Chapter Text
Tim never gave what dying would feel like much thought. He thought about after, speculated about the afterlife or who would show up to his funeral, what they would say. Who would cry, who would be dry-eyed. He used to wonder if his parents would show up, finally accepting him when it was too late (though he hasn’t done that in a very long time.)
But actually dying? He never thought of how it would feel much at all. Probably because he figured he’d probably die peacefully in his sleep.
So much for that.
There are not enough words to describe the pain besides he burns . The blaze bites at his skin and digs at his flesh. The explosion makes his ears ring so he can’t even hear himself scream, but he isn’t sure if he even is. His vocal chords have likely turned to ash.
His ears ring and everything hurts and then-
And then its his alarm that’s ringing. And he opens his eyes to find he’s back in his bed. In his flat. Not in a hospital or buried beneath tons of concrete. Or a morgue.
He sits up straight in bed, breathing heavily.
It was a dream. (He thinks, assumes. That or he’s dead.) He’s had weird dreams before, but none quite like that. He’s had plenty of dreams about The Stranger. Usually Not-Sasha or Danny. Never something like this though. He’s never had one where he destroyed The Circus. He’s never had one where he killed himself.
Which. Okay, he knows he’s been at least bordering on being suicidal. He knows that he will probably die within the next year and he knows he doesn’t really care about that. But he didn’t think that was enough to make his dream about it.
Whatever. He doesn’t care. He’s late to work anyways (Not that he’s ever really “on time” anymore. But he is sick of meetings with Elias about his clothing choice and tardiness.)
He doesn’t even bother changing out of the sweatpants he woke up in, just throwing on the first T-shirt he finds on his floor, a worn black shirt with “party animal” in hot pink lettering. If he remembers right (and he hopes he does) Sasha had gifted it for him as a joke for his 27th birthday. He’s worn it just about every day since he found out she’d died.
Then he stops quickly in the bathroom to brush his teeth, not even bothering to glance in the mirror, he doesn’t care what he looks like, and leaves his flat 30 minutes after he’s supposed to have arrived.
He takes his time getting to the Institute, stopping for coffee and a donut and walking slower than necessary. Rosie raises an eyebrow at him when he walks by, but she doesn't say anything.
“Tim? What are you wearing? And why are you so late? Are you okay?” Tim doesn’t recognize the woman speaking to him. But she knows his name, so she’s probably someone from another department who he’s forgotten in the recent months. Which doesn’t give her any reason to be down here or question Tim.
“Fuck off,” He says to her, not in the mood to be nice “I can dress however I want.”
“Excuse me?”
“You're excused.”
“Timothy Stoker I do not know what has gotten into you but you cannot speak to be that way.” Tim rolls his eyes and moves past her into the office and drops down in his seat. There’s a statement for him to research, but he doesn’t even look at it. It’s not like he can be fired. He wouldn’t care if he could.
Instead, he takes out his phone. He doubts he’ll make it through the whole day, but he apparently has to show up.
The lady follows him over to the desks, which is weird. No one came down to the archives if they could help it anymore. With Jon’s paranoia, Melanie’s tendency to point a knife at anyone who looked at her wrong, Daisy following Basira like a guard dog, and Tim’s attitude, the rest of the institute avoided them as much as possible. It was kind of fun to watch them vacate the staff room when one of them entered.
“Seriously, what is up with you?” she asks. Tim sighs.
“Look, I don’t know what you want, but I don’t care. Leave me alone.” She looks hurt, but that’s not Tim’s fault. He’s given people ample time to understand that he doesn't want to be friends with anyone. That he's going to snap at people and wear pajamas to work and show up late with a hangover and leave early- most likely to drink- and he didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to hear their concerns or comments. He wanted to be left alone.
She walks away after that, but not towards the stairs like she should. No, she walks around towards the desks. Not just any desk, Sasha’s desk.
“What the fuck do you think you're doing?” He asks. No one’s cleaned her desk out. No one’s touched it. He hasn’t let anyone. When he wants to clean it out, when he has the mental strength to do so, he will. But that is not now. Or probably any time soon.
She has the gall to look confused.
“Working? I don’t get paid to sit around and look pretty, you know.”
Did Elias hire another assistant? They already have more than they started out with. Unless one of them died while Tim was asleep, which wasn’t completely out of the question. (He realizes with a start that he doesn’t know what day it is, he doesn’t know when his memories bleed into dreams.)
“Look, I don’t care what you do, you just can’t sit at that desk.”
“Why not? I’ve sat here since we transferred.”
Tim furrows his brows. Absolutely not, that’s Sasha’s desk.
“You just can’t.”
“Oh, you're in.” Comes a familiar voice from the bottom of the stairs. It’s Martin, carrying 3 mugs of tea.
“Unfortunately.”
“S-sorry, I thought you were out sick or something. I didn’t make you tea. I-If you want-“
“It’s fine Martin. I’m not really in the mood for tea anymore.”
“Oh! O-okay. Um, here.” He says passing Tim and setting a mug on Sasha’s desk for the apparently new girl.
“Thanks Martin.”
Tim glares at Martin, hurt building in his chest. He might not get along with Martin much anymore, but he knew that Sasha’s desk was an area to avoid, he knew Tim’s pain, and he respected that boundary. He’s the one who told Melanie and Basira and Daisy not to mess with it. Or the Sunflower mug they had yet to remove from the Archive’s cabinet in the staff room, the one he was currently setting on Sasha’s desk, for a woman who was not Sasha.
“N-no problem Sasha!” Martin says.
Tim lets out a startled laugh.
“What the fuck is going on?” He asks
“What?”
“The fucking- What the fuck is going on?” He repeats.
“Are you sure you're okay Tim?” The woman- Sasha he guesses- asks. She stands up from her desk, moving towards him and placing the back of her hand on his forehead before he even has time to process what is happening.
“You don’t have a fever, do you feel sick?”
Tim lets out another laugh. Whoever is playing this prank on him has a sick sense of humor. He didn’t think Martin would play along with something like this. It seemed widely out of character.
“Tim? Do you need to go home?” She asks again.
“Yes,” He manages to squeak out. He stands up, not bothering to grab more than his phone, and hurries up the stairs and out the institute’s front door.
By the time he gets back to his flat, he’s about hyperventilating. Nothing makes sense, he’s confused and angry and why would Martin do that? Why would Elias do that? Did he hire ‘Sasha’ purely to torture Tim? Did he force her to take Sasha’s desk purely to hurt Tim? Was he watching him right now? Giggling in his office while he watched Tim slide to the floor with his back against the door? Was he smiling, congratulating himself on his good work as he watched Tim sob into his hands?
Was this Elias’ idea of a punishment? He knows he had Shown Melanie something after her several attempts at killing him. Was this his punishment for being late, leaving early, not working, and being out of dress code?
He pulls his phone out to send a very unprofessional ‘fuck you’ email to Elias when the notifications on his screen catch his attention.
Sasha ❤️
| Are you alright?
| You can talk to me
| Tim?
| You’re really scaring me
Tim stares at them, even more confusion and anger bubbling up from his stomach. He doesn’t understand. He had Sasha’s phone. Not-Sasha had left it behind, and Tim had taken it. It should be in his room. Which means-
No, there's no reason for someone to have broken into his apartment, found Sasha’s phone, stolen nothing else, and left no evidence of a break-in, just to text him something unassuming from his dead best friend's phone. Not even Jon would do that.
And Martin wouldn’t make tea for someone in Sasha’s cup or let someone sit at her desk. Nothing makes sense.
There’s an idea that had settled into Tim’s brain a while back. One that's ridiculous when this whole thing could be some cruel dream, or Hell, or some hallucination conjured by The Stranger, or any mix of the 3.
He shakes as he makes his way over to the calendar on his wall. It should be stuck in March 2017, when he stopped changing it. Or maybe even before that, if he dreamt that. Either way, it should be after July 2016.
Instead, his calendar displays October 2015. and he knows he threw out his 2015 calendar at the end of the year, it shouldn't be in his flat, much less hanging on his wall.
Part of Tim wants to collapse out of relief? Horror? Hysteria? Another part wants to cry, and another part can only stare in disbelief.
Either he dreamt all of that- Prentiss, Jon’s paranoia, Not-Sasha, Elias being evil, The Circus- or he died at the unknowing and traveled back in time.
The logical part of him says it was all a dream. Because even in a world overrun with monsters stemming from fear “Gods,” time travel was still impossible, improbable. It would be insane for him to believe that he time traveled over it being a god-forsaken dream. He knows plenty of people have had dreams that felt like they lasted years, ones where they built up entire lives only to wake up the next day.
But if that was the case, why didn’t he remember Sasha? Why was the Sasha he saw today unrecognizable? Shouldn’t have recognized her? Even if it took a second, a dream couldn’t have replaced the Sasha in his memories with someone else right? Even now as he sits and concentrates, the only Sasha he can remember is Not-Sasha.
He doesn’t have a polaroid or cassette he can check against his memories. He thinks he has a couple of examples of Sasha’s handwriting around his flat, but nothing to check it against. He couldn’t go back to work. He didn’t want to go back to work.
Sasha ❤️
| Alright I’m coming over
| I have your stuff
Tim’s hands shake as he stares at his phone, fingers hovering over the keyboard. He should tell her something, tell her he’s sick, and to stay away. A bad dream, a stomach bug, hell even drugs. Anything to explain and excuse his behavior this morning. Anything to give him the space to breathe and unravel his thoughts.
But. He wants to see her. He’s missed her so much. He needs her, needs to hug her and know she’s real, know she’s alive and as safe as she’ll ever be.
Because maybe he’ll wake up and this will all be a dream. Maybe he’ll wake up in a hospital bed months into the future, or maybe not at all. Maybe this is just the moments before his death.
Even if she’s not real, even if she’s a figment of his imagination, he wants to believe she’s real. He wants so badly to hold her again. He wants her back. He doesn’t care if it's fake, he needs this.
The commute to and from the institute is just under an hour, which gives him plenty of time to put himself
together and try and come up with an explanation for today.
He sits on his couch and scrolls through the photos on his phone. All the pictures that included Sasha included the woman he’d seen today- not the woman who had replaced his best friend. She’s unfamiliar, foreign. He remembers taking the photos, but the woman in them isn’t the one he remembers taking them with. (Which is good, right? He doesn’t recognize her. Which means She must the real Sasha.)
There’s a knock at his door just 40 minutes after Sasha had sent her text. Almost 20 minutes faster than it should have taken her. Which shouldn’t surprise him, it seemed in character for Sasha, but he had no idea what was real and what was fake when it came to his memories of her. He could never be 100% sure his memory of her was real to her actual personality, he could never be sure Not-Sasha hadn’t changed more than Sasha’s physical appearance.
He opens the door and just. Looks at her. She’s the woman in the photos, the woman from the archives, the woman who sat at Sasha's desk, the woman who was concerned for him, the woman who drank tea out of the sunflower mug Tim had never let anyone touch.
Melanie had only described her as tall and with long hair and glasses, and Tim had been too angry and hurt to ever ask her to describe her in more detail. (Maybe he should have, he couldn’t have known this would happen to him. For all he had known he would have died without ever knowing what she really looked like, they had never found a polaroid of her.)
She is tall, taller than Tim for sure. Her hair was long, she wore them in twists that ended at her waist, and she wore large, orange, square glasses.
Not-Sasha had been short, just barely taller than Jon, white with highlighted brown hair styled in a bob. She had glasses, but preferred to wear contacts that made her eye’s a bright blue. Sasha’s eyes were a deep brown. Dark enough that they could be black. And if he looked close enough, he could see some freckles on her cheeks. Not-Sasha had exactly one pole under her left eye.
“Are you going to let me in?” Sasha asks.
“Yeah,” He says, voice cracking. He clears it “Yeah, sorry,” He steps aside to let her in.
She steps in and hands him his jacket and bag.
“Thank,” He says, setting them both on the floor by the door.
“Do you want to explain?” She asks.
Tim doesn’t think he can. He’s tried and failed to come up with a reasonable excuse. The only time he’d ever snapped at her had had explanations. Maybe he was overreacting, or in the wrong, but he still had reasons. He doesn’t have an explanation he can give her today. He doesn’t know what to say or do, really, he just wants to burst into tears and hug her. He kinda wants to have a full toddler-type meltdown, actually. Complete with throwing shit against the wall and then passing out afterward.
But he can’t do that because he’s a full-grown man. And he also wants his deposit back.
“Tim?”
“Yeah?”
“What's going on?” She asks. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, rubbing at them and refusing to look up from the floor. And then he shrugs.
“Tim?” She says, a little more concerned this time. And he can’t stop the tears from welling up in his eyes. He attempts to blink them away, but they spill over without his permission. A breath hitches in his throat, and he covers his mouth with his hand in an attempt to silence the sobs that are threatening to tear themselves from his throat.
“Hey, hey, what's going on?” She asks, pulling him into her arms.
“I’m sorry,” he sobs, balling the back of her shirt in his fists. (She smells like vanilla and orange. Not-Sasha had preferred earthy perfumes.)
She doesn’t say anything, just rubs circles on his back and lets him sob into her shirt until his sobs become more like whimpers.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks softly.
“No,” he manages to choke out. He can’t, not without sounding delusional. Even with all the things he knows now, if someone told him they had time traveled from years in the future, he wouldn’t believe them. He would softly attempt to move them towards therapy. He’s not even completely sure this isn’t a hallucination or dream.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to be alright? I told Jon I’d be right back, but I can call out if you need me.”
“No, I’ll be alright. Can- can you come back after work though?”
“Of course,”
“And stay the night if you could?” He wants to wake up knowing it wasn’t a dream. That Sasha’s alive and okay.
“Sure. Are you sure you’ll be alright?”
“Yes, I promise. I’ll text you if I’m not.”
“Okay,” she hesitates, before pulling him into one last hug.
“I’ll see you tonight,” Tim waves before shutting the door behind her.
He’s tired. Emotionally more than physically. He wants to cry again, but he doesn’t have the energy too. He’ll probably take a nap. And when he wake up he’ll stare at his phone until it hits him again that it’s real (granted he doesn’t wake up back in 2017 or not at all) and then he’ll start working on how to keep Sasha safe. He wants fuck all to do with everything else, Jon can deal with his own bullshit, but he’s going to save Sasha if it kills him.