Chapter 2
Michael wakes in a hospital, and there are three things he knows with absolute certainty.
Firstly, everything hurts.
Secondly, he is human.
And third of all, he is not alone.
All of these mix together to form the most horrifying, stomach-churning cocktail in Michael’s gut as the heart monitor in the corner begins to scream loudly, something that makes his head pound and eyes water. Just then, a solid hand presses to his chest, warm through the paper-thin hospital gown.
“Woah, woah, easy now, you’re alright, okay? You’re alright, just-breathe, yeah? Can you breathe for me?”
A head enters his vision, admittedly a very nice head Michael thinks half hysterically, feeling fully hysterical as he recognizes the face attached to it, inky dyed curls tumbling out of his bun and framing a pair of piercing hazel eyes. He gives Michael a concerned look, the left side of his cheek smudged with something dark, maybe ash or dirt, hand still firm over the other man’s wildly pounding heart. Gerry Keay stands over him, corporeal and breathing, tanned and flushed and alive, alive, alive.
“How—” Michael says, flinches as he hears his own voice, raw and quivering and hoarse.
Must’ve been all the screaming, he thinks vaguely as Gerry’s mouth twists, achingly familiar, wincing at the shredded sound that escapes Michael’s throat.
“Well, I—” he pauses, something strange flickering over his face. “Found you. I was in the institute ruins, and you sorta came out of nowhere, and I had to build up a pile with some old bookshelves to get to my car. There was cell service up there, so I called the police, and they managed to get you out.”
Michael opens his mouth to tell him that’s not exactly what he meant, but Gerry continues rambling, nerves seemingly as frayed as Michael’s feel. “We’re about an hour out from London now, they dropped us off at a special care unit, apparently you were in some pretty bad shape or something.” His expression shifts, morbid curiosity and fragile anxiety. “They said you wouldn’t have made it if you’d been found any later. How long were you down there anyways?”
He’s looking at Michael now with some kind of desperation, like he needs Michael to confirm that he’d been down there for days or something rather than trapped inside the physical manifestation of madness itself, as if he’s trying to convince himself that he didn’t just watch Michael spawn out of a magical door in the dilapidated ruins of the Magnus fucking Institute, as if he could even begin to guess at what he’d seen. After a break that consists only of some awkward staring from both parties, Gerry flushes and coughs, looking fully anxious and flushed with embarrassment. “I’m only asking because I-well, I thought I saw something down there, something weird, and I have this…tendency, to, y’know, hallucinate supernatural occurrences. It’s a medical thing and I—”
“Awhile,” Michael says finally, cutting him off, his voice raspy, eyes now trained on the smooth, unscarred, non-inked flesh of his throat. “I was there for…awhile.” God, he looks so young. Michael’s head is spinning, swirls dancing in front of his vision, not unlike the sensation of shining a flashlight into one’s eyes and dealing with flashes of color for the next few minutes.
Everything hurts so very badly.
He lets himself slip into it, lets the pain smother him, a familiar blanket to keep out the rest of the world, drifts for what could be days but in all reality it was only 15 minutes, maybe less.
Gerry is speaking again, voice lighter, relieved, sounding boyish and naïve as he prattles on, speaking for the sake of it, and it reminds Michael so much of himself during his time at the institute that bile rises in his throat once more, the tension in Gerry’s shoulders relaxing slightly. He’s going on about some trip he took a few weeks ago, somewhere hot and lovely, though Michael did not catch the name nor can he bring himself to particularly care. Two things are becoming increasingly clear, two more things to add to his growing list of problems, two things that make his stomach sink and his heart twist like he’s back in the Spiral once more, only this feels so much more.
The first is that this is not his Gerry.
The second is that this is not his world.
In this moment of realization, a pang of loss and longing stabs through him so harsh that it makes the breath catch in his chest. God, he misses Gerry, misses him with a fury that makes him feel like he’s tearing apart.
“Gerard?” A voice comes from the door, old and thin and utterly horrifying as Michael’s eyes snap to her, static filling his head. Gertrude Robinson enters, not bothering to look at Michael lying prone, instead walking up to Gerry and touching his chin with a tenderness that would have made pre-Distortion Michael writhe in jealousy, feels half devastated at the relief and love in Gerry’s expression, organic and warm, unhidden and unabashed.
He cared for her…
Using the sleeve of her cardigan to wipe the grime off his face, Gertrude’s eyes move over his bandaged shoulder, silvery brows creasing.
“What the hell were you thinking, young man?” She snaps after a moment, sharp and severe as always, and yet this Gertrude is soft in a way Ms. Robinson had never been, her hair braided back instead of wrangled close to her head, glasses round where his Gertrude’s had been rectangular and clean cut. Damn his traitorous heart, despite the hatred burning his heart like hot coals, he still feels the urge to shelter and protect this frail old woman from the world around, even as he knows now, she’s anything but.
“I’m sorry Gee-Gee, I understand that you’re upset, but if I hadn’t been here, this guy would’ve died!” He gestures plaintively to Michael, and Gertrude’s piercing green gaze finally lands on him, expression softening at the sight, and he can’t even begin to imagine what he must look like right now. Michael cringes back, biting back a small whimper of pain as every inch of his body feels like it’s being actively stabbed with shards of glass, loathes the maternal gentleness in her face as she scans his expression.
…he trusted her…
“Are you alright, boy?” Gertrude asks, as if-as if—
“Quite,” he rasps, hatred and despair washing over him. Michael feels like he’s drowning, like his world effectively chewed him up and spit him out into another where he has nothing and no one, and there’s a very real possibility that another Michael Shelley exists here, taking up a space that Michael himself was never allowed to fill. Gertrude nods, looking quietly worried at the sound of his voice, but she makes no comment, and Michael forces himself to look away, if only to avoid the sight of her soft, thin hand resting easily on Gerry’s shoulder. She walks closer, tugging her olive-green cardigan tighter around her shoulders, squinting at the clipboard full of papers by his bed, keen eyes scanning the file.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Michael. Michael Shelley.” He watches her face carefully, searching for any flicker of recognition, and finds himself disappointed when Gertrude’s expression remains the same.
“Well, Mr. Shelley, it seems you’re quite lucky my grandson showed up when he did.”
“So I’ve been told.” Good god, he’d nearly forgotten what she looked like, from this angle he can see the deepening wrinkles, the smile lines his Gertrude never possessed, the fine sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose signaling time in the sun, possibly from the same trip Gerry had mentioned earlier. Michael can’t imagine Gertrude on a vacation, never saw her leave the archives unless she had to, not even when she came to work sniffling and coughing, waving him away as Michael plied her with tea and begged her to at least lay down on the couch in the breakroom and nap if she wouldn’t take a sick-day. She gives him a thin smile, not unkind in its minimalism but nonetheless uncomfortable to look at, remembers the same expression on Gertrude’s mouth as they existed the Tundra into Sannikov land.
…and she fed him to me.
Michael closes his eyes, offering up a small, desperate prayer to anyone who’s listening to end this walking nightmare, and lets himself drift once more.
-
Gerry is…confused.
Michael Shelley lies prone on the bed hours after Gerry’s been dismissed from hospital care, silent and still as Gerry sits in a nearby chair just watching him. Gertrude, tired and incredibly done with his antics and his apparent need to stick by Michael’s side for the time being, has left to fetch him new clothes and take a shower before returning and hopefully bring back something for dinner. Gerry would murder for a good bowl of Pad Thai right now. Michael looks wrong, pale as a corpse and just as lifeless, blond hair hanging limply around his too-thin face, cheekbones stark and grey-blue eyes sunken and bloodshot. Gerry cannot in good consciousness leave him here by himself, not after everything he’d seen in the institutes ruins and beyond, can’t wipe the look of horror that crossed the man’s face at the sight of Gertrude from his head as much as he tries. He doesn’t understand what Michael was even doing in the institute in the first place, cannot explain the things he’d ‘seen’, the flash of guilt on Michael’s face when he’d asked him if he’d hallucinated it all, and most importantly, he cannot for the life of him figure out how he knew Gerry’s name. That haunts him, Michael’s weak, broken Gerry just before he’d passed out, can’t forget the image of his wide, swirling eyes and the blood staining his teeth as he crawled out of that horrible door. Maybe he imagined that too, maybe Michael had said something else. Maybe he hadn’t said anything at all.
Maybe none of this is real, and Gerry is Somewhere Else, maybe he isn’t real, maybe, maybe—
“Hey,” Michael croaks after a moment, and fuck, it takes genuine effort to not flinch when Gerry hears his voice.
“Yes?”
“Are you alright? You looked a bit pale.”
As if he’s one to talk. “I’m okay, just a bit tired.” He forces out a weak smile and Michael looks so sad at the sight that he drops it. Christ, is he really in that bad of shape? Gerry scrubs a hand over his face, sighing. “You holding up okay?”
“Yes,” Michael lies.
“You hungry?”
Michael shrugs, paling as the movement jostles something painful, glancing up at the IV bag of supplements. “I’ll be okay, thank you, Gerry.”
After a quiet moment of tense silence as Michael settles back down, Gerry leans forwards, hands twisting as he rests his elbows on his knees, eyes trained on Michael’s profile.
“How do you know my name?”
Michael goes very still. Interesting.
“Name tag,” he says simply.
Oh. Well, he has a bit of a point there.
“I mean, in the institute, when I found you, you said my name, you called me Gerry.”
“Did I?”
Did he?
“Yes,” Gerry says, and its half a question. He hates that it’s a question, that he’s so fucked in the brain that he can’t even trust his own memory.
“I don’t think I did,” he says, eyes flickering over Gerry’s face, blue swirling into grey in a way that’s Wrong in the way Michael just seems to be. He doesn’t blink for a moment, gaze boring unintentional holes into Gerry’s skull. It’s unsettling, But Gerry can’t bring himself to look away. Michael is beautiful in some broken way, even as he stares at Gerry like his hair is ablaze. “I don’t remember that.”
“What exactly do you remember?” Gerry asks tentatively.
“I—” Michael goes quiet, disappearing into his head like he keeps doing, expression suddenly vacant before he snaps back a moment later, hollow and threadbare but alive once more. “I got lost. I was looking for shelter and got stuck down there.”
Gerry nods, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Okay, but…why were you out there in the first place?”
Michael looks less than pleased by all these questions, turning his face back to the ceiling and the soulless white LEDs. “I lost my home recently, got evicted, and I’ve been…about, one might say. My car broke down a few miles before, and I thought I could—I don’t know, but I got lost in the dark and got myself trapped inside those old ruins.”
Oh, well now Gerry feels bad for even asking, the poor sod just seems to be having a bad time all around.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s alright,” Michael says quietly, his too-long fingers tugging at a loose thread on his covers, ‘nervous habit’ written all over the gesture. “I…never did thank you for saving me. So, thank you, Gerry.”
Despite himself, a flush creeps up the back of his neck. “Don’t mention it, really, it was my pleasure.”
Michael hums, a soft sound that Gerry likes much better than the wounded rasp of his voice, tries to imagine what he sounds like when it’s healed, thinks that it’s probably a Very Nice sound.
Christ, he really needs to get his head checked again.
There’s a lapse in the conversation before he forces himself to stand, offering Michael another weak smile. “I’ll be right back. Hang tight, yeah?” He says before strolling from the room and ignoring the twinge in his leg from the fall. Gerry makes his way down to the nearest vending machine, scavenging a few crumpled bills and assorted coins from his jean pocket and buying himself a packet of crisps and a shitty-looking bottled coffee. Glancing in the reflection of the glass panel, he searches for any glimpse of the colorful man, for any of those forever present ghosts. The only thing he’s met with is his own face, the dark smudges under his eyes and the absolute mess his hair has become in the hours following his little road trip.
That’s another thing that’s been bothering him, the absence of the figures and the false fires and fog and fingers snatching at his face. His mind is too quiet. It’s nearly worse than the fear, if he’s honest with himself.
Sighing, Gerry turns away from the vending machine and back towards Michael Shelley’s room, braving another few hours with the haunted man.
Somewhere Else, an Eye opens, and turns its sight upon Gerard Keay.