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"What, I don't get to be angry? I just have to let all of these things happen to all of my friends and, and pretend that I'm just soft, quiet, perfect little Michael whom you hired out of pity?"
Elias glares in a way that barely creases his face with anger, maddeningly calm. "Please get to the point, Michael."
"Maybe there isn't one! Maybe—"
Elias presses his hand against the desk and swipes away the remnants of statements the pesky assistant had been cutting into crude shapes. "Maybe you're just wasting my time."
"Yes. Perhaps I am."
"I see. That puts me in a... difficult position."
Michael smiles, full of venom. "Good."
"You might want to turn the tape off, Michael."
And he does. Barely breaking vicious eye contact, Michael stops the tape from recording. It kicks back on a moment later.
"Oh, look at that. Seems it wants to hear what's going on." Michael sniffs haughtily, and crosses his arms. Elias seems unbothered.
"Hmm. A pity. You know Jon listens to all of them."
"What, you want to hide your big evil monologue from him?"
"Just wanted to spare you the small amount of dignity you have left."
Michael laughs, high and hauntingly hollow. "Dignity? Like the dignity of being mobbed by a hivewoman and sleeping at my workplace with a Swiss army knife in my hands?? Fetching tea and biscuits for a pitiful facsimile of someone I thought I knew? Traipsing along into endless clouds of smoke for weeks?"
Elias is grimacing at him. "Are you done?"
"Not even close. Because I—" Michael rises from his seat in a fit of passion but then thinks better of it when Elias almost looks pleased and calms his voice down. "I had a lot of time to think in that choking fog. You've been watching us all this entire time. You knew that THING was not Sasha. You probably knew Prentiss was waiting to attack us. You did nothing. Why?"
Elias just stares at him. He hates when Elias just stares at him. Michael slams his hand down onto the desk. "Why??"
After a tense second, Elias speaks. "Let's just get this over with, shall we?"
"What? The same trick you pulled with Melanie? Just that perfect bit of information to cut me down to your size?" A small dig at their height difference never hurts.
"Yes."
"I hope you have something better than your pathetic dig at my feelings for Jon."
"It's baffling, really. Such loyalty to someone who really treats you quite badly."
"If it gets under your skin. Is that meant to be some kind of revelation?"
"You know, I really should have gone for that. Found something that would finally manage to shatter your perfect image of him. But, as you say, I am very busy at the moment. So I suppose I'll have to go with what I have prepared."
Michael steels himself. "Do it," he demands.
"Those pills."
Michael's heart sinks.
"You hide them so well. Not kept in bottles, not taken in sight. You wrap them in napkins every day at home so you can smuggle them into work and take them so diligently at the same time every day, and you hate them. But you need them, don't you?"
Michael's breath shakes as he tries to defend himself. "My d-doctor—"
"What did your doctor say?"
"Th-there's nothing left for me to try—"
"No, Michael. There's always more pills to try. The round ones you took when you were five, the flat ones you took when you were twelve, desperately, desperately trying to fix what you know has always been broken. Those little blue ones you took in college weren't from your doctor, were they? Circling back to old friends and older vices without doctor's orders. Because you know you are damaged."
Michael feels as though his very soul is being rended into pieces. Tears prick at his eyes as he listens in miserable, terrible silence.
"It's a pity, really. The habit they started you on so young. You didn't even want them. Yucky, you'd say, yucky, momma."
Michael's eyes fill with tears. "Don't—"
"But when your father beat you, they made your pain fall away like the rain. And when he killed her and then himself, they numbed your memories until you forgot they were even there, and when you remembered them again there were always more pills."
Michael grits his teeth, willing his tears to stop falling, but they come like waterfalls down his cheeks. "Shut. Up."
"Do you want to know what your doctor truly thinks?"
Michael gets flashes of conversations had over a breakroom table. "There's no saving him. It's like he's always one missed dose away from total ruin."
"Why not refer him elsewhere?"
"Nobody wants to take him. I've tried."
Michael chokes on a sob. "Oh, god..." He crumples to the floor in a heap, chest heaving and struggling to expand. He can't breathe, he can't feel his body bruise from the impact, his vision starts to narrow and he can't stop the waves of nausea and panic from washing over him.
"Two more hours. Don't miss your next dose, Michael. Don't cut up any more statements."