Work Text:
Ahti stood at the front door of the Valhalla Nursing Home, a trembling hand pressing against the cold, unmoving surface. The lights overhead flickered weakly, casting shadows that stretched and warped against the peeling wallpaper. Something wasn’t right. The feeling clawed at his gut, an itching, gnawing sense of wrongness that made his skin crawl.
He didn't...
He couldn't think straight, but he knew that he didn’t belong here, in this strange place.
He twisted the handle. It didn’t budge.
Ahti’s breath hitched.
Locked.
Of course it was.
Something deep within him knew he wasn’t supposed to leave. But he had to. He had to. The thought was overwhelming, frantic, like waves crashing against a crumbling shoreline.
Shadows clung to the corners of the dimly lit hallway, heavy and suffocating.
Footsteps approached from behind, light and unhurried. The floorboards creaked beneath them, the sound sharp and deliberate in the quiet.
"Ahti?"
The feeling of wrongness settled deeper, and he turned around to face the person behind him.
Rose Marigold, the nurse. Always smiling. Always watching. Her presence was a splinter in his mind, a piece that didn't fit the puzzle. Her green uniform was pristine, her golden hair neatly tucked behind her ears, but her expression held something he couldn’t quite place.
"What are you doing, Ahti?" she asked, voice honeyed with concern as her gaze flickered between him and the door. "It’s late. You should already be upstairs, getting ready for bed."
"I…" Ahti hesitated, glancing back at the locked door as if it held the answers he sought. "I...Tämä ei ole minun koti(This isn't my home)." The words tumbled out, urgent in a way he couldn't comprehend. This wasn't right, this place... it wasn't where he belonged. "Minä haluan...(I want to...)"
"Eh?" Rose tilted her head, brow furrowed. "Ahti! You know I don’t speak that, we've talked about this. How am I supposed to know what you’re saying? You and Mr. Blum, I swear..."
"Voi jumalauta(God damn it)," he muttered, frustration rising in him. "I...I want to go home. I need to go, return. I need to return to the job."
The job.
There was something important there. Unfinished business. Training. There was something about a new assistant, assignments and jobs and urgent duties that drifted out of his grasp like water through his fingers, like sea foam dissolving upon hot sand. Lockdown. Mops and music and...
Vacation time was running out.
Why couldn't he remember?
"The job? Oh, Ahti," Rose’s smile widened, but it felt wrong, a mask hiding something sinister, "you live here now. Don’t you remember? You don’t need to work, you just need to relax. Let’s go back to your room, I can put on some music for you to listen to."
Ahti turned back to the door, grasping the handle once more, willing it to open. It remained locked.
"Ahti," Rose chided gently. "Come on now." Her fingers curled around his wrist, not unkind, but firm. "Let’s get you to bed. You don't want to go outside right now anyways, it looks like it'll be a stormy night."
He didn’t move. Couldn’t. The walls were pressing in, closer than before. His pulse pounded in his ears.
Ahti stumbled as Rose began to guide him up the stairs, chattering as she did. He could hardly focus as up and up they went, further away from the front door.
A sense of claustrophobia closed in around him.
"What job do you so desperately need to return to, Ahti?" she asked, her tone light as if she were teasing a child. "I don't think you've ever told me about what you used to do, before you came here. Although maybe I could guess, with how you steal poor Mr. Blum's work clothes all the time."
The question sent a ripple through his mind, dislodging half-formed memories. Images flashed - endless corridors, buzzing fluorescent lights over cool cement and smooth tile, a mop pressed against a floor streaked with something dark, something wrong.
New Jersey, New Orleans, New... New York...
He squeezed his eyes shut, thoughts colliding like flotsam in a storm. He had a job. He knew he did. He had responsibilities, assignments, things left undone. There was a place, a place older than memory. A house. The house.
The house wasn't new. It was old, it was the oldest...
He blinked, panic swirling in his mind as thoughts collided like waves crashing against a rocky shore. "I was the man of the house, the... I am a...talonmies, eikö niin?(janitor, right?)" The word he wanted slipped away from him, elusive and taunting. Just out of reach.
What was his job?
He struggled to grasp the answer, but his mind was waterlogged, thoughts slipping away before he could catch them.
Rose giggled, her hand brushing against her mouth. "Yes, Ahti. The man of the house. Of course, you are." But her laughter echoed in the pit of his stomach, twisting the knot tighter, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong.
This place, this house, this town. All of it was wrong, but the reason slipped away before he could remember.
Remember? Did he know the reason?
His eyes darted around the stairwell, seeking clarity, but the shadows only deepened. There was no sunlight to drive them away, only the dull light offered by flickering lights that desperately needed to be replaced. "What is this place? Where is my home?"
"Ahti," Rose smiled, but it was the smile one used when speaking to a child that they thought too young to understand, "this is your home, you live in Bright Falls, Ahti. The Valhalla Nursing Home, you're a resident here."
"No, that's not... this isn't my home." Ahti didn't feel like this place was home. It didn't feel right. "Voi helvetti...(Bloody hell...)"
"Well, then where is your home?"
Where?
He tried to picture it.
He saw water. Endless, churning waves, a great and terrible sea.
"...Ahtola?" The word felt old, ancient, like it belonged to someone else. No, that wasn’t it. That wasn’t... Ahti grasped at the distant memories of home, but they slipped through his fingers like sand. "No, no. It's the... Oldest House?" The words felt significant, but he couldn’t grasp their meaning. All he knew was that they sounded like home.
"You’re just confused, Ahti. It's alright, this is your home now." She turned the corner as they reached the top of the stairs, her hand still on his arm, her voice soothing but filled with an undercurrent of something that was wrong. "You’ve been here for a while, but you sometimes... forget. Let’s go get you to bed, and you'll feel better in the morning, okay?"
Ahti felt trapped, the walls closing in as if the very building itself conspired to keep him there.
He swallowed, throat dry.
No. No, something was very, very wrong.
His breath came faster, shallower.
"I can’t stay here!" The urgency in his voice startled even him, but it was true. "I... I need to clean! The floors! There is something there." He gestured wildly to the shadows at the edges of the hallway, writhing and clinging to the edges of the floors just visible in the corner of his eyesight, always on the edges no matter how directly he tried to look at it. "There is a mess, there. Bad. Vileda and a mop, I can make it go away, bright and clean."
A smudge. A stain. Something dark and shifting.
Something wrong.
It was growing. Expanding. Pulsing. A mess.
He needed to clean it.
Rose laughed, shaking her head. "A mess? Oh, Ahti, you silly thing," she said as she patted his arm. "Anyways, we don't have Vileda, you've stolen from Mr. Blum enough to know that. We stock O-Cedar for cleaning." Rose chuckled again, but it felt like nails on a chalkboard. "And, I keep telling you, you don’t need to clean! That’s the workers’ job - you're here to relax, Ahti."
But that was his job. Wasn’t it?
Something cracked inside him, something fragile and barely held together. He stumbled back, chest rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths.
He needed to leave. He needed to go.
But the doors were locked. The hallways stretched endlessly. The shadows were growing, creeping closer, curling around the edges of his vision.
Another memory flickered in his mind, hazy and indistinct. He remembered the smell of dust and paper, a sense of purpose, an assistant with hair as red as blood. Clogs to unclog, messes to clean up. Important things that were thought of as menial by those observing without doing. But it was just out of reach, like trying to grasp seafoam as it slipped through his fingers and dissipated into air. "But I..."
His breath quickened, panic clawing at him as confusion spiraled out of control.
He was lost. A ship adrift. The sea was rising, waves crashing over him.
Rose’s smile faltered for a moment, a flicker of something else crossing her face. "Ahti. Come on now." She reached out, her grip firm as she took his upper arm. "We're at your room, just come get in bed and I'll turn off the lights. It’ll be good for you."
"No!" The word escaped his lips before he could stop it. "I’m lost! I do not belong here. This is not right!"
A pulse of something dark throbbed in the corner of his vision, a mess he couldn’t identify, but it felt like a stain on the fabric of reality itself.
"Ahti?" Rose’s voice cut through his haze, but it was distant, muffled like an echo in a canyon, like screaming underwater. "What’s wrong? You need to calm down, you're getting too worked up..."
He took a step back, the walls closing in, the weight of reality pressing down on him as he twisted to look at the mess - except there was nothing, only a clean floor that had been swept that morning. "I need to clean! There’s... it’s wrong! I have to fix it!"
And that was his job, wasn't it?
"Ahti, stop! You don’t need to clean anything!" Her voice sharpened, frustration creeping in as she moved closer, her grip tightening on his arm. "You’re not a worker here. You don’t have to worry about that. Come to bed, you're going to disturb the others!"
He was adrift, a lost ship in a storm, with no lighthouse to guide him. A shiver ran down his spine, sensing the darkness creeping toward him, the ominous shadow in his periphery growing larger, only to dance away from his sight when he tried to look at it.
"I can’t stay here," he choked out. "I need to go home."
"But you are home," Rose said gently. She reached out, her hand resting on his forearm, her grip firm. "Come on, Ahti. Let’s get you to bed."
"No." His voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper. "No, this is wrong."
Her fingers tightened. "Ahti."
He twisted in her grip, but his body felt sluggish, his limbs uncooperative. The shadows deepened. His pulse roared in his ears, drowning out everything else.
He was suffocating.
Trapped.
His knees buckled. Rose caught him, guiding him toward the open doorway of his room. She easily maneuvered him to his bed, settling him over the covers and reassuring him that she would be back to check on him in a bit, after she finished her rounds of the other residents.
As she left his room, Ahti...
Was this his room? His home?
He couldn't...
"No!" He pressed his palms against his temples, willing clarity to break through the fog. "What is this? Why did I come here?"
He had come here willingly, hadn't he?
A vacation, a rest, a moment to catch his breath...
But there were no answers, only the oppressive silence that filled the space. The shadows grew thicker, and he felt the darkness closing in, smothering him as the storm swirled around him.
The lights flickered.
The sea raged.
A storm was coming.
And there was no lighthouse to guide him home.
In the darkness of his room, Ahti was drowning.