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Alex Reagan is fairly certain that this just happens to be the smallest elevator in existence. She’s been a lot of places in the world, but the one at the Usher Foundation that leads to the archive is the smallest modern one for sure. It’s barely big enough for three people honestly and that normally doesn’t bother her in the slightest. While Alex has a fair amount of fear for the things that she’d discovered over the last few months (the hunt for example is the one that sticks out the most considering it’s why she’s here) but the Buried wasn’t one of them. Alex was the sort of person who turned her bed into swaddling nests and burrowed into them. Honestly that buried blanket nest is where she felt the safest.

No. The elevator itself wasn’t the issue here. Alex Reagan has ridden it more than a few times since she’d started working in the archives a month or so ago. While she would rather be out there being a reporter, Alex had blown out all of the credibility that she’d ever had when she’d told people that the things that went bump in the night were real. In the end Tannis Braun was right about how her skills would be valuable here investigating the validity of the statements. In some ways it was almost freeing—when she was working for Usher, Alex didn’t need to worry about pesky things like journalism ethics. Instead she could lie and make someone believe whatever they wanted in order to get their story from them.

In a way it was all kind of freeing.

So if it wasn’t the elevator itself, and it wasn’t the confined space that bothered her what didn’t bother her exactly was the man who she was currently sharing the elevator with. His size in it, with the foot of height that he had on her, the more bulk that he’d had on his frame (not that Alex was calling him fat by any means) instead it was just the way that he loomed over her and seemed far larger in the space than he actually was. And the fact that he was attractive and god was he attractive. Alex has said hello when she’d gotten into the elevator with him, and saw that he’d already pushed the floor for the sub basement level archives.

But the problem was that somewhere between the archives and the first floor, the elevator had just decided to stop. Not just stopping which would be bad enough, but stopping and losing all power. Normally the dark wouldn’t have been a thing, because Alex would have just pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight app or call someone even if her phone didn’t have great service here. That was part of the reason it was still plugged in at her desk. Artifact storage was only three elevator stops away, and Alex was delivering some information she’d had on a statement. But now here they were in the small and dark with the extremely attractive man she doesn’t know.

This is fine. This is all fine.

But Alex just gives a grin that she knows that he wouldn’t be able to see in the pitch blackness so deep that it feels like she could hold it in her hands like dirt. “Well, I guess this is one way to avoid that meeting with my boss.” There isn’t fear in her, just the bad joking tone that Alex makes to lighten a situation. The meeting with Tannis was supposed to be in half an hour and she was supposed to be meeting someone important to the Foundation.

The fact that it could be the person in the elevator never even crosses Alex’s mind. After all, that man had been described to her as being ‘Old Man Strand’ and this man definitely wasn’t old in the slightest.

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Alex notices the change in him, the way that he’s different even if she doesn’t know the hows or the whys of it. But she lets him lead her away, her dark eyes peering at him from below the horned rim of her glasses. Well, that was at least one good thing: Alex hadn’t had any overtures made to her that she’d been aware of. When she’d dreamed of the incident it’s in flashback; there’s no joy to the chase of it, no wanting to savor blood and teeth. From what Alex had been able to tell from the research she had done on the internet, those had been normal nightmares brought on by a traumatic event, and she couldn’t think of something more traumatic in her past than that.

That didn’t explain the whole seeing of Eyes in her dream, which is something that Alex isn’t going to mention to anyone here, and definitely not her boss.

But his saying that he’d fought avatars before makes Alex’s step pause and then draw out to an entire and full stop. Without even thinking about it, Alex places her hand on his arm in order to stop him as well. “Wait, you’ve fought avatars? I didn’t think that you could do that and live. I mean, I almost didn’t and it was a single one. I just got lucky that she didn’t get the chance to finish the job before something came along that caught her attention more than I did, honestly. How do you fight more than one?”

"I should say I've supervised it." He shrugs, then looks faint, "IT's sad, but we've lost lives that's what we do here Alex. We prevent the rituals from happening."

Leading her back to the elevator he lowers his gaze, "We've had some terrible luck."

When he looks faint, Alex frowns, and she stops him before they get back onto the elevator properly, resting her hand on his arm again.

She knows what could happen, she's not an idiot and more than that, Alex is someone who has already beaten death once so who even knows if she'd manage to do it again?!

She doesn't think she will.

But this isn't about Alex Reagan, this about Dr. Strand when she asks him softly: "are you okay?"

"...It is tough remembering those we lost."

It's overwhelming really. Stepping back onto the elevator he smiles at her and offers her a hand, "Let's go back up to the so-called land of the living."

He could spend hours down here.

Wandering the rooms.

But looking at this hunt touched woman he wanted to find out more about her and for that he needed his computer.

Damn.

Alex can’t help but to look down surprised at the hand he’s holding out to her for a moment. It’s not that Alex hasn’t been at extremely lax places to work before (PNWS comes to mind) but it’s that she wouldn’t have expected it from Dr. Strand. That said, there’s only a second’s hesitation before she takes it allows him to draw her into the elevator with him.

Even if she’s still not exactly sure what it is that she’s supposed to be going down here.

“Sure.” Alex just agrees and gives him a smile. “Here’s hoping the elevator doesn’t misbehave like that on the way down.”

The elevator shudders to life with a click and a hiss before starting to move slowly upward. He withdraws his hand without a second thought.

"They are...finicky. Take someone with you to get over pratfalls and broken tiles. I love it down there. I feel like I'm surrounded by ancient history."

“I like history too,” Her voice is soft as she steps into the corner that Alex had sought refuge in before when the elevator had lurched. It’s a precautionary measure; she really doesn’t want to die in a fall, thank you. But even with the haste that he lets go of her, Alex keeps her eyes on Dr. Strand.

“I’m pretty sure that getting someone else to come down here with me is going to be next to impossible. The other assistants don’t even like to go into the archives, never mind down here with this stuff.” And then there’s time for a bad joke, because there always is. “Unless you’re offering to come with me which may defeat the purpose of like...me doing research for you, I think.”