Chapter Text
“Why not kill us before we ever got here, before we ever had a chance?” Jon felt the buzz of compulsion in his throat, but the tears tracked down his face sapped away any satisfaction he might have gained from Knowing that this time, Elias wouldn’t be able to put off or resist it. He clenched hands that had been holding Martin’s mere minutes ago into fists.
“ The world would be dull without you,” Elias’ voice never quavered, and there was no fear in his expression in spite of the pull still drawing words from his throat. “You, and you little revenge quest, your endless moral quandaries, all the little friends ,” an image of Jordan Kennedy was forced into his mind, “you always seem to make. I’m not entirely sure how killing you would effect the world, if taking out the foundation the Ritual was built on would make it crumble, but I’m going to keep you because you’re interesting. ” His eyes bored into Jon, lit with manic delight. “So few are still capable of change in the world we’ve made, Jon, and even fewer are willing to pursue it. You,” Jon didn’t notice when Elias got into his personal space but he’s there, hand against the side of Jon’s face and nose inches from Jon’s, “are constantly changing. Naturally- a n Archive with no additions can only decay and die, but watching you add to your collection is… endlessly fascinating.”
And then, why hadn’t he backed away, Elias was kissing him, hot and demanding in the way Martin had only ever been shy and sweet, teeth digging into his lower lip. He tried to push him off, tried to remove him, but Elias had always been larger and stronger physically than Jon, and the Eye remained as reluctant as before to allow him to strike a fatal blow against one of its own.
When it finally ended, Jon was still held, jerking and writhing, close to Elias. As he sputtered and gasped, the other man looked at him with something undeniably soft in his expression. “You’re so frightened of everything, all the time. It’s delicious.”
“ Wh-whose fault-” he could barely get the words out, still trying to regain his breath and escape Elias’ hold.
Elias beamed. “I’ll happily take the blame, Archive.” He reached up to stroke a strand of hair out of Jon’s face, and Jon jerked his head away. Elias frowned, but finally let him go.
Jon stumbled back a few steps, glancing wildly about the room, which still looked as much the twisted copy of Elias’ office at the Institute as it had when he and Martin had entered with determination in their hearts, as it had when Martin had been torn away from him. Everything designed so someone sitting at the desk could see everything in the room, the only secrets there belonging to the desk and its owner.
His eyes caught on the desk, on an ornamental looking letter opener, and his thoughts drifted to something else Elias had said, ignored among the more immediately upsetting bits about… keeping Jon, whatever that meant. If there was any chance it could fix things, surely he had to try? Martin would have hated it, would have demanded they find another way, but Martin wasn’t there. Martin wasn’t there.
He lunged for the letter opener, trying to bring it to his own chest- the neck might have been better but he couldn’t, he couldn’t , not after Daisy- before Elias could stop him. Grab it, turn it inward, push -
Even with the head start the distance Jon had put between them gave him, Elias caught him easily, pulling Jon’s back against his own chest. Jon flailed, feeling desperate and rabid, slashing at the hand that tried to take the letter opener and heaving against the arm keeping it from its target. Elias caught him by the wrist, but Jon noted with satisfaction that his arm was trembling with effort. He wasn’t so helpless.
Elias bent down, murmured in his ear, the gesture horribly intimate, “I didn’t kill Martin, Jon. Just put him… elsewhere. But if you die, I see no reason I shouldn’t change that.”
It took a moment for the words to sink it, his arm falling limp as soon as the realized their meaning. Elias pried the letter opener from his fingers easily and tossed it across the room, pulling Jon along as he backed up a step and sat down in the absurdly luxurious office chair, pulling Jon into his lap. Jon didn’t resist, too busy frantically calling on Beholding trying to See Martin. The speck of hope was poisonous, banishing all other thought. He’d seen Martin pulled impossibly into the wall, vanish from Jon’s Sight, heard the scream and assumed it was too near to the noise Prentiss had made for him to have lived, but if he was, if Elias had placed him in some domain, maybe pressed into the Buried in some pocket of the wall, Jon had to find him. He had to save Martin, then they could save the world together, as they’d always meant to.
Elias ran gentle fingers through his hair, hand moving down to clasp over Jon’s mouth before he could think to compel another answer from him. “He’s alive,” he repeated, and an image of Martin pacing a small, dungeon-like room, harried and tear-stained but none the worse for wear, entered his mind, not from the Eye but from Elias. “ But the maintenance of that state is dependent on your good behavior.” The arm around his chest squeezed almost breakingly tight in time with the emphasis. “There are so many ways one can get lost in our new world, even without dying. Martin’s particularly susceptible to several of them.” Another image, Martin in the same room staring in terror as a small hole opened along the bottom of one wall and silver worms started to pour in.
Jon shook his head as sharply as he could with Elias’ hand over his jaw, tears pricking his eyes again. Elias dipped his chin to rest atop Jon’s head. “No? Then I have your promise that you won’t try to compel me, if I let you speak?”
Jon’s breath heaved as he nodded, momentarily rattling Elias’ chin from its resting place . He’d find Martin another way, but he could do nothing if he was already devoured or transformed. Elias’ hand dropped in time with another image, Martin glancing frantically around the cell, looking for worms that were suddenly gone, clutching his hair and muttering to himself as he wondered if he’d started imagining things.
“You could be lying,” Jon said flatly. He had no idea what the limits of Elias’ powers were, the image could be conjured entirely from his imagination, Martin dead as he had thought.
“ Would you care to risk his life on that?” Elias squeezed both arms around his waist, then straightened.
Jon shuddered. He didn’t have to shake his head for Elias to know his answer.
Elias hummed and w ent back to petting Jon’s hair. Jon could only cringe from the contact so far, held in place as he was. “I’m sure you can intuit the boundaries of what I’d like to propose,” Elias said, voice dropping into a register Jon had never heard him take before, smug but not performatively so, with an undercurrent he refused to categorize further. “You do as I ask, and Martin will be safe. He might even be comfortable. You misbehave, and…”
Jon nodded furiously before Elias could conjure another demonstration. His voice broke as he said, “I understand.” He knew that, as much as he had had no idea what he was signing up for when he had taken the promotion to Head Archivist, this promise had implications he could barely fathom in the moment. He couldn’t see Elias’ smile with his back to him and didn’t care to See, but he could feel it, like oil sliding down his back.
“ Perfect.” Elias moved to set Jon on his feet, rising after him, striding toward a door that hadn’t been there since Jon and Martin had foolishly charged in. The beaming grin was back, and it looked wrong beneath the cold blue eyes.
The door swung open of its own accord to show a set of stairs spiraling upward, stairs which had not been there either in the office’s original iteration or when Jon and Martin had entered. Elias held out a hand. “Come along, Jon. I want to look at our kingdom.”