Chapter Text
They're back in the Institute. By mutual decree, not the archives, or the research department, or any other of their collective old haunts. Somewhere that, despite the bad blood bathing the place like wallpaper, is still neutral territory. A break room of some sort on one of the mid-upper levels. It has couches, and it has a kettle, and everything else is secondary.
They part as naturally as oil and water. The new archive crew to one side, the remnants of the old on the other, vastly outnumbered as they are. Michael doesn't even know most of the newer people's names. Jon won't look at him, and he doesn't dare ask where Sasha or Tim are. Martin is the sole link between them, but he's-- well, there's other bombs for him to defuse.
Such as Elias, currently the only other member of their side of the room. The others are watching him as if they expect him to manifest a gun from thin air and kill them all, but he's just sitting politely, folded up on himself with his hands in his lap and his head tilted down towards the floor. The pose – and the white gauze wrapped around his eyes in messy layers-- gives him the impression of an angel, Michael thinks, like one of the somber statues in a church courtyard.
They want to question him. He doesn't need beholding-given powers to figure that out. Michael can feel it hanging in the air, unspoken, but stiflingly present. Martin is holding them back for now, but he's wavering, exhausted, resolve flickering like the last vestiges of flame.
The action takes place before he consciously authorizes it. He's nudging Elias with a shoulder, trying not to flinch at the startled gasp it shakes out of him in response.
"Do you want to go somewhere else?" Michael whispers.
A pause, and then the barest of nods.
Contact made isn't given up easily, Michael finds, as he trails a hand down to Elias' hand and pulls the two off them off the couch. There's a commotion from the other side of the room, and one of the women Michael doesn't know raises her voice above the rest.
"Where do you think you're going?" she growls, angry.
Michael holds his head up in defiance, even as Elias at his side threatens to shrink into some microscopic form. "The library," he decides, because it comes to mind first.
She looks like she wants to argue, or perhaps give chase, but Jon gives her an incomprehensible look and shakes his head slightly. "Let them go," he says.
She still gives them another shifty glance, but apparently the word of the apocalypse-averter himself is enough to get them out the door, and Michael doesn't wait long enough for him to change his mind.
They're halfway there before Elias untenses even the barest amount. It's slow going. Elias is still taking those hesitant baby steps of the newly blinded, not yet confident in the darkness' inability to manifest objects for him to bump into in the otherwise-empty hallway. Considering the fear-driven world they've all narrowly escaped, it's maybe a more rational impulse than one would consider otherwise.
But he does untense, and they do make it to the library in one piece. It's only at the doors that Michael thinks to ask--
"Is this an okay place for you? I only picked it because it was the first place I could think of that wasn't--" he pauses. The words to describe everything are far too heavy to say out loud. It's too soon, too real. "--bad for me," he finishes. An understatement, but it is at least a statement.
Elias shakes his head, and then nods. "It's fine," he says. "Never spent much time there, before."
Michael nods. He understands that. The before. The corner of Elias' mouth quirks upward in some facsimile of a smile, and then disappears. "Plus, it's got the comfy chairs, doesn't it?"
He can't help it, his face falls. "I don't know," he says, willing his voice to not betray his agony. "We can certainly check, though."
He doesn't know, really. That's the problem. He doesn't know how much Elias even remembers of the last 25 years. He doesn't know if maybe he's referring to chairs from their time-- their shared time in the Institute, or--some chairs in those years of lost static and kaleidoscope fractals. He doesn't know if there were chairs in the hallways. Can't remember if he sat down. If he even existed when he wasn't an appendage but a whole body with walls like intestines squirming and moving and digesting, a grotesque real estate venus flytrap.
"Michael?" Elias' voice stirs him from his thoughts to find the two of them still standing at the entrance. Elias' hand is still gripped in his, and he gives it a quick squeeze, gratified when he gets one in return.
"Sorry," he says, feeling very small. "Got lost."
Elias nods like he understands, and of course, he's probably the only person on the planet at this point who's been through anything even remotely similar to what he has. They're both old, but new in their bodies, skin worn like winter clothes on the first frost of the year. Of over twenty years. Michael maneuvers them over to the nearest seats and marvels at how relatively unscathed he escaped.
The two of them lapse into silence for a moment, but it's not like the other room. The silence there had felt deliberate. Exclusionary. There had been plenty of chatter – the fate of the Institute and its hundred or so employees in the post-post-apocalypse was a rather complex matter, after all, but no one had asked their thoughts on any of it.
Not that they had any to speak of. Michael didn't know what was going on in Elias' head, but he knew that he never wanted to see the Institute's stupid carpet again, the sooner the better. But again, unlike the others, he had truly no other place to go. He'd been missing for over a decade. If he wasn't already declared legally dead, he would be soon. Going back to his apartment was a lost cause. As the Distortion, he'd been his own living quarters. He was living quarters. The thought made him giggle involuntarily, and beside him, Elias flinched. He recovered swiftly, turning his bandaged gaze on Michael and raising an eyebrow. "What are you thinking about?" he asked.
Michael shrugged. "Thinking about the Institute, I guess. And the future. The sooner I never see this place again, the better. But-- it used to be-- when I was the Distortion, I was my living quarters." Saying it made him giggle again, tinged with desperation. "I haven't paid rent in quite some time. I've got nowhere else to go."
Elias gave him an odd look, made unreadable by the fact that a fourth of his face was covered. "I should have a place in my name," he said. "Assuming Jonah didn't just sleep in his office."
Michael's tongue made it to the door before his brain. "Or the Panopticon," he said. "Crawled back into his coffin every night like a vampire."
Elias seemed to find the thought funny rather than horrifying, judging by the huff of laughter and the tiny smile he shot in Michael's direction. "He had to have at least kept a bank account," he said. "Even if he did sleep hanging from the ceiling like a bat."
Belatedly, Michael's mind caught up with the rest of him. "Are you offering--" he couldn't find the words for an assumption to make.
"Whatever I have," Elias finished for him. "Whatever he had. Us bad guys ought to stick together, yeah?" He punctuated this by knocking his shoulder against Michael's softly. There was a beat of silence, and then he added-- "I have ulterior motives, anyway. I don't want to be alone." He hesitated, tilting his head away. "It's too quiet."
Michael had his hand in his grip before he was done speaking, shaking it vigorously. "I understand," he said forcefully. " I understand. "
"The fact that you've got working eyes is just a fun bonus," Elias said lightly.
"Genius!" Michael exclaimed. "I can be the eyes, and you be the brains."
Elias let out a startled laugh. "We-- we might find some difficulty with that setup. I don't know why Jonah picked me, but it certainly wasn't for my brains. More for my lack thereof."
"Well, then we can borrow Martin," Michael said determinedly. "Or Jon. They must have some sense between the two of them."
Elias made a noncommittal noise, and the silence fell once more, more comfortable than before. Or, comfortable for Elias at least, Michael guessed. He seemed content to just sit, staring off into-- nothing, he supposed. But Michael couldn't stand it. He tapped his shoes against the hardwood floor of the library. He stretched his hands, ran a querying finger through the long curls of his hair, and let out an idle hum before he consciously recognized he was making noise and quieted himself. The stillness that followed was the itchy sort, and his brain wanted to sit still even less than his body.
"Can Helen come too?" he blurted out. "If- if she wants to."
"Helen?" Elias asked.
"She's, um- like my spiral sibling. She was the Distortion too, for a while. Although not as long. I don't know if she'll even want to. I mean, she might still have her own stuff, I don't know. Just a thought."
A beat of silence. "Yeah, if she wants to," Elias said, and then continued with an unexpected enthusiasm. "Why not? The more, the merrier."
"Should we go ask her now? Do you know if you have a place? Can we go?" Michael was practically vibrating with excitement, bouncing slightly in his seat.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's-- yes, he had an apartment within walking distance from here. Could probably get there on the subway too, though. Especially with you as my eyes."
Michael bounced to his feet, flapping a hand in the air. "Let's go!"
Elias got to his feet, and then maneuvered Michael's still arm into a bent angle. "It's easier to walk if you guide me like this," he explained, slipping his arm through Michael's.
His other hand's flapping increased its velocity. "Got it!" he chirped.
Elias did seem more confident on the trip back to the room the others were in. He wasn't taking those hesitant, shuffling steps anymore, and Michael found it easier to guide him around the occasional obstacle. When they opened the door to the break room, they were greeted by collective stares. Helen had made little progress since they had left. Excluded from the crew of new archival employees like the two of them, but equally excluded from their quiet reunion of the archives-circa-1990, she was still hovering quietly on the fringes.
"Why are you two back?" demanded the angry lady from before.
"We're leaving," Elias said flatly, earning him raised eyebrows and an expression Michael could only describe as the puzzled version of angry. "The Institute," he clarified. "To-- to Jonah's house."
"Why are you telling us? " she asked.
Michael decided it was his time to step in. "I wanted to talk to Helen first," he said. The group as a whole looked surprised by that, as if they had forgotten she was there. Judging by the toothy grin she shot Michael's way, that very well might be the case.
"Me? Why, I'm delighted!" She laughed. "Shall we take this out into the hall?"
It was kind of unfair, Michael thought, how well the pointed glance Elias gave the rest of them came across with no eyes to speak with, as he said, "Yes, I think we shall."
When the door had closed safely behind them in the hallway, Helen tilted her head at Michael. "What's up?" she asked.
"I was wondering, um--" he hesitated, realizing for the first time what a strange situation this was. The two of them had only barely met each other, truly. Had nothing in common but the source of their nightmares. But surely that would be enough. He gathered his willpower and carried on. "If you had anywhere to stay? Because if you don't, Elias offered-- Jonah's old place. You could stay with us."
She blinked at him in response, clearly caught off-guard. "I- I hadn't thought of it yet, actually. I had an apartment, before-- but I-- now..."
"Same boat we're in," Elias added dryly. "Seems to be a common theme for ex-avatars. We ought to just get a house, commit to the whole thing."
She looked to him with an amused twinkle in her eyes. "I used to be a real estate agent, you know. I don't know what kind of resources we're working with in terms of funds, but it's very possible."
"What, Elias Bouchard's home for ex-fear-god-avatars and other newly human entities?" Elias snorted.
"Why not?" said Helen, as Michael exclaimed "Yes!" simultaneously.
The hallway went quiet as Elias seemed to consider what he was getting into.
"Oh, hell," he said finally. "Let's do it."
As if by some unerring sixth sense-- and that likely wasn't too far off the mark, Michael realized-- Jon chose that moment to stick his head into the hallway.
"Elias, a word?" he asked.
"Pumpernickel," Elias replied.
Michael swore he could see the gears in Jon's head grind to a stop before slowly catching up. "What?"
"You asked for a word," and was that a faint grin at the edge of Elias' face? "So I gave you one."
As delighted as Michael was by this turn of events, Jon refused to be deterred by it. "I was wondering if I could get your statement about what happened with Jonah Magnus. For the record."
The temperature in the hallway seemed to drop ten degrees. Jon didn't seem to realize it, but Michael could see the tension in Elias' body, so carefully and cautiously unwound in their time together, snap back into place like a string pulled taut. He was practically vibrating with rage, the cold kind that slipped past your defenses and settled in your gut. Like Gertrude, Michael realized uncomfortably.
Elias gave Jon a thin smile. "Don't you think the Eye has had enough from me?" he asked.
Jon recoiled as if Elias had physically struck him. He looked... guilty, Michael thought. And pained. "Yes," he said quietly, as if he was somewhere further away, and then with more force. "Yes, you're right. I'm----- sorry, Elias."
Michael was almost afraid Elias would hit him then and there, but he seemed to relax fractionally instead. He didn't say anything else, though Jon hovered a moment as if he expected it before disappearing back into the break room. They stood silently a moment longer.
"So!" Helen exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "The sooner we're out of here, the sooner we can go house shopping! "
"Yes," Elias declared, holding out an arm for Michael to take. "Let's get out of here. And can someone with working eyes pull up the direction to Jonah's place?"