#and then played Helen just to trick and lie to Jon

[fatherofpuppets]

I'm a simple man: every time I think about Michael The Distortion — I cry.

[haberdashing]

And Freedom’s A Fairy Tale Lie (10/?)

When Michael is transformed just before killing Jon, the face the Distortion next wears is one much more familiar to Jon than that of Helen Richardson.

on AO3

The Unknowing was...

The Unknowing was...

The Unknowing was. Perhaps that was as good a place to start as any.

The Unknowing was, and then a certain man pressed a certain button, and very suddenly the Unknowing was no longer.

There was a brief moment in which everything seemed like it was going back to normal, and the man watching it all--not the button-presser, but the other man, the one who had fought him and helped him in turn--rejoiced in the relative freedom to be found.

And then Jon--that was his name, Jon, the knowledge was coming back to him now--saw the explosions in the distance.

The information of who, what, where, even how he was unceremoniously crashed into his head shortly before a plank of wood that must have once been part of the ceiling nearly did the same.

The bright, colorful lights of the Circus were replaced by an eerie glow now, and piece by piece, the building began to fall apart.

It seemed almost as if things were moving in slow motion; the explosions couldn’t, shouldn’t, have taken more than a few seconds, and the building’s collapse not much longer than that, but Jon could track each piece of debris as it flew this way and that, a chaotic cacophony not unlike that which the Circus had tried to achieve, but without the same sort of strange rhythm underlying it all.

There wasn’t time to get to the exits, Jon knew that much. Maybe if they had been near the door--was that where Daisy had gone off to?--but not here, not when they were right in the middle of it.

Jon hadn’t planned on dying today, really. The strange serenity of Tim’s expression suggested that perhaps Jon was alone in that.

A bundle of feathers appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and Jon watched them fall to the ground slowly but surely. Some of the feathers seemed to almost hover in the air, and not just because the air was starting to act up now, wind seeming to pick up even as the better part of the building remained standing.

A chunk of concrete went flying-

There was no way that piece of concrete should have fallen to the ground that slowly. Feathers, sure, but concrete was thick and solid and very much subject to gravity’s pull.

It wasn’t just Jon’s imagination, then, or a trick of his perspective. The world was in slow motion now. But why? The Circus prolonging his agony? His consciousness refusing to give up the ghost?

Jon’s questions were answered when his eyes landed upon an intact goldenrod door standing apart from any wall, only steps away from his current position.

The door creaked open, and Martin stepped out--that door looked too small for him, at his full height, and yet...

“Tim! Sims! Over here!”

...Jon still wasn’t certain that Martin wasn’t playing some sort of long con here, that entering the corridors wouldn’t lead to a protracted and torturous death.

Jon was, however, certain that staying here was sure to guarantee him an equally ignoble death.

He would take possible death over certain death any day.

Jon stepped forward, his steps shaky but sure, until he was just within the corridors’ reach, though he was still able to look back and see the chaos continuing to unfold behind him.

Tim was facing Martin and the door now, but he showed no signs of heading towards them.

“You’re going to die if you don’t come with me!”

“Then I’ll die.” The statement was calm, cool. It occurred to Jon that this wasn’t a decision Tim had just made; Tim sounded content with this possibility, must have made his peace with it some time ago.

“Timothy Daniel Stoker, you come here right this instant!”

One hesitant step forward from Tim, then a moment spent glancing around--the explosions were getting close now, the debris falling fast and heavy--then another step, and another, until he had just barely crossed Martin’s threshold.

“There we go.”

Martin closed the door, and the corridors stretched on and on, and the aftermath of the Unknowing was nowhere to be seen.

[haberdashing]

And Freedom’s A Fairy Tale Lie (1/?)

When Michael is transformed just before killing Jon, the face the Distortion next wears is one much more familiar to Jon than that of Helen Richardson.

Chapter 1 /  Chapter 2

on AO3

Jon had never known that he was about to die before.

He’d suspected it a few times before, true. He’d been afraid for his life during Prentiss’ attack on the archives, had thought the not-Sasha thing might well kill him and take his place, had known all too well that Daisy’s threats directed towards him were far from idle.

But Jon hadn’t known, then, hadn’t held that same deep certainty he felt now about the end of his life rapidly approaching. Even back then, he had seen that there was the potential for him to live on, that it was possible he could survive the threat currently endangering him and live to be threatened another day. He hadn’t guessed the details of how he’d gotten out of each situation, admittedly, but he’d known that such outcomes were at least plausible ones.

Jon didn’t see any such outcomes here. The options were clear enough: die by Michael’s hand, or die by Nikola’s. No third option. No way out.

And Michael had promised that dying by its hand would be far more pleasant than the alternative. Not that Jon trusted Michael--he knew better than that, knew better than to trust a creature that had just proclaimed itself “the throat of delusion incarnate”--but... what was the alternative, really? Wait for Nikola to skin him alive, for his remains to be used to help bring about the end of the world? Even if that promise was a trick on Michael’s behalf, Jon rather doubted it could do much worse than that.

“Open it. Open it, and all this will be over.”

“All this,” presumably, meaning Jon’s life... but also possibly the apocalypse? Without the old skin Gertrude had kept somewhere beyond his reach, and without his skin (a thought that still gave Jon goosebumps, despite or perhaps because of how the concept of someone else removing and wearing his skin had become more and more normalized during the course of his kidnapping, going from a preposterous idea to a very likely fate in the not-too-distant future), could the Unknowing still go on?

Perhaps not. Perhaps if he gave in, it would save the world. Perhaps his death would be for a noble cause.

Or perhaps his death was simply an inevitability come to pass.

Either way, Jon didn’t hesitate, reaching out and grabbing the doorknob in front of him as if his life depended upon it, though he knew well enough that in fact the exact opposite was true.

But when Jon tried to turn the doorknob, it remained stationary, the sound of a lock preventing its movement clearly audible.

Jon looked over to Michael, trying to discern whether this was just another of its tricks, but to no avail. “Er, it’s...”

Jon tried the door twice more in rapid succession--perhaps Michael had only locked it for a moment, perhaps it simply wanted to further prolong his terror before consuming him--but the door remained locked each time he tried it.

“What?” Michael said.

“It’s locked.”

“It’s not.” Michael laughed at that, a strange snort of a laugh; Jon had heard Michael Shelley’s laugh, now, and Michael’s laugh was not the same. There was some surface similarity between the two, perhaps, but it was, well, it was distorted, transformed almost beyond recognition.

Jon considered trying the door again, but decided against it, letting his arms fall back to his sides instead; if Michael was trying to play some sort of mind game with him here, he wasn’t terribly inclined to play along.

“Why is it locked?”

“It can’t be!”

Jon couldn’t help but think how many things in his life were things that most people would say couldn’t be, how what could and could not be had long since proven to be a slippery slope.

Jon was quickly losing his patience as he had lost so much else recently, and rather than continuing to try the locked door fruitlessly, he threw his hands in the air and yelled, “Well, you try it!”

The words came out harsh, even to Jon’s own ears, but he didn’t have it in him to regret it. After all, what else did he have left to lose?

Jon wasn’t sure what he expected as a response, but he hadn’t really been expecting Michael to actually take him up on the request, to stroll over and wrap its impossibly large and sharp hands around the doorknob, and yet he watched as Michael did just that.

Jon certainly hadn’t expected the door to stay every bit as locked when Michael tried to open it as it had been for him. Judging by the expression on its face, neither had Michael.

Michael tried the door again and again, laughing shakily as it remained as steadfastly locked as ever no matter how forcefully and frantically he grabbed it.

“Th-Tha-That-That’s… not-”

It was hard to read the expression on Michael’s face at first, perhaps unsurprising for a creature that was more eldritch fear monster than man, but as Jon continued to watch its futile attempts at opening the door, he took in the furrow of its brows and the widening of its eyes...

Was that fear he saw on Michael’s face? Jon wouldn’t have thought Michael capable of such a thing, and yet...

“Oh.” Michael’s voice was almost calm in its resignation, but its shaking hands, letting go of the doorknob after one final fruitless jiggle, betrayed its true feelings clearly enough. “Oh no.”

And then Michael began to scream.

Jon had never heard anything quite like it. It was a scream human enough to chill Jon to the bone, yet still recognizably inhuman, with all the echoing and distortion that Jon had come to associate with Michael and its particular brand of fear. It was more human-sounding than Prentiss’ death screech, certainly, but similar enough that Jon would have recognized it for what it was even without watching Michael writhing before his eyes, his form warping and glitching in impossible ways before disappearing from view entirely.

As the screaming ended and Michael vanished, the door that it had tried so desperately to unlock creaked open.

Except, when Jon looked more closely, it wasn’t the same door as before. He hadn’t seen it change, had been watching Michael much more closely than the door, but while the door was still yellow, it was a different shade of yellow now, a soft and muted goldenrod. The doorknob was different, too, bronze instead of black, with carved details that looked oddly old-fashioned, though trying to look too closely at the carvings just gave Jon a headache.

Then Jon looked past the door itself to the one standing in the doorway, the one who had opened it, and he could swear his heart skipped a beat as his brain raced to put together the pieces.

It was Martin.

Martin, who nobody had seen since before Leitner was murdered. Martin, who almost everybody had written off as dead or worse by now, especially after hearing Tim’s story of their separation in Michael’s corridors. Martin, who Jon had thought he would never see again...

Except... except it wasn’t quite Martin, was it? It resembled Martin, as Michael likely had resembled the late Michael Shelley, but while the overall image was more or less intact, some of the details were grossly off. Martin had always been taller than Jon, but now he was a giant, taller than any human could ever grow to be, with hands eerily similar to the huge, pointed hands of Michael, albeit covered with Martin’s freckles...

Jon was still trying to process all of this, staring silently at Martin-not-Martin, when he heard “D’you want to come in?”

And it sounded like Martin’s voice, too, it really did, which didn’t help matters any...

“Wh... M-Martin? But... but y- Michael...” Jon could tell well enough how incoherent his attempts at speech were, was mentally berating himself for not managing to sound more put-together... but to be fair, he had just been convinced he was about to die, still wasn’t sure that that wasn’t about to happen, and was now staring at somebody he thought he’d never see again, except that it wasn’t actually him, just a monster wearing him like a costume, or, or something along those lines... so sue him if this wasn’t his finest hour when it came to conversation.

Martin (or the thing that looked like Martin) didn’t seem to have the same difficulty, though, shaking his (its?) head gently before saying, voice steady and calm, “Michael isn’t me. Not now.”

“What happened?” The question, at least, flowed out naturally enough, as did Martin’s response to it.

“He got... distracted. Let feelings that shouldn’t have been his overwhelm me. Lost my way.”

That was... tricky for Jon to wrap his head around, especially given the seemingly-arbitrary change in pronouns halfway through, but then again, what else was new?

“And now? Y-you’re Martin?”

Martin bit his lip in a way Jon knew well, the way Martin always did when he was trying to concentrate on something, except it didn’t look quite right. Martin’s teeth poking out from under his lips looked... what was it about them that made them look so off? Were they bigger than before? Sharper? Whiter? His teeth were different, at any rate. They were wrong.

“I don’t know. I never know, not really. ...do I need a name?”

“...no, I, I suppose not.”

Martin paused for a moment before adding, “Martin is... better than Michael.”

“But he’s gone.” It wasn’t a question, not really. Jon had known for some time now that Martin was gone, one way or another, and this new wrinkle didn’t change that, really, only complicated it. Whoever or whatever the creature standing in front of him now was, it wasn’t the Martin Blackwood he knew so well.

“Yes. As is Michael. There’s only me.” A wry smile made its way onto Martin’s face there as he spoke, the tone oddly reminiscent of the sort one might use to explain things to a preschooler.

“I...”

Jon wanted to know more, wanted details, wanted explanations, but he had a feeling that no matter what questions he managed to come up with, all he would be left with were responses that inspired even more questions in turn, a never-ending cycle of uncertainty and confusion. Maybe he would never fully understand this, but all he could do was try to accept that lack of understanding. It was better than trying to fight it, at any rate.

“Okay.”

Martin looked pointedly over at the door, then back at Jon before asking, “Do you still want to leave here?”

Jon let out a soft, humorless laugh. “A-are you still going to kill me?”

“No!” The response was swift and certain, and Martin’s face looked almost... offended? Silly, really, that, it was a fair enough question given the circumstances... “That was Michael’s desire, not mine.”

“So... s-so what do you want?”

Martin cupped his chin in one hand, which just served to highlight to Jon exactly how disproportionately large his hands now were, how unnatural that once-familiar gesture now appeared. “I don’t know. Martin liked you... rather a lot, actually...” The laugh that came out of Martin’s mouth was shaky and echoed far more that the room’s acoustics would normally allow, but his face grew red at the same time, and even if Martin’s laugh had an unnatural echo and his fingers were closer to elongated claws now, Jon knew that blush. “...so there’s a lot to consider. But I will help you leave.”

A distant warning bell went off in Jon’s head. Whatever Martin... whatever it looked and acted like now, it was still a monster, still a being whose very existence was tied to distorting reality, to falsehood... and it was still trying to get him to enter its corridors, even if the supposed reason behind it had changed...

“Wait, is this a... Mic- Y-you’re the Distortion, the, the, the Liar. W- How do I know this isn’t a, a trick?”

Jon could tell he still sounded like a stammering, incoherent mess, but in a way, that only strengthened his point in his mind. After all, Martin, or, or whatever it wanted to be called now, wasn’t acting nearly as flustered as Jon was now, despite seemingly having gone through some major changes itself, so either this was a trick or... or “Martin” was being surprisingly unemotional, which didn’t entirely track.

Martin snorted loudly. “And if it was... what would you do about it, exactly?”

The answer, of course, was nothing. Trick or not, Jon had exactly as much power as he’d had before over his situation, which was to say almost none. Trick or not, Jon was faced with the same choice as before: enter the corridors, be they owned by Michael or Martin or a being without true name, or just wait for Nikola to kill him.

And Jon still stood by his previous assessment that whatever this being could do to him, it would still be better than dying by Nikola’s hand and going from trying to prevent the Unknowing to being a part of its completion.

“...right, right...”

A thought occurred to Jon. “How long have I... b-been here? There’s no... It was hard to keep track-”

His voice comes out weaker than he would have liked, the question sounding almost more like a plea, but he doesn’t have much time to consider the implications of that before Martin interrupts him.

“Time is hard, A-and it’s difficult to follow without a proper mind, especially here. A while.”

“Right.” Jon knew “a while” could mean anywhere from days to years (though he was fairly sure it hadn’t been the latter), but also knew better than to push for a more definite answer.

“The door is open, if, if you’re ready?” Martin shot Jon an awkward, toothy smile, and despite everything Jon couldn’t help but smile back.

“No, not, not really, but...” But when had that ever stopped any of this? When had him not being ready ever made a lick of difference to the rest of the world? Not since he was eight years old, at the very least...

Jon sighed a little, but as Martin shooed him on, he flung open the door and walked into the corridors, willing if not ready to face whatever face awaited him within.