Statements today feel long, and I can only imagine the workload that awaits me down in artefact storage. I would be down there now, but Jon isn't back quite yet; it's something about paperwork and such, and he is going to get kidnapped. I feel a yawn forcing its way through me. I stand up for a moment to reorient myself, stretching. My elbows and wrists crack with the movement, and I can hear someone nearby snicker. I spin around to catch the perpetrator, but I know who it is. Tim is sorting through some busy work I assigned him. To be fair, it is genuinely grunt work because I did not know what to do with him. I have him alphabetizing some documents that were dragged up here for me by one of my colleagues in artefact storage. I am so backlogged with things to do.

"I have to use the washroom," I let Tim know, and I slip out. I guess I am the next on the chopping block because someone follows me into the bathroom. As I am washing my hands with water that is just a smidge too hot, I am interrupted by my not so secret shadow. She's been following me the last few days. She still clearly has not taken to me. I am fine with that. I don't need everyone to like me.

She forces my head against the basin of the sink, and I can feel a bump raising onto my head. I slide onto the ground and look up at her. She stands over with me huffing. She raises her foot to my face. I say nothing, and she drops it back to her side. Her eyes search for answers in me that she cannot understand. "What? Didn't feel like indulging the beast today?"

She scoffs, and offers me a hand. My head is smarting, but this whole situation is giving me whiplash. "I don't trust you, but you may serve some use still."

I may serve some use to you? You think you can use me. Daisy, you were so close to getting into my good graces. "I can and will kill you if I need to." I'd like to see you try.

I smile at her, her hand still grips mine. My fingers are going numb with her grip, she drops my fingers, growing bored, or perhaps out of something like disgust. "You're a fucking freak."

"Are you any better?" She steps away from me, and I take another step in her direction. She continues to take another step back, and I walk past her, leaving the bathroom.

The annoyance flooding through me right now is accompanied by flashes of something else, a glimpse into something else. It seems Daisy is not the only one after my life today. Today is going to be too much for me to handle emotionally. What can I say, I have performance anxiety.

When I get back, Tim is still entrenched in my sorting I have tasked him with. Basira and Melanie are wandering around. Melanie catches me in a glance, looking away. She has been strange with me ever since. I think she is still deciding what to think of me. Basira's eyes catch on my face, "What happened to you?"

Tim looks away from his busywork. "Woah, I thought you were using the bathroom."

"S'nothing. I fell down." I seat myself in Jon's spot. He's gone for now, and I am surrounded by people deciding how to feel about me. It's funny because I think I know him more than he realizes. Where had I left off? I am shuffling through my notes and papers before me, and I swallow a smile down. Jon is going to hate my system, I just know it. If I made things easy for him though, there would be no room for growth. Plus, he might just be happy for the work as a return to some kind of equilibrium. Unfortunately, I have to keep this up for now.

Basira is staring at me still. "It was Daisy, wasn't it?"

Melanie looks like she wants to say something, but she takes her chance to slip away at this point in time. "I said I fell. Are you bored, Basira?" I set down my pen, balancing my chin on the palm of my hand. "Would you like something to do?" She stares at me blankly, mumbling a few sounds. Nothing intelligible, less so words, and more so things trying to be words.

I press a hand against the lump at my forehead, and the skin there is rough, there is drying blood that peels and sticks to my fingers. "Oh, it's just a little scratch." I can already feel Elias' glare burning into my skull. I am sure to get some disapproving looks from him. It's not like I wanted Daisy to jump me! I'll clean it later. I am trying to work with what I have right now, okay.

Tim sighs and then plops his stack of my nonsensical notes and paperwork from my colleagues into the cardboard box they had arrived here with. "Martin has some first aid stuff hidden in some corner, I'll be back. Some nasty fall, huh?" The uneasiness with which he has been treating me since finding out fades just like that. Suddenly, he is on my side again. That is at least one person less I have to worry about.

I feel my phone buzzing in my pocket, and when I check the notifications, it lights up with a text from someone that had not been able to face me. All it says is, "Sorry, I need time. I am sorry." Two people. It's working. I wasn't sure if this was the right play, but I think everything will be alright.

Tim is back with a heavy-duty kit of first aid materials. Only Martin could be that overprepared. I take a seat, and he offers me a sympathetic smile as he takes out an antiseptic and something to dab at my dried blood with. He is applying ointment and gauze to my head, and I can hear his heart growing in pace. "Why are you here," he asks me. "If you knew you couldn't leave."

"Elias saved my life Tim. I know you all can't stand him, and he's not the best, but he saved me. I'm no saint either."

"So what, you became trapped here because he saved you? Seems a bit ridiculous to me."

I know this is a bit absurd. I nod, "It's stupid, but I had nowhere to go, and I was so so tired. I just wanted it to end."

"Oh, you mean-"

"If Elias hadn't offered me a job, I would never have had the chance to know you and Martin, as silly as it is." Embracing this is what's kept me above water. Elias has helped. He's involved himself in my life, and he really has helped me, but spinning it this way also makes Tim sympathetic. I am scrambling to pick up the pieces and change the way he sees me. Elias has been playing at this so much longer than I have.

"Thank you, Helen." Tim's gratitude and sincerity catches me off guard. Give a little, get a little, I guess.

"For what?"

"You didn't have to say all that. You could have lied." I want you on my side Tim. I want you to actually like me. Sometimes the truth is necessary. There you have it, Elias. You brought meaning to my life, and you give me a reason to keep moving forward. Even if I hadn't done it, I don't think I would have lasted very long given the circumstances.

Basira coughed from the corner she occupied. "Are we going to,"

"What, end up like me and Elias?" He represents an unpleasant ever-present specter in their lives, synonymous with a fate neither wanted nor would have chosen. The mention brings forth a collective understanding of the trials they face.

"No, I didn't mean it like that. I guess just, can we retain our humanity, or is it too late?" It's a query that pierces through the veneer of normalcy, exposing the vulnerability that lingers beneath. The fear of losing one's humanity, of becoming a mere pawn in the games played by eldritch entities, lies beneath her words.

"At some point, you will have to make a choice, and it will be you or them. When you make that choice, there is no going back." Inevitability looms around the corner. Things were set in motion long ago.

"When you say-"

"I won't say anymore on the topic you guys. I think it would be a good idea for us all to get busy now, but I appreciate your concern." The declaration is a gentle but firm refusal to delve further, closing the door on the conversation. It's an acknowledgment that some truths are best left unspoken. They may not understand me, but the work serves as a practical diversion from the existential questions that linger. The room, once again, falls into a contemplative silence; however, this time it is less uncomfortable and uneasy. I have won some kind of faith back.

The day wears on, and I realize I am the last person still here. The archival assistants have left. My phone is dead.

As I am leaving the institute to walk home, my already sore head takes a hit. My vision glitters with fairy dust from all the torment it's taken today as I crumple to the ground. A lanky misshapen figure stands over me. Darkness has fallen, and I am leaving work later than usual. I have just had so much to do lately. Melanie and Tim went out for drinks and left early. As it got later, I had stayed later in the hopes of catching up on things. I really would like to be back in artefacts.

I also just don't really know if I can handle a near silent car ride home with Elias tonight. I need a break. Everything in me is boiling over. I know I am not perfect nor am I a good person, but I guess. I don't know. Sometimes the aimlessness wanders into me. It was weird. I felt like I was friends with Tim and Melanie and them despite everything, and now I worry.

"If it isn't the hand of the eye, you look as pathetic as all of you observers. You don't have any real backbone. You don't know what to do when you find yourself here." The voice that speaks is disjointed and broken and vaguely human. I won't be judged by you too. A clawed hand grasps at my scalp, dragging me upwards. I watch it, bones in places they shouldn't be. My attacker looks like some creature a child sculpted come to life. There are bits and pieces unfinished and others abandoned. There is an idea of a person hidden in there somewhere. Strange.

I gasp as it tightens their grip on my hair and pain strikes through my head in forked branches. I am tired of all this. I reach for anything, my fingers splayed and clawing out. I act less out of decision and consideration and more out of annoyance. You had to go and ruin my walk home. I knew it was coming, but still. A jangled laugh escapes its mouth as I claw at nothing, and I take the opportunity to stab a dull pair of scissors into where the neck might be. The scissors were with my box of things up in the archives today, and I thought far ahead enough to bring some kind of sharp object with me. It groans and cries out, and I launch myself into it. My hands find its mangled face as it screams beneath me and I push craters into areas where the eyes would be. I squish and mold its features beneath me. It feels like kneading bread dough, and its skin is cold to the touch. It croaks and warbles beneath me as my hands sink into it with squelches. I tear the scissor out of it and rip pieces of its body off with one hand as I continue to plunge my scissors in with the other.

I try to take a deep breath, but I cannot take one deep enough. My breath is short and hot in my throat. It comes out quicker than I want it to. How am I supposed to juggle all of this Elias? I can't do this. I need you here, fuck. No, I can do it. I will do whatever it takes. I can't lose this. I finally had something worth having. "You're not even fucking," a sound like a cough escapes it, "worth the effort."

"Helen?" I look up, the scissors still embedded in its gut and I am shocked to see Melanie. What did she come back here for? While I am still distracted, it slides from beneath me and tumbles into the darkness with a screech. Well, shit.

"Hi, Melanie. It's a bit late for you to be here." Melanie almost seems to glow in the darkness of the night, she casts shadows as outdoor lights fall upon her frame.

She tilts her head, her eyes skimming the surroundings. She forces herself to look me in the eyes. "Seems like you've had a hell of a day."

"Something like that."

"I came here because I left something inside. Would you maybe like a ride home?" Her body language communicates a genuine concern, a subtle shift in weight as she extends the invitation. It's an unspoken gesture. Something in her has changed at this moment. She says nothing about whatever she has witnessed, but maybe the struggle was worth it. I think I have her trust again.