Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Tim woke up on the riverbed, he saw two people:

A tall, yellow-haired boy--- girl---- person, with a tie-dyed shirt and a name tag. Michael Shelley. They loomed over the pretty lady who’d so gracefully pulled him into her lap when he’d washed up there. His vision was still blurry, but he got the sense that he’d seen her face before. Somehow. Somewhere. The woman had a name, of course, as most people do, but Tim couldn’t seem to remember what it was.

“Tim! Oh, thank god you’re okay!”

He knew that voice. Whose voice was it? Where had he heard it before? This lady must’ve passed through the archives at some point.

The archives. Where were the archives?

Where was he?

All he could think to do was to try to sit up, to look around and figure out where the fuck he was.

“No, no, lay back down. You need to rest after everything?”

“After everything? What happened?”

Another woman spoke, her voice was posh and polished. Fucking tory.

“You never did mention how bloody stupid he was, Sasha.”

“Shush, he’s just confused!”

“Hold on, who the hell are all of you?”

The first woman- Sasha. A different Sasha than the one he knew, apparently, as she was shorter and rounder, with long braided dark hair and big dark eyes. A Sasha that had passed through the archives at some point, and he’d just forgotten. Yes. That must be it. This new Sasha’s excitement slowly faded, and he wondered what he’d done wrong.

“You don’t remember me, Tim?”

Tim shook his head. He really didn’t, but she seemed sad, so she must have been important to him somehow, right?

“Oh….oh dear. Let me see if I can jog your memory. You said you’d burn the archives down if you lost me?”

He did say something like that about his Sasha, didn’t he? But his Sasha was different from this one. First of all, she was very pale and willowy, with stick-straight brown hair and big greenish-gray eyes magnified by heavy circular prescription glasses. He sat with her on a table, messing around with the tape recorder. Jon had probably taped over all of the things they said after he got it back.

Jon.

He missed Jon.

Tim got his mind back to the question at hand, thinking for another moment before answering.

“That was...that was another Sasha. How do you remember that? Wait, actually, how do you even know that that happened? Did Jon t- do you even know Jon? How do you know me?”

Tim tried to sit up again but ended up falling on the floor. Stupid, useless, jello-y meat sack of a body.

“I- Tim. That’s me. I’m that Sasha.”

“You’re clearly not! What did you do to her? Where is she?”

Finally, Michael spoke, seemingly amused by everything going on.

“It’s very, very funny to watch you two argue, as Timothy is incapacitated and Sasha is being quite the heterosexual, but shouldn’t we be headed back to camp? We got what we needed, after all.”

“I still don’t know where we are-”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, Timothy. You’ll find out soon enough.”

Michael picked him up effortlessly, throwing him over their shoulder and carrying him back to this “camp”, leaving Sasha alone and angry by the riverbed.

Alone with the exception of one Helen Richardson.

Chapter Text

“Are you going to come with me or are you just going to sit there like an idiot?”

“What is it with you and calling people idiots? You are aware that other insults exist, right?”

“Answer the question, Sasha.”

Sasha kept quiet, still looking out onto the water and refusing to face Helen. Since she’d arrived they’d had a few talks, and, well, she was good enough company when Sasha wasn’t hiding and screaming because all of the colors were amplified and she was barely sure if any of this was real.

Helen was good enough company when she was needed. Right now, she was not.

“Sasha?”

“Just--- leave me alone. Please.”

“...Are you going to be alright?”

“I’ll be alright if you fucking leave, Helen.”

“Right, right.”

Helen still didn’t leave, instead going to sit with Sasha, waiting for any objection before pulling her close to let her rest her head on her shoulder.

“....You thought he’d remember?”

“I did. I really, really did.”

“But the table-”

“I KNOW what the table did, Helen. I know what happened, I just---- I kinda had a little bit of hope.”

“Sasha, dear-”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Right. Sorry. Anyway, maybe if we just wait a little while, he’ll start to remember.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“We don’t KNOW how it works, Sasha.”
“I don’t care. I just want Tim back. I want him to remember me. I spent so long waiting a-and when he finally shows up, he--”

A soft sob came from Sasha, and only then did Helen realize that she’d been crying.

And now her blazer was soaked. Great. If she didn’t care, she would’ve made some sarcastic comment, but seeing Sasha, someone she’d grown to be so close with over the past few months, feeling so terribly, really broke her heart. So she shifted, pulling her into a tight hug,

Sasha clung to her almost immediately.

“Shh, Sasha, it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

She buried her face in the crook of Helen’s neck, soaking the expensive blazer even further.

Helen would’ve minded if it was anyone else.

She didn’t mind, because it was Sasha.