Work Text:
“You need to control your Archivists,” Peter said in a huff.
Elias raised an eyebrow. The door to his office hadn’t opened, but Peter didn’t need to open it. Physical objects were more of a suggestion than a definite rule in the Lonely.
Peter leaned against a filing cabinet, arms crossed and glaring at Elias. He didn’t seem to have come out of the Lonely all the way - he was still somewhat translucent, and the fog wrapped so closely around him most of his lower legs were obscured.
“My Archivist,” Elias said slowly, “had nothing to do with our bet. You lost, Peter. As I told you you would.”
“Your Archivist attacked me!”
Elias looked away from Peter and resumed filling out the paperwork on his desk. Peter truly had neglected his administrative duties. “That was the deal.”
Peter stormed over to him, though since he still would not let go of the fog that surrounded him, his stomping footsteps made no sound. “Our deal was that he would try and retrieve Martin from the Lonely,” he hissed, “not that he would rip a statement out of me.”
A brief look of smug satisfaction - or a more heightened version of Elias’s usual expression of smug satisfaction - flashed across his face.
“You knew he would do this.” Peter leaned further over Elias, clearly meaning to intimidate him. Elias picked up another form.
“I suspected.”
“You should’ve warned me.”
“And why,” Elias asked, straightening his papers before setting them down, “would I do that?”
“You knew how much it would hurt,” Peter said petulantly, retreating back to the filing cabinet.
“It was necessary.”
“Was it?” Peter asked in a tone that indicated he did not believe Elias in the slightest.
“Jon needed to take a statement. If he can take one from you, he’s ready.”
“If he’s ready, why isn’t he back? Maybe the Lonely got him after all.”
Elias laughed, short and unamused. “He’ll be back.”
“You aren’t going to win.”
“Who’s going to stop me? Certainly not you - you’ve lost. You lost Martin, Gertrude destroyed your ritual with a text, and Jon took your statement. You’re finished.”
“Winning has made you insufferable.”
Elias looked at Peter with something that could almost be termed pity. “I couldn’t let you win forever. I’d get bored.”
Peter’s mouth fell open in shock. He quickly closed it, turned around, and stormed out of the office. The door slammed shut behind him, though Elias didn’t see Peter pull it closed. Interesting.
***
Elias watched as his Archivist fell out of the Lonely near the front door of the Institute. Small crystals of ice had formed in his hair and eyebrows, and he clutched Martin’s hand like it was his only lifeline. Up until a moment ago, Elias thought, that had probably been true.
Betting on love was always risky, but people were just so damn predictable. Martin would do anything for Jon, and Jon would do anything for Martin. It had been so easy to play them. And now, everything was ready. All he needed was for Jon to place the Watcher’s Crown on his head.
He couldn’t do it now, though. That would be jumping the gun, and Elias is smart enough to know that right now, Jon won’t do as he asks. It’s frustrating, knowing his ritual is ready but not being able to enact it. He’s felt this from dozens of other avatars over the years, most notably from Peter a couple decades ago. He’d barely been able to talk Peter out of killing Gertrude for what she’d done, and he thinks that if anyone interfered with his ritual now, there would be no saving them.
***
Peter popped into existence late that night in Elias’s apartment. He remained wrapped in fog as he had been earlier in the day, and everything around him was so bright that it almost hurt his eyes. He had been… somewhere, between that afternoon and now, somewhere dark, and the white lights on the white tile made him squint. Elias stood before him in front of a shower that was still running, completely naked and holding a towel. Somewhere outside the room, a TV played something that sounded like Big Brother.
“I suppose it would be hypocritical of me to ask for privacy,” Elias remarked dryly, turning off the water in the shower.
“Extremely.”
“You can make an appointment if you’d like to speak with me. I believe I’m free next Wednesday. Hovering in my bathroom is somewhat impolite.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to book an appointment with my husband. I can annoy you on my own time.”
“As of November 14, 2011, you are no longer my husband,” Elias said disinterestedly, beginning to pull on his clothes. “Are you here for a reason?”
“Nope!” Peter said, popping the ‘p’.
This was a lie, and Elias knew it. He debated whether or not it would make Peter leave if he made him tell the truth, decided it would, and then decided he didn’t especially want Peter to leave. Not yet.
“Ah, just here to be a nuisance then. Fantastic.”
“I am curious - if nothing can stop your ritual, why haven’t you completed it yet?”
“I’m not going to talk politics with you, Peter.” Elias folded his arms. He’d put on as much clothes as he intended to, which appeared to be an undershirt and boxers. He looked pointedly at something behind Peter, and when Peter didn’t move, sighed. “Do you mind stepping out of my bathroom.”
Peter faded out of existence and reappeared about five feet behind where he’d been standing. He was in Elias’s bedroom now, and Elias entered through a door Peter had apparently been blocking.
Elias closed the bathroom door behind him. “Why are you in my house, Peter?” He asked, voice hovering on the knife edge between irritation and anger.
“Can’t you just Know that?” Peter replied scathingly. “Ask me and force the truth out of me? Apparently you don’t have a problem getting other people to do that.”
“I was trying to be considerate, but yes, I could. I thought I’d offer you a chance to tell me yourself; I can’t imagine giving your statement was a pleasant experience.”
“I’ve never been emotionally vulnerable with you before, and I have no plans of starting now,” Peter said, sitting on the corner of the bed in a huff. He still refused to let go of the fog that was around him, separating him from the world. “Turn the TV off.”
Elias muted the TV and raised an eyebrow. “If your plan is to wallow in your misery, may I suggest you do so in the entire dimension you have for this purpose.”
Enough genuine pain flashed across Peter’s face that Elias briefly regretted his words, but Peter was being a nuisance.
Peter didn’t tell Elias that, ever since Jon had taken his statement, he couldn’t go back to the Lonely. He remained wrapped up in its fog, but when he tried to go there, there was nothing. A dark void that Peter somehow knew, if he entered, he would never leave. He didn’t say that he’d faded from existence when Jon had asked him his last question, and that he only remembered existing since then when he was with Elias. Instead, he said “Come here.”
“Did you appear in my bathroom because you wanted a quick fuck?” Elias said, laughing.
“Come here,” Peter said again, and he didn’t say yes so Elias wouldn’t know he was lying.
Elias stopped laughing. “Are you all right?” He asked, with more genuine care than Peter had thought him capable of. The question slipped out without his quite meaning it to. “What do you want?”
“I want to exist again,” Peter said. “Damn you.”
“Peter,” Elias said slowly, “what happened when Jon took your statement.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Peter said, standing and moving towards Elias. There was a certainty growing in the pit of his chest that something terrible had happened to him, and he wanted to forget. Elias’s Archivist had done this to him, and maybe Elias could fix it, and maybe with Elias beneath him he could believe he existed again.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said again, with this strange logic of Beholding and his desperation to feel his god again echoing through his head. He reached out to put a hand to the back of Elias’s neck and pull him closer, but his hand didn’t connect.
Elias looked down at the still-transparent, fog-encircled hand that had just passed through his neck and chest. “Did Jon kill you?” There was more pride for his Archivist in Elias’s voice than sadness for Peter, and in that moment Peter had never hated him more.
“You let him,” Peter snapped. “Was this always a part of your plan? Getting me killed before you complete your ritual?”
“I didn’t know he could do this,” Elias said, more curious than apologetic.
“Be glad I can’t touch you. If I could, you’d be dead.”
Elias met Peter’s eyes and shrugged. “You were always going to die eventually. If not today, it would have been tomorrow when I wear the Crown.”
“If you wear the Crown.”
“I will,” Elias said as Peter faded from existence once more. “I will.”