hallway as though she had yelled. “It is in both of our best interests that you leave this place, and I am willing to let you do so alive.”
The man that was almost Michael Shelley froze for a moment before relaxing slightly
“Who- who are you? Or what? Is what right? Are you-” Michael Shelley’s voice was rough and he stumbled over his own words, staring at her with something between terror and confusion.
She really hated that stare. Not the terror or confusion, that was delightful, but the stare.
“I am Helen. I am, I suppose, your successor. Well- not your successor, I am Michael’s successor, you’re Michael Shelley, who is a different entity but also you aren’t. You do know that, right? I actually don’t know if you know anything. I mean, Michael is me, but me if I wore your skin and identity and your Who and I don’t anymore, now I wear Helen Richardson and so I am not her but I am Helen. Do you follow?” Michael nodded, and it wasn’t a lie. A few years sort of being her and sort of being in the corridors seemingly made you adept at understanding that which wasn’t really understandable. “And now you are once again Michael but you are not Michael and you are too much of something else to belong here. You did miss the window to quit your job in the archives so you are still bound to that place.”
Now Michael did look confused, but any questions he had about The Magnus Institute could very well be asked there, since he’d have to go there anyways. When Helen stretched out a hand for him he spent what might very well have been a full thirty seconds just staring at it. Considering if it was safe, probably. When he did grab it he winced slightly at how it felt but did not let go, letting her haul him up so he was standing.
The walk through the corridors was silent except for the click of Helen’s heels, not muffled by the thick rug in the way Michael’s heavy winter boots were. Michael had taken the scarf off again, carrying it under his arm along with his coat. The rest of his outfit consisted of a pair of soft, warm, brown pants and a colorful sweater. She wasn’t actually sure what colors, but there were a lot of them.
The corridor was beige or sometimes yellow if you weren’t focusing properly, lacking any real personality with repeating rooms and furniture that didn’t quite belong in the setting it was in but you couldn’t quite say why. Helen did prefer it to Michael’s too bright colors and mindbreaking not-quite-paintings-not-quite-mirrors, perhaps due to Helen Richardson’s experience with them.
When they reached the door Helen gestured for Michael to open it. He grabbed the doorknob, looking back at her with gray eyes that weren’t quite gray.
“Thank you.”
“Really, it’s mutually beneficial. You being here is a disturbance.”
“Still, you could have just killed me.”
Helen was quiet at that. Michael was right, she probably could have killed him without much issue. The part of her that was slowly becoming less of Helen Richardson hadn’t wanted to and the part of her that never had been was increasingly frustrated with that fact.
Michael, apparently taking her lack of response as a confirmation of some kind of lingering humanity (he wasn’t entirely wrong, she supposed), smiled at her. It did not reach his eyes, sunken in and baggy as they were, crooked and showing off a tooth gap. Very unlike Michael’s, which had been unnervingly straight and only had one, large front tooth. Then he opened the door and walked through.
The smile had lacked any real warmth. Probably for the best, Michael Shelley’s blind trust had never led him anywhere good.