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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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Richard Strand was bored.

Not strictly - bored in the traditional sense. He had plenty he could do. His job was all about finding things, about preparing things for Tanis and for the great and glorious plans of his host. His mind was constantly working.

No, he was bored with people. Occasionally these sorts of things happened. Human beings were boring. They had been ever since he was seven -

("Richie! Richie let me out! Richie I-" She coughed. The air smelled likes and and dirt, "Richie Please! I'm sorry!")

Perhaps it was that memory - the thrill of discovery digging beneath the sand and wondering if there might be anything or anyone there that made him stop and think. Made him truly address how bored he was. That had been his focus when he stepped onto the elevator.

It was interesting. People found him oppressive. Rooms within him were stuffy - so when one of Tanis's archival assistants got on with him an eyebrow was raised...

But then she wasn't panicking. And even when the elevator stopped with a flick of his hand in the hopes of provoking a reaction she was...pleased. Hmn.

"Who's your boss?"

His voice is deep, rich and throaty as he folds his hands, "I'm sure the elevator will be fixed soon."

"Tannis Braun. I just started working as an archival assistant six weeks ago I think?" Alex pauses and she considers; sometimes when you end up spending so much time working in the basement days can all seem to run together especially if you're a workaholic like Alex Reagan always is. Even if this isn't the profession that she'd wanted to be in since she was a kid, it was still fascinating in its own right and that was enough to mean that she lost herself inside of her work.

"Yeah," Alex says more definitively, "it was six weeks ago when I signed the contract. Nic kind of just threw me into working just as soon as I had signed on the dotted line, actually. And threw me into the deep end, so to speak--I don't think that Tanis was expecting any new assistants." Which was a bit of an understatement considering how he'd stared at her when she got down to the archives before Nic had remembered to call, and how she'd needed to unearth the spare desk from a mountain of documents and cassette tapes.

The cassette tapes were a shock because Alex hadn't seen anyone use them for anything in more than a decade. As someone who worked in radio, she knew that there was the smallest bit of digital in those old sort of tapes, but she was used to things being more modern. In the end, for the first two days that Alex had been set the task of recording statements (Tanis said that her voice was far more suited to it than his was) Alex had used her trusted recorder. Of course, she only found out it didn't work after Tanis ranted at her for forty-five minutes about how unprepared she was for doing this job but at least he didn't fire her.

Alex Reagan still doesn't know when you end up taking a job at the Usher Foundation, you're stuck there for life.

"What about you?" And the curiosity is evident in the cool, Canadian tones of her voice. But it's more than that, Alex is genuinely interested in who he is and why the man is here. "I don't think I've seen you here before." Because Alex definitely would have remembered, if only for the voice alone.

I haven't seen you here before. How long had he been in his realm recently? He had been doing some renovating. If people were going to become buried he was going to get creative damn it. Nothing so archaic as what his father had crafted.

(Richie please...

Oh Richard. Now this is the side I wanted to see of you.)

The girl however made him stick his hands in his pockets, "I'm Doctor Richard Strand." I'm paying your salary seemed trite, and I'm one of the founders seemed pointless. New hire, new hire...

Come to think of it hadn't there been a reporter? With the smell of hunt about her? Hadn't something happened and she'd been drawn in and signed and now...

Did she know? Did she know why she was here?

He appeared to become more animated, keeping the world around them static and compressed. This strange woman who wasn't uncomfortable in his presence.

"...If you're new I should have introduced myself properly. I end up burying myself in my work too often for it to be healthy."

Somewhere his dead sister screamed, his ex-wife chuckled, his daughter growled to herself, eyes blinked and animals howled and beings in other realms rolled their eyes at the terrible pun.

Richard, for his part, extended a hand - warm and calloused - despite his appearance.

"It's very nice to meet you Miss.."

Alex doesn’t want to say it, but the words drop from her lips because without having her recorder (and all too often even then!) the filter between Alex’s brain and mouth is never what it should be. There’s no denying the shock in her tone, because she can’t imagine how anyone would... What were people thinking?! “You’re ‘Old Man Strand’?! But—“ whatever was going to be the word following the but was swallowed by the sense of embarrassment in her. And maybe the smallest sense of common sense even though her mother and her old boss believed that Alex didn’t have one.

“Oh my god!” The words are added quickly, replacing the but there and her tone is quickly filled with apology. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Strand. I didn’t expect that. I mean. I’m uh. Supposed to be meeting you actually.”

There’s a light laugh and Alex tucks a piece of hair behind her ear before she extends her other hand out to take his own in the darkness. Honestly even with the increased pressure of the atmosphere around her, her sense of being mortified with herself is far stronger than her fear. And even then her fear is only that of being fired. So, another joke. “Assuming that I still have a job after all of this, I mean.” Which is a big if, and Alex is self aware enough to know that.

“But I’m Alex. Alex Reagan. Just Alex works fine for me, Dr. Strand. And I really am sorry.”

She means it and she doesn’t flinch away from his hand.

Edited 2020-09-06 21:03 (UTC)

Her grip is light and warm and he smiles a thin smile despite everything - grateful. It's amusing. It's the first time he's smiled in - what? Weeks? Months? It's a shame it could be read as contemptuous but at the same time.

He squeezes her hand back and folds his hands in front of him studying her. This is the "reporter" he was approving.

"Old Man Strand. Was it Nic who came up with that?"

"I wouldn't know. I mean, I'm new so I've just kind of... heard it around, I guess? People seemed worried about me meeting you. I don't know why, honestly." Which is more of that lack of filter thing. Maybe those journalism ethics had actually been good for something after all, honestly because she at least would have been more careful about her personal feelings and reassuring him.

Probably. Or at the very least possibly anyway.

But she just gives him another smile, because Alex is really hoping that he's not going to turn around and end up using what her blunder was in order to do something really unreasonable like fire everyone else here. Alex knows that she can be a fuck up, but she doesn't want to fuck up everyone else's life just because she didn't have the sense to keep her mouth shut about it.

Alex tucks one hand into the pocket of her trousers and just shrugs for a second. "It's kind of no harm, no foul, I think. I mean, it's one of those things that normally happens when people are scared of their bosses, especially if they're strict or intimidating or whatever." It's clear from Alex's voice that Dr. Strand isn't intimidating her right now, even if he is her boss. There's something a bit freeing in that whole probably going to lose your job and need to move back home to Vancouver with your parents thing.

He blinks at that. She's so calm.

He can sense fear. It comes with the job and the territory. It's intoxicating. He never thought he'd miss it. There's something about the lack of that pull however that makes him curious. It's a different sort of pull to this woman staring up at him with interest - or at least a devil-may-care attitude.

For someone so tied to the hunt that devil may care attitude is a surprise.

"Rest assured, if you make any sort of statement I find offensive it's forgiven that we're stuck in an unusual situation." for the moment. And he wasn't in the mood to deny her at the moment.

He could deny her nothing.

"Are you scared of me?"

The question catches Alex off guard, that much is obvious. Normally, she’s good at reading people, and right now she can’t get a read on him so she doesn’t know what he expects the answer to be. But her lips had already worked themselves into a broad grin at his comment about their unusual situation, and they kind of fall into an expression of puzzlement.

Tilting her head for a moment Alex considers before she decides that the easiest thing that she can do is tell the truth. So, she just shakes her head as she says, “no. I’m not scared of you, Dr. Strand.”

Alex does pause for a moment this time at least before her curiosity gets the better of her and she just asks, with all the intrepidness of her former life: “why do I feel like that’s a surprise to you?”

"Because apparently people are calling me old man strand." He chuckles, "Don't worry. I'm only teasing you. You are easy to tease."

He shrugs, "I used to be a teacher. I'm used to people being very scared of me."

That makes Alex laugh. She can’t help it, it’s a bright and happy sound as she shrugs in the darkness. The humor carries into her voice, lacing it and injecting warmer tones into her normally cooler ones. “Well, you’re definitely not the first person to say that about me, Doctor. You probably wouldn’t be the last.” The look she gives him is an amused appraisal with the very human wanting to know that’s slowly being increased just by her being closer to the Eye even without knowing what it was or what it’s doing to her.

“Though,” Alex just murmurs softly. “I can say that I never had anyone ever do it so quickly.”

This feels like something that’s going to take a while to be fixed, so Alex just sits in the corner of the elevator. Tucking her legs up, she leaves space for him if he wants to join her on the floor. Alex honestly doesn't know or not, but she gives him a smile and gestures towards it anyway.

"What did you teach? I'm assuming you don't mean something like grade school or whatever."

His smile is a bit more genuine, "Religion and mythology before I retired to be a full time...researcher."

Before he came into his own, fully accepted his avatar status. After discovering that Coralee was an avatar of the spider's web and after Charlie chose that over his work.

"You were a reporter right?"

Alex just gives him her entire focus as he speaks, and Alex's focus is like a laser in a way. A flashlight that she shines on people when she wants to know more about them. The trick to it is that Alex actually does want to know more about every single one of those people. Right now, Dr. Strand is at the head of the list.

But his fields of study made sense in the framework of the Usher Foundation. Both of them had to do in the things that people believed in and Alex knows that. More-so, Alex knows that those sort of things were simply a framework for something far more important: the story. Alex normally loved stories; stories were her artist's medium, all bright and shining. Alex can make people feel with how she tells them, and because she was a reporter all of her stories had the benefit of being true.

Even the one that got her here.

Hearing someone else say that she 'was' a reporter is a reminder that now she's not and she will never be again. At some point she's going to need to leave the Usher Foundation and figure out the rest of her life. But for now, this place is safety. When Alex responds, her voice is a little more subdued, and she nods. "I was, yeah. I worked for Pacific Northwest Stories, and I was doing a story on someone who had gone missing. I followed the story and found myself being faced to face with an actual honest to god werewolf." Who had almost killed her, but Alex doesn't say that, and her hand reflexively goes to the place on her stomach where claws had dug into the softness of her belly.

She was very lucky. She was also afraid. Alex isn't afraid of him, but the memory of the woman's face above hers as she shoves her claws into Alex's stomach does make her very afraid. For a moment, Alex stays silent and she takes a deep breath and while the faint shaking of her body and racing of her heart slows, the terror in her has only seeped into down into a low grade fear.

Alex gives him a little smile as she rubs her hands up and down her arms as her focus comes back to him. "Sorry. It was a thing that no one believed until I came here."

HE can smell the hunt on her. He can't see that attack, the claws and the blood but he can smell the hint of a wolf about her. That desire for the chase. It's got it's claws in deep.

She is dangerous.

Better to know where she was and what she was doing. He had to keep her close.

The air around them grows stiffer by a hair, "You'd be surprised about what we're willing to believe." He inhales the suddenly moldier smelling air, "What you can find buried in the vaults where we keep the statements."

"IS that something you've found yet? That you like?"

“I know. It’s why I had come here in the first place. This seemed like the only one who would believe me. But then Nic offered me a job and now here I am.” Alex just laughs, and the staler air doesn’t bother her.

Home for Alex has always been a little associated with the smell of dirt and mildew. Her father's office had been in the cellar, and she would go down there and sit on their old couch and read while he did his paperwork. In some ways she’s more comfortable than she has been yet, and the edge of fear thins and wanes around her. If anything, Alex is more at ease than she has been since they'd both gotten on the elevator.

"The archives? Yeah, I found it. It's fascinating, really how far some of these things go back. And yeah, I like it in there too. I mean, it's not bad! I don't know why people don't." Alex has heard that it was creepy from some of her coworkers, in particular her boss Tannis. Speaking of, "it's probably why whenever he needs an older statement, Tannis sends me in there to get it. It doesn't bother me. I've sort of become the go to girl for anything needed in there. Pretty sure I'm spending about half of my time in there at this point, if not more." It's definitely more, Alex just doesn't notice due to the way time seems to work within the vaults, and her own workaholic tendencies.

Interesting.

He leans against the wall and smiles, "Is that right. It seems to fit the picture of a reporter - digging through archives..." He pauses, "Though I thought new hires would be more upset we've been slow translating things to digital."

She really is intriguing. Considering her, he flicks his wrist - and the elevator lurches downward.

He needs it. He needs to taste her fear.

Alex just shrugs again at that, her smile brightening up her eyes behind her glasses. When she begins to speak, it's clear that this is a question that Alex has asked many times over the past few weeks when she'd started needing to read them into the tape. It had been an affront to her digital loving senses. But then, like everything else, you get used to it.

People can get used to almost anything after all.

"Well, I mean I'm not in love with it but..." The lurching of the elevator cuts her off, and Alex doesn't scream, but she does gasp loudly in the small space of the elevator. As if it would do some good, she presses herself even smaller into the corner of the elevator, her hands clamped against the hand rails. Anyone would be afraid of that in a stuck elevator, and Alex is definitely one of them. Being buried doesn't bother her anywhere near as much as being dropped and smashed on the floor when this thing hits the ancient landing pad in the archives.

The lurch stops. It's a low blow. Dropping and nearly hitting the bottom? That's a VAST line. Still that fear - even that taste of it, free falling - she's against that creature that his family has struggled to cope with. Lovely. Utterly and absolutely deliciously lovely.

His face is absolutely stony as the elevator begins to descend.

"If you like seeing ancient things let me show you something interesting. We can have our meeting there if you like - Did Tanis go over what you'll be asked to do?"

He should thank the man. Send him on to others for praise for this.

"Namely I might have some work for you to do as well. All the more reason to get used to artifact storage."

When the lurch stops, Alex lets out a deep breath that she'd been holding that had just started to burn within her lungs. The relief rolls off of her in the same way that the fear had, and she stays tucked safely into the corner and it's enclosing walls. Her hands let go of the railings, and she shakes them out a bit, the white from her knuckles slowly turning back to the proper pale state of her skin.

But he had her attention though, that much was sure. Her eyes met his stony face, but she's clearly listening, and her head tilts a bit in interest. "Only the general broad threads of it," Alex admits with a little bit of a smile. "Just that doing research for you was being added to the things that I was already doing. I'm pretty sure it's just because Tannis doesn't like the archives or artifact storage."

And because she's Alex, she needs to ask: "what kind of things do you need researched?"

Pointless things.

Useless things because honestly Tanis will be commended for sending her to him but he can look things up himself.

That said. The elevator continues to slide downward and he leans back casually, calmly and unbothered, "Do you like treasure hunts? The search for Gold and Silver? Or are you more of a historical artifact person."

“Well, Dr. Strand I’m a reporter. Or was at any rate. And it’s a big part of a reporter’s job to tell stories. So, historical artifacts would win over gold and silver all the time. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with them but I’m not a geologist so I wouldn’t even begin to know how to tell their story.”

Alex just looks over him curiously. “What about you, Dr. Strand? I mean you taught Religion and Mythology and both of those are kind of nothing if they’re not the study of stories that humans have been making up since the beginning of time in order to make themselves feel better.”

The elevator stops with a whumph - and when the door opens there's a smell. Dust and decay and mildew. Old books and leather that hasn't seen the sun in years. It is wet and cold and perfect and he seems decidedly more animated as he gestures for her to follow him.

The smell is the most interesting because it's a yellow hallway filled with decaying lights and doors. It could almost pass for an academic hall.

One of the lights flickers and he slams a hand against the wall with a shrug, "Power down here is touch and go at best."

Her question gives him pause as he gestures for her to follow him, hands back in her pockets. She moves with care, and he can sense the hunt in that. The eagerness of the chase and the preparation and willingness to run if needed.

"I pursue facts. Despite the circumstances I'm always interested in the reasoning behind things. The roots of the problem, the roots of the story. All of the things we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel comfortable are just that- roots to greater emotions."

"take for instance the story of Hercules. The "Heroes Journey". Campbell used it as a basis for why the modern stories of heroes appeal to us - but why start with Hercules? Who were these beings who influenced people so often? Are they men? Are they gods? Are they something else entirely? And what did they do to influence us in such a way?"

Upon taking his mantle, upon realizing the truths of the world, Richard Strand had accepted his place as one of those beings. He simply moved things behind the scenes. Hercules was the Hunt - hunting down monsters and other beings just as this girl did.

This woman did.

He stopped at a plain brown door and produced a keycard from his belt, scanning it, "...You're not particularly squeamish are you? Allergic to anything?"

"I'll need to remember to bring a battery charger for my phone so I don't end up getting endlessly lost down here or something." It's said matter-of-factly, something added to Alex's mental list for what she's going to need for work. It's not even like she doesn't have three in her bag at her desk right now; some habits (like those involved in having the need to recharge phones and recorders, things that were generally useless to her now.) were difficult to break.

It's easy to see that he was a good teacher. If nothing else, Alex was willing to bet that he was an interesting one. The sort from who you learned a lot but who also you spent many nights cursing the name of as you tried to write whatever assignment that you'd been given. Those were always Alex's favorite kind of classes, and the ones from which she learned the most.

That said, she wouldn't be Alex if she didn't push back. "Doesn't Campell's hero's journey theory only really work from the standpoint of a white European-centric narrative? So all of those ideas are based in the history of colonialism and oppression, completely ignoring the stories of earlier not so white mythology."

Alex doesn't even notice how she moves anymore, she doesn't know of how the mark in her stomach from the Hunt is more than simply a scar on her skin. She doesn't know what it means to be marked by an entity like that, and she doesn't know that basically it goes down to her very soul.

Still, the question would have caught Alex off guard when she'd started at the Foundation, but now even after six weeks here, she'd gotten used to that whole crazy thing that they'd had going on. "No, I'm not particularly squeamish anymore, and I don't have any allergies." That said, she does ask, her interest and desire to Know unmistakable: "what's in there?"

"Ask yourself why. Why we pursue a narrative wholly rooted in fear with dogged determination and why fear is something we center in our lives."

He's glad he's turned away from her then as he unlocks the door,a cruel smile on his face. "Welcome to artifact storage."

The room is massive. Seemingly impossible given the space - and right out in front are several skeletons - with flesh seemingly still on their bones.

they lay spaced apart - a closer inspection might reveal they are covered in stone as he shrugs his shoulders.

"An expedition we engaged in. Those are from pompeii."

Buried by one of his spiritual ancestors.

"Well, because fear is the one thing that we have in common, isn't it?" Alex just asks as she walks into the room, not minding the skeletons in front of it at all. "It's the one thing that we always come back to," moving forward, Alex just tilts her head to look at them, considering them from different angles as she does.

Clearly she catches how they were entombed and calcified even before he says that they were.

But Alex doesn't stop her response to what he's saying, even as crouches down to look at the feet on them. "All of humanity being chased by their fears forever. How could we not set them at the heart of every story that we've always told."

She looks up at him as she says the next bit: "I mean, isn't that what this place is about really? The things that we fear? Cataloging them and understanding them? Is it alright if I?" Alex gestures to the skeleton as she rises to her feet again.

"I mean with gloves or whatever obviously, I wouldn't want to do something to harm them. The artifacts I mean."

"Let us assume there are some groups of people more fearful than others."

He nods, "But you're right. We do focus on fear here. Oftentimes to the detriment of all else. Which is important. To master ourselves we must first master our fears. That is mastering our animal instincts."

"There's gloves over there."

There is a box and a section of work tables and tools, he nods, "...It's fascinating isn't it?"

They're all laid out in a circle. They were half buried - ready to receive more buriel from his patron, "They were frozen like this."

He moves to pull on a pair of gloves himself.

"We think this was a religious ritual. Or perhaps some sort of ceremony to honor the dead."

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