Archive of Our Own ^beta

i.

The first time, he's in Georgie's flat, staring at the ceiling, trying to convince himself that moving from the couch is worth the effort.

Suddenly, there's a door. It's not that it appeared, really, just that it hadn't been there before, and now it always had.

Jon scrambles back as the door creaks open, falling backwards onto... grass. A blue sky above him, peppered with clouds. The couch is gone.

Decidedly not Georgie's apartment, unless she's gotten very into an odd sect of interior decorating.

The door opens further, and as Jon had already begun to suspect, Michael unfolds themself from it, bones far too long and bending in ways they shouldn't. They land on the grass with a thump decidedly too quiet for a human, with an odd texture, like a fistful of sand being thrown at raw meat.

"Hello, Michael." Jon tries to stay calm. "Are you here to kill me?"

Michael says nothing, just leans back on the grass next to him. Jon hesitates, before looking up as well and studying the clouds. He was in Michael's realm: if he was going to die, there was very little he could do, and protesting likely wouldn't help.

It's a long few moments. Michael reaches out with one too long finger, pointing at a cloud which instantly begins collapsing into itself. Eventually, it sort of resembles an eye. And an ear, somehow. And a mouth.

"That's you." Michael says simply.

"I suppose it is."

Another flick of their hand and the cloud twists again. Parallel lines cross and fold into themselves, and Jon nearly closes his eyes to ignore the pounding headache before it rounds out slightly to be... a door. Close enough to one, anyway. It looks suspiciously like a face.

"That's you, isn't it?"

"Mm." here's silence for several more moments, a light breeze in wherever this is gently toying with Jon's hair. It's oddly calming.

"Why are you here?"

"I am always here. I am also never here. Here is not a place you can truly be."

"Right, right. Why am I here, then?"

"I want you to be."

Jon groans in frustration. "Why?"

Michael pauses for a long time, cloud now twisting into a Mandelbrot set, growing steadily bigger and engulfing the entire sky in a greyish purple without ever changing.

"Understanding," they say simply.

He wakes up with grass in his ears.

ii.

The next time, Jon has returned to working at the institute. This time, they are in a forest. Jon looks close enough to realize every tree is perfectly identical and each branch symmetrical in a branching pattern before he decides to ignore them entirely.

Michael is holding a fractal in their hands, cupping it like a baby bird. It folds in and in and in on itself, and Jon looks away before he, too, is folded in.

"His name is Susan," Michael says, like that explains everything. They raise their outstretched palms slightly, and Susan... pulses.

"Oh." Understanding. You're here to understand, Jon. You're the Archivist, it's what you do. "D-do fractals have names?" Stupid. Stupid Jon. What a dumb question.

"No." Jon waits for further explanation even though he knows none is coming. Michael blinks languidly, eyes devoid of pupils or irises and instead just full of spirals that catch in the splotchy (yet annoyingly uniform) forest light.

He blinks, realizing he's taken several steps closer and Michael's hair is almost touching his cheek.

"Where are we?"

"You've been here before." Jon blinks, and the world around him shifts into those snaking halls with too many doors. "Would you prefer to see it like this?"

"N-no. Thank you." The forest is back as though it was never gone, but the trees all have doorknobs. "Why bring me back here?”

"We wanted to see you."

"We?" Jon asks, before kicking himself, because obviously that's not the part of that sentence he should be focusing on. Michael merely gestures to the... to Susan. "Right."

"Do you like him?" Michael asks, and Jon doesn't know what to say to that. Maybe it's written on his face, because Susan is gone with what Jon imagines as an indignant huff, but more sounds like thousands of butterflies flapping in unison. "I am sorry."

"S-sorry?"

"I can apologize, Archivist. I'm a liar."

"I just- why introduce me? To- er, to Susan?"

"You have trouble understanding me. I thought maybe you could understand him. It was stupid." Michael seems... angry? Bored? Sad? Jon's never been good with emotions.

He wakes up with fractals in his eyes.

iii.

The third time, they're in a field of long golden grass. Michael simply stares calmly at him.

"Ask,” they say, and Jon doesn't hesitate.

"Why are you showing me any of this?" Jon says, vaguely aware of the compulsion rolling off of him like waves of fog. He's spent too many sleepless nights trying to figure it out. He wants answers. "What do you want?"

"I want you to understand, Archivist." Michael says. "I don't know why. Understanding is against my nature. Being understood is against my nature. But... I don't mind. I like being understood by you." Michaels mouth quirks into something not like any human expression, though Jon gets the impression that he's trying to smile.

"Why me?"

"You're not the only one who has trouble understanding things, Archivist." Something resembling a frown. "I do not know." 

"Well, try, then." A slow blink. "If you're so keen on me understanding you, and you don't know how to explain that, it'd be helpful if at least I knew why." Deductive reasoning, maybe. A motive. Anything concrete to work with.

A very long pause. Michael trails his hand though the grass, slicing through them like a scythe. They fall lazily to the ground.

"You... understand the joy of becoming. Of having your self realized. It is the only thing Michael and I had in common," Michael says. "It made our twisting... Less. Or more. It is why I like you so much, I think. Plus, you are very amusing. More than the others."

Jon's head spins a little bit. A creepy monster just said it liked him because he was- what, because he was no longer human? Then, what did that mean about-

"No." Jon realizes, then, he was talking out loud. "Your journey as the Archivist is quite entertaining, but that is not why you understand. You take no joy in becoming the Archivist, even if it is your destiny. I am talking about who you are. Not what you are."

"Wait, wait, this all because I'm..." Saying it out loud after being stealth for so long feels wrong, so he doesn't.

Michael not-smiles softly. Jon feels a twinge of irritation.

"I didn't fuse with someone. I didn't become anyone else. I've always been me. I was, anyway, before the Archives. Our experiences are nothing alike."

"Yes."

"But you keep saying they are."

"Yes."

"I don't understand." Jon says helplessly.

"You don't have to." Michael brushes their long hair out of their face, leaning in close. Jon smells rain. They gently, slowly, touch their forehead to his, bending down to make up for the near foot difference between them. Their eyes are a spiralling kaleidoscope, and Jon wants nothing more than to throw himself in. “But, I hope you will.”

Jon wakes up with questions spilling from his lips.

He's not sure if he will ever get answers.

He's less sure if he needs them.