Work Text:
The last clear, happy memory Mike has is falling.
It’s a great memory, his love of the Vast, of the sky, suffused into his entire being. An intoxication that had gripped him the moment he jumped out of that window.
He remembers the Archivist and remembers sending him plummeting through an endless, infinite expanse, though both of them were never actually there.
Still. It felt good, sending someone falling.
That was why Mike had chosen the Vast in the first place, wasn’t it?
Or was it because he himself was afraid, afraid of the fractals and spirals that plagued him after the accident? Afraid of the very lichtenberg scar that marred and graced his face and shoulder? Mike truly didn’t know. But, that was never his intention, was it? His intention, his purpose, was always to fall. The landing never matters, nor does the jump. Only the fall. The wind, rushing past his ears. The sun, brightening the sky into a beautiful light blue. The clouds, disintegrating as he swims through the sky and towards the earth, and yet never lands. Only falling.
That will never happen again, now. Now the world only exists in flashes of brown and black and sometimes a wriggling, disgusting pink. There is only Mike and the dirt. Mike and the Buried.
He hates it, of course. His blood aches and wants and yearns for the wind and the clouds and the blue expanse of the thing he dedicated his body, his mind, his life to.
But it will never come again. Never again because of that Hunter and her rabid snarl and the gun. The bullet isn’t enough to kill him, obviously. The Vast will protect him, the Vast won’t let him die, the Vast will take his fear and replace it with the delicious ecstasy of falling.
The last good memory Mike has is of falling. But that is not the last memory he has.
He remembers the pain of the punch, the whimpering voice of the Archivist, the agony of the bullet tearing through his skull. Mike remembers the dirt and the compactness and the Buried, pressing in on him. Keeping him from that delicious feeling of plummeting. It is all he knows now. He does not know if he will die, only that, for once, the Vast will not save him this time. The Buried has sunk its claws into Mike, and it will never let go, not until it has wrung every drop of fear from him.
Mike will never feel the clouds and the air and the sky in his blood again.
Mike will never fall again.