#I hâte Elias sooOOOOO MUCH AAAAAAAGH

[get-your-fuckin-star-bitch]

[Unwinding AU]

Just realized that if things go generally the same as they do during Infestation and Human Remains… and Michael gets Basira’s statement later, and the tapes…………..

Cause he’d DEFINITELY still want to, now more than ever, cause she was the one who really knew things! And he feels completely lost in the middle of everything that’s been going on. He really, really wants/needs to hear some of his old mentor’s advice.

(Jon’d also be, uh. The way he is in the original canon, to an extent… lol. Though this time Michael’s probably his prime suspect… for, er… odd reasons. He’s ironically worried that some supernatural creature took Michael’s form and killed Gertrude to take the position, which is so close but also no, Jon, he’s just as scared as you…)

And of course he recognizes some of the files-

God, probably almost cries when he finally hears her voice again for the first time in way too long…

…Only to find that she’s… not who he thought she was. Not in any way, at all. Every single thing he thought he knew about her has just been thrown to the floor and shattered by the end of the first tape.

The archivist doesn’t know what to do with this information at all.

He just. Is a mess of emotions for a while after this. All of which probably isn’t helped by the fact that Jon keeps looking at him suspiciously/like he’s seen a ghost, every time Michael’s around.

CONTINUED BELOW, (this turned into A Thing again lol)

(OH YEAH OK FORGOT TO MENTION UH)

(So basically before this: Michael finally gets jumped by the door, terrified out of his mind… and escapes! Though not in the way people usually do it. And as he discovers very shortly after, the method has left a mark.)

(And now he’s struggling to fight the occasional compulsion to basically do murder, and he can’t look at his reflection cause it’s all warped and stuff.)

(Elias is very intrigued about this.)

(Still working out the details of many different events, which is why those bits haven’t been posted)

Anyway-

So the whole Jon thing isn’t helping him work out how Gertrude basically lying to him the entire time feels, much less how his actual physical/mental/creature state feels.

Not sure how Sasha and Tim are yet, but Martin is probably gonna be nice to have around in the middle of all this.

OOHHHH BOY HELEN

Michael goes for a walk while upset over a particularly world-shattering tape. Sees someone get trapped in door. Hesitates at first, but then runs after her, trying to help. Jon thinks it’s him when she comes in for the statement, until Michael comes in JUST after the door closed, cause he felt it open in JON’S office and even if Jon HAS been snarky, it’s “for GOOD REASON” and so he BURSTS in, panicking, and jon’s like “AH FUCK- WHAT-????”

So Michael’s briefly VERY relieved, and apologizes, then realizes that someone else must have been there- then gets the whole story and is mortified.

Just… walks away to lie down.

Does not even bother assuming his “normal” form.

Nearly gives Martin a heart attack when he walks in to make sure everything’s ok- but like he’s not even threatening at all, he just seems really, really not ok, so like… why panic?

He just asks if Michael wants a cup of tea, and Michael almost starts crying again, but from GOOD feelings this time, and thus Martin keeps Michael from falling down an awful downward emotional spiral simply by fucking caring. I love Martin so goddamn much.

Over time, Michael starts learning more and more about a lot of things, actually. He may have been wrong about Gertrude as a person, but he had been right about her maybe knowing stuff that could help him understand. VERY right, indeed.

And even though he now knows she lied to him, he still finds comfort in hearing her voice. On some level, he’s gotten it into his head that maybe she just did it in the hopes that he wouldn’t ever have to worry about these things… after all, hadn’t she once said something about how he “really should be quitting by now”, or something?

Regardless, he finds that he actually sort of likes the new face of the old woman. She had this sort of fire in her… and he wishes he could have really known that side of her. Gotten to experience it a little. I mean, come on- she was honestly a bit of a badass!

And this new image he has of her just makes him miss her even more, on a whole new level.

And then he starts to wonder if maybe she knew anything about the door, remembering how she’d reacted to that awful book, ages ago. Maybe she’d (posthumously) be able to tell him what’s going on with him, and maybe even how to fix it?

So he tries looking through her tapes for anything regarding doors.

He finds nothing.

Maybe… creepy mirror-people?

There are a handful of incidents involving that kind of thing, but none that describe his situation.

He does find the one about the stair dude, and has to take a day off work after that, but he’s starting to feel pretty sure there’s nothing in the archives that matches anything he’s seen.

…Until he stumbles upon that worker-in-clay statement. The one in “sculptor’s tool”.

Reads the date on the statement after reading over it, (not aloud, or on tape), and it clicks. The boat ride. The one that he almost thought he’d just dreamt because of how bizarre it had all been-

She had said they were going to Sannikov land.

No wonder she’d been so worried about the boat turning around… they’d been off to go stop “Gabriel” from succeeding in starting the thing that had happened shortly after! But it had stopped… so clearly they’d messed it up anyway, thank goodness.

…but…

…why hadn’t she mentioned all of this to him beforehand?

If he was supposed to help her in that mission, why hadn’t she told him anything about what they were supposed to do?

How could he help her if he didn’t understand?

…If he didn’t…

In a moment, all the recent conversations and interactions he’d had with with others came back to him at once, and he looked into the mirror at his distorted reflection.

…what was it she’d called it…?

“It is not what it is?”

Indirect answers. The door. Mirrors. Even his own appearance never quite showed the truth.

And he’d been subconsciously noticing how much he relied on the confusion and lack of understanding of others in order to-

No.

He was thinking too far into this- and going based off of almost nothing at all, and-

Dark.

Snowing. Crunching ground under feet and footprints in shifting snow and the world around is wrong. And yet is also right, it knows better, much better, and more than he does, it is more than he is, to it, he is nothing, and-

Map. Door.

Go through.

There is

no

Way

Back.

And he is gone, but no, he is elsewhere, he is

It is there.

The center.

Replace it.

No. No, no no no no no no NO-

The fear crackles and piles up into a buzzing crescendo as the feeling of his entire body being rent apart and reshaped like clay is etched into his brain. And no one is going to save him.

She wasn’t there. She had won. He had just been an offering.

She was satisfied.

He was screaming.

The image broke like glass around him and he slid to the floor, gasping for breath and clutching at his head, hands, torso- reassuring himself that he was still there.

Still… whole.

He was still in his office.

Still sort of held the statement in his hands… although-

Claws. Laughter, and laughter, and laughter that would not stop-

He frantically shook off the punctured paper with a strangled cry, willing the talons to go away.

His fingers returned to normal.

But the feeling — that horrible twisting sensation, like his whole entire being was suddenly just putty, held firmly in a pair of hands that were warping and stretching and pulling him apart — stayed.

…and then, from somewhere in the direction of artefact storage… someone screamed.

[help how do I tag this- my head /gen hurts 🫠]