The Curse (Gertrude era assistants thoughts) has once again claimed me.
So, AU where all of them get to live and work together (the timeline gets a pretty severe case of "being thrown in a blender"), an idea that first came to because I desperately want them all to interact. I also call it the "What if Gertrude cared like 40% more about Fiona and Eric" AU, because that's what a good 60% of the plot relies on.
One day (probably not too far into the future) I will actually write this. Currently, however, I am fighting with my first GerryMichael fic so you'll have to do with little bits of ideas.
It's generally implied that Emma told Gertrude what happened to Fiona, just lying about her own involvment. So, Gertrude "blow shit up" Robinson decides to just- hoard artefacts of The Vast and then go get her. It's still a struggle, and she does have to give up a finger for it (she never quite got as far as The Archivist as Jon did, so I imagine she's be able to chop it off), but ultimatly she gets Fiona Law back to the surface. Fiona doesn't know that it was Emma's fault, and is overjoyed to see that she is alive and well when she returns (imagining a scene where Fiona comes into the archives and runs up to her to hug her, meanwhile Emma thinks she's about to be stabbed or something). Fiona, after her long exposure to The Buried (and also the multitude of entities Emma got her into contact with), essentially becomes an avatar at this point, and with that comes the good old semi-immortality. She does her best to avoid hurting people, and when she accidentally does she does her best to help via her work at The Archives. She returns to life before Eric.
In MAG 167 it's stated that Gertrude was fully capable of Knowing what happened to Eric, but decided not to because "it was easier to make him just another pillar of her crusade" or however they put it. In this AU she just... doesn't do that. She manages to pull together some sort of ritual to bring him out of The Catalouge (shhhhh, don't question it, Gertrude is just reeeeaaaally good at pitting The Entities against eachother), in part it is helped by Gertrude finding his eyes in Mary's office (because I like to feel like she would've keep them if Eric hadn't destroyed them). This does get him back under The Eye's connection, which pisses him off pretty badly (Gertrude thinks he can quit whining and be glad to be alive). As repayment for undoing all of his progress for getting away from The Archives, she manages to pin enough stuff on Mary (including, but not limited to; child abuse, child neglect, a bit of murder, kidnapping (of Eric), theft, desecration of a corpse (The Catalouge) and Tax Evesion) to get him custody of Gerard (who would be about 14 years by this point). She also promises that as long as he keeps helping her with her work, she will make sure Gerry and him are safe.
When Michael eventually start working at the archives, he realises that Fiona's and Eric's ages don't really match up with... anything (Fiona has looked eighty-something for wayyy too long and Eric says he had his son when he was thirty five and he does not look like he is around 50) and this gets added to his conspiracy wall (don't worry about that one just yet).
Gerry, as previously mentioned, grows up with Eric. This leads to him being a bit less jaded than he is in the actual series but other than that he remains mostly the same personality-wise. While Gertrude did manage to get him away from Mary, she did not manage to get her locked up for very long (I belive it's stated that Mary has some sort of contact or something to keep her out of jail). At some point after getting out, she finds Gerry and gives him the eye tattos as a punishment for aligning himself with The Archives (I'm sorry, but I needed a reason for him to stay away from The Archives and I also kinda wanted him to have the tattos). This ends up leading him to distance himself from The Institute as he doesn't want any more of The Eye's attention. He doesn't really start coming back there until he's twenty-something. He does still track down Leitners, but not quite as often as in the podcast. When he finally does start coming back to The Archives it's because he needs more information to track one down.
Sometime around 2003, Gertrude comes to some sort of insight about the fact that a lot of rituals require a death to be stopped, and none of her current assistants are very fitting for the role since they're all too aware of what's going on and none of them are willing to die for it. To begin with, she decides that she should hire someone a bit younger than her, but still experienced, to hopefully take her place in case she dies or something similar happens. Emma, however, convinces her that getting someone more disposable to sacrifice would be better, as having Gertrude around for longer would be better for the world than someone a bit worse. In the end Gertrude decides that both would be good, and Elias permits it and promises to find two fitting people that Gertrude can then decide if she wants or not.
Enter Sarah Carpenter and Michael Shelley. Eric gets very upset with Gertrude over this since it means that two more people are trapped under The Eye.
There isn't much to say about Sarah here, since she is essentially a character we've all made up in our heads. I do usually imagine her and Michael to be friends of some sort, but that's just a me thing.
For Michael Shelley, he's pretty damn Eye aligned in this one. It's mostly based on the line "After much serching and despair, it drove him into the waiting arms of the institute", making it seem as though he was spending quite a bit of his life before The Institute desperatly looking for information on The Spiral. Thus the aformentioned Conspiracy Wall. It's like, an entire wall in his living room. He does not have guests over. He pulls a Martin and (badly) fakes his qualifications (I imagine him joining during his late teens, although he tries to make it seem like he is ninteen-twenty. Nobody actually believes him. Both Eric and Fiona are like "Gertrude, that is a child, what are you doing?", particularly Eric, since Gerry would be around that age as well at this point). He's so very shocked that he actually gets hired. The Spiral mark is also there, and it and The Eye end up feeding into eachother because he constantly feels like an insane person due to the stuff he's looking into and obsessing over (the Conspiracy Wall does not do him any favors).
I haven't quite figured out how I wanna do Sarah's and Emma's survival yet. I've got a good idea about Michael's but this is already a lot of text. Gerry lives because he now has people in his life that encourage him to go to the doctor regularly.
I do have a bit of a scene planned out for Michael and Gerard meeting. Both of them are in The Archives after hours, "borrowing" statements for their own private research (as you do). Michael realises that someone has broken into The Archives, and like a hypocrite decides that won't stand. So he sneaks up to him to threaten him with a paperweight. Gerard's first instinct upon seeing him is "Oh, shit, Spiral avatar" and pulls a switchblade on him. Five minutes and an akward conversation later they both decide to just mind their buissness. This does happen multiple times.
I would like to apologise if this is incoherent, I wrote it very late and I'm slightly sleep deprived
you know when a word completely changes meaning and becomes synonym with love, destiny, soul mates, partner in crimes, ranch metaphor, red string theory, actively stalking you on twitter kind of love
