Chapter Text
Michael has spent over half his life imagining what happened to Ryan. How he must’ve felt. How scared he had to have been. He doesn’t need to imagine, anymore. What he sees can’t possibly be real, which means he must have lost his mind.
It almost feels deserved. Michael had frozen up when Ryan’s hallucinations crawled through the seams into the real world and dragged Ryan through to whatever place lay beyond. Of course, that couldn’t have been real, either, but Michael’s no longer sure what ‘real’ even means.
Miss Robinson doesn’t hesitate, though. She walks towards the… tower?… and Michael walks with her. At least, Michael thinks it could be a tower, maybe, or possibly a chasm. There are stairs. He knows there are stairs.
A crowd of people stares at the, the structure, and they all look just as terrified as Michael feels. He doesn’t speak. It must be a normal building, the crowd must be a normal crowd, because otherwise Gertrude would be reacting, too, and she’s not which means that none of this is real and Michael’s senses have betrayed him. Knowing it’s not real doesn’t make it any less horrifying. If anything, it makes it even worse, like when you become lucid during a nightmare and start imagining all the ways it could be scarier.
He doesn’t grab the sleeve of Miss Robinson’s coat when they start to weave through the crowd, but it’s a near thing.
The air buzzes with the panicked cries of the people around them. None of their conversations make any sense. Most of them speak in a jumble of disconnected words and phrases, some of them speak like they’ll suffocate if they stop. Some of them stand and stare and don’t move, or fall to the ground to weep into their knees.
Miss Robinson passes by all of them without a second glance. Michael tries to follow her lead. He doesn’t want to scare anyone, or make whatever episode he’s having obvious.
He doesn’t want to be schizophrenic, and if he is then he doesn’t want anyone to know. He saw how everyone treated Ryan. The way they avoided him or acted like him being afraid or responding to something that wasn't there made him a serial killer. Michael doesn’t want to lose his job or be hospitalized, but maybe he should be? He also remembers the times Ryan got angry about things Michael couldn’t understand, and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone.
What if this escalates, and he thinks someone is trying to hurt him, or Miss Robinson? What if he really can’t be trusted? What if he can’t trust himself?
He keeps his eyes fixed on Miss Robinson’s back and tries to ignore the hot, wet blurring of his vision. When they start to spill down his cheeks, he can’t tell if they’re tears of fear or of grief.
Finally, Miss Robinson stops in front of a door and turns to him. She doesn’t comment on his crying.
“Michael, I know this is difficult,” she says, and pushes a piece of paper into his hands, “but you need to walk through this door. You’ll find yourself in a hallway. Follow the map. You need to get to the center of the Spiral, and then all of this will be over.”
Michael stares at her. He can barely process her words.
“I– through the door?”
“Yes. If you see a figure, shatter any mirror that doesn’t reflect it.”
Michael looks at the door. He can’t tell what it looks like, and it hurts his eyes. Or maybe his mind.
“Are you coming with me?” he asks.
Miss Robinson gives him a grim look. “I’m afraid not. I have more to do.”
“Right,” Michael says, more to himself than to Gertrude. He takes a step toward the door and then stops.
“How, how will I find you? When I’m done, I mean.”
She smiles wryly. “I don’t imagine you’ll need any help with that.”
Michael swallows. “Is it just mirrors and hallways, or…? There’s not going to be anymore buildings inside, right?”
He’s stalling and he knows it. He doesn’t want to open that door. He doesn’t even want to touch the handle that might be brass or might be zinc with a matte black finish or might be a thick chunk of glass carved to look like crystal. It feels like jumping in front of a train.
“Michael, we can’t afford to waste time,” Miss Robinson says sharply, “You need to go, now.”
Heat rushes to his face as he turns back to the door. His arm reaches for the handle in slow motion. He falters with centimeters between his hand and the doorknob.
He's being silly. It's just a door.
It’s warm, ice cold, and it turns like it wanted him to open it. The door opens with a loud creak, and Michael steps through and pulls it shut behind him.
From there things start to make less sense. He walks, following the map, through corridor after corridor. Occasionally he opens doors and walks through them into identical hallways. Sometimes he hears laughing, and when he sees a horribly tall figure at the end of the hallway his breaking mind thinks he sees Ryan in it.
He runs. Every mirror he passes show this thing, even though it shouldn’t be visible in any of them from where it stands. He thinks he sees a mirror that doesn’t, and only realizes his mistake when his fist punches through canvas. The paint cuts his hand like glass. He pulls his hand back and keep running, keeps following the map, he can't get lost, he can't let this thing stop him from doing what Miss Robinson asked. He finally finds one, a mirror that shows him and not the monster, and the glass shards slice fractals into his knuckles.
And then the monster vanishes. Maybe it never existed.
Michael’s mind hurts. It hurts more the further he walks, until it overpowers the stinging pain in his hand. He opens doors and turns right and turns right and turns right until he sees the monster in the mirror again and then he breaks mirrors.
The map shakes in his hands. At some point his finger tears right through it, and he thinks he must’ve been gripping it too tightly but when he looks his fingertip is sharp like a knife and his hands seem too large to be his, only how could anything possibly be his when he doesn’t even exist?
He can’t exist. Or this place can’t exist. Or nothing exists.
When he makes the next turn, he thinks maybe Ryan hallucinated Michael.
He walks and walks and walks and at some point laughter bounces off the walls and the mirrors only show Michael which means the laughter belongs to Michael. The walls bend and twist around the sound and Michael keeps walking.
His face is wet.
His mind hurts.
His mind hurts like nothing has ever hurt before. Something rends it from what it is piece by agonizing piece and sutures it back into something unrecognizable. It can’t think. Everything is blinding pain. It passes by a mirror and the tall, distorted shape in them is Michael and it wants to cry and it wants to claw that feeling out of itself and it wants to scream it wants to hurt it wants to kill it wants to know if the grief carving through its throat mourns for its ruined ritual or for Michael or for Ryan and it laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs until Sannikov Land has never existed.