Chapter Text
Gertrude Robinson had done an excellent job of preparing her assistants.
It did help that she wasn’t the only one working towards that end. Emma’s ceaseless experiments had given the two of them a common goal, and the woman herself had given up most of her right to question Gertrude’s motivations when she left Fiona entombed in a locked coffin, and was well on her way to giving up all the rest as she was told she and Sarah would be going off for a few days to speak with a person of interest. It was far from the first such trip and, had it ended as it was meant to, it would have been far from the last. Sarah herself suspected nothing on the outset, and as things would come to pass, it doesn’t matter how she would have reacted upon discovering the outcome of Gertrude’s own “work trip.”
Then there was Michael.
Michael, of course, did not suspect anything of the trip Gertrude had arranged for him. It was far from the first such trip and, he was certain, would be far from the last. It never occurred to him to do research on their destination. Why would it? Gertrude would never put him in any danger, not that there was anything dangerous that could possibly occur on an archival business trip.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when he started to realise that this was, in fact, not simply a trip to contact a statement-giver or retrieve some old document Gertrude needed for her research. It doesn’t really matter. Either he didn’t come to terms with his situation until it was too late, or he didn’t care about the distortions surrounding him until it was too late, but either way the conclusion was the same.
Besides, it’s not as though this story is about him, not really. Michael Shelley, for a certain value of “Michael Shelley”, ceased to exist as an independent entity before this story properly begins.
Gertrude Robinson returned to the archives alone, met only with Emma. Each immediately knew what the other had done on their trip, even if the details were as yet lost to them.
For a little while it was only the two of them in the Archives, Gertrude mulling over the specifics of how to safely dispose of Emma while Emma fretted over how long she had left before she would be disposed of.
And then Michael returned.
There was no fanfare. There was no cheery announcement of his entrance or thinly-veiled accusation flung towards Gertrude. Michael Shelley simply reappeared at his desk a few days after he should have ceased to exist, stammering out a few “Good morning”s and “Where’s Sarah?”s as the portion of the archival staff that was supposed to be alive showed up to work.
Gertrude Knew what was going on, of course, and the Distortion knew that she Knew, and she Knew that it knew that she Knew. But what was she meant to do about it? It hadn’t caused any harm yet aside from exercising some eccentric filing methods, and she had already been doing that for years. Really, it was the least dangerous member of her staff at the moment.
Emma was taken care of easily enough, and the Distortion stayed, still sitting at Michael Shelley’s desk each day and doing his work, regardless of whether Gertrude actually assigned it anything. Gertrude took on new accomplices—not assistants, she would never consign another person to work for the Eye for as long as she could help it—and the Distortion stayed, never once dropping the appearance of an innocent, if mildly incompetent, archival assistant.
Eventually, Gertrude Robinson would die of a bullet wound to her chest, hidden away in the tunnels below the Institute, not to be found for months afterwards.
And the Distortion would stay.
Michael wasn’t really sure why he was still working for the Institute.
Perhaps “working for” wasn’t the most correct term to use. Michael Shelley’s salary was still being paid out, and his work was still being completed (when he was given work, and not necessarily properly), but the contract that bound him to the Eye had expired the moment he and the Spiral had become inextricable from one another, and even if he’d wanted to take on a new one, it likely wouldn’t have stuck.
But whatever the most proper term might have been, Michael was still choosing to return to the Institute each day, and to participate at some level in the workings of the Archives.
Maybe at first it had been a test to see how Gertrude Robinson would react. If she would come to doubt her memories of Sannikov Land, or wonder what had truly happened after she sent Michael Shelley into the corridors as sacrifice. But no, obviously that wouldn’t work on an Archivist, even one who was deliberately trying to be bad at her job. She Knew that what she thought she had been doing was exactly what had happened, and even without Knowing, she had far too much confidence to doubt herself like that, some of it even earned.
Maybe it just wanted to see if she was capable of guilt. Observed signs pointed to negative on that one.
At first it had tried to mess with Gertrude’s filing system, leaving statements out of place and stacked arbitrarily into boxes in places where boxes were not meant to be, but it quickly became apparent that Gertrude had been doing that on purpose since before she even hired Michael Shelley. Then the plan switched to filing statements properly, if eccentrically, but that method had gotten so mixed up with Gertrude’s tangled web of slapdash filing systems that it really didn’t make much of a difference.
Eventually, he settled for being a minor yet persistent background nuisance.
The Archives would have carried on the same without the Distortion as with it. Gertrude Robinson didn’t so much as look at it in the context of her real work, and her actual job as Archivist was so neglected there wasn’t much an outsider could do to either sabotage it or help it along.
But he stayed, and he kept up the mask of Michael Shelley as well as he could, and if someone happened to catch a glimpse of too-long fingers or too-bright hair or hear a laugh that could not have come from a single human throat… it would not matter. Such things could not possibly be associated with the timid and oh-so-innocent Michael Shelley. The fault must lie in the perceiver, the light playing tricks on their eyes or the narrow Archives hallways playing tricks on their ears.
Michael didn’t know why he stayed in the Archives for so long. Maybe there wasn’t a reason. Maybe it was just one of those things he found himself absently compelled to do, for no reason that could be perceived by a mind even close to a mortal scale. Maybe he’d just gotten used to the routine.
And then Gertrude Robinson vanished into the tunnels and did not return.
It could have found her, if it had wanted. Maybe it could even have intervened before her death. But, frankly, Gertrude Robinson had not done anything to earn such a favor within Michael Shelley’s lifespan, and she certainly hadn’t remedied that in the years since.
So instead it did nothing, and it remained in the Archives, this time with more of a purpose than it had had before.
There would have to be a new Archivist, after all. It might be interesting to see how they fared. Maybe they would be easier to mess with than Gertrude Robinson.
There would also have to be a new crop of archival assistants. That fact, for some reason, seemed even more important.