One of my headcanons for Michael Shelley is that he always had low-simmering rage.

It started when he was a kid, right after Ryan disappeared and the adults around him became frustrated by his confusing story. He was asked so many times what really happened that day, and he never had an answer to give. Not even to himself.

It wasn’t long before their frustration crawled under his skin and became something he internalized. He spent a long time being mad at himself for being too disoriented by what happened that day to be of any help to Ryan in the aftermath. Yet, he was upset with someone else too: The adults who wouldn’t believe that something strange had happened to him. Who wouldn’t just say “Yes. That sounds scary. I’m sorry you had to go through that,” instead of “That couldn’t have happened.”

When he joined The Magnus Institute, that angry part of him was giddy to have the chance to prove them wrong. He wanted to find books and statements about missing people that would give him the chance to say “See! I was right all along!” But he didn’t. And every time it seemed like he stumbled on something close Emma would run up behind him and put all his eagerness to rest with a reasonable explanations.

That only made Michael’s frustration grow. He was in the one place he could hope to find answers, and he was still just as lost as when he started. He could feel himself become a little angrier everyday, but he shoved it all down to be just as pleasant and kind as he always was. After all, he didn’t want to scare his frail, timid, elderly boss by having a meltdown and ripping down every shelf in the place until he found the information that would validate him. So he just bottled it all up.

Up until he became The Distortion and exploded.