Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter Arndt woke up terrified. He didn't know where he was, he didn't know why he was there, and he didn't know who had brought him here.

What he knew was little: he had fallen asleep in his bedroom, and now he wasn't in said bedroom.

He was on a simple, uncomfortable bed, and all he could see was a ceiling of glass.

Darkness behind the glass – lights, too, in the darkness, but far, far away, and articifial. Not stars. Just... lights, beyond the glass. Far away.

Peter didn't know where he was... but he was certain there was someone else there, with him – he could hear them breathe, just a few feet away. He could sense them, even – cold, so very cold... Should he turned his head, should he try to get up, he'd certainly see them.

And perhaps he'd understand where and why.

Was it because of that money he owed to the loan sharks?

...Was it a way to get him scared?

He was terrified.

He could stand back up, and look at the person he was sure was in the room with him, and tell them he'd pay – he'd do anything they want, they didn't have to worry about that, really. Their little game had worked, they didn't need to keep him here, here he couldn't make the money he owed them.

Except...

Except Peter was terrified. Even looking at that person, who was here, in the room of glass with him... He couldn't bring himself to look.

But he'd have to, he knew that.

Peter's breathing became worse, hard, jerky. The fear was in his stomach, in his lungs, in his brain. It was slowly, but surely, engulfing his whole being. It was like sinking into deep waters without even a light to tell you where you were – not that the light would prevent you from drowning, but still...

Getting a light, though... Peter could do that. It was easy to get one, in fact. All he had to do was to be brave, and get standing – to look at the person who was here, with him, in the room.

Surely, then, he'd get answers. If not the answers he wanted, at least some answers. It was better than not knowing. Even if the loan sharks decided they wanted him dead... At least Peter would know what to fear. Should he panick, he'd at least know why.

Peter forced himself up – and looked at the man standing before a door of glass. There were men in dark getups, with black masks covering their faces standing outside, and the walls were made of glass too. But what really mattered...

The man...

Three pieces dark gray suit, cold blue tie, cold blue pocket square. Tall, silver hair, grey eyes, in his forties, smooth face – not half a feeling visible on his face. A smile, perhaps, depending on the moment – but no real feeling there.

Nothing visible, at least.

If the man standing in the glass room had any feelings left, they were probably feelings of darkness. Hatred. Rage. Disgust. On the other hand, if the man standing before Peter had only one feeling left, it was probably... a feeling of emptiness.

Devouring.

Peter was certain he had seen him before. He didn't know when or where, but he was certain...

Something about Jessica...

“What am I doing here?!?”

Peter tried to stand up – but he couldn't. His hands were tied to the bed, and he hadn't noticed until now. In fact, if he was feeling particularly clear-headed, he soon noticed that his body wasn't feeling anything physical. He tried to tug at the restraints – it did nothing. Of course it did nothing.

They – whoever they were – they wouldn't have him tied up if he could just shake it off.

The man – not a stranger, no, Peter was certain he had already seen him somewhere – the man looked at him.

Gave him a cold smile – half a smile. The ghost of a smile. A mere shadow. A soulless smile. A facial expression with nothing to express. A line, not a smile.

“Prisoner 0001. Peter Arndt. Welcome to the International Detainee Unit intake. I am Warden Hobbes.”

A jail. A jail Peter had never heard of, but a jail nonetheless. Illegal, perhaps, secret, for all he knew, but still a jail. A place to be held – for a long time.

Peter was not getting out – the line, turned slightly upwards, on Hobbes' face, told him so.

Here to stay, Prisoner 0001. You are here to stay.

Why was he here to stay? What had he done? Who was Hobbes?

Why would Peter deserve to rot in a hole? – he looked around, almost frantically. He was in a cell of glass, and through the glass, he could see more cells of glass, and beyond the unit of five cells, he could see other units. The lights let him see, more or less, vaguely, the dark walls of the large place they were in. Hundreds and hundreds of units. No sunlight.

Just the glass, the cells, the units, the guards, and Warden Hobbes.

And Peter Arndt.

Nothing else. No one else. He was Prisoner 0001 after all. The others would come, he could guess – and Peter worried. What kind of people would be forgotten here, with him? What kind of people deserved to be forgotten here? What kind of monsters was he going to live with from now on?

Why was he here?

A flash. Hobbes – but had it been Hobbes at the time? Peter couldn't remember – in a bar, in New York. Waiting for Jessica, taking a drink. Speaking with Hobbes – a stranger, at the time. Also from Puyallup, like Jessica.

Like Jessica...

Peter tried to stand up, but the restrainst and the abruptness of his attempt drew him right back onto the bed – and Warden Hobbes kept staring down at him, coldly.

But was it really coldness?

“Is... Is this about Jessica?!? You knew her, didn't you? Her death was an accident, I swear! I had nothing to do with that! I was even injured in the car accident, the police will tell you! If it's about Jessica, please, just let me out! I... I didn't want her to die!!!”

That much, at least, was true. Peter had never wanted Jessica to die, and her death had been an accident. He hadn't wanted anything to happen, but... But she had been lying to him about that phone call, he knew it, and why couldn't she have just told him the truth, why couldn't she simply love him, like he loved her? Why?!?

It wasn't his fault, damn it!

Hobbes' eyes told him the man believed him – and at the same time, it was obvious that the man could tell there was more to it, that the “car accident” had been a set up, that Peter had...

Somehow, the man knew everything.

And Peter knew, it was the only reason he was here.

Because of Jessica.

Hobbes didn't answer his questions – instead, he just smiled.

At that moment, Peter could tell, there was at least one emotion left in Warden Hobbes, despite the void he seemed to give off. A large, devouring wrath – all of it dedicated to only one man.

To Peter Arndt.

Hobbes turned to the door, passed it, letting the guards in. The guards untied Peter while keeping him in sight – not that Peter would have tried anything. He wouldn't even know what to do.

Just before the glass door was closed again, Hobbes pressed a picture – Jessica, smiling, and Hobbes in an army uniform, smiling, in a sunny place, with drinks – against the glass wall, and said:

“When you find that one person who connects you to the world, you become someone different. Someone better. When that person is taken from you, what do you become then?”

His voice was low, neutral, and yet... Hobbes tucked the photo back behind his pocket square.

“Mr. Arndt, your intake is finished.”

The door to Peter's glass cell closed, the words, imprinted in the man's mind.

Peter stared, lost – terrified – at the Tomb.

Prisoner 0001, Peter Arndt.

Chapter Text

The other side ~ Kara's mission for Decima, the one that should have ended with her getting the name of the person responsible for her burn notice, didn't end well.

First thing first, she hadn't been able to find John, even if she was certain he had survived Ordos – he had, after all, left, while she had stayed behind to be blown away by a missile. Decima had been able to give her a facial recognition footage from New York, with John well alive appearing on it, and looking just as broken as she had been. Yet, she hadn't been able to find anything after that. The only thing she knew for certain was that John had last been seen in New York Harbor. She suspected he had found someone to work for... Or perhaps he had gone off the grid alone, she wasn't sure.

Kara had, on the other hand, found Mark. Her former handler had been looking, just like her, for John. Apparently their former teammate had used the identity Michael Conor and stolen Summakor right from under the Agency's nose, terminating the sleeping agent inside the company and cutting off all the communications.

John was, after all, Summakor Corporation's only owner – long story, involving a mission back in 2009 that he had done mostly on his own, under the cover identity of Michael Conor, at the end of which John had unexpectedly become the “official” owner of a transnational firm, at least on paper. Now, whatever he had done to make it happen, Summakor was completely out of the CIA's hands, and into John's.

The company seemed to be working as usual, though. John had probably taken control for the money, and perhaps the technology. What he was planning to do with it was a mystery.

Not that it mattered much for Kara right now, considering she had been caught, and was headed to one of the supersecret CIA prisons or something, for the rest of her life – only a few days before the attack on the DoD facility, Mark and her had been found out, and well...

At least Mark's bomb vest had taken care of her former handler. She'd have hated it if he had just gone back to work after what he had done to John and her – though, she wasn't sure even Mark Snow could wiggle himself entirely out of a compromised status. But he might still have managed to just retire, be put on indefinite leave, something like that.

At least he was dead now.

Kara gritted her teeth in anger, as she was pushed along a long corridor. She had a black hood on her head, evidently, and she had been drugged for the trip to the prison, so she had no idea where she actually was, but...

Agents such as herself, when they were considered a traitor and there were actual proofs of the treason, always ended up in a black site jail not very people knew about, if they weren't killed as they tried to escape. To be fair, circumstances as the ones in Ordos, when they were ordered to simply dispose of their colleagues, didn't happen often – from time to time, yes, but not that often.

A forced retirement usually meant there wasn't any usable proof against the agent, but the higher-ups knew for sure they had switched sides / taken a bribe / whatever... and they didn't want to take it up to the even-higher-ups.

She should have realized something was wrong when Mark had told her John was a traitor, and she had to clean up behind him.

First, because of the unknown woman who had given them the orders for Ordos – it was always Mark, or Beale, who gave the direct orders. Not an unknown woman.

Second, because John would cut his head off with a plastic knife before betraying his country. The guy breathed martyrdom, for God's sake, he lived to bleed for the innocents and never get a thank you. He might question the orders, from time to time, but John wouldn't ever sell secrets to another country. He did things because he thought them right – or at least less wrong than not doing it – not for the money, the fame or the advancement.

To be clear, John Reese might have, one day, given the opportunity, acted against the CIA, but he would never have done it for someone else, for profit. He would have done it because he believed it to be the right thing to do.

John Reese didn't switch sides – he stopped believing in the agents, never in the goal.

And Mark had told Kara she had to clean up, because John was a traitor – laughable. How could she have even believed that? It was ridiculous.

Well, it turned out Mark had told the very same thing to John – Kara didn't have a hero complex, her, so it could sound a bit more believable – and yet John hadn't killed her.

What was John doing, now? Where was he?

Certainly not on his way to a secret prison like she was, she could guess. That's what revenge had earned her – and John didn't do revenge at the cost of innocent lives. John could shoot, maim, kill someone in revenge, but he'd never put bystanders in grave danger as a collateral damage, as she had done. Moreover, he'd see the person responsible as a target, but he wouldn't hold the organization as responsible – because one person was a bastard didn't make the entire system wrong, he'd say.

Besides, he'd never consider himself worth a revenge – someone else, yes, and Kara herself might even have been it, if she hadn't shot him in a blatant act of “nothing personal, John” in Ordos.

Kara wasn't sure where John got his holier-than-you beliefs from, but she could just tell he'd react like that.

For all she knew, he had gone and gotten himself employed by another agency / vigilante group / whatever-allowed-him-to-take-out-bad-guys-and-think-he-was-making-the-world-a-better-place. Or, considering he had gotten hold of Summakor Corporation, he had started his own business, taking out villains and running the transnational firm on the side to assure the income.

Whatever.

She was sat on a hard chair, her hands still handcuffed with a ziptie, the chain between her feet making it impossible to run off. Whoever was responsible for this place knew what they were doing – logical, considering it wasn't just another jail, but most likely a place made for people like her.

It irked her.

Kara waited about one minute, wondering where she was – already thinking about ways to escape, to make this place hell. It would all depend if the prison was above or underground, if the prisoners were always confined to their cells or if they got time out, no matter how surveilled...

A door opened, she heard a few footsteps, and the black hood was taken off.

Kara blinked, getting used to the light again. Not fast, at that. She still couldn't tell what the man in front of her looked like exactly when he started speaking – tall, John-like perhaps, dressed in shades of cold, but that was it for now.

"Prisoner 1645. Kara Stanton. Welcome to the International Detainee Unit, women side, intake. I am Warden Hobbes;"

Kara did a double take at the voice - cold, cold, way too cold, but still his voice, still recognizable... She blinked once more, and the room became better defined.

The man sitting on the other chair, looking completely blank - different - did too.

"John?"

He wore a three pieces gray suit, shining dark blue shirt, grey tie and pocket square. Getting John to wear a tie was like getting Mark to smile genuinely -Kara thought the only times she had seen him dressed up was either in a tux with a bow tie or when he was playing Michael Conor at the end of the mission. It just didn't usually happen.

But unless John had a twin brother, Kara could tell the man was her former partner. There just wasn't another explanation.

Except if John was in fact one of many clones, which would explain why he was so weird about some things, like, you know, humanity.

The man looked up from his folder and gave her a look – cold, empty, so-not-John when it should be John. It didn't look like he wasn't recognizing her, but more like the look he gave other agents when they called him by his name instead of his alias during a covert mission. The look that said “do you really think we have time for that?”. The nonsense look.

Kara had never been on the end of that particular look, but she knew it well enough. Then John – Willard Hobbes – looked back at the folder, his face completely bank.

“Ms Stanton, your intake is finished.”

And that was it. Kara Stanton was now a prisoner of the Tomb, on the other side. Nothing more. Just a prisoner. And no matter how many times she tried, Hobbes never let John out to play.